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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The New York Times Current History of the
+European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915, by Various
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915
+       What Americans Say to Europe
+
+
+Author: Various
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 16, 2005  [eBook #16702]
+
+Language: en
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEW YORK TIMES CURRENT HISTORY
+OF THE EUROPEAN WAR, VOL. 1, JANUARY 9, 1915***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Linda Cantoni, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 16702-h.htm or 16702-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/7/0/16702/16702-h/16702-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/7/0/16702/16702-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+The New York Times
+
+CURRENT HISTORY OF THE EUROPEAN WAR
+
+JANUARY 9, 1915.
+
+What Americans Say to Europe
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES W. ELIOT
+
+_(Photo (c) by Paul Thompson.)_
+
+_See Page 473_]
+
+[Illustration: JAMES M. BECK
+
+_See Page 413_]
+
+
+
+
+In the Supreme Court of Civilization
+
+Argued by James M. Beck.
+
+
+THE NEW YORK TIMES _submitted the evidence contained in the official
+"White Paper" of Great Britain, the "Orange Paper" of Russia, and the
+"Gray Paper" of Belgium to James M. Beck, late Assistant Attorney
+General of the United States and a leader of the New York bar, who has
+argued many of the most important cases before the Supreme Court. On
+this evidence Mr. Beck has argued in the following article the case of
+Dual Alliance vs. Triple Entente. It has been widely circulated in
+France and Great Britain._
+
+Let us suppose that in this year of dis-Grace, Nineteen Hundred and
+Fourteen, there had existed, as let us pray will one day exist, a
+Supreme Court of Civilization, before which the sovereign nations could
+litigate their differences without resort to the iniquitous and less
+effective appeal to the arbitrament of arms.
+
+Let us further suppose that each of the contending nations had a
+sufficient leaven of Christianity to have its grievances adjudged not by
+the ethics of the cannon or the rifle, but by the eternal criterion of
+justice.
+
+What would be the judgment of that august tribunal?
+
+Any discussion of the ethical merits of this great controversy must
+start with the assumption that there is an international morality.
+
+This fundamental axiom, upon which the entire basis of civilization
+necessarily rests, is challenged by a small class of intellectual
+perverts.
+
+Some hold that moral considerations must be subordinated either to
+military necessity or so-called manifest destiny. This is the Bernhardi
+doctrine.
+
+Others teach that war is a beneficent fatality and that all nations
+engaged in it are therefore equally justified. On this theory all of the
+now contending nations are but victims of an irresistible current of
+events, and the highest duty of the State is to prepare itself for the
+systematic extermination, when necessary or expedient, of its neighbors.
+
+Notwithstanding the clever platitudes under which both these doctrines
+are veiled, all morally sane minds are agreed that this war is a great
+crime against civilization, and the only open question is, which of the
+two contending groups of powers is morally responsible for that crime?
+
+Was Austria justified in declaring war against Servia?
+
+Was Germany justified in declaring war against Russia and France?
+
+Was England justified in declaring war against Germany?
+
+As the last of these questions is the most easily disposed of, it may be
+considered first.
+
+
+England's Justification.
+
+England's justification rests upon the solemn Treaty of 1839, whereby
+Prussia, France, England, Austria, and Russia "became the guarantors" of
+the "perpetual neutrality" of Belgium, as reaffirmed by Count Bismarck,
+then Chancellor of the North German Confederation, on July 22, 1870, and
+as even more recently reaffirmed in the striking fact disclosed in the
+Belgian "Gray Book."
+
+In the Spring of 1913 a debate was in progress in the Budget Committee
+of the Reichstag with reference to the Military Budget. In the course of
+the debate the German Secretary of State said:
+
+     "The neutrality of Belgium is determined by international
+     conventions, _and Germany is resolved to respect these
+     conventions_."
+
+To confirm this solemn assurance, the Minister of War added in the same
+debate:
+
+     "Belgium does not play any part in the justification of the
+     German scheme of military reorganization. The scheme is
+     justified by the position of matters in the East. _Germany
+     will not lose sight of the fact that Belgian neutrality is
+     guaranteed by international treaties._"
+
+A year later, on July 31, 1914, Herr von Below, the German Minister at
+Brussels, assured the Belgian Department of State that he knew of a
+declaration which the German Chancellor had made in 1911, to the effect
+"that Germany had no intention of violating our neutrality," and "that
+he was certain that the sentiments to which expression was given at that
+time _had not changed_." (See Belgian "Gray Book," Nos. 11 and 12.)
+
+Apart from these treaty stipulations, which are only declaration of
+Belgium's rights as sovereign nations, The Hague Conference, in which
+forty-four nations (including Germany) participated, reaffirmed as an
+axiom of international law the inherent right of a nation to the
+sanctity of its territory.
+
+It seems unnecessary to discuss the wanton disregard of these solemn
+obligations and protestations, when the present Chancellor of the German
+Empire, in his speech to the Reichstag and to the world on Aug. 4, 1914,
+frankly admitted that the action of the German military machine in
+invading Belgium was a wrong. He said:
+
+     "We are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no
+     law. Our troops have occupied Luxemburg and perhaps are
+     already on Belgian soil. _Gentlemen, that is contrary to the
+     dictates of international law._ It is true that the French
+     Government has declared at Brussels that France is willing to
+     respect the neutrality of Belgium, so long as her opponent
+     respects it. We knew, however, that France stood ready for
+     invasion. France could wait, but we could not wait. A French
+     movement upon our flank upon the lower Rhine might have been
+     disastrous. So we were compelled to override the just protest
+     of the Luxemburg and Belgian Governments. _The wrong--I speak
+     openly--that we are committing_ we will endeavor to make good
+     as soon as our military goal has been reached. Anybody who is
+     threatened as we are threatened, and is fighting for his
+     highest possessions, can only have one thought--how he is to
+     hack his way through."
+
+This defense is not even a plea of confession and avoidance. It is a
+plea of "Guilty" at the bar of the world. It has one merit, that it
+does not add to the crime the aggravation of hypocrisy. It virtually
+rests the case of Germany upon the gospel of Treitschke and Bernhardi,
+that each nation is justified in exerting its physical power to the
+utmost in defense of its selfish interests and without any regard to
+considerations of conventional morality. Might as between nations is the
+sole criterion of right. There is no novelty in this gospel. Its only
+surprising feature is its revival in the twentieth century. It was
+taught far more effectively by Machiavelli in his treatise, "The
+Prince," wherein he glorified the policy of Cesare Borgia in trampling
+the weaker States of Italy under foot by ruthless terrorism, unbridled
+ferocity, and the basest deception. Indeed, the wanton destruction of
+Belgium is simply Borgiaism amplified ten-thousandfold by the mechanical
+resources of modern war.
+
+
+This Answer Cannot Satisfy.
+
+Unless our boasted civilization is the thinnest veneering of barbarism;
+unless the law of the world is in fact only the ethics of the rifle and
+the conscience of the cannon; unless mankind after uncounted centuries
+has made no real advance in political morality beyond that of the cave
+dweller, then this answer of Germany cannot satisfy the "decent respect
+to the opinions of mankind." Germany's contention that a treaty of peace
+is "a scrap of paper," to be disregarded at will when required by the
+selfish interests of one contracting party, is the negation of all that
+civilization stands for.
+
+Belgium has been crucified in the face of the world. Its innocence of
+any offense, until it was attacked, is too clear for argument. Its
+voluntary immolation to preserve its solemn guarantee of neutrality will
+"plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against the deep damnation of its
+taking off." On that issue the Supreme Court could have no ground for
+doubt or hesitation. Its judgment would be speedy and inexorable.
+
+The remaining two issues, above referred to, are not so simple.
+Primarily and perhaps exclusively, the ethical question turns upon the
+issues raised by the communications which passed between the various
+Chancelleries of Europe in the last week of July, for it is the amazing
+feature of this greatest of all wars that it was precipitated by
+diplomats and rulers, and, assuming that all these statesmen sincerely
+desired a peaceful solution of the questions raised by the Austrian
+ultimatum, (which is by no means clear,) it was the result of
+ineffective diplomacy and clumsy diplomacy at that.
+
+I quite appreciate the distinction between the immediate causes of a war
+and the anterior and more fundamental causes; nevertheless, with the
+world in a state of Summer peace on July 23, 1914, an issue, gravely
+affecting the integrity of nations and the balance of power in Europe,
+is suddenly precipitated by the Austrian ultimatum, and thereafter and
+for the space of about a week a series of diplomatic communications
+passed between the Chancelleries of Europe, designed on their face to
+prevent a war and yet so ineffective that the war is precipitated and
+the fearful Rubicon crossed before the world knew, except imperfectly,
+the nature of the differences between the Governments involved. The
+ethical aspects of this great conflict must largely depend upon the
+record that has been made up by the official communications which can,
+therefore, be treated as documentary evidence in a litigated case.
+
+A substantial part of that record is already before the court of public
+opinion in the British and German "White Papers," the Russian "Orange
+Paper," and the Belgian "Gray Paper," and the purpose of this article is
+to discuss what judgment an impartial and dispassionate court would
+render upon the issues thus raised and the evidence thus submitted.
+
+Primarily such a court would be deeply impressed not only by what the
+record as thus made up discloses, _but also by the significant omissions
+of documents known to be in existence_.
+
+The official defense of England and Russia does not apparently show any
+failure on the part of either to submit all of the documents in their
+possession, _but the German "White Paper" on its face discloses the
+suppression of documents of vital importance, while Austria has as yet
+failed to submit any of the documentary evidence in its possession_.
+
+We know from the German "White Paper"--even if we did not conclude as a
+matter of irresistible inference--that many important communications
+passed in this crisis between Germany and Austria, and it is probable
+that some communications must also have passed between those two
+countries and Italy. Italy, despite its embarrassing position, owes to
+the world the duty of a full disclosure. What such disclosure would
+probably show is indicated by her deliberate conclusion that her allies
+had commenced an _aggressive_ war, which released her from any
+obligation under the Triple Alliance.
+
+The fact that communications passed between Berlin and Vienna, the text
+of which has never been disclosed, is not a matter of conjecture.
+Germany admits and asserts as part of her defense that she faithfully
+exercised her mediatory influence with Austria, but not only is such
+mediatory influence not disclosed by any practical results of such
+mediation, but the text of these vital communications is still kept in
+the secret archives of Berlin and Vienna.
+
+Thus in the official apology for Germany it is stated that, in spite of
+the refusal of Austria to accept the proposition of Sir Edward Grey to
+treat the Servian reply "as a basis for further conversations,"
+
+     "we [Germany] continued our mediatory efforts to the _utmost_
+     and advised Vienna to make any possible compromise consistent
+     with the dignity of the Monarchy."
+
+     [German "White Paper."]
+
+This would be more convincing if the German Foreign Office in giving
+other diplomatic documents had only added the _text_ of the advice which
+it thus gave Vienna.
+
+The same significant omission will be found when the same official
+defense states that on July 29 the German Government advised Austria "to
+begin the conversations with Mr. Sazonof." But here again _the text_ is
+not found among the documents which the German Foreign Office has given
+to the world. The communications, which passed between that office and
+its Ambassadors in St. Petersburg, Paris, and London, are given _in
+extenso_, but among the twenty-seven communications appended to the
+German official defense it is most significant that not a single
+communication is given of the many which passed from Berlin to Vienna
+and only two that passed from Vienna to Berlin.
+
+This cannot be an accident. Germany has seen fit to throw the veil of
+secrecy over the text of its communications to Vienna, although
+professing to give the purport of a few of them.
+
+Until Germany is willing to put the most important documents in its
+possession in evidence, it must not be surprised that the world,
+remembering Bismarck's garbling of the Ems dispatch, which precipitated
+the Franco-Prussian war, will be incredulous as to the sincerity of
+Germany's mediatory efforts.
+
+
+Austria's Case Against Servia.
+
+To discuss the justice of Austria's grievances against Servia would take
+us outside the documentary record and into the realm of disputed facts
+and would expand this discussion far beyond reasonable length.
+
+Let us therefore suppose _arguendo_ that our imaginary court would
+commence its consideration with the assumption that Austria had a just
+grievance against Servia, and that the murder of the Archduke on June
+28, 1914, while in fact committed by Austrian citizens of Servian
+sympathies on Austrian soil, had its inspiration and encouragement in
+the political activities either of the Servian Government or of
+political organizations of that country.
+
+The question for decision would then be not whether Austria had a just
+grievance against Servia, but whether having regard to the obligations
+which Austria, as well as every other country, owes to civilization, she
+proceeded in the right manner to redress her grievance.
+
+On June 28, 1914, the Austrian Crown Prince was murdered at Serajevo.
+For nearly a month there was no action by Austria, and no public
+statement whatever of its intentions. The world profoundly sympathized
+with Austria in its new trouble, and especially with its aged monarch,
+who, like King Lear, was "as full of grief as years and wretched in
+both."
+
+The Servian Government had formerly disclaimed any complicity with the
+assassination and had pledged itself to punish any Servian citizen
+implicated therein.
+
+From time to time, from June 28 to July 23, there came semi-inspired
+intimations from Vienna that that country intended to act with great
+self-restraint and in the most pacific manner. In his speech to the
+French Chamber of Deputies, Viviani says that Europe had in the interval
+preceding July 23 express assurances from Austria that its course would
+be moderate and conciliatory. Never was it even hinted that Germany and
+Austria were about to apply in a time of profound peace a match to the
+powder magazine of Europe.
+
+This is strikingly shown by the first letter in the English "White
+Paper" from Sir Edward Grey to Sir H. Rumbold, dated July 20, 1914. It
+is one of the most significant documents in the entire correspondence.
+At the time this letter was written it is altogether probable that
+Austria's arrogant and most unreasonable ultimatum had already been
+framed and approved in Vienna, and possibly in Berlin, and yet Sir
+Edward Grey, the Foreign Minister of a great and friendly country, had
+so little knowledge of Austria's policy that he
+
+     "asked the German Ambassador today (July 20) if he had any
+     news of what was going on in Vienna with regard to Servia."
+     The German Ambassador replied "that he had not, but Austria
+     was certainly going to take some step."
+
+Sir Edward Grey adds that he told the German Ambassador that he had
+learned that Count Berchtold, the Austrian Foreign Minister,
+
+     "in speaking to the Italian Ambassador in Vienna, had
+     deprecated the suggestion that the situation was grave, but
+     had said that it should be cleared up."
+
+The German Minister then replied that it would be desirable "if Russia
+could act as a mediator with regard to Servia," so that the first
+suggestion of Russia playing the part of the peacemaker came from the
+German Ambassador in London. Sir Edward Grey then adds that he told the
+German Ambassador that he
+
+     "assumed that the Austrian Government would not do anything
+     until they had first disclosed to the public their case
+     against Servia, founded presumably upon what they had
+     discovered at the trial,"
+
+and the German Ambassador assented to this assumption.
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 1.]
+
+Either the German Ambassador was then deceiving Sir Edward Grey, on the
+theory that the true function of an Ambassador is "to lie for his
+country," or the thunderbolt was being launched with such secrecy that
+even the German Ambassador in England did not know what was then in
+progress.
+
+The British Ambassador at Vienna reports to Sir Edward Grey:
+
+     "The delivery at Belgrade on the 23d July of the note to
+     Servia was preceded by a period of _absolute silence_ at the
+     Ballplatz."
+
+He proceeds to say that with the exception of the German Ambassador at
+Vienna--note the significance of the exception--not a single member of
+the Diplomatic Corps knew anything of the Austrian ultimatum and that
+the French Ambassador when he visited the Austrian Foreign Office on
+July 23 was not only kept in ignorance that the ultimatum had actually
+been issued, but was given the impression that its tone was moderate.
+Even the Italian Ambassador was not taken into Count Berchtold's
+confidence.
+
+[Dispatch from Sir M. de Bunsen to Sir Edward Grey, dated Sept. 1,
+1914.]
+
+No better proof of this sense of security need be adduced than that the
+French President and her Foreign Minister were thousands of miles from
+Paris, and the Russian Minister had, after the funeral of the Austrian
+Archduke, left Vienna for his annual holiday.
+
+The interesting and important question here suggests itself whether
+Germany had knowledge of and approved in advance the Austrian ultimatum.
+If it did, it was guilty of duplicity, for the German Ambassador at St.
+Petersburg gave to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs an express
+assurance that
+
+     "the German Government _had no knowledge of the text of the
+     Austrian note before it was handed in and has not exercised
+     any influence on its contents. It is a mistake to attribute to
+     Germany a threatening attitude_."
+
+[Russian "Orange Paper," No. 18.]
+
+This statement is inherently improbable. Austria was the weaker of the
+two allies and it was Germany's sabre that it was rattling in the face
+of Europe. Obviously Austria could not have proceeded to extreme
+measures, which it was recognized from the first would antagonize
+Russia, unless it had the support of Germany, and there is a
+probability, amounting to a moral certainty, that it would not have
+committed itself and Germany to the possibility of a European war
+without first consulting Germany.
+
+Moreover, we have the testimony of Sir M. de Bunsen, the English
+Ambassador in Vienna, who advised Sir Edward Grey that he had "private
+information that the German Ambassador (at Vienna) knew the text of the
+Austrian ultimatum to Servia before it was dispatched and telegraphed it
+to the German Emperor," and that the German Ambassador himself "indorses
+every line of it." [English "White Paper," No. 95.] As he does not
+disclose the source of his "private information," this testimony would
+not by itself be convincing, but when we examine Germany's official
+defense in the German "White Paper," _we find that the German Foreign
+Office admits that it was consulted by Austria previous to the ultimatum
+and not only approved of Austria's course but literally gave her a
+carte blanche to proceed_.
+
+This point seems so important in determining the sincerity of Germany's
+attitude and pacific protestations that we quote _in extenso_. After
+referring to the previous friction between Austria and Servia, the
+German "White Paper" says:
+
+"In view of these circumstances, Austria had to admit that it would not
+be consistent either with the dignity or self-preservation of the
+monarchy to look on longer at the operations on the other side of the
+border without taking action. _The Austro-Hungarian Government advised
+us of this view of the situation and asked our opinion in the matter. We
+were able to assure our ally most heartily of our agreement with her
+view of the situation and to assure her that any action that she might
+consider it necessary to take in order to put an end to the movement in
+Servia directed against the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
+would receive our approval._ We were fully aware in this connection that
+warlike moves on the part of Austria-Hungary against Servia would bring
+Russia into the question and might draw us into a war in accordance with
+our duties as an ally."
+
+Sir M. de Bunsen's credible testimony is further confirmed by the fact
+that the British Ambassador at Berlin, in his letter of July 22 to Sir
+Edward Grey, states that _on the preceding night_ (July 21) he had met
+the German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and an allusion was
+made to a possible action by Austria.
+
+     "His Excellency was evidently of opinion that this step on
+     Austria's part would have been made ere this. He insisted that
+     the question at issue was one for settlement between Servia
+     and Austria alone, and that there should be no interference
+     from outside in the discussions between those two countries."
+
+He adds that while he had regarded it as inadvisable that his country
+should approach Austria-Hungary in the matter, he had
+
+     "on several occasions in conversation with the Servian
+     Minister emphasized the extreme importance that
+     Austro-Servian relations should be put on a proper footing."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 2.]
+
+Here we have the first statement of Germany's position in the matter, a
+position which subsequent events showed to be entirely untenable, but to
+which Germany tenaciously adhered to the very end, and which did much to
+precipitate the war. Forgetful of the solidarity of European
+civilization and the fact that by policy and diplomatic intercourse
+continuing through many centuries a United European State exists, even
+though its organization be as yet inchoate, he took the ground that
+Austria should be permitted to proceed to aggressive measures against
+Servia without interference from any other power, even though, as was
+inevitable, the humiliation of Servia would destroy the status of the
+Balkan States and even threaten the European balance of power.
+
+No space need be taken in convincing any reasonable man that this
+Austrian ultimatum to Servia was brutal in its tone and unreasonable in
+its demands. It would be difficult to find in history a more offensive
+document, and its iniquity was enhanced by the short shriving time which
+it gave either Servia or Europe. Servia had forty-eight hours to answer
+whether it would compromise its sovereignty, and virtually admit its
+complicity in a crime which it had steadily disavowed. As the full text
+of the ultimatum first reached the Foreign Chancelleries nearly
+twenty-four hours after its service upon Servia, the other European
+nations had barely a day to consider what could be done to preserve the
+peace of Europe before that peace was fatally compromised.
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 5; Russian "Orange Paper," No. 3.]
+
+Further confirmation that the German Foreign Office did have advance
+knowledge of at least the substance of the ultimatum is shown by the
+fact that on the same day the ultimatum was issued the Chancellor of the
+German Empire instructed the German Ambassadors in Paris, London, and
+St. Petersburg to advise the English, French, and Russian Governments
+that
+
+     "the acts as well as _the demands_ of the Austro-Hungarian
+     Government cannot but be looked upon as justified."
+
+[German "White Paper," Annex 1B.]
+
+How could Germany thus indorse the "demands" if it did not know the
+substance of the ultimatum?
+
+The hour when these instructions were sent is not given, so that it does
+not follow that these significant instructions were necessarily prior to
+the service of the ultimatum at Belgrade at 6 P.M. Nevertheless, as the
+ultimatum did not reach the other capitals of Europe until the following
+day, as the diplomatic correspondence clearly shows, it seems improbable
+that the German Foreign Office would have issued this very carefully
+prepared and formal warning to the other powers on July the 23d unless
+it had not only knowledge of Austria's intention to serve the ultimatum
+but also at least of the substance thereof.
+
+While it may be that Germany, while indorsing in blank the policy of
+Austria, purposely refrained from examining the text of the
+communication, so that it could thereafter claim that it was not
+responsible for Austria's action--a policy which would not lessen the
+discreditable character of the whole business--yet the more reasonable
+assumption is that the simultaneous issuance of Austria's ultimatum at
+Belgrade and Germany's warning to the powers were the result of a
+concerted action and had a common purpose. No court or jury, reasoning
+along the ordinary inferences of human life, would question this
+conclusion for a moment.
+
+The communication for the German Foreign Office last referred to
+anticipates that Servia "will refuse to comply with these demands"--why,
+if they were justified?--and Germany suggests to France, England, and
+Russia that if, as a result of such non-compliance, Austria has
+"recourse to military measures," that "the choice of means must be left
+to it."
+
+The German Ambassadors in the three capitals were instructed
+
+     "to lay particular stress on the view that the above question
+     is one the settlement of which devolves solely upon
+     Austria-Hungary and Servia, and one which the powers should
+     earnestly strive to confine to the two countries concerned,"
+
+and he added that Germany strongly desired
+
+     "that the dispute be localized, since any intervention of
+     another power, on account of the various alliance obligations,
+     would bring consequences impossible to measure."
+
+This is one of the most significant documents in the whole
+correspondence. If Germany were as ignorant as her Ambassador at London
+affected to be of the Austrian policy and ultimatum, and if Germany was
+not then instigating and supporting Austria in its perilous course, why
+should the German Chancellor have served this threatening notice upon
+England, France, and Russia, that Austria must be left free to make war
+upon Servia, and that any attempt to intervene in behalf of the weaker
+nation would "bring consequences impossible to measure"?
+
+[German "White Paper," Annex 1B.]
+
+A few days later the Imperial Chancellor sent to the Confederated
+Governments of Germany a _confidential communication_ in which he
+recognized the possibility that Russia might feel it a duty "to take the
+part of Servia in her dispute with Austria-Hungary." Why, again, if
+Austria's case was so clearly justified? The Imperial Chancellor added
+that
+
+     "if Russia feels constrained to take sides with Servia in this
+     conflict, she certainly has a right to do it,"
+
+but added that if Russia did this it would in effect challenge the
+integrity of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and that Russia would
+therefore alone--
+
+     "bear the responsibility if a European war arises from the
+     Austro-Servian question, _which all the rest of the great
+     European powers wish to localize_."
+
+In this significant confidential communication the German Chancellor
+declares the strong interest which Germany had in the punishment of
+Servia by Austria. He says "_our closest interests therefore summon us
+to the side of Austria-Hungary_," and he adds that
+
+     "if contrary to hope, the trouble should spread, owing to the
+     intervention of Russia, then, true to our duty as an ally, we
+     should have to support the neighboring monarchy with the
+     entire might of the German Empire."
+
+[German "White Paper," Annex 2.]
+
+In reaching its conclusion our imaginary court would pay little
+attention to mere professions of a desire for peace. A nation, like an
+individual, can covertly stab the peace of another while saying, "Art
+thou in health, my brother?" and even the peace of civilization can be
+betrayed by a Judas kiss. Professions of peace belong to the cant of
+diplomacy and have always characterized the most bellicose of nations.
+
+No war in modern times has been begun without the aggressor pretending
+that his nation wished nothing but peace and invoking Divine aid for its
+murderous policy. To paraphrase the words of Lady Teazle on a noted
+occasion when Sir Joseph Surface talked much of "honor," it might be as
+well in such instances to leave the name of God out of the question.
+
+Let us, then, analyze the record as already made up; and for the sake of
+clearness the events which preceded the war will be considered
+chronologically.
+
+Immediately upon the receipt of the ultimatum in St. Petersburg on July
+24, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, in a formal communication
+to Austria-Hungary, suggested that the abrupt time limit "leaves to the
+powers a delay entirely insufficient to undertake any useful steps
+whatever for the straightening out of the complications that have
+arisen," and added:
+
+     "To prevent the incalculable consequences, equally disastrous
+     for all the powers, which can follow the method of action of
+     the Austro-Hungarian Government, it seems indispensable to us
+     that, above all, the delay given to Servia to reply should be
+     extended."
+
+Sazonof further suggested that time should be given for the powers to
+examine the results of the inquiry that the Austro-Hungarian Government
+had made in the matter of the Serajevo assassination, and stated that if
+the powers were convinced
+
+     "of the well-groundedness of certain of the Austrian demands
+     they would find themselves in a position to send to the
+     Servian Government consequential advice."
+
+He justly observes that
+
+     "a refusal to extend the terms of the ultimatum ... would be
+     in contradiction with the very bases of international
+     relations."
+
+[Russian "Orange Paper," No. 4.]
+
+Could any court question the justice of this contention? The peace of
+the world was at stake. Time only was asked to see what could be done to
+preserve that peace and satisfy Austria's grievances to the uttermost
+farthing.
+
+Concurrently with Sazonof's plea for a little time to preserve the peace
+of the world, Sir Edward Grey had seen the German Ambassador on July 24
+and had suggested to him that the only method of preventing the
+catastrophe was
+
+     "that the four powers, Germany, France, Italy, and ourselves,
+     (England,) should work together simultaneously at Vienna and
+     St. Petersburg."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 11.]
+
+Germany had only to intimate to Austria that "a decent respect to the
+opinions of mankind," as well as common courtesy to great and friendly
+nations, required that sufficient time be given not only to Servia, but
+to the other nations, to concert for the common good, especially as the
+period was one of Summer dullness and many of the leading rulers and
+statesmen were absent from their respective capitals.
+
+Under these circumstances was it not natural that Russia should announce
+on July 24
+
+     "that any action taken by Austria to humiliate Servia would
+     not leave Russia indifferent,"
+
+and that on the same day the Russian Chargé d'Affaires at Vienna
+suggested to the Austrian Foreign Office
+
+     "that the Austrian note was drawn up in a form rendering it
+     impossible of acceptance as it stood, and that it was both
+     unusual and peremptory in its terms"?
+
+To which the only reply of the Austrian Foreign Minister was that their
+representative in Servia
+
+     "was under instructions to leave Belgrade unless Austrian
+     demands were accepted in their integrity by 4 P.M. tomorrow."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 7.]
+
+Austria's only concession then or subsequently to the cause of peace was
+the assurance that Austria would not _after its conquest_ of Servia
+demand any territory.
+
+The action of Germany on this day, July 24, is most significant. Its
+Ambassador in England communicated a note to Sir Edward Grey in which it
+justified Austro-Hungarian grievances and ultimatum by saying that
+
+     "under these circumstances the course of procedure and demands
+     of the Austro-Hungarian Government can only be regarded as
+     equitable and moderate."
+
+The note added:
+
+     "The Imperial Government [Germany] want to emphasize their
+     opinion that in the present case there is only question of a
+     matter to be settled exclusively between Austria-Hungary and
+     Servia, and that the great powers ought seriously to endeavor
+     to reserve it to those two immediately concerned."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 9.]
+
+On July 25, probably to the great surprise of both Germany and Austria,
+which had definitely calculated upon Servians non-compliance with the
+ultimatum, the latter country, under the conciliatory advice of Russia
+and England, made a reply in which, at some sacrifice of its
+self-respect as a sovereign State, it substantially accepted all but one
+of the demands of Austria, and as to that it did not, in terms, refuse
+it, but expressed its willingness to refer it either to arbitration or
+to a conference of the powers.
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 39.]
+
+No court would question for a moment the conclusion that the reply was a
+substantial acquiescence in the extreme Austrian demands, nor indeed did
+either Germany or Austria seriously contend that it was not. They
+contented themselves with impeaching the sincerity of the assurances,
+calling the concessions "shams," and of this it is enough to say that if
+Germany and Austria had accepted Servians reply as sufficient, and
+Servia had subsequently failed to fulfill its promises thus made in the
+utmost good faith, there would have been little sympathy for Servia, and
+no general war. Indeed, both Russia and England pledged their influence
+to compel Servia, if necessary, to meet fully any reasonable demand of
+Austria. The outstanding question, which Servia agreed to arbitrate or
+leave to the powers, was the participation of Austrian officials in the
+Servian courts. This did not present a difficult problem. Austria's
+professed desire for an impartial investigation could have been easily
+attained by having the neutral powers appoint a commission of jurists to
+make such investigation.
+
+On July 24 Sir Edward Grey also had asked the German Ambassador to use
+his good influences at Vienna to secure an extension of time. To this
+most reasonable request the answer and action of the German Government
+was disingenuous in the extreme. They agreed to "pass on" the
+suggestion, but the German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs added
+that as the Austrian Prime Minister was away from Vienna there would be
+delay and difficulty in getting the time limit extended, and
+
+     "he admitted quite freely that the Austro-Hungarian Government
+     _wished to give the Servians a lesson and that they meant to
+     take military action. He also admitted that the Servian
+     Government could not swallow certain of the Austro-Hungarian
+     demands_."
+
+He added that Germany did not want a general war and "he would do all in
+his power to prevent such a calamity."
+
+[English "White Paper," Nos. 11 and 18.]
+
+Immediately on the issuance of the ultimatum the Austrian Foreign
+Minister, Count Berchtold, had most inopportunely taken himself to
+Ischl, where he remained until after the expiration of the time limit.
+Access to him proved difficult, and the Russian Chargé at Vienna, having
+lodged a pacific protest with the Acting Foreign Minister in order to
+take no chances, telegraphed it to Berchtold at Ischl. Nevertheless,
+Berchtold's apparently designed absence from the capital was Germany's
+excuse for its failure to get the time limit extended.
+
+If Germany made any communication to Austria in the interests of peace
+the text has yet to be disclosed to the world. A word from Berlin to
+Vienna would have given the additional time which, with sincerely
+pacific intentions, might have resulted in the preservation of peace.
+Germany, so far as the record discloses, never spoke that word.
+
+Contrast this attitude with that of Russia, whose Foreign Minister on
+the morning of July 25 offered
+
+     "to stand aside and leave the question in the hands of
+     England, France, Germany, and Italy."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 17.]
+
+As Russia was the member of the Triple Entente most interested in the
+fate of Servia, what proposal could have been more conciliatory or
+magnanimous?
+
+On July 25 Sir Edward Grey proposed that the four powers (including
+Germany) should unite
+
+     "in asking the Austrian and Russian Governments not to cross
+     the frontier and to give time for the four powers, acting at
+     Vienna and St. Petersburg, to try and arrange matters. If
+     Germany will adopt this view I feel strongly that France and
+     ourselves should act upon it. Italy would no doubt gladly
+     co-operate."
+
+[English "White Paper," Nos. 24 and 25.]
+
+To this reasonable request the Imperial German Chancellor replied:
+
+     "First and last, we take the ground that this question must be
+     localized _by the abstention of all the powers from
+     intervention in it_,"
+
+but added that Germany would, if an Austro-Russian dispute arose,
+
+     "co-operate with the other great powers in mediation between
+     Russia and Austria."
+
+[German "White Paper," Annex 13.]
+
+This distinction is very hard to grasp. It attempts to measure the
+difference between tweedledum and tweedledee. Russia's difference with
+Austria was over the attempt of the latter to crush Servia. Germany
+would not interfere in the latter, but would as an abstract proposition
+mediate between Russia and Austria. For all practical purposes the two
+things were indistinguishable.
+
+How she "co-operated" we shall presently see.
+
+All that Germany _did_ on July 25, so far as the record discloses, was
+to "pass on" England's and Russia's requests for more time, but
+subsequent events indicate that it was "passed on" without any
+indorsement, for is it credible that Austria would have ignored its
+ally's request for more time if it had ever been made?
+
+The Austrian Foreign Minister, having launched the ultimatum, absented
+himself from the capital, but the Russian Minister at Vienna, as already
+stated, succeeded in submitting this most reasonable request verbally to
+the Acting Foreign Minister, who simply said that he would submit it to
+Count Berchtold, _but that he could predict with assurance a categorical
+refusal_. Later on that day (July 25) Russia was definitely advised that
+no time extension would be granted.
+
+[Russian "Orange Paper," Nos. 11 and 12.]
+
+Was ever the peace of the world shattered upon so slight a pretext? A
+little time, a few days, even a few hours, might have sufficed to
+preserve the world from present horrors, but no time could be granted.
+A colossal snap judgment was to be taken by these pettifogging
+diplomats. A timely word from the German Chancellor would have saved the
+flower of the youth of Germany and Austria from perishing. It would be
+difficult to find in recorded history a greater discourtesy to a
+friendly power, for Austria was not at war with Russia.
+
+Defeated in their effort to get an extension of time, England, France,
+and Russia made further attempts to preserve peace by temporarily
+arresting military proceedings until efforts toward conciliation could
+be made. Sir Edward Grey proposed to Germany, France, Russia, and Italy
+that they should unite in asking Austria and Servia not to cross the
+frontier "until we had had time to try and arrange matters between
+them," but the German Ambassador read Sir Edward Grey a telegram that he
+had received from the German Foreign Office that "once she [Austria] had
+launched that note [the ultimatum] Austria could not draw back."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 25.]
+
+As we have seen, Germany never, so far as the record discloses, sought
+in any way to influence Austria to make this or any concession. Its
+attitude was shown by the declaration of its Ambassador at Paris to the
+French Minister of Foreign Affairs, which, while disclaiming that
+Germany had countenanced the Austrian ultimatum, yet added that Germany
+approved its point of view,
+
+     "and that certainly the arrow, once sent, Germany could not
+     allow herself to be guided except by her duty to her ally."
+
+This seemed to be the fatal fallacy of Germany, that its duties to
+civilization were so slight that it should support its ally, Austria,
+whether the latter were right or wrong. Such was its policy, and it
+carried it out with fatal consistency. To support its ally in actual war
+may be defensible, but to support it in times of peace in an iniquitous
+demand and a policy of gross discourtesy offends every sense of
+international morality.
+
+On the following day Russia proposed to Austria that they should enter
+into an exchange of private views, with the object of an alteration in
+common of some clauses of the Austrian note of July 23. _To this Austria
+never even replied._ The Russian Minister communicated this suggestion
+to the German Minister of Foreign Affairs and expressed the hope that he
+would "find it possible to advise Vienna to meet our proposal," but this
+did not accord with German policy, for on that day the German Ambassador
+in Paris called upon the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in
+reply to a similar suggestion that Germany should suggest to Vienna to
+meet Servia in the same conciliatory spirit which Servia had shown, the
+Ambassador answered that that "was not possible in view of the
+resolution taken not to interfere in the Austro-Servian conflict."
+
+On the same day England asked France, Italy, and Germany to meet in
+London for an immediate conference to preserve the peace of Europe, and
+to this fruitful suggestion, which might have saved the peace of Europe,
+the German Chancellor replied with the pitiful quibble that "it is
+impossible to bring our ally before a European court in its difference
+with Servia," although it affected to accept "in principle" the policy
+of mediation.
+
+Germany's acceptance "in principle" of a policy which she in practice
+thwarted suggests the law-abiding tendencies of that Maine statesman who
+was "for the Maine prohibition liquor law, but against its enforcement."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 46.]
+
+Germany's refusal to have Servia's case submitted to the powers even for
+their consideration is the more striking when it is recalled that the
+German Ambassador at London quoted to Sir Edward Grey the German
+Secretary of State as saying
+
+     "that there were some things in the Austrian note that Servia
+     could hardly be expected to accept,"
+
+thus recognizing that Austria's ultimatum was, at least in part, unjust.
+Sir Edward Grey then called the German Ambassador's attention to the
+fact that if Austria refused the conciliatory reply of Servia and
+marched into that country
+
+     "it meant that she was determined to crush Servia at all
+     costs, being reckless of the consequences that might be
+     involved."
+
+He added that the Servian reply
+
+     "should at least be treated as a basis for discussion and
+     pause,"
+
+and asked that the German Government should urge this at Vienna, but the
+German Secretary of State on July 27 replied that such a conference "was
+not practicable," and that it "would practically amount to a court of
+arbitration," and could not, in his opinion, be called together "except
+at the request of Austria and Russia."
+
+[English "White Paper," Nos. 43 and 46.]
+
+That this was a mere evasion is perfectly plain. Germany already knew
+that Austria would not ask for such a conference, for Austria had
+already refused Russia's request for an extension of time and had
+actually commenced its military operations. Germany's attitude is best
+indicated by the letter of the Russian Minister in Germany to the
+Russian Foreign Office in which he states that on July 27 he called at
+the German Foreign Office and asked it
+
+     "to urge upon Vienna in a more pressing fashion to take up
+     this line of conciliation. Jagow replied that he could not
+     advise Austria to yield."
+
+[Russian "Orange Paper," No. 38.]
+
+Why not? Russia had advised Servia to yield, and Servia had conceded
+nearly every claim. Why could not the German Foreign Office advise
+Vienna to meet conciliation by conciliation, if its desire for peace
+were sincere? All that Russia and England desired was that a little time
+and consideration should be given, without prejudice to the rights or
+claims of Austria, before the peace of the world was hopelessly
+shattered.
+
+Before this interview took place the French Ambassador had called at the
+German Foreign Office on a similar errand and urged the English
+suggestion that action should at once be taken by England, Germany,
+Russia, and France at St. Petersburg and Vienna, to the effect that
+Austria and Servia
+
+     "should abstain from any act which might aggravate the
+     situation at the present hour."
+
+By this was meant that there should be, pending further parleys, no
+invasion of Servia by Austria and none of Austria by Russia. _To this
+the German Foreign Minister opposed a categorical refusal._
+
+On the same day the Russian Ambassador at Vienna had "a long and earnest
+conversation" with the Austrian Under Secretary of State for Foreign
+Affairs. He expressed the earnest hope that
+
+     "something would be done before Servia was actually invaded.
+     Baron Machio replied that this would now be difficult, as a
+     skirmish had already taken place on the Danube, in which the
+     Servians had been aggressors."
+
+The Russian Ambassador then said that his country would do all it could
+to keep the Servians quiet,
+
+     "and even to fall back before an Austrian advance in order to
+     gain time."
+
+He urged that the Austrian Ambassador at St. Petersburg should be
+furnished with full powers to continue discussions with the Russian
+Minister for Foreign Affairs,
+
+     "who was very willing to advise Servia to yield all that could
+     be fairly asked of her as an independent power."
+
+The only reply to this reasonable suggestion was that it would be
+submitted to the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 56.]
+
+On the same day the German Ambassador at Paris called upon the French
+Foreign Office and strongly insisted on the "_exclusion of all
+possibility of mediation or of conference_," and yet contemporaneously
+the Imperial German Chancellor was advising London that he had
+
+     "started the efforts toward mediation in Vienna, immediately
+     in the way desired by Sir Edward Grey, and had further
+     communicated to the Austrian Foreign Minister the wish of the
+     Russian Foreign Minister for a direct talk in Vienna."
+
+What hypocrisy! In the formal German defense, the official apologist for
+that country, after stating his conviction
+
+     "that an act of mediation could not take into consideration
+     the Austro-Servian conflict, which was purely an
+     Austro-Hungarian affair,"
+
+claimed that Germany had transmitted Sir Edward Grey's further
+suggestion to Vienna, in which Austria-Hungary was urged
+
+     "either to agree to accept the Servian answer as sufficient or
+     to look upon it as a basis for further conversations";
+
+but the Austro-Hungarian Government--playing the rôle of the wicked
+partner of the combination--"in full appreciation of our mediatory
+activity," (so says the German "White Paper" with sardonic humor,)
+replied to this proposition that, coming as it did after the opening of
+hostilities, "_it was too late_."
+
+Does any reasonable man question for a moment that, if Germany had done
+something more than merely "transmit" these wise and pacific
+suggestions, Austria would have complied with the suggestions of its
+powerful ally or that Austria would have suspended its military
+operations if Germany had given any intimation of such a wish?
+
+On the following day, July 28, the door was further closed on any
+possibility of compromise when the Austrian Minister for Foreign Affairs
+
+     "said, quietly but firmly, _that no discussion could be
+     accepted on the basis of the Servian note_; that war would be
+     declared today, and that the well-known pacific character of
+     the Emperor, as well as, he might add, his own, might be
+     accepted as a guarantee that the war was both just and
+     inevitable; that this was a matter that must be settled
+     directly between the two parties immediately concerned."
+
+To this arrogant and unreasonable contention that Europe must accept the
+guarantee of the Austrian Foreign Minister as to the righteousness of
+Austria's quarrel the British Ambassador suggested "the larger aspect of
+the question," namely, the peace of Europe, and to this "larger aspect,"
+which should have given any reasonable official some ground for pause,
+the Austrian Foreign Minister replied that he
+
+     "had it also in mind, but thought that Russia ought not to
+     oppose operations like those impending, which did not aim at
+     territorial aggrandizement, and which could no longer be
+     postponed."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 62.]
+
+The private conversations between Russia and Austria having thus failed,
+Russia returned to the proposition of a European conference to preserve
+its peace. Its Ambassador in Vienna on July 28 had a conference with
+Berchtold and pointed to the dangers to the peace of Europe and the
+desirability of good relations between Austria-Hungary and Russia.
+
+To this Count Berchtold replied that he understood perfectly well the
+seriousness of the situation and the advantages of a frank explanation
+with the Cabinet at St. Petersburg.
+
+     "He told me that, on the other hand, the Austro-Hungarian
+     Government, which had only reluctantly decided upon the
+     energetic measures which it had taken against Servia, _could
+     now neither withdraw nor enter upon any discussion of the
+     terms of the Austro-Hungarian note."_
+
+[Russian "Orange Paper," No. 45.]
+
+On the same day, July 28, the German Imperial Chancellor sent for the
+English Ambassador and excused his failure to accept the proposal of
+conference of the neutral powers, on the ground that he did not think it
+would be effective,
+
+     "because such a conference would in his opinion have the
+     appearance of an 'Areopagus' consisting of two powers of each
+     group sitting in judgment upon the two remaining powers."
+
+After engaging in this pitiful and insincere quibble, and when reminded
+of Servia's conciliatory reply, amounting to a virtual surrender,
+
+     "his Excellency said that he did not wish to discuss the
+     Servian note, but that Austria's standpoint, and in this he
+     agreed, was that her quarrel with Servia was a purely Austrian
+     concern, _with which Russia had nothing to do_."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 71.]
+
+At this point the rules of the countries intervened in the dispute. The
+Kaiser, having returned from Norway, telegraphed the Czar, under date of
+July 28, that he was
+
+     "exerting all my influence to endeavor to make Austria-Hungary
+     come to an open and satisfying understanding with Russia,"
+
+and invoked the Czar's aid.
+
+[German "White Paper," Annex 20.]
+
+If the Kaiser were sincere, and he may have been, _his attitude was not
+that of his Foreign Office_. Upon the face of the record we have only
+his own assurance that he was doing everything to preserve peace, but
+the steps that he took or the communications he made to influence
+Austria _are not found in the formal defense which the German Government
+has given to the world_. The Kaiser can only convince the world of his
+innocence of the crime of his Potsdam camarilla by giving the world _the
+text_ of any advice he gave the Austrian officials. He has produced his
+telegrams to the Czar. _Where are those he presumably sent to Francis
+Joseph or Count Berchtold? Where are the instructions he gave his own
+Ambassadors or Foreign Minister?_
+
+It is significant that on the same day Sazonof telegraphed to Count
+Benckendorff:
+
+     "My conversations with the German Ambassador confirm my
+     impression that Germany is rather favorable to the
+     uncompromising attitude adopted by Austria,"
+
+and he adds, and history will vindicate him in the conclusion, that
+
+     "the Berlin Cabinet, which might have been able to arrest the
+     whole development of this crisis, seems to exercise no action
+     on its ally."
+
+[Russian "Orange Paper," No. 43.]
+
+On July 29 Sir Edward Goschen telegraphed Sir Edward Grey that he had
+that night seen the German Chancellor, who had "just returned from
+Potsdam," where he had presumably seen the Kaiser. The German Chancellor
+then showed clearly how the wind was blowing in making the suggestion to
+Sir Edward Goschen that if England would remain neutral, Germany would
+agree to guarantee that she would not take any French territory. When
+asked about the French colonies, no assurance was given.
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 85.]
+
+Later in the day the German Chancellor again saw the English Ambassador,
+and expressed regret
+
+     "that events had marched too rapidly, and that it was
+     therefore too late to act upon your [Sir Edward Grey's]
+     suggestion that the Servian reply might form the basis of
+     discussion."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 75.]
+
+On the same day the Ambassador for Germany at St. Petersburg called upon
+Sazonof and expressed himself in favor of further explanations between
+Vienna and St. Petersburg, to which Sazonof assented. [Russian "Orange
+Paper," No. 49.] On the same day Sir Edward Grey asked the German
+Government
+
+     "_to suggest any form of procedure_ under which the idea of
+     mediation between Austria and Russia, already accepted by the
+     German Government in principle, _could be applied_."
+
+To which the German Foreign Office replied that it could not act for
+fear that if they made to their ally any suggestion that looked like
+pressure it might "_cause them [Austria] to precipitate matter and
+present a fait accompli_." [See letter of Sir Edward Goschen to Sir
+Edward Grey, July 29--English "White Paper," No. 70.]
+
+This was the last and worst of the quibbles put forth to gain time while
+Austria was making progress toward Belgrade. It assumes that Austria
+might not only fail to respect the wish in a matter of common concern of
+its more powerful ally, but that it might act in disregard of Germany's
+wish. This strains human credulity to the breaking point. Did the German
+Secretary of State keep a straight face when he uttered this sardonic
+pleasantry? It may be the duty of a diplomat to lie on occasion, but is
+it ever necessary to utter such a stupid falsehood? The German Secretary
+of State sardonically added in the same conversation that he was not
+sure that the effort for peace had not hastened the declaration of war,
+as though the declaration of war against Servia had not been planned and
+expected from the first.
+
+As a final effort to meet quibbles, the British Ambassador at Berlin
+then suggested that after Austria had satisfied her military prestige,
+the moment might then be favorable for four disinterested powers to
+discuss the situation and come forward with suggestions for preventing
+graver complications.
+
+To this proposal the German Secretary of State seemingly acquiesced,
+but, as usual, _nothing whatever was done_. [English "White Paper," No.
+76.] It is true that on July 29 Sir Edward Grey was assured by the
+German Ambassador that the German Foreign Office was
+
+     "endeavoring to make Vienna explain in a satisfactory form at
+     St. Petersburg the scope and extension of Austrian proceedings
+     in Servia,"
+
+but again the communications which the German Foreign Office sent to
+Vienna on this point _have never yet been disclosed to the world_.
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 84.]
+
+In this same conference Sir Edward Grey
+
+     "urged that the _German Government should suggest any method_
+     by which the influence of the four powers could be used
+     together to prevent war between Austria and Russia. France
+     agreed, Italy agreed. The whole idea of mediation or mediating
+     influence was ready to be put into operation _by any method
+     that Germany could suggest_ if mine were not acceptable. In
+     fact, mediation was ready to come into operation by any method
+     that Germany thought possible, if only Germany would 'press
+     the button' in the interests of peace."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 84.]
+
+The difficulty was, however, that Germany never "pressed the button,"
+although obviously it would have been easy for her to do so, as the
+stronger and more influential member of the Double Alliance.
+
+On the same day the Austrian Government left a memorandum with Sir
+Edward Grey to the effect that Count Mensdorff said that the war with
+Servia must proceed.
+
+On the night of July 29 the British Ambassador at Berlin was informed
+that the German Foreign Office "_had not had time to send an answer
+yet_" to the proposal that Germany suggest the form of mediation, but
+that the question had been referred to the Austro-Hungarian Government
+with a request as to "what would satisfy them."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 107.]
+
+On the following day the German Ambassador informed Sir Edward Grey that
+the German Government would endeavor to influence Austria, after taking
+Belgrade and Servian territory in the region of the frontier, to promise
+not to advance further, while the powers endeavored to arrange that
+Servia should give satisfaction sufficient to pacify Austria, but if
+Germany ever exercised any such pressure upon Vienna, _no evidence of it
+has ever been given to the world_. Certainly it was not very effective,
+and for the reasons mentioned it is impossible to conclude that the
+advice of Germany, if in good faith, would not have been followed by its
+weaker ally.
+
+From all that appears in the record, Austria made no reply to this most
+conciliatory suggestion of England, but, in the meantime, the
+irrepressible Kaiser made the crisis more acute by cabling to the Czar
+that the mobilization of Russia to meet the mobilization of Austria was
+affecting his position of mediator, to which the Czar made a
+conciliatory reply, stating that Russia's mobilization was only for a
+defense against Austria.
+
+The Czar, to put at rest any anxiety of the Kaiser as to Russia's
+intentions with respect to Germany, added:
+
+     "I thank you cordially for your mediation which permits the
+     hope that everything may yet end peaceably. It is technically
+     impossible to discontinue our military preparations which have
+     been made necessary by the Austrian mobilization. It is far
+     from us to want war. _As long as the negotiations between
+     Austria and Servia continue, my troops will undertake no
+     provocative action. I give you my solemn word thereon._ I
+     confide with all my faith in the grace of God, and I hope for
+     the success of your mediation in Vienna for the welfare of our
+     countries and the peace of Europe."
+
+What more could Russia do? If Austria continued to mobilize, why not
+Russia?
+
+On this day, July 30, the German Ambassador had two interviews at St.
+Petersburg with Sazonof, and it was then that Sazonof drew up the
+following formula as a basis for peace:
+
+     "If Austria, recognizing that her conflict with Servia has
+     assumed character of question of European interest, declares
+     herself ready to eliminate from her ultimatum the points which
+     violate principle of sovereignty of Servia, _Russia engages to
+     stop all military preparations_."
+
+[Russian "Orange Paper," No. 60.]
+
+At this stage King George telegraphed Prince Henry of Prussia that
+
+     "the English Government was doing its utmost, suggesting to
+     Russia and France to suspend further military preparations, if
+     Austria will consent to be satisfied with the occupation of
+     Belgrade and neighboring Servian territory as a hostage for
+     satisfactory settlement of her demands, other countries
+     meanwhile suspending their war preparation."
+
+The King adds a hope that the Kaiser
+
+     "will use his great influence to induce Austria to accept
+     this proposal, thus proving that Germany and England are
+     working together to prevent what would be an international
+     catastrophe."
+
+[Second German "White Paper."]
+
+This last proposition, however, was never accepted or declined, for the
+impetuous Kaiser gave his twelve-hour ultimatum to Russia to demobilize,
+and this was an arrogant demand which no self-respecting power, much
+less so great a one as Russia, could possibly accept.
+
+While this demand was in progress Sir Edward Grey was making his last
+attempt to preserve peace by asking Germany to sound Vienna, as he would
+sound St. Petersburg, whether it would be possible for the four
+disinterested powers to offer to Austria that they would
+
+     "undertake to see that she obtained full satisfaction of her
+     demands on Servia, provided they did not embarrass Servian
+     sovereignty and the integrity of Servian territory."
+
+Sir Edward Grey went so far as to tell the German Ambassador that if
+this was not satisfactory, and if Germany would make any reasonable
+proposals to preserve peace and Russia and France rejected it, that
+
+     "his Majesty's Government would have nothing to do with the
+     consequences,"
+
+which obviously meant either neutrality or actual intervention in behalf
+of Germany and Austria.
+
+On the same day the British Ambassador at Berlin besought the German
+Foreign Office to
+
+     "put pressure on the authorities at Vienna to do something in
+     the general interest to reassure Russia and to show themselves
+     disposed to continue discussions on a friendly basis."
+
+And Sir Edward Goschen reports that the German Foreign Minister replied
+that last night he had
+
+     "begged Austria to reply to your last proposal, and that he
+     had received a reply to the effect that the Austrian Minister
+     for Foreign Affairs would take the wishes of the Emperor this
+     morning in the matter."
+
+_Again the text of the letter in which Germany "begged" Austria to be
+conciliatory is not found in the record._
+
+The excuse of Germany that the mobilization of Russia compelled it to
+mobilize does not justify the war. Mobilization does not necessarily
+mean aggression, but simply preparation. If Russia had the right to
+mobilize because Austria mobilized, Germany equally had the right to
+mobilize when Russia mobilized, but it does not follow that either of
+the three nations could justify a war to compel the other parties to
+demobilize. Mobilization is only a preparation against eventualities. It
+is the right of the sovereign State and by no code of ethics a _casus
+belli_. The demand of Germany that Russia could not arm to defend
+itself, when Austria was preparing for a possible attack on Russia, has
+few, if any, parallels in history for bullying effrontery. It treated
+Russia as an inferior, almost a vassal, State.
+
+It must be observed that, while Germany insisted that Russia should
+demobilize, the Kaiser offered no reciprocal promise. On his theory
+Germany and Austria were to be left free to complete their preparations,
+but Russia was to tie her own hands and leave herself "naked to her
+enemies." This is shown by the last telegrams which passed between the
+Czar and Kaiser. The Czar telegraphed:
+
+     "I have received your telegram. I comprehend that you are
+     forced to mobilize, but I should like to have from you the
+     same guaranty which I have given you, viz., that these
+     measures do not mean war, and that we shall continue to
+     negotiate for the welfare of our two countries and the
+     universal peace which is so dear to our hearts. With the aid
+     of God it must be possible to our long-tried friendship to
+     prevent the shedding of blood. I expect with full confidence
+     your urgent reply."
+
+To this the Kaiser replied:
+
+     "I thank you for your telegram. I have shown yesterday to your
+     Government the way through which alone war may yet be averted.
+     Although I asked for a reply by today noon, no telegram from
+     my Ambassador has reached me with the reply of your
+     Government. I therefore have been forced to mobilize my army.
+     An immediate, clear, and unmistakable reply of your Government
+     is the sole way to avoid endless misery. Until I receive this
+     reply I am unable, to my great grief, to enter upon the
+     subject of your telegram. I must ask most earnestly that you,
+     without delay, order your troops to commit, under no
+     circumstances, the slightest violation of our frontiers."
+
+This impetuous step of Germany to compel its great neighbor to desist
+from military preparations to defend itself came most inopportunely, for
+on Aug. 1 the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador _for the first time_ declared
+to the Russian Government its willingness to discuss the terms of the
+Austrian ultimatum to Servia, and it was then suggested that the form of
+the ultimatum and the questions arising thereon should be discussed in
+London. (Dispatch from British Ambassador at Vienna to Sir Edward Grey,
+dated Sept. 1, 1914.) Sir Edward Grey at once advised the English
+Ambassador in Berlin of the fact, and urged that it was still possible
+to maintain peace
+
+     "if only a little respite in time can be gained before any
+     great power begins war,"
+
+     [English "White Paper," No. 131.]
+
+but the Kaiser, having issued the arrogant ultimatum to Russia to
+demobilize in twelve hours, had gone too far for retreat, and, spurred
+on by the arrogant Potsdam military party, he "let slip the dogs of
+war." After the fatal Rubicon had been crossed and the die was cast the
+Czar telegraphed King George:
+
+"In this solemn hour I wish to assure you once more I have done all in
+my power to avert war."
+
+Such will be the verdict of history.
+
+
+The Judgment.
+
+These are _the facts_ as shown by the record, and upon them, in my
+judgment, an impartial court would not hesitate to pass the following
+judgment:
+
+1--_That Germany and Austria in a time of profound peace secretly
+concerted together to impose their will upon Europe and upon Servia in a
+matter affecting the balance of power in Europe. Whether in so doing
+they intended to precipitate a European war to determine the mastery of
+Europe is not satisfactorily established, although their whole course of
+conduct suggests this as a possibility. They made war almost inevitable
+by (a) issuing an ultimatum that was grossly unreasonable and
+disproportionate to any grievance that Austria had and (b) in giving to
+Servia, and Europe, insufficient time to consider the rights and
+obligations of all interested nations._
+
+2--_That Germany had at all times the power to compel Austria to
+preserve a reasonable and conciliatory course, but at no time
+effectively exerted that influence. On the contrary, she certainly
+abetted, and possibly instigated, Austria in its unreasonable course._
+
+3--_That England, France, Italy, and Russia at all times sincerely
+worked for peace, and for this purpose not only overlooked the original
+misconduct of Austria but made every reasonable concession in the hope
+of preserving peace._
+
+4--_That Austria, having mobilized its army, Russia was reasonably
+justified in mobilizing its forces. Such act of mobilization was the
+right of any sovereign State, and as long as the Russian armies did not
+cross the border or take any aggressive action no other nation had any
+just right to complain, each having the same right to make similar
+preparations._
+
+5--_That Germany, in abruptly declaring war against Russia for failure
+to demobilize when the other powers had offered to make any reasonable
+concession and peace parleys were still in progress, precipitated the
+war._
+
+6--_That Belgium as a sovereign State has as an inherent right the power
+to determine when and under what conditions an alien can cross her
+frontiers. This right exists independently of treaties, but is, in the
+case of Belgium, reinforced by the Treaty of 1839 and The Hague
+Convention, whereby the leading European nations (including Germany)
+guarantee its "perpetual neutrality." The invasion of Belgium by Germany
+was in violation of these rights, and England only respected its own
+solemn covenant when, in defense of that neutrality, it declared war
+against Germany._
+
+
+In Conclusion.
+
+The writer of this article has reached these conclusions with
+reluctance, as he has a feeling of deep affection for the German people
+and equal admiration for their ideals and matchless progress. Even more
+he admires the magnificent courage with which the German Nation, beset
+on every hand by powerful antagonists, is now defending its prestige as
+a nation. The whole-hearted devotion of this great nation to its flag is
+worthy of the best traditions of the Teutonic race. Nevertheless, this
+cannot alter the ethical truth, which stands apart from any
+considerations of nationality; nor can it affect the conclusion that the
+German Nation has been plunged into this abyss by its scheming statesmen
+and its self-centred and highly neurotic Kaiser, who in the twentieth
+century sincerely believes that he is the proxy of Almighty God on
+earth, and therefore infallible.
+
+In visiting its condemnation, the Supreme Court of Civilization should
+therefore distinguish between the military caste, headed by the Kaiser
+and the Crown Prince, which precipitated this great calamity, and the
+German people.
+
+The very secrecy of the plot against the peace of the world and the
+failure to disclose to the German people the diplomatic communications
+hereinbefore quoted, strongly suggest that this detestable war is not
+merely a crime against civilization, _but also against the deceived and
+misled German people_. They have a vision and are essentially
+progressive and peace-loving in their national characteristics, while
+the ideals of their military caste are those of the Dark Ages.
+
+One day the German people will know the full truth and then there will
+be a dreadful reckoning for those who have plunged a noble and
+peace-loving nation into this fathomless chasm of misfortune.
+
+    "Though the mills of God grind slowly,
+      Yet they grind exceeding small,
+    Though with patience He stands waiting,
+      With exactness grinds He all."
+
+
+
+
+Critics Dispute Mr. Beck
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+It is regrettable that President Wilson's admirable policy of strict
+neutrality is not more sincerely and carefully observed by the press and
+public of this country.
+
+We are a cosmopolitan nation. Citizens of the five great warring
+countries and their descendants, to a very great extent, constitute our
+population. Partiality of any kind tends to destroy the elemental ties
+which bind us together, to disrupt our Union, and to make us a house
+divided against itself. James M. Beck's article in last Sunday's TIMES
+is of the kind which, serving no good purpose, helps to loosen, if not
+sever, our most vital domestic ties. While not for an instant doubting
+Mr. Beck's sincerity, we must take issue with his inadvertently
+ill-timed expression of opinion.
+
+The article in question is based on the following statement: "Any
+discussion of the ethical merits of this great controversy must start
+with the assumption that there is such a thing as international
+morality." How does Mr. Beck define "international morality"? How can he
+assume that to exist which each of the contending nations by their
+diverse actions prove to be non-extant? How can he claim that there is
+an "international morality" of accepted form when each nation claims
+that its interpretation must be accepted by the others?
+
+Mr. Beck's allegation that the question "Was England justified in
+declaring war against Germany?" is more easily disposed of than the
+questions "Was Austria justified in declaring war against Servia?" and
+"Was Germany justified in declaring war against Russia and France?"
+proves two things--first, that his interest lies primarily in the
+vindication of England; second, that he disregards the fundamental
+causes and recognizes only the precipitating causes of the war.
+
+The precipitating cause of the war between England and Germany is
+verbosely if inadequately covered by his article. We must admit that a
+treaty was broken by Germany, yet we contend that this broken agreement
+was a pretext for a war fomented and impelled by basic economic causes.
+At the outset, let us distinguish between a contract and a treaty. A
+contract is an agreement between individuals contemplating enforcement
+by a court of law; punishment by money damages in the great majority of
+cases, by a specific performance in a very few. A treaty is an agreement
+between nations contemplating enforcement by a court of international
+public opinion; punishment by money indemnity in the great majority of
+cases, by specific performance (i.e., force of arms) in a very few.
+
+
+Germany's Existence Threatened.
+
+Germany contends that her breach of treaty obligation is punishable by
+the payment of money indemnity to the aggrieved party. This she has
+offered to do in the case of Belgium, as she has already done in the
+case of Luxemburg. Germany's existence was so seriously threatened that
+her action seems justifiable, and there remains a sole moral obligation
+to compensate any neutral country injured by her.
+
+The mere fact that Belgium had made an unfortunate alliance with England
+is deplorable in that Belgium has suffered terribly; but this suffering
+is not attributable to Germany. When Japan violated Chinese neutrality,
+China protested. Though she was entitled to a money indemnity, there is
+no valid reason under the sun why the United States as a guarantor of
+the integrity of China should declare war against Japan. England's
+justification, in so far as there can be any justification for adding to
+the toll of death, is the same as that of Germany, the preservation of
+national sovereignty.
+
+Further: "It seems unnecessary to discuss the wanton disregard of these
+solemn obligations." There can be nothing wanton in a struggle for
+existence, and that this European war is such a struggle is the only
+possible explanation of its magnitude, ferocity, and vast possible
+consequences. Then, too, though deplorable, treaty obligations are not
+solemn, as Italy has proved to the complete satisfaction of so many.
+Italy's contention that this is an aggressive war on the part of Germany
+and Austria is as untenable as the German contention that it is an
+aggressive war on the part of England. For this war was not an
+aggressive war on the part of any nation, but an unavoidable war caused
+by the simultaneous bursting of the long-gathering economic storm
+clouds.
+
+Again: "The ethical aspects of this great conflict must largely depend
+upon the record that has been made up by the official communications."
+This is similar to a contention that the ethical rights in a case in
+court must depend upon the astuteness of counsel in summing up to the
+jury. "A court would be deeply impressed ... by the significant
+omissions of documents known to be in existence." A court of law, as our
+former Assistant Attorney General of the United States surely knows,
+compels no one to give testimony that tends to incriminate, and,
+furthermore, does not construe failure to testify on the grounds that it
+will tend to incriminate against the defendant. In the law the defendant
+is entitled to every reasonable doubt. It is also conceivable that a
+reasonable time for the defense to present its case would be granted
+before passing judgment.
+
+Passing on: "To discuss the justice of Austria's grievances against
+Servia would take us ... into the realm of disputed facts." This seems a
+delectable bit of humor. We respectfully submit that Mr. Beck's other
+assertions might also be considered as "in the realm of disputed facts."
+Mr. Beck admits that Austria had a just grievance against Servia, though
+he questions her method of redress. Though we conceive that in the
+unfortunate European tangle Austria relied on German support in the
+event of international conflict, we submit that reliance on Russian
+support was a bigger factor in encouraging little Servia to defy her big
+neighbor than the remoter help that Germany would furnish Austria in the
+event of the conflict spreading.
+
+Austria, in the exercise of her right to engage in a punitive expedition
+against Servia, guaranteed that she would do nothing to generalize the
+conflict by her assurances to Russia and to the world that there would
+be no annexation of Servian territory or annihilation of the Servian
+Kingdom. Whether these assurances were genuine or not is impossible of
+determination. We have no right to constitute ourselves arbiters of
+their sincerity.
+
+
+No European Solidarity.
+
+Mr. Beck speaks of "the solidarity of European civilization and the fact
+that by policy and diplomatic intercourse ... a United European State
+exists, even though its organization be as yet inchoate." This
+solidarity is conspicuous only by its utter non-existence. Whatever may
+have been achieved by policy and diplomatic intercourse has been marred
+and rendered useless by the lines of demarkation of the spheres of
+influence of the great powers of Europe and by the racial and
+temperamental incongruities of Europe's population.
+
+We read: "Servia had forty-eight hours to answer; ... the other European
+nations had barely a day to consider what could be done to preserve the
+peace of Europe. Why should an Austro-Servian war compromise the peace
+of Europe?" Was it not because of the tangled web of international
+diplomacy, the Triple Entente as well as the Triple Alliance?
+
+Referring to a German warning in regard to Austria's demands on Servia,
+"the German Foreign Office anticipates that Servia 'will refuse to
+comply with these demands'--why, if they were justified?" We grieve at
+the shattered ideal of Mr. Beck, who, in the face of the international
+calamity which has befallen the world, still can believe that all
+justifiable demands are complied with.
+
+Again, quoting German "White Paper," Annex 1B, Germany desired "that
+the dispute be localized, since any intervention of another power, on
+account of the various alliance obligations, would bring consequences
+impossible to measure." The explanation of this statement is not--an
+aggressor threatens his adversary, but, rather, a prudent man begs
+opposing factions to keep cool.
+
+Great space is devoted in the article in question to Germany's
+unwillingness to place the Austro-Servian controversy in the hands of
+France, England, Germany, and Italy. As Germany disavows all interest in
+the controversy, if she speaks truly, it was not within her power to
+dictate to her ally in a matter which she could in nowise control except
+by force of arms. Furthermore, had she had the power, how could she be
+expected to exert pressure on her ally to leave a vital controversy to a
+court of four, two of whom were bound by alliances with Russia,
+Austria's real antagonist, and a third, (Italy,) as subsequent events
+have shown, Austria's natural, geographical, and hereditary enemy? At
+best, had each power held to its treaty obligations, there would have
+been a deadlock.
+
+Further: "The Russian Minister ... called at the German Foreign Office
+and asked it 'to urge upon Vienna ... to take up this line of
+conciliation. Jagow replied that he could not advise Austria to yield.'"
+Elsewhere in the article a statement is made that the Austro-Servian and
+Austro-Russian questions "for all practical purposes ... were
+indistinguishable." This inconsistency of having Servia in the light of
+a principal and then again in the light of an agent is the greatest
+stumbling block to a clear analysis of the precipitating cause of the
+war. The logical explanation of Servia's position is that of Russia's
+agent. Hence Germany could not be expected to exert the same pressure on
+an allied principal that Russia could exert on her agent.
+
+It is true that Germany engaged in many blundering diplomatic quibbles
+in the final stages of preparation for the war; but it is also true that
+England quibbled, though with greater diplomatic finesse; for instance,
+"Sir Edward Grey went so far as to tell the German Ambassador that ...
+if Germany would make any reasonable proposals to preserve peace, and
+Russia and France rejected it, that 'his Majesty's Government would have
+nothing to do with the consequences.'" Here it is apparent to every one
+that the word "reasonable" begs the questions.
+
+
+Slav and Teuton.
+
+The German people were encouraged to relish the idea of a war against
+Russia once that war became likely, for sooner or later it seemed
+inevitable that Slav and Teuton would clash, and Germany felt confident
+that at the present time she outmatched her enemy. The Russians, too,
+were encouraged to desire the Slav provinces of Austria, which racially
+are a part of the Russian domain. The English people were made to relish
+this opportunity to strike their great commercial competitor, especially
+when they could do so with little likelihood of unfavorable criticisms.
+Finally, the impressionable French people were stirred to thoughts of
+revenge and recovery of their lost provinces.
+
+Sympathy with any country in this most disgraceful yet most inevitable
+of wars brands the sympathizer as a party to the material and lustful
+purposes of at least one of the combatants. There is no ethical
+justification of this war from any standpoint. There is no justification
+of this war from any standpoint. There is only an explanation of the war
+from an economic standpoint. All these specious arguments on the
+precipitating causes of the war can be but for the display of brilliant
+forensic oratory and matchless diction. Let us thrust aside in these
+dark moments of peril and horror all subterfuge.
+
+England, overburdened with taxation, was on the verge of civil war.
+Russia, whose masses were overridden roughshod by a bureaucracy
+weighting down the peasants with onerous national burdens, expected
+sooner or later the cataclysmic upheaval with which the Nihilistic
+societies have long been threatening its tyrannical Government. France,
+seriously financially embarrassed because of crop impoverishment and
+bad foreign investments in Brazil, Russia, and the Balkans, was subject
+to continued internal political upheavals, with ever-changing Ministries
+and a growing Socialist Party.
+
+Austria, "the ramshackle empire," was in danger of disintegrating from a
+variety of causes, not the least of which was the infusibility of its
+racially different elements. Germany, in a blind race for commercial
+supremacy, suffered from industrial overproduction, thus creating an
+unhealthy financial condition which fortified the Socialist Party to an
+extent which threatened her imperialistic form of government itself.
+
+So these monarchies whose days were numbered, because of dissatisfaction
+at the waste and extravagance of a world gone mad with national excesses
+committed in the name of civilization, in reality the price of our
+modernization, in a final desperate effort to rally their waning
+fortunes stampeded their awakening masses into a ruinous interracial war
+in order to stave off the torch and the guillotine.
+
+GEORGE E. BERNHEIMER.
+
+New York, Oct. 30, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Russia to Blame
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Allow me to submit the following in answer to the article of James M.
+Beck, entitled "Case of the Double Alliance vs. the Triple Entente,"
+published in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Oct. 25, 1914:
+
+The case of "Russian Mobilization vs. German Mediation." Q.--Upon whom
+was the duty to yield?
+
+Mr. Beck has spent considerable time and effort to prove, at least by
+inference, that Germany must have been informed beforehand of the
+Austrian ultimatum to Servia. Personally, I am convinced that the
+ultimatum in question was sent with the full knowledge and consent of
+Germany; and, whether this is true or not, I maintain that it was
+Austria's duty to inform her ally before taking a step which was likely
+to endanger the peace of Europe.
+
+The concession of this point takes me immediately to the ultimatum
+itself and to the question, "Was the tenor of the ultimatum justified?"
+Mr. Beck, in his judgment, says: "The ultimatum is grossly unreasonable
+and disappropriate to any grievance that Austria had." Perhaps Mr. Beck
+is right, but I have good reasons to think that the tenor of the
+ultimatum was fully justified, in view of Servia's former conduct.
+
+Austria was dealing here with a Government the real spirits of which had
+come into power by the commission of one of the most dastardly crimes of
+modern times. A crime which, at the time of its commission, sent a shock
+of horror through the entire civilized world, to wit, "the outrageous
+murder of the former King and Queen of Servia," outrageous because it
+was perpetrated by the so-called aristocracy of Servia. The
+long-continued agitation carried on by Servia against Austria, at the
+instigation of Russia, which finally culminated in another no less
+outrageous assassination, that of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his
+consort, to my idea fully justified Austria in making demands which
+under ordinary circumstances might have been termed "unreasonable."
+
+The question whether Austria was justified in going to war against
+Servia is a debatable one, but I respectfully refer to the fact that our
+own country, the United States, was only very recently on the verge of
+precipitating war with a "much weaker" nation than ours, on account of
+the latter's refusal to salute the American flag. Neither did we stop on
+that occasion with the ultimatum, but we followed it up with dispatching
+a fleet of warships, the landing of troops, and the seizure of Vera
+Cruz.
+
+From the time Austria's ultimatum was sent all the great powers seemed
+to have professed a great eagerness for the preservation of peace. Mr.
+Beck asserts that Germany was not sincere in its desire for peace and
+could have avoided the war if it had seriously tried to exert its
+influence over Austria. This finding is based on the inference drawn
+from the fact that Germany failed to achieve any results.
+
+To determine whether Mr. Beck is justified in finding as he does, it is
+necessary, first of all, to examine the exact status of the powers at
+the time the ultimatum was sent. We find that Austria had a just
+grievance against Servia, for which it was seeking redress. An issue was
+therefore raised between Austria and Servia. Germany, although Austria's
+ally, immediately defined its attitude by declaring emphatically that
+"the question at issue was one for settlement between Servia and Austria
+alone."
+
+
+Why Did Russia Mobilize?
+
+I beg to ask Mr. Beck to answer the following question: By what
+right--moral, legal, or equitable--did Russia make Servia's cause its
+own? Did Russia have any alliance with Servia? I further ask: What
+privity existed between Austria, Servia, and Russia?
+
+Suppose Mr. Beck can justify the action of Russia, although a "rank
+outsider," in taking Servia's part, how can he possibly justify the
+positively unreasonable and, under the circumstances, most dangerous
+step of "actual mobilization" on the part of Russia?
+
+Mr. Beck has tried to justify the mobilization by quoting the Russian
+excuse "that Russia's mobilization was only for a defense against
+Austria." On close examination what does this amount to? It resolves
+itself into a situation somewhat like this: A sends an ultimatum to B
+seeking redress for a wrong committed by B upon A, whereupon C mobilizes
+"for defense against A." I leave it to the average American of ordinary
+intelligence to find a reason for C's mobilization "for defense against
+A." Mr. Beck might as well try to justify a mobilization on the part of
+Japan if the United States was preparing to invade Mexico for the
+purpose of redressing an insult to the American flag. Does Mr. Beck
+realize the seriousness of actual mobilization by Russia at that
+critical moment? Not one of the other powers dared to take this one step
+which among nations is regarded as tantamount to a declaration of war.
+
+And what did the Kaiser do at this moment? He did the only thing he
+could do, and, I dare say, the only thing our American Nation could have
+done under the same circumstances. He wired the Czar and stated: "I am
+willing to bring my influences to bear upon Austria, provided you agree
+to cease mobilization." Was this demand unreasonable? What else could
+Germany have done, I ask, with the Russian bear standing on the border
+with the sword already drawn? This moment was the crucial and decisive
+one in the prologue to this awful world drama.
+
+The only question therefore and the all-important one to be submitted to
+the Court of Civilization, is, Whose duty was it to yield? Was it
+Russia's, with the sword already drawn against a country which had not
+attacked it, not even threatened it, or was it Germany's, with the sword
+in the sheath?
+
+In his "conclusion," Mr. Beck speaks of Germany as "beset on every hand
+by powerful antagonists." Does he really mean to deprive the German
+Emperor of the right to demand as a condition precedent to mediation on
+his part the discontinuance of mobilization by Russia?
+
+Mr. Beck in his "judgment" under Paragraph 4 says "that Austria, having
+mobilized its army, Russia was reasonably justified in mobilizing its
+forces." The use of the qualifying word "reasonably" seems to indicate
+that even Mr. Beck is not quite certain that Russia was in fact
+justified in mobilizing its forces.
+
+Is it reasonable, just, and fair of Mr. Beck to expect Germany, "beset
+on every hand by powerful antagonists," to permit Russia to continue
+mobilizing its 18,000,000 soldiers and have Germany believe that Russia
+was sincere in its "peaceful intentions" in the face of actual
+mobilization? At this moment the German Kaiser made a very reasonable
+demand upon Russia to cease mobilization, and I ask every fair-minded
+American, whether lawyer or layman, "whose duty it was to yield" at this
+moment. The answer to this question will settle the much-disputed point
+as to the actual cause of the war.
+
+In conclusion, I beg to ask Mr. Beck: Why expect so much of Germany and
+nothing of Russia, when Germany had not merely professed her peaceful
+intentions, but actually maintained peace for over forty years, during
+which period not a foot of territory had been acquired by her through
+conquest? This is a fact.
+
+Coming into a court of law supported by such a reputation, does Mr. Beck
+really believe that the decision of the court would have been in favor
+of Russia? Does Mr. Beck really believe that the decision would have
+been against Germany, whose war lord was begging the Czar almost on his
+knees to avoid the awful calamity by the discontinuance of mobilization?
+
+Picture the United States about to invade Mexico to redress an insult to
+the American flag. Picture England as the ally of the United States, and
+Japan supporting Mexico, without any alliance existing between the two
+latter countries. To make this example conform to the actual facts under
+discussion, we must, of course, assume that both Japan and England are
+situated in the North American Continent, and across the border from the
+United States and England. Japan, with an army of 18,000,000 soldiers,
+(assumed for the purpose of argument,) mobilizes her army, professedly
+for defense against the United States. Could any fair-minded American
+possibly expect England to intercede with her ally, the United States,
+without first demanding the demobilization of Japan? Whose duty was it
+to yield?
+
+The actual fact is that Germany even then did not declare war against
+Russia until Russian soldiers had actually crossed not the Austrian but
+the German border.
+
+I may add that in writing the above I am prompted only by the very
+natural desire, viz., to impress upon the jury composed of the American
+people the one fact which should be given the most careful consideration
+in order to enable it to arrive at a just verdict in the case submitted,
+and this fact is "the mobilization of Russia."
+
+FRANK SEGGEBRUCH.
+
+New York, Oct. 29, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+In Defense of Austria
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Referring to your editorial, "The Evidence Examined," in your Sunday
+edition, I wish to protest emphatically against your assertion that a
+"Court of Civilization" must inevitably come to the conclusion that
+Germany precipitated the war. There are still millions of civilized
+people who see these things quite differently.
+
+Mr. Beck makes out a case from the viewpoint of the accusing party--of
+course, nobody will doubt the legal abilities of Mr. Beck--but before
+the Supreme Court of Civilization there is also a law: audiatur et
+altera pars. Mr. Beck, as he presents the case to the court, has not
+mentioned very important points which, for the decision of the Supreme
+Court, would be most vital ones.
+
+At first the breach of Belgian neutrality, admitted and regretted by the
+German Government, has nothing to do with the question--who precipitated
+the war? It constituted only an action of the war itself. On the other
+hand, you call in your editorial the Austrian ultimatum a savage one
+and take it for granted that this ultimatum started the stone rolling
+and brought finally the general clash in Europe about. This presumption,
+when presented to the court, will have to be thoroughly proved, because
+there are many people, fair and just, as you consider yourself, who are
+convinced of the ample justification of this ultimatum.
+
+It is hardly describable how many criminal acts have been committed by
+Servians against the very existence of the Dual Monarchy for the last
+six years, under the eyes of the Servian Government and approved by it,
+by intriguing against Austria's right to cultivate her own territory,
+Bosnia, spreading secret societies all over the empire, &c.
+
+The awful crime, the assassination of the heir to the throne, was only
+the finish of a long chain of like acts. These facts, which immediately
+lead up to the ultimatum, ought to be considered in the first place by
+judging Austria's justification for sending this ultimatum to Servia. A
+just Judge in the Court of Civilization will, I am convinced, carefully
+study the ante-history and in all probability arrive at the conclusion
+that the ultimatum was amply justified and Servia fully deserved the
+severest punishment possible.
+
+Mr. Beck presents to the court the Russian interference with this
+intended punishment and forgets to tell the Judge that Russia had not
+the least right to this interference. No foreign power had.
+
+Therefore, Austria was entirely within her right to decline any
+negotiations with Russia about this punishment before its completion.
+Nevertheless, the German Government brought these negotiations about,
+and, while these negotiations proceeded satisfactorily, Russia
+mobilized, mobilized all along her western frontier against Austria and
+Germany, notwithstanding the fact that she had promised not to do so and
+officials in Petrograd had pledged their words to the contrary.
+
+Russia knew there could be no such thing as a war with Austria alone, as
+well as Germany knew that a war with Russia meant a war with France. If
+the laws of morality rule in the Court of Civilization, they should
+above all be applied to the conduct of Servia and Russia. Austria was in
+a state of self-defense, when she decided not to bear any longer
+Servia's treacherous and murderous attacks against her existence; this
+is entirely within the boundaries of the laws of morality. Russia,
+however, without the slightest right, moral or legal, attacked Austria
+from the back by interfering with Austria's own affairs.
+
+Therefore I wish to point out that a careful student of the papers, by
+considering the ante-history of the war, which, as you will admit, is
+very essential, may come to a quite different conclusion and Mr. Beck as
+State's attorney will have a hard stand against the counsel of the
+defendant.
+
+EDWARD PICK.
+
+New York, Oct. 27, 1914.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Defense of the Dual Alliance--A Reply
+
+By Dr. Edmund von Mach.
+
+     Instructor of Fine Arts, Harvard, 1899-1903; Instructor in
+     History of Art, Wellesley College, 1899-1902; Lecturer in
+     History of Art, Bradford Academy, Cambridge, Mass. Author of
+     many books on Greek and Roman sculpture and the history of
+     painting. Served in the German Army, 1889-91.
+
+
+Hon. James M. Beck has eloquently argued the case of the Allies against
+Germany and Austria-Hungary, and submitted his findings with confident
+assurance of their acceptance by the Supreme Court of Civilization.
+Carried away by his zeal he has at times used terms not warranted by the
+evidence, such as "the irrepressible Kaiser," "stupid falsehood,"
+"duplicity," and the like, but since the court can be trusted to
+disregard such expressions no further attention will be paid to them.
+
+To a certain extent this article is not a reply but a continuation of
+Mr. Beck's argument, for, wherever our personal sympathies may lie, we
+are all equally interested in discovering the truth. In the final
+settlement of peace American public opinion may, nay, will, have a
+prominent voice. If it is exerted on the strength of a true
+understanding of European events, it will contribute to the
+establishment of a lasting peace.
+
+As to the evidence submitted Mr. Beck seems to err in believing that
+Governments are accustomed to publish in their various white, gray, or
+orange papers "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
+This is nowhere done, for there are many bits of information which come
+to a Government through its diplomatic connections which it would be
+indelicate, discourteous, or unwise to give to the public. The official
+documents on American foreign relations and all white, gray, or orange
+papers are "edited." They are understood to be so by Congress,
+Parliament, the Reichstag, the Duma, &c., and no charge of dishonesty
+can be maintained against the respective Governments on that score.
+
+If the Chancellor says that Germany was using her good offices in
+Vienna, this is as valuable a bit of evidence as the reprint of a
+dispatch in the "White Paper," unless we wish to impugn his veracity,
+and in that case the copy of a dispatch would be valueless, for he might
+have forged it. The entire argument, therefore, against Germany and
+Austria, based on what Mr. Beck calls the "suppression of vitally
+important documents," is void, unless you will apply it equally to Great
+Britain and the other countries.
+
+In Sir Edward Grey's "White Paper" Mr. Beck has missed no important
+documents because he looked at England's well-prepared case through
+sympathetic eyes, and it did not occur to him to ask, "Where are all the
+documents bearing on Italian neutrality?" Does he believe that England
+was so little interested in the question whether she would have to fight
+two or three foes, and whether her way to Egypt and India would be safe
+or threatened? There are many dispatches to and from Rome included in
+the "White Paper," but not a mention of Italy's position.
+
+The first paper contains a letter to the British Ambassador in Berlin
+concerning the Austro-Servian relations. Is it not probable that Sir
+Edward Grey's attention was called to this question by his Ambassador in
+Vienna? Where is his letter? Or, if Sir Edward thought of it himself,
+why did he not mention his conversation also to Sir M. de Bunsen in
+Vienna? Where is this note? Are we to assume that Sir M. de Bunsen made
+his first report on July 23, although Sir Edward Goschen in Berlin had
+an interesting report to make a day earlier?
+
+We can thus go through the whole British "White Paper" and discover the
+omission of many interesting documents.
+
+No. 38 is a letter from Sir Rennell Rodd in Rome, dated on July 23 and
+received on July 27. He had no doubt sent also a telegram. What did it
+contain, and why was it not published under the date of its arrival
+instead of the letter which had been delayed in transit?
+
+
+Where Is No. 28?
+
+In No. 29 Sir Edward Grey refers in a telegram to Sir R. Rodd to what "I
+had said to the German Ambassador." Such a reference could have a
+meaning for Sir R. Rodd only if he had been informed of this
+conversation. There is no dispatch printed in the "White Paper"
+containing this information. Possibly it was so entwined with other
+instructions, which Sir Edward Grey did not care to have known, that it
+could not be published. Was it perhaps sent to the printer first as No.
+28, and removed at the last moment when it was too late to change the
+subsequent numbers? Or, if this assumption is wrong, what was printed
+originally as No. 28? Where is No. 28? There are other omissions, and
+one especially noteworthy one between Nos. 80 and 106 which will be
+discussed later.
+
+Viewed in this light, the English "White Paper" loses much of the value
+of a complete record, which it has had in the eyes of many. There is
+absolutely no reason to doubt the accuracy of those dispatches which
+have been printed, but it becomes incumbent upon the searcher after the
+truth to inquire whether the existence of unprinted (in the case of the
+German "White Paper" Mr. Beck uses the term "suppressed") papers may not
+at times alter the interpretation which should be given to those that
+are printed.
+
+Since we have no published records anywhere concerning the advice given
+to Italy by the Allies, and the gradual steps leading up to Italy's
+decision to remain neutral; nor any hint as to the day when her decision
+was communicated to England and the other powers, it would be futile to
+speculate on this subject. Since, however, the Queen of Italy and the
+wife of the Commander in Chief of the Russian forces are sisters, and
+since it was in the interest of the Allies to keep Italy neutral, it is
+not unreasonable to assume that an exchange of opinion took place
+between Italy and the Allies concerning the conditions under which Italy
+would remain neutral.
+
+If the actual opening of hostilities could be so managed that Germany
+could be called the aggressor, then Italy probably declared that she
+would not enter the war. This is a very important phase of the case, and
+the omission from Sir Edward Grey's "White Paper" of all dispatches
+dealing with Italian neutrality is much to be regretted.
+
+Since we are dealing with the Italian dispatches here, it may be
+advisable to consider at once all the communications which are published
+as having passed between Sir Edward Grey and the British Ambassador, Sir
+Rennell Rodd, in Rome. They are numbered 19, (perhaps 28,) 29, 35, 36,
+38, 49, 57, 63, 64, 80, 81, 86, 92, 100, and 106, of which the important
+numbers are 38, 57, 64, 80, and 86.
+
+On July 23 Sir Edward Grey was informed that "the gravity of the
+situation lay in the conviction of the Austro-Hungarian Government that
+it was absolutely necessary for their prestige, after the many
+disillusions which the turn of events in the Balkans has occasioned, to
+score a definite success." (No. 38.)
+
+Austria, in other words, believed that to let the murder of her
+heir-apparent pass unpunished would have meant a deathblow to her
+prestige, and consequently, as any one familiar with her conditions will
+agree, to her existence. Russia, on the other hand, on July 25 said (see
+No. 17, report from Sir G. Buchanan) that she could not "allow (note the
+word) Austria to crush Servia and become the predominant power in the
+Balkans, and if she feels secure of the support of France, she will face
+all the risks of war."
+
+These two dispatches to Sir Edward Grey tell the whole story in a
+nutshell. Austria believed, rightly or wrongly, that it was a question
+of life or death for her, while Russia claimed the right of preventing
+Austria from becoming the predominate power in the Balkans, and actually
+threatened war. Russia did not claim to be concerned with the justice of
+Austria's demands on Servia.
+
+No such definite word of Russia's intention was sent to Germany, for on
+July 26 Sir M. de Bunsen reported Germany's confident belief that
+"Russia will keep quiet during the chastisement of Servia." (No. 32.)
+
+On the next day Sir Rennell Rodd reports from Rome (No. 57) that the
+Minister of Foreign Affairs believes that "if Servia will even now
+accept it (the Austrian note) Austria will be satisfied" and refrain
+from a punitive war. He, moreover, believes--and this is very
+important--that Servia may be induced to accept the note in its entirety
+on the advice of the four powers invited to the conference, and this
+would enable her to say that she had yielded to Europe and not to
+Austria-Hungary alone. Since Italy was to be one of the four powers, the
+Minister's belief was doubtless based on accurate information. There is
+then as late as July 27 no claim made by Servia that Austria's demands
+are unreasonable. She only hates to yield to Austria alone. Austria, in
+the meanwhile, (No. 57,) repeats her assurance that she demands no
+territorial sacrifices from Servia.
+
+On the next day, July 28, Sir Rennell Rodd reports (No. 64) that "Servia
+might still accept the whole Austrian note, if some explanation were
+given regarding mode in which Austrian agents would require to
+intervene." Austria, on her part, had explained that "the co-operation
+of the Austrian agents in Servia was to be only in investigation, not in
+judicial or administrative measures. Servia was said to have willfully
+misinterpreted this." (No. 64.)
+
+From these reports it appears that the differences between Austria and
+Servia were on the way to a solution. Austria claimed that her demands
+were just, and Servia did not deny this. Austria further claimed that
+her prestige, her very existence, demanded the prompt compliance with
+her requests by Servia. She explained in a satisfactory way the one
+point on which Servia had taken exceptions, and Servia was on the point
+of complying, and would have complied, if the powers had been willing to
+let her do so. Such a conclusion of the incident would have strengthened
+Austria's prestige and assured the punishment of the murderers of
+Serajevo.
+
+
+Russia's Remark About Austria.
+
+The reason why Servia was not allowed to submit was Russia's remark,
+quoted above, that she would not "allow" Austria to become the
+predominant power in the Balkans. It was, therefore, Russia's task to
+prevent Servia from accepting Austria's note. Since war was her
+alternative, baldly stated to England from the first, she had to do
+three things--first, to secure as many allies as possible; secondly, to
+weaken her enemies, preferably by detaching from them Italy, and,
+thirdly, to get as much of a start in her mobilization as possible.
+
+The treaties between Russia, France, and Great Britain, unlike those
+between Germany, Austria, and Italy, have never been published. Whatever
+their wording may be, Russia was at first apparently not absolutely sure
+of the support of France, (No. 17,) and France, it would seem, was
+unwilling to tempt fate without the help of England. That England should
+be willing to join such a combination for such a cause seemed so
+preposterous to Germany that she did not believe it. Without England no
+France, without France no war, for alone Russia could not measure
+herself against Austria. Austria would not have attacked her of her own
+free will, but if Russia had attacked Austria, the whole world knew from
+the published treaties that Germany was bound to come to the assistance
+of her ally. It would have been two against one, and the two could have
+waited until Russia had finished her cumbersome mobilization. For even
+if she had her whole army of many million men on the frontier, Austria
+and Germany together were strong enough to stem her advance.
+
+Russia's only chance, therefore, when Servia was on the point of
+yielding, and Austria had almost re-established her prestige, was to
+secure the help of France, but this meant also the promise of England.
+
+The demands made on England by Russia, some of which are quoted in the
+"White Paper," are too well known to deserve repetition. This was the
+chief thing that counted, to get England's promise. The next was to
+detach Italy from her allies, (but of this there are no documents
+available,) and the third to gain time for her mobilization. All the
+other suggestions and counter-suggestions which fill the English "White
+Paper" are insignificant, as soon as the fundamental positions of
+Austria and Russia are understood.
+
+Germany has claimed that England promised her support to Russia and
+France on July 30, or in the night of July 29, and, to prove it, has
+published the letter from the Belgian Minister in St. Petersburg to his
+Minister of Foreign Affairs, printed in translation in THE NEW YORK
+TIMES on Oct. 7. This letter, which has not been officially denied by
+the Allies, states that the promise of England's support gave the
+Russian war party the upper hand and resulted in the order of complete
+mobilization.
+
+
+English "White Paper's" Testimony.
+
+Strangely enough, and doubtless by an oversight, the English "White
+Paper" contains two dispatches (Nos. 80 and 106) which seem to confirm
+the accuracy of M. de l'Escaille's statement, viz., that England
+promised the Russian-French combination her support.
+
+On July 29 Sir Rennell Rodd wrote to Sir Edward Grey (No. 80) that the
+Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs had told him "there seemed to be a
+difficulty in making Germany believe that Russia was in earnest. As
+Germany, however, was really anxious for good relations with ourselves,
+if she believed that Great Britain would act with Russia and France, he
+thought it would have a great effect."
+
+In a later dispatch of the same day (No. 86) he deprecates Russia's
+partial mobilization, which he fears has spoiled the chances of
+Germany's exerting any pressure on Austria.
+
+But on the next day, July 30, these remarkable words occur: "He [the
+Italian Minister] had reason to believe that Germany was now disposed to
+give more conciliatory advice to Austria, as she seemed convinced that
+we should act with France and Russia, and was most anxious to avoid
+issue with us." (No. 106.)
+
+Readers of the "White Paper" will look in vain for an explanation of
+such a change of heart on Germany's part. What does "now" mean in the
+last letter? And why does Germany seem "convinced" that England will act
+with Russia--if not that she has heard of the promise mentioned by M. de
+l'Escaille, as given early on July 30 or late the 29th? The dates agree,
+and unless Sir Edward Grey publishes further papers to explain the
+change that had taken place between July 29 and July 30 one seems forced
+to accept this explanation.
+
+What is Germany's attitude? Does she rush into war? Not at all, for she
+is "most anxious to avoid issue" with England. (No. 106.) Germany knew
+that Russia had begun to mobilize. Every day, every hour counted; for
+against the masses of Russia she had only her greater speed to match.
+She knew that England had gone over to Russia, although she was probably
+hoping that the alliance between the Saxon and the Slav was not yet
+irrefragable. Still, the prospects were dark. But in spite of this the
+efforts were renewed to see what could be done in Vienna.
+
+The famous exchange of telegrams between royalty began in the evening of
+July 29; and here it is wise to halt for a moment. On July 30 the Czar
+telegraphed to the Emperor in reply to the Emperor's expression of
+regret that Russia should be mobilizing, as follows: "The military
+measures in force now were decreed five days ago." That is, according to
+the Czar, the Russian mobilization had begun on July 25. On July 27,
+however, the Russian Minister of War, M. Suchomlinow, had declared to
+the German Military Attaché "on his word of honor" that no mobilization
+order had been issued. July 25, however, it will be remembered, was the
+day on which Sir G. Buchanan had reported from St. Petersburg that
+Russia will "face all risks of war" if she can feel sure of the support
+of France.
+
+On July 31 Russia mobilized her entire army, which led to Germany's
+ultimatum that Russia demobilize within twelve hours. No reply was
+received to the request, and orders for the mobilization of the German
+Army were issued at 5:15 P.M., Aug. 1, after the German Ambassador in
+St. Petersburg had been instructed to declare that, owing to the
+continued mobilization of the Russian Army, a state of war existed
+between the two countries.
+
+
+Kaiser Tried to Keep Peace.
+
+In order to understand this step one should read the book "La France
+Victorieuse dans la Guerre de Demain," ("France Victorious in the Next
+War,") by Col. Arthur Boucher, published in 1911. Col. Boucher has
+stated the case baldly and so simply that every one can understand it.
+In substance his argument is this: "Alone France has no chance, but
+together with Russia she will win against Germany. Suppose the three
+countries are beginning mobilization on the same day. Germany finishes
+first, France second, and Russia last. Germany must leave some of her
+troops on her eastern frontier, the rest she throws against France. All
+France has to do is to hold them for a few days. [Col. Boucher mentions
+the exact number of days. This book is not at hand, and the writer
+prefers not to quote from memory.] Then Russia comes into play, more
+German troops will be needed in the East, the French proceed to an
+attack on their weakened enemy, and La France sera victorieuse."
+
+Everything hinges on just a couple of days or so. A couple of days! And
+how much of a start had Russia? She had begun on July 25; on July 27
+definite news of the Russian mobilization was reported in Berlin,
+although the Minister of War denied it "on his honor." On July 30
+England was understood to have promised her support to Russia, and the
+Czar acknowledged that Russia had been mobilizing for the past five
+days. Five days! And Col. Boucher, expressing the opinion of military
+experts, had counted on victory on a much smaller margin!
+
+Do the Judges of the Supreme Court of Civilization realize the almost
+super-human efforts in the interest of peace made by the German Emperor?
+Russia has a start of five days, and on July 31 a start of six days. Can
+we not hear all the military leaders imploring the Emperor not to
+hesitate any longer? But in the interest of peace the Emperor delays. He
+has kept the peace for Germany through the almost thirty years of his
+reign. He prays to his God, in Whom he has placed his trust through all
+his upright life, with a fervor which has often brought him ridicule.
+Also, he still believes in England, and hopes through her efforts to be
+able to keep the peace. He waits another day. A start of seven days for
+Russia! The odds against Germany have grown tremendously. At last he
+orders mobilization. For a longer delay he would not have been able to
+answer to his country. As it is, there are many people who blame him
+severely for having waited so long.
+
+But William II. was right, for when the world will begin to realize the
+agonies through which he must have passed during these days of waiting,
+and the sacrifices he made in his effort to preserve peace, it will
+judge Germany rightly, and call the Emperor the great prince of peace
+that he is.
+
+But, it has been said, why did he not avoid war, either by forcing
+Austria to yield to Russia, or, if she refused, by withdrawing from her?
+In common with the whole of Germany, he probably felt that Austria's
+position was right. Servia herself, as has been seen above, did not
+claim that she was unjustly treated, whatever outsiders thought of
+Austria's demands; and Austria was fully justified by past events in
+believing that it was with her a question of life and death. Should
+Germany sacrifice her faithful friend under such circumstances, and for
+what? For the arrogance of Russia, who would not "allow" her to
+re-establish her prestige in a righteous cause? The word "righteous" is
+used advisedly, because in the early stages of the controversy nobody,
+not even Russia nor Servia herself, denied the justice of Austria's
+demands. The writer is informed that even the liberal English press
+found no fault with the course taken by Austria, although it commented
+adversely on the language used in the note.
+
+What would have been the result of peace bought by Germany at such a
+cost? It would have alienated her only faithful friend without laying
+the foundations for a lasting friendship with her opponents. This at
+least was Germany's honest belief. She may have been wrong. History more
+probably will call her right. To desert Austria might have postponed the
+war, but when it would have come Germany would have stood alone, and,
+worse, she would have lost her self-respect.
+
+This claim may sound strange in the ears of those who have just
+witnessed and will never forget the suffering of that beautiful little
+country, Belgium. They hold that, since Germany invaded Belgium, it is
+Germany who broke a treaty and who is to blame.
+
+Mr. Beck considers this to be so self-evident that he deems it
+unnecessary to advance any proof. He quotes the Chancellor's speech,
+and, moving for a quick verdict, declares his motion of guilty carried.
+The matter, however, is not quite so simple for the man who is seeking
+for the whole truth. Let us look at the facts.
+
+Belgium was a neutral country, just as any country has the right to
+declare itself neutral, with this difference: that in 1839 she had
+promised to five powers--Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria, and
+Prussia--that she would remain perpetually neutral. These five powers in
+their turn had promised to guarantee her neutrality. She was, however, a
+sovereign State, and as such had the undoubted right to cease being
+neutral whenever she chose by abrogating the Treaty of 1839. If the
+other high contracting parties did not agree with her, it was their
+right to try to coerce Belgium to keep to her pledges, although this
+would undoubtedly have been an infringement of her sovereignty.
+
+The Treaty of 1839 contains the word "perpetual," but so does the treaty
+between France and Germany, in which Alsace and Lorraine are ceded by
+France to be perpetually an integral part of the German Empire. Does
+this mean that France, if the Allies should win, could not retake these
+provinces? Nobody probably will believe this.
+
+The Treaty of 1839 was a treaty just like the Treaty of 1871, with this
+difference, that the latter treaty was concluded between two powers, and
+the earlier one between five powers on one side and Belgium and Holland
+on the other. This gave certain rights to all the signatory powers, any
+one of whom had the right to feel itself sufficiently aggrieved to go to
+war if any other power disregarded the treaty.
+
+
+Rights of Neutrals.
+
+There was once another neutral State, the city and district of Cracow,
+also established by a treaty to which Great Britain was a signatory.
+Three of the signers considered the conditions developing in Cracow to
+be so threatening that they abolished Cracow as an independent State.
+Great Britain sent a polite note of protest, and dropped the matter.
+
+Since that time, however, two Hague Conferences have been held and
+certain rules agreed upon concerning the rights and duties of neutrals.
+The Belgian status of inviolability rests on these rules, called
+conventions, rather than on the Treaty of 1839. During the
+Franco-Prussian War of 1870 Mr. Gladstone very clearly stated that he
+did not consider the Treaty of 1839 enforceable. Great Britain,
+therefore, made two new treaties, one with France and one with Prussia
+(quoted and discussed in Boston Evening Transcript, Oct. 14, 1914) in
+which she promised to defend Belgian neutrality, by the side of either
+France or Prussia, against that one of them who should infringe the
+neutrality.
+
+These treaties were to terminate one year after peace had been
+concluded between the contestants. A treaty, like the one of 1839,
+however, which was considered unenforceable in 1870, can hardly be
+claimed to have gained new rights in 1914. In calm moments nobody will
+claim that a greater sanctity attaches to it than to the treaty in which
+Alsace and Lorraine are ceded forever to Germany.
+
+No, it is The Hague Conventions to which we must look. The first
+convention (1899) contained no rules forbidding belligerents from
+entering neutral territory. In the second conference it was thought
+desirable to formulate such rules, because it was felt that in war
+belligerents are at liberty to do what is not expressly forbidden. At
+the request of France, therefore, a new set of rules was suggested, to
+which Great Britain and Belgium offered valuable amendments. The rules
+were finally accepted, and are today parts of international law. They
+read; "Article I. The territory of neutral powers is inviolable. Article
+II. Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or convoys of either
+munitions of war or supplies across the territory of a neutral power."
+
+These articles, together with the whole convention called "Rights and
+duties of neutral powers and persons in case of war on land," have been
+ratified and therefore accepted as law by the United States of America,
+Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia and other minor
+powers. Great Britain experienced a change of heart, and, although her
+own delegates had moved these articles, she refused to ratify them, when
+she ratified most of the other conventions on Nov. 27, 1909. (A table
+showing the ratifications of conventions has been published by The World
+Peace Foundation, Boston.)
+
+
+The Case of Belgium.
+
+Since Great Britain did not accept these articles as law, she was not
+bound by them, for the principle of The Hague Conferences is that a
+nation is bound only by those laws which it accepts. The remarkable
+fact, therefore, appears that the only one of the big nations which had
+refused to accept these articles, and which, therefore, might have moved
+her troops across a neutral country and have claimed that she could do
+so with a clear conscience because she broke no law which was binding on
+her, was Great Britain. And the world now sees the spectacle of Great
+Britain claiming to have gone to war because another power did what she
+herself could have done, according to her own interpretation, with
+impunity. Japan has broken the international law by infringing the
+neutrality of China, but Great Britain can claim that she did not break
+a law by doing exactly what Japan did.
+
+It is not asserted here that the citizens of Great Britain are not
+absolutely sincere in their belief of the causes which have allied them
+with the Russians and the Japanese, and the Indians and the Zouaves, and
+the negroes and the French and the Belgians against Germany. Their
+Government, however, should have known that the presumption of
+insincerity exists when one charges against others a crime which one
+would have felt at liberty to commit one's self. Yet, more, the British
+Government knew better than anybody else that Germany had not even
+committed this crime; for, according to all laws of justice, no person
+or nation can claim the inviolability of a neutral when he has committed
+"hostile acts against a belligerent, or acts in favor of a belligerent."
+(Article XVII. of The Hague Conference of 1907.)
+
+The question, therefore, arises, "Did Belgium commit acts in favor of
+one of Germany's opponents, if not actually hostile acts against
+Germany?" In order to understand Germany's charge that Belgium had
+committed such acts, attention must be directed to one of the most
+unfortunate stipulations of the Treaty of 1839, which compelled Belgium
+to maintain several fortresses. This meant that a small neutral people,
+sandwiched in between two great powers, had to keep itself informed on
+military affairs. Instead of being able to foster a peaceful state of
+mind, which is the surest guarantee of neutrality, the Belgians were
+forced to think military thoughts.
+
+[Illustration: ANDREW CARNEGIE
+
+_(Photo (c) by Underwood & Underwood.)_
+
+_See Page 415_]
+
+[Illustration: JACOB H. SCHIFF
+
+_(Photo by American Press Assn.)_
+
+_See Page 459_]
+
+In the eighties and early nineties they suspected France of designs on
+their integrity. Since then a change in the popular feeling has taken
+place and in recent years the instruction of the Belgian artillery, for
+instance, was intrusted to French officers in active service. These
+officers were constantly at home and very properly concerned with
+solving military problems such as a future war with Germany might
+present. What was more natural than that these same officers, when they
+were detached for a few months or years to Ličge or Namur or Huy, taught
+their Belgian charges to prepare against a German attack, and to look
+upon the French as their friends and the Germans as their enemies? If
+conditions had been different, and German officers had been in charge of
+Belgian fortresses, the Belgian guns in practice would always have been
+trained on imaginary French invaders.
+
+
+French Officers in Belgian Forts.
+
+If this is understood it will be seen that in the case of war the actual
+neutrality of the Belgian garrisons would naturally be determined by the
+position taken by that nation whose officers had been in charge of the
+Belgian fortresses. And this might be entirely independent of the
+professed wishes of the Belgian people or their Government. If French
+officers in active service remained in the several fortresses, or even
+only in one after the beginning of hostilities, and if the French
+campaign plans contemplated an attack through Belgium, then Belgium had
+committed an "act in favor of France" by not forcing the French officers
+to leave, and had forfeited the rights and privileges granted by The
+Hague Convention of 1907 to a neutral State.
+
+Did French officers remain in Ličge or in any other Belgian fortress
+after hostilities had begun, and did France plan to go through Belgium?
+Germany has officially made both claims. The first can easily be
+substantiated by the Supreme Court of Civilization by an investigation
+of the prisoners of war taken in Belgium. Until an impartial
+investigation becomes possible no further proof than the claim made by
+the German Government can be produced.
+
+The second charge is contained in No. 157 of the English "White Paper"
+in these words of instruction from the German Foreign Secretary to the
+German Ambassador in London: "Please impress upon Sir Edward Grey that
+German Army could not be exposed to French attack across Belgium, which
+was planned according to absolutely unimpeachable information."
+
+Sir Edward Grey has attacked Germany for invading Belgium, but has
+nowhere denied that Germany had the unimpeachable evidence she said she
+had, and which of course nullified any previous assurance from France.
+
+It is not known whether Sir Edward Grey was shown this evidence or not,
+but if the preservation of Belgian neutrality was Great Britain's chief
+concern, why did she not offer to negotiate treaties with Germany and
+France as she had done in 1870? It will be remembered that then she
+bound herself to join with either of the contestants in defending
+Belgian neutrality against the attacks of the other.
+
+As the case stands today, on the evidence of Sir Edward Grey's own
+"White Paper" and speeches, Great Britain is making war on Germany
+because:
+
+1. She broke the Treaty of 1839, although her own Gladstone had declared
+this treaty to be without force, and although the status of neutral
+States had been removed by The Hague Convention from the uncertainty of
+treaties to the security of international law.
+
+2. Great Britain makes war against Germany because Germany has broken
+Articles I. and II. of Chapter 1 of The Hague Convention referring to
+neutrals, although Great Britain herself has refused to recognize these
+articles as binding upon her own conduct.
+
+3. She makes war on Germany although she has never denied the
+correctness of Germany's assertion that she had unimpeachable proof of
+France's intentions of going through Belgium, which, together with the
+sojourn of French officers in Belgium, constitutes the offense which,
+according to The Hague Convention, deprives a so-called neutral State of
+the privileges granted in Articles I. and II.
+
+It is impossible to say here exactly what these proofs are which Germany
+possesses, and which for military reasons she has not yet been able to
+divulge. She has published some of them, namely, the proof of the
+continued presence of French officers on Belgian soil, and has given the
+names and numbers of the several army corps which France had planned to
+push through Belgium.
+
+The case then stands as follows:
+
+1. Was the inviolability of Belgium guaranteed by Articles I. and II. of
+The Hague Convention? Yes.
+
+2. Had Germany ratified these articles? Yes.
+
+3. Had Great Britain ratified these articles? No.
+
+4. Would Belgium have forfeited the right of having her country held
+inviolable if she had committed "acts in favor of France," even if these
+acts were not actually hostile acts? Yes, according to Article XVII. of
+The Hague Convention.
+
+5. Did Belgium commit "acts in favor of France," and was Germany,
+therefore, justified in disregarding the inviolability of her territory?
+
+
+The Main Question.
+
+This is the important question, and the answer must be left to the
+Supreme Court of Civilization. The weight of the evidence would seem to
+point to a justification of Germany. Yet no friend of Germany can find
+fault with those who would wish to defer a verdict until such a time
+when Germany can present her complete proof to the world, and this may
+be when the war is over.
+
+Throughout this argument the famous passage of the Chancellor's speech
+in the Reichstag has been disregarded. It reads:
+
+     Our troops have occupied Luxemburg and perhaps are already on
+     Belgian soil. Gentlemen, that is contrary to the dictates of
+     international law. It is true that the French Government has
+     declared at Brussels that France is willing to respect the
+     neutrality of Belgium so long as her opponents respect it. We
+     knew, however, that France stood ready for invasion. The
+     wrong--I speak openly--that we are committing we will endeavor
+     to make good.
+
+This has been understood to mean that the Chancellor acknowledged that
+Germany was breaking the Treaty of 1839 without warrant, and that
+Germany, therefore, deserved the contempt of the world. May it not bear
+another interpretation? Thus:
+
+The Chancellor, like Gladstone in 1870, did not consider the 1839 Treaty
+enforceable, but saw the guarantee for Belgium in The Hague Convention.
+He did not wish to offend Belgium by announcing to the world that she
+had lost her rights as a neutral because of her acts favorable to
+France, for when he spoke he was still of the opinion that she would
+accept the German offer which guaranteed to her both her independence
+and integrity.
+
+And just as Servia would have accepted Austria's note if Russia had
+permitted her, so Belgium would not have resisted the German demand if
+it had not been for England.
+
+This can be proved by the British "White Paper," Nos. 153 and 155. In
+the former the King of the Belgians appeals "to the diplomatic
+intervention of your Majesty's Government to safeguard the integrity of
+Belgium," being apparently of the impression that Germany wished to
+annex parts, if not the whole, of his country. The London reply advises
+the Belgians "to resist by any means in their power, and that his
+Majesty's Government will support them in offering such resistance, and
+that his Majesty's Government in this event are prepared to join Russia
+and France, if desired, in offering to the Belgian Government at once
+common action for the purpose of resisting use of force by Germany
+against them, and a guarantee to maintain their independence and
+integrity in future years."
+
+Has Mr. Beck really not noticed in this promise the omission of the word
+neutrality? By the Treaty of 1839 Belgium enjoyed not only independence
+and integrity, but also perpetual neutrality. Does Great Britain offer
+to fight Germany for the enforcement of the Treaty of 1839? No! Because
+hereafter the word neutrality is dropped from her guarantee, and since
+she alone of all the great powers has not ratified the articles of The
+Hague Convention concerning neutrals she alone will be able to disregard
+the inviolability of Belgian soil, even though Belgium kept strictly
+neutral in a future war.
+
+And what, finally, does she guarantee her? Independence and integrity!
+That is exactly the same that Germany had promised her. For this Belgium
+had to be dragged through the horrors of war, and the good name of
+Germany as that of an honest nation had to be dragged through the mire,
+and hatred and murder had to be started, that Belgium might get on the
+battlefield, from the insufficient support of Russia and France and
+England, what Germany had freely offered her--independence and
+integrity.
+
+Casual readers would not miss the word neutrality from Sir Edward Grey's
+guarantee, because they do not differentiate between the words
+integrity, independence, and neutrality. Great Britain and her ally
+Japan, marching through China into Kiao-Chau, may be said to have
+violated China's neutrality, but not her independence, nor, so long as
+they refrain from annexing any Chinese territory, her integrity.
+
+
+Fixing the Blame.
+
+Nobody familiar with the careful work of Sir Edward Grey can for one
+moment believe that Sir Edward inadvertently dropped the word, just as
+little as J. Ramsay Macdonald and other British leaders believe that he
+inadvertently dropped one of the two remaining words, integrity and
+independence, when he told Parliament of Germany's guarantee, and why
+Great Britain should not accept it, but go to war.
+
+When the blame for the horrors committed in Belgium are assessed these
+facts must be remembered:
+
+1. Belgium was by treaty bound to maintain fortresses.
+
+2. France tempted her to commit "acts friendly" to herself, by which
+Belgium forfeited her rights to the protection of The Hague articles
+governing the rights and duties of neutrals.
+
+3. England urged her to take up arms, when she had only asked to have
+her integrity guaranteed by diplomatic intervention. (Nos. 153, 155.)
+
+4. Germany promised her independence and integrity and peace, while
+England, quietly dropping her guarantee of neutrality "in future years,"
+promised her independence and integrity and war.
+
+5. And Sir Edward Grey was able to sway Parliament, according to one of
+the leaders of Parliament himself, only because he misrepresented
+Germany's guarantee, and, having dropped, in his note to Belgium, the
+word "neutrality," dropped yet another of the two remaining words,
+integrity and independence.
+
+This is the case as it appears on the evidence contained in the various
+"White Papers." Austria was attending properly to her own affairs;
+Servia was willing to yield; Russia, however, was determined to
+humiliate Austria or to go to war. Germany proved a loyal friend to her
+ally, Austria; she trusted in the British professions of friendship to
+the last, and sacrificed seven valuable days in the interest of peace.
+France was willing to do "what might be required by her interests,"
+while Great Britain yielded to Russia and France, promising them their
+support without which France, and therefore Russia, would not have
+decided on war.
+
+As to Belgium, Germany told Sir Edward Grey that she had unimpeachable
+evidence that France was planning to go through Belgium, and she
+published her evidence concerning the French officers who remained in
+Belgium. Although Belgium had thus lost any rights attaching to her
+state of neutrality, Germany promised to respect her integrity and
+independence, and to pay for any damage done. She preferred, however, to
+listen to Great Britain, who promised exactly the same except pay for
+any damage done.
+
+Unlike Mr. Beck, who in the same article pleads his case as the counsel
+for the Allies and casts his verdict as the Supreme Court of
+Civilization, the present writer prefers to leave the judgment to his
+readers as a whole, and further still, to the whole American
+people--yea, to all the peoples of the world. Nor is he in a hurry, for
+he is willing to wait and have the Judges weigh the evidence and call
+for more, if they consider insufficient what has already been submitted.
+
+Snap judgments are ever unsatisfactory. They have often to be reversed.
+The present case, however, is too important to warrant a hasty decision.
+The final judgment, if it is based on truth, will very strongly
+influence the nature of the peace, which will either establish good-will
+and stable conditions in the world, or lead to another and even more
+complete breakdown of civilization.
+
+
+
+
+What Gladstone Said About Belgium
+
+By George Louis Beer.
+
+     Historian; winner of the first Loubat Prize, 1913, for his
+     book on the origins of the British Colonial system.
+
+
+In the course of his solemn speech of Aug. 8, 1914, in the House of
+Commons Sir Edward Grey quoted some remarks made by Gladstone in 1870 on
+the extent of the obligation incurred by the signatory powers to the
+Quintuple Treaty of 1839 guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium. Shorn
+from their context as they were, these sentences are by no means
+illuminating, and it cannot be said that their citation in this form by
+Sir Edward Grey was a very felicitous one. During the paper polemics of
+the past months these detached words of Gladstone have been freely used
+by Germany's defenders and apologists to maintain that Great Britain of
+1870 would not have deemed the events of 1914 a casus belli, and that
+its entrance into the present war on account of the violation of
+Belgium's neutrality was merely a pretext. During the course of this
+controversy Gladstone's attitude has in various ways been grossly
+misrepresented, Dr. von Mach of Harvard even stating in the columns of
+THE NEW YORK TIMES that Gladstone had declared the Treaty of 1839 "to be
+without force." But, apart from such patent distortions, Gladstone's
+real position is apparently not clearly defined in the mind of the
+general public, which is merely seeking for the unadulterated truth,
+regardless of its effect upon the case of any one of the belligerents.
+
+Shortly after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 the
+Prussian Ambassador in London informed Gladstone, then Prime Minister,
+that some time prior to the existing war France had asked Prussia to
+consent to the former country's absorption of Belgium, and that there
+was in the possession of the Prussian Government the draft of a treaty
+to this effect in the handwriting of M. Benedetti, then French
+Ambassador at Berlin. This communication was obviously made, as Lord
+Morley tells us, with the object of prompting Gladstone to be the agent
+in making the evil news public and thus of prejudicing France in the
+judgment of Europe. Gladstone thought this "no part of his duty," and
+very shortly thereafter, at the direct instance of Bismarck, this draft
+treaty of 1866-7 was communicated by Baron Krause of the Prussian
+Embassy in London to Delane, the editor of The Times. On July 25, 1870,
+it was published in the columns of that paper and aroused considerable
+anxiety in England.
+
+It immediately became imperative upon the British Government to take
+some action. As Gladstone wrote to Bright, the publication of this
+treaty
+
+     has thrown upon us the necessity of doing something fresh to
+     secure Belgium, or else of saying that under no circumstances
+     would we take any step to secure her from absorption. This
+     publication has wholly altered the feeling of the House of
+     Commons, and no Government could at this moment venture to
+     give utterance to such an intention about Belgium. But neither
+     do we think it would be right, even if it were safe, to
+     announce that we would in any case stand by with folded arms
+     and see actions done which would amount to a total extinction
+     of the public right in Europe.
+
+
+The Special Identical Treaties.
+
+A simple declaration of Great Britain's intention to defend the
+neutrality of Belgium by arms in case it were infringed seemed to
+Gladstone not to meet the special requirements of the case as revealed
+by the proposed Treaty of 1866-7 between Prussia and France. His main
+object was to prevent the actual execution of such an agreement, by
+means of which the two belligerent powers would settle their quarrels
+and satisfy their ambitions at the expense of helpless Belgium. Hence,
+on July 30, the British Government opened negotiations with France and
+Prussia and within a fortnight had concluded separate but identical
+treaties with each of these powers. According to these treaties, in case
+the neutrality of Belgium were violated by either France or Germany,
+Great Britain agreed to co-operate with the other in its defense. The
+preamble of these treaties states that the contracting powers
+
+     being desirous at the present time of recording in a solemn
+     act their fixed determination to maintain the independence and
+     neutrality of Belgium,
+
+as provided in the Treaty of 1839, have concluded this separate treaty,
+which,
+
+     without impairing or invalidating the conditions of the said
+     Quintuple Treaty, shall be subsidiary and accessory to it.
+
+Article III. further provided that these Treaties of 1870 were to expire
+twelve months after the conclusion of the existing war, and that
+thereafter the independence and neutrality of Belgium would "continue to
+rest, as heretofore," on the Treaty of 1839.
+
+These documents tell a plain tale, which is amply confirmed by the
+proceedings in Parliament in connection with this matter. On Aug. 5,
+1870, while the negotiations leading to the above-mentioned treaties
+were still pending, questions were raised in the House of Commons about
+the recently published abortive Treaty of 1866-7 between Prussia and
+France. In reply Gladstone stated that
+
+     the Treaty of 1839 is that under which the relations of the
+     contracting powers with Belgium are at present regulated;
+
+and that, while he could not explain the intentions of the Government
+"in a matter of this very grave character in answer to a question," he
+hoped to be able to communicate some further information in an authentic
+manner. Three days later, as these treaties with France and Prussia had
+been virtually concluded, Gladstone was able to satisfy the anxiety of
+the House and outlined their terms. He explicitly stated that, after
+their expiration,
+
+     the respective parties, being parties to the Treaty of 1839,
+     shall fall back upon the obligations they took upon themselves
+     under that treaty.
+
+After Gladstone had finished speaking the leader of the opposition,
+Disraeli, took the floor and pointed out that, as a general proposition,
+
+     when there is a treaty guarantee so explicit as that expressed
+     in the Treaty of 1839, I think the wisdom of founding on that
+     another treaty which involves us in engagements may be open to
+     doubt.
+
+But he accepted Gladstone's statement
+
+     as the declaration of the Cabinet, that they are resolved to
+     maintain the neutrality and independence of Belgium, I accept
+     it as a wise and spirited policy, and a policy, in my opinion,
+     not the less wise because it is spirited.
+
+Gladstone then replied, saying that the reason the Government had not
+made a general declaration of its intentions regarding Belgium was that
+much danger might arise from such a declaration and that inadvertently
+they might have given utterance to words
+
+     that might be held to import obligations almost unlimited and
+     almost irrespectively of circumstances.
+
+We had made up our minds, he continued, that we had a duty to perform,
+and we thought a specific declaration of what we thought the obligations
+of this country better than any general declaration. Referring to the
+two treaties in process of ratification, he concluded:
+
+     We thought that by contracting a joint engagement we might
+     remove the difficulty and prevent Belgium from being
+     sacrificed.
+
+The policy of the Government continued, however, to be criticised,
+mainly on the ground that the Treaty of 1839 amply covered the case. On
+Aug. 10 Gladstone defended his policy in the House of Commons in a
+speech pitched on a high moral plane, in which he dilated upon Belgium's
+historic past and splendid present and on Great Britain's duty to this
+little nation irrespective of all questions of its own self-interest.
+With genuine fervor, he exclaimed:
+
+     If, in order to satisfy a greedy appetite for aggrandisement,
+     coming whence it may, Belgium were absorbed, the day that
+     witnessed that absorption would hear the knell of public right
+     and public law in Europe.... We have an interest in the
+     independence of Belgium which is wider than that which we may
+     have in the literal operation of the guarantee. It is found in
+     answer to the question whether under the circumstance of the
+     case this country, endowed as it is with influence and power,
+     would quietly stand by and witness the perpetration of the
+     direst crime that ever stained the pages of history, and thus
+     become participators in the sin.
+
+
+What Gladstone Had in Mind.
+
+What Gladstone had in mind was the scheme of 1866-7, by which France was
+to absorb Belgium, with Prussia's consent and aid. He distinctly stated
+that the Treaties of 1870 were devised to meet the new state of affairs
+disclosed by the publication of this incomplete treaty. It was in order
+to prevent the revival of such a conspiracy that Gladstone made separate
+and identical treaties in 1870 with France and Prussia. They were a
+practical device to secure an effectual enforcement of the Treaty of
+1839 under unforeseen and difficult circumstances. The agreement of 1870
+was, as Gladstone said, a cumulative treaty added to that of 1839, and
+the latter treaty
+
+     loses nothing of its force, even during the existence of this
+     present treaty.
+
+During the course of this speech defending the Government's action
+against those critics who claimed that the Treaty of 1839 adequately met
+the situation, Gladstone made some general remarks about the extent of
+the obligation incurred by the signatories to the Treaty of 1839:
+
+     It is not necessary, nor would time permit me, to enter into
+     the complicated question of the nature of the obligations of
+     that treaty, but I am not able to subscribe to the doctrine of
+     those who have held in this House what plainly amounts to an
+     assertion that the simple fact of the existence of a guarantee
+     is binding on every party to it, irrespectively altogether of
+     the particular position in which it may find itself at the
+     time when the occasion for acting on the guarantee arises.
+
+It is, of course, impossible to state precisely what were those
+unuttered thoughts that passed through Gladstone's mind as he spoke
+these characteristically cautious words, but what in general they were
+can be satisfactorily gleaned from a letter that he had written six days
+before this to John Bright:
+
+     That we should simply declare _we_ will defend the neutrality
+     of Belgium by arms in case it should be attacked. Now, the
+     sole or single-handed defense of Belgium would be an
+     enterprise which we incline to think quixotic; if these two
+     great military powers [France and Prussia] combined against
+     it--that combination is the only serious danger; and this it
+     is which by our proposed engagements we should, I hope, render
+     improbable to the very last degree. I add for myself this
+     confession of faith: If the Belgian people desire, on their
+     own account, to join France or any other country, I for one
+     will be no party to taking up arms to prevent it. But that the
+     Belgians, whether they would or not, should go "plump" down
+     the maw of another country to satisfy dynastic greed is
+     another matter. The accomplishment of such a crime as this
+     implies would come near to an extinction of public right in
+     Europe, and I do not think we could look on while the
+     sacrifice of freedom and independence was in course of
+     consummation.
+
+
+
+
+Fight to the Bitter End
+
+AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW CARNEGIE.
+
+     Retired ironmaster and philanthropist; builder of the Peace
+     Temple at The Hague; founder of the Carnegie Institution at
+     Washington; founder and patron of a chain of libraries in the
+     United States and Great Britain, and benefactor of many
+     societies and institutions.
+
+By Edward Marshall.
+
+
+Here is the report of a truly remarkable statement by Mr. Carnegie. He
+is the world's most notable peace advocate, and in this interview he
+voices the reflections suggested to him by the great European war.
+
+They are unusual, and make this interview especially worthy of a place
+upon the pages of the Christmas issue of THE TIMES, although it
+principally deals with war, and Christmas is the festival of peace.
+
+"Has war ever settled anything which might not have been settled better
+by arbitration?" I asked Mr. Carnegie.
+
+"No; never," he replied. "No truer inference was ever made than may be
+found in Milton's query, penned three centuries ago and never answered:
+'What can war but wars breed?'
+
+"War can breed only war. Of course, peace inevitably must follow war,
+but, truly, no peace ever was born of war. We all revere the memory of
+him who voiced the warning: 'In time of peace prepare for war'; but, as
+a matter of fact, we all know that when one nation prepares for war
+others inevitably must follow its dangerous lead.
+
+"Hence, and hence only, the huge armaments which have oppressed the
+world, making its most peaceful years a spectacle of sadness--a
+spectacle of men preparing and prepared to fight with one another.
+Sooner or later men prepared to fight will fight; huge armaments and
+armies mean huge battles; huge battles mean huge tragedies.
+
+"This never has been otherwise, and never can be. Peace can come only
+when mankind abandons warful preparation. And so I seem to have replied
+to your inquiry with an answer with a tail to it; and the tail is more
+important than the answer, for the answer merely says that war never
+settled anything which might not have been settled better by
+arbitration, while the tail proclaims the folly of a world prepared for
+war."
+
+
+How to Prevent War.
+
+"Armament must mean the use of armament, and that is war. If we are to
+prevent war we must prevent preparation for war, just as if we are to
+prevent burglary we must prevent preparation for burglary by prohibiting
+the carrying of the instruments of burglary. The only cure for war" [Mr.
+Carnegie in speaking italicized the word "cure"] "is war which defeats
+some one; but two men who are unarmed are certain not to shoot at one
+another. Here, as in medicine, prevention is much better than cure.
+
+"Plainly it must be through such prevention, not through such a cure as
+victory sometimes is supposed to represent, that warfare can be stopped.
+Warfare means some one's defeat, of course, and that implies his
+temporary incapacity for further war, but it goes without saying that
+all conquered nations must be embittered by their defeat.
+
+"Few nations ever have fought wars in which the majority of at least
+their fighting men did not believe the side they fought for to be in the
+right. Defeat by force of arms, therefore, always has meant the general
+conviction throughout conquered nations that injustice has been done."
+
+
+Nations Like Individuals.
+
+"In such circumstances nations must be like individuals under similar
+conditions. The individual believing himself to have been in the right,
+yet finding himself beaten in his efforts to maintain it, will not
+accept the situation philosophically; he will be angry and rebellious;
+he will nurse what he believes to be his wrong.
+
+"To nurse a wrong, whether it be real or fancied, is to help it grow in
+the imagination, and that must mean at least the wish to find some
+future means of righting it, either by strategy or increased strength.
+
+"There are two things which humanity does not forget--one is an injury,
+and, no matter how strongly some may argue against the truth of this
+contention, the other is a kindness.
+
+"In the long run both will be repaid. And nations, like individuals,
+prefer the coin which pays the latter debt. Military force never has
+accomplished kindness. Kindness means industrial armies decked with the
+garlands of peace; military armies, armed and epauletted, must mean
+minds obsessed with the spirit of revenge or conquest, hands clenched to
+strike, hearts eager to invade.
+
+"Every military implement is designed to cut or crush, to wound and
+kill. Nations at peace help one another with humanity's normal
+tenderness of heart at times of pestilence, of famine, of disaster.
+Nations at war exert their every ounce of strength to force upon their
+adversaries hunger, destruction, and death. Starvation of the enemy
+becomes a detail of what is considered good military strategy in war
+time, just as world-embracing charity has become a characteristic of
+all civilization during times of peace. Must we not admit flotillas
+carrying grain to famine-stricken peoples to be more admirable than
+fleets which carry death to lands in which prosperity might reign if
+undisturbed by war?"
+
+"But do you not admit that wars sometimes have helped the forces of
+civilization in their conquest against barbarism?"
+
+"War has not been the chief force of civilization against barbarism,"
+Mr. Carnegie replied with emphasis. Then he continued more thoughtfully:
+
+"That is one way of saying it. Another is, no effort of the forces of
+civilization against barbarism is war in the true sense of the word.
+
+"Such an armed effort is a part of the force pushing barbarism backward,
+and therefore, in the last analysis, tends toward kindness and peace;
+while, in the sense in which we use the word, war means the
+retrogression of civilization into barbarism. It is usually born of
+greed--greed for territory or for power.
+
+"Such war as that of which we all are thinking in these days is war
+between civilized men. One civilized man cannot improve another
+civilized man by killing him, although it is not inconceivable that a
+civilized man may do humanity a service by destroying human savages, for
+with the savages he must destroy their savagery.
+
+"But a war in civilized Europe destroys no savagery; it breeds it, so
+that it and its spawn may defile future generations.
+
+"There has been much balderdash in talk about unselfish motives as the
+origin of warfare. It is safe to say that 99 per cent of all the
+slaughter wrought by civilization under the cloak of a desire to better
+bad conditions really has been evil. It is impossible to conceive of
+general betterment through general slaughter. There have been few
+altruistic wars."
+
+"But how about our Spanish war?" I asked. "Surely it was not greed which
+sent our men and ships to Cuba."
+
+"No," said Mr. Carnegie, "that was not war, but world-police work.
+
+"Our skirmish with Spain was a most unusual international episode. We
+harmed none of the people of the land wherein we fought, but taught them
+what we could of wise self-government and gave them independence. To
+battle for the liberation of the slave is worthy work, and this of ours
+was such a battle.
+
+"Our Spanish war was not the outgrowth of our rivalry with any one or
+any one's with us; it was the manifestation of our high sense of
+responsibility as strong and healthy human beings for the welfare of the
+weak and oppressed."
+
+
+That Was Police Work.
+
+"It did not make toward militarism on this continent, but the reverse;
+in a few months it established permanent peace where peace had been a
+stranger. It was police work on the highest plane, substituting order
+for disorder."
+
+"But did it not emphasize the need for the maintenance, even here, of a
+competent and efficient naval and military force?" I asked.
+
+Mr. Carnegie shook his head emphatically.
+
+"That is the old, old argument cropping up again," said he, "the
+argument that a provocative is a preventive. For us to maintain a great
+army for the purpose of preventing war thereby would be as sensible as
+for each of us to be afraid to walk about except with a lightning rod
+down his back, since men have been struck by lightning. No nation wants
+to fight us. We have friends throughout the world.
+
+"Millions now resident in military nations are hoping that some day they
+may be able to become citizens of our beloved republic, principally
+because it now is not, nor is it every likely to be, military. Humanity
+loves peace. Here peace abides, and, if we follow reason, will remain
+unbroken.
+
+"Note the advantages of our own position. Imagine what the task would be
+of landing seventy thousand hostile soldiers on our shores! First they
+would need to cross three thousand miles of the Atlantic or five
+thousand miles of the Pacific.
+
+"And what if they should come? My plan of operation would be to bid them
+welcome as our visitors, considering them as men, not soldiers; to take
+them to our great interior, say, as far west as Chicago, and there to
+say to them:
+
+"'Here we shall leave you. Make yourselves at home, if that thought
+pleases you; fight us if it does not. If you think you can conquer us,
+try it.'
+
+"They would make themselves at home and, learning the advantages of
+staying with us, would become applicants for our citizenship, rather
+than our opponents in warfare.
+
+"And if they tried to fight us, what would happen to them? Our nation is
+unique in an important respect. Its individuals are the best armed in
+the world. Not only, for example, are its farmers armed, but they can
+shoot, which is far more than can be said of those of Britain or of any
+other nation.
+
+"The Governments of Europe cannot afford to give their citizenry arms,
+and, as for the European citizenry, it not only cannot afford to
+purchase arms, but cannot afford even to pay the license fees which
+Government demands of those possessing arms with the right to use them.
+
+"But ours? Most Americans can afford to and do own guns with which to
+shoot, and, furthermore, most Americans, when they shoot, can hit the
+things at which they shoot.
+
+"Combine this powerful protective influence with the fact that thousands
+of any army coming to invade us would not want to fight when once they
+got here, but would want to settle here and enjoy peace, and we find
+that we thus are protected as no nation in the world ever has been
+protected or can be.
+
+"Imagine the effect upon the European fighting man's psychology if he
+found that an army transport had conveyed him to a land where one man's
+privilege is every man's right! Learning this, it is not a joke to say,
+but is a statement of the probable fact, that the invading soldiery
+would not want to fire its first volleys, but would want to file its
+first papers. They would not ask for cartridges, but for citizenship.
+
+"America is protected by a force incomparable, which I may call its
+peaceful militia, and the man who, above all other men, I most should
+wish to see appointed to its command would be Gen. Leonard Wood were it
+not for the fact that there would be some danger that in such an
+eventuation his professional training would carry him beyond the rule of
+reason.
+
+"That is likely to be the most serious trouble with the trained soldier.
+The doctor wants to dose, the parson to preach, and the soldier to
+fight. Professional habit may make any of us dangerous.
+
+"But if it came to fighting I do not consider it within the bounds of
+possibility that we could lose. I once asked Gen. Sherman how the troops
+which he commanded during the civil war compared for efficiency with
+European troops. His answer was:
+
+"'The world never has seen the army that I would be afraid to trust my
+boys with, man for man.'"
+
+
+Would Surprise the Enemy.
+
+"That thought of welcoming an invading army appeals strongly to me. The
+hostile General would be amazed by the ease with which he got his forces
+in, but he would be more startled by the difficulty he would find if he
+tried to get them out. If they once learned the advantages of our
+liberties they would find it hard not to get away, but to go away. I
+restrain my temper with difficulty when I contemplate the foolishness of
+the people who discuss with gravity the possibility of a successful
+invasion of these United States by a foreign foe. The thought always
+arises when I hear these cries from our army and naval officers for a
+greater armament: 'Are these men cowards?' I don't believe it. It is
+their profession which makes them alarmists.
+
+"Not only are the physical difficulties which would hamper an invasion
+practically insuperable, but the reception enemies would get, if any of
+them landed, would be wholly without parallel in the world's history.
+
+"If our liberties really were threatened, every man, and very nearly
+every woman, in our vast population would rise to their defense as never
+any people yet has risen to any national defense. Americans, young and
+old, en masse, would sweep to the protection of what they know, and what
+the world knows, would be the cause of right and human liberty.
+
+"I, myself, should wish to be invited to advance and meet invading
+forces if they came. I would approach them without any weapons on my
+person. I would not shoot at them. I would make a speech to them.
+
+"'Gentlemen,' I would say, 'here's the chance of your life to win life's
+chief prize. Now you are peasant soldiers. You have the opportunity to
+become citizen kings. We are all kings here. Here the least of you can
+take a rank much higher than that of any General in your army. He can
+become a sovereign in a republic.'
+
+"I think they would hurrah for me, not harm me, after they had heard my
+speech.
+
+"Striving for peace, we shall become so powerful that if war comes we
+shall be invincible. Peace, not war, makes riches; the rich nation is
+the powerful nation.
+
+"Perhaps I was as much a peace man in my youth as I am now, but when I
+was asked, during the civil war, to organize a corps of telegraph
+operators and railroad conductors and engineers and take them to
+Washington, I considered it the greatest of all privileges to obey the
+order.
+
+"I was the last man to get on the last train leaving Burkes Station,
+after Bull Run, and, now, if the country ever should be invaded, I would
+be, I hope, one of the first to rush to meet the enemy--but I think my
+haste would be to convert, not to kill, him.
+
+"The man who has done well in business, however, learns to abhor all
+waste, and I must admit that it does pain me to see hundreds of millions
+of our dollars spent on battleships which will but rust away, and
+thousands of our able men vegetating on them or in an army.
+
+"The men who urge this vast waste of our money and men mean well, no
+doubt, but they do not know the nation of which they have the good
+fortune to be citizens--they do not realize how very potent a force we
+have become in the wide world, nor the fact that one of the great
+reasons why we have become a force lies in the circumstance that our
+national development has not been hampered by the vast expense of
+militarism."
+
+Mr. Carnegie paused.
+
+Some weeks ago, in an interview granted me for publication in THE NEW
+YORK TIMES, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia
+University, predicted that the present war would find its final outcome
+in the establishment of the United States of Europe. I asked Mr.
+Carnegie to express his view upon this subject.
+
+"Nothing else could occur which would be of such immense advantage to
+Europe," he replied.
+
+"United we stand, and divided they fall. If the territory now occupied
+by the homogeneous and co-operative federation known as the United
+States of America were occupied instead by a large number of small,
+independent competitive nations, that is, if each section of our
+territory which now is a State were an independent country, America
+would be constantly in turmoil.
+
+"Europe has been set back a century because she substituted the present
+war of nations for the promotion of a federation plan. The latter would
+have meant peace and prosperity, the former means ruin.
+
+"If in Europe this year such a federation as Dr. Butler regards as a
+future probability had been a present actuality, 1914 would have left a
+record very different from that which it is making.
+
+"For instance, it would have been as difficult for the State of Germany
+to fight the State of Russia, or the State of France, or that of
+England, or all of them, and to trample neutral Belgium, as it now
+would be, here, for the State of Pennsylvania to declare war on the
+States of New York and Connecticut and to wreck New Jersey as she sent
+her troops to the invasion.
+
+"Originally we had thirteen States, and thirteen only, but there was
+other territory here, and the attractive force of the successful union
+of the thirteen States brought the other territory in as it was
+organized.
+
+"Thus we started right. Europe had begun before men had become so wise,
+and, having begun wrong, has found herself, through the centuries,
+unable to correct old errors."
+
+
+A Federation of Europe.
+
+"Certainly I hope that out of the great crime of this vast war some good
+will come. The greatest good which could come would be a general
+European federation. I do not believe that this will come at once; but
+the world will be infinitely the better if it comes at length--if the
+natural law of mutual attraction for mutual advantage draws these
+nations now at war into a union which shall make such wars impossible in
+future, as wars between our States, here, are impossible.
+
+"But before this can come peace must come, and before peace can come one
+or the other of the nations now at war must at least ask for an
+armistice.
+
+"If I were in the place of that great General, Lord Kitchener, and
+should receive the news that such a request had been made by the
+commander of the opposing forces, I should say: 'No armistice!
+Surrender!'
+
+"But, then, if the surrender should be made, I should say, in effect:
+
+"'Gentlemen, we have made up our minds that these terrible explosions
+must mark the end of war between our civilized nations. Our sacrifices
+in this war have been too great to permit us to be satisfied with less
+than this.
+
+"'If we now cannot feel assured of such a federation of nations as will
+result in the settlement of all future disputes by peaceful arbitration
+at The Hague, then we shall keep on fighting till the day comes when we
+can achieve that end.
+
+"'Upon the other side of the Atlantic,' I should continue if I were Lord
+Kitchener and should be confronted by such a situation, 'we see in the
+United States of America an example which must satisfy us that world
+peace now can be maintained.
+
+"'There,' I should go on, 'thirteen States were banded into union in
+1776. Their total population was less than the present population of
+their largest city and their area has spread until it links two oceans
+and offers homes in forty-eight States to one hundred millions, and the
+population still increases rapidly. An experiment of world significance
+was tried, and is a success, for the aggregated nation has grown and now
+is growing in power more rapidly than any other nation on the surface of
+the earth.'"
+
+
+Would Mean World Peace.
+
+"'It is plain to me and should be plain to all of us,' I should
+continue, if I were Lord Kitchener, so placed, 'that we in Europe have
+but to follow this example which America has set for us in order to
+achieve an ultimate result as notably desirable. When we have
+accomplished it world peace will be enthroned and all the peoples of the
+earth will be able safely to go about the pleasant and progressive
+business of their lives without apprehension of their neighbors.
+Humanity, thus freed of its most dreadful burden, will be able to leap
+forward toward the realization of its ultimate possibilities of
+progress.'"
+
+"And do you really think there is the immediate possibility of an
+effective European league for permanent peace and general disarmament?"
+I asked Mr. Carnegie.
+
+"Naturally my mind has dwelt much on this problem," he replied. "The
+culmination of the European situation in the present war is very
+dreadful, but no good ever came out of crying over spilled milk.
+However, it seems safe to conclude that a majority of the people of the
+civilized world will presently decide that a step forward must be taken.
+
+"Everywhere in Europe, when the present conflict ends, this fact will be
+emphasized by shell-wrecked, fire-blackened buildings; by the vacant
+chairs of sons and fathers who have fallen victims; by innumerable
+graves and by a general impoverishment, the inevitable result of war's
+great waste, which will touch and punish every man, every woman, every
+child.
+
+"In the face of such an emphasis no denial of the facts will be among
+the possibilities, and I scarcely think that any even will be attempted.
+If the federation Dr. Butler has predicted does not come about at once,
+it will be admitted almost universally that future disputes occurring
+between the Governments of Europe shall be settled, not by force of
+fighting men, but by arbitration at The Hague.
+
+"And now a serious question obtrudes itself. Must there not be a
+carefully considered and cautiously worked out understanding, which may
+be considered the preliminary of peace? Later on the foremost men of
+every nation can meet in conference to consider with an earnestness
+hitherto unknown the great problems which will be involved in the
+permanent abolition of war and establishment of peace; but for this the
+way must be prepared.
+
+"Here, again, I think The Hague Tribunal is the proper body to assemble
+for the purpose of devising means for the accomplishment of the great
+end, which must be such legislation as will accomplish, at the end of
+this war, the ending of all war among the nations.
+
+"An important duty of the conference would be some arrangement for a
+union of the forces of the nations now at war, charged with and
+qualified to perform the duty of maintaining peace pending the
+completion of the final comprehensive plan."
+
+
+For One Purpose Only.
+
+"It is possible and even probable that as a part of the accomplishment
+of this it may be found to be desirable and even necessary to organize
+and provide for the maintenance of a joint naval and military body of
+strength sufficient to enforce world peace during the period necessary
+for the preparation of a plan to be submitted to all powers. But if this
+force is to be established, it must be done with the clear understanding
+that it is designed for one thing only, the maintenance of peace, and
+must not be used at any time for any other service.
+
+"In the selection of the commanding officer to be intrusted with this
+task, it will be conceded that the victors in this war, or those who
+have a notable advantage at the time of the beginning of the armistice,
+shall have the right of his appointment.
+
+"No protest ever will arise from the mass of the people of Europe
+against the abolishment of militarism. Even the people of Germany, as a
+whole, have not found militarism attractive. It has been the influence
+of the military aristocracy of Germany, the most powerful caste in the
+world, which not only has encouraged the national tendency, but has
+forced the Emperor, as I believe, to action against his will and
+judgment.
+
+"But a change was notable in Germany before the war began, and will be
+far more notable after it has ended. The socialistic movement waxes
+strong throughout the nation, and the proceedings of the Reichstag show
+us that the nation is marching steadily, though perhaps slowly, toward a
+real democracy.
+
+"I believe the first election to follow peace will result in a demand by
+the Reichstag that it, alone, shall be given power to declare war. It
+will be argued, and it is evident that it then will be amply provable,
+that it is the people who suffer most through war, and that, therefore,
+their representatives should utterly control it.
+
+"That itself would be a most important step toward peace, and I feel
+certain that it is among the probabilities.
+
+"As things stand in Germany, although the Reichstag has its powerful
+influence in regard to war expenditure and might accomplish important
+results by refusing to vote amounts demanded, the fact remains that
+until it has been given the power of making or withholding declaration
+of war the most important results cannot be accomplished."
+
+"In Fried's volume," I suggested to Mr. Carnegie, "you are credited with
+saying that Emperor William, himself and by himself, might establish
+peace. Granting that that might have been the fact before this war
+began, is it your opinion that he, or any other one man, could now
+control the situation to that extent?"
+
+"Assuming that the Germans should come out victorious," Mr. Carnegie
+replied, "the Emperor would become a stronger power than ever toward the
+maintenance of peace among the nations. At one time I believed him to be
+the anointed of God for this purpose, and did not fail to tell him so.
+
+"Even if his forces should be defeated in this present carnage, I am
+sure he would be welcomed by the conference I have suggested as the
+proposer of the great world peace, thus fulfilling the glorious destiny
+for which at one time I considered that he had been chosen from on
+high."
+
+I asked Mr. Carnegie what part he thought this country, the United
+States, should play in the great movement which he has in mind and
+thoroughly believes is even now upon its way.
+
+"The United States," he answered, "although, happily, not a party to the
+world crime which is now in progress, seems entitled to preference as
+the one to call the nations of the world to the consideration of the
+greatest of all blessings--universal, lasting peace."
+
+
+
+
+Woman and War
+
+"SHOT. TELL HIS MOTHER."
+
+By W.E.P. French, Captain, U.S. Army.
+
+
+What have I done to you, Brothers,--War-Lord and Land-Lord and Priest,--
+That my son should rot on the blood-smeared earth where the raven and
+     buzzard feast?
+He was my baby, my man-child, that soldier with shell-torn breast,
+Who was slain for your power and profit--aye, murdered at your behest.
+I bore him, my boy and my manling, while the long months ebbed away;
+He was part of me, part of my body, which nourished him day by day.
+He was mine when the birth-pang tore me, mine when he lay on my heart,
+When the sweet mouth mumbled my bosom and the milk-teeth made it smart,
+Babyhood, boyhood, and manhood, and a glad mother proud of her son--
+See the carrion birds, too gorged to fly! Ah! Brothers, what have you
+     done?
+
+You prate of duty and honor, of a patriot's glorious death,
+Of love of country, heroic deeds--nay, for shame's sake, spare your
+     breath!
+Pray, what have you done for your country? Whose was the blood that was
+     shed
+In the hellish warfare that served your ends? My boy was shot in your
+     stead.
+
+And for what were our children butchered, men makers of cruel law?
+By the Christ, I am glad no woman made the Christless code of war!
+Shirks and schemers, why don't you answer? Is the foul truth hard to
+     tell?
+Then a mother will tell it for you, of a deed that shames fiends in
+     hell:--
+Our boys were killed that some faction or scoundrel might win mad race
+For goals of stained gold, shamed honors, and the sly self-seeker's
+     place;
+That money's hold on our country might be tightened and made more sure;
+That the rich could inherit earth's fullness and their loot be quite
+     secure;
+That the world-mart be wider opened to the product mulct from toil;
+That the labor and land of our neighbors should become your war-won
+     spoil;
+That the eyes of an outraged people might be turned from your graft and
+     greed
+In the misruled, plundered home-land by lure of war's ghastly deed;
+And that priests of the warring nations could pray to the selfsame God
+For His blessing on battle and murder and corpse-strewn, blood-soaked
+     sod.
+Oh, fools! if God were a woman, think you She would let kin slay
+For gold-lust and craft of gamesters, or cripple that trade might pay?
+
+This quarrel was not the fighters':--the cheated, red pawns in your
+     game:--
+You stay-at-homes garnered the plunder, but the pawns,--wounds, death,
+     and "Fame"!
+You paid them a beggarly pittance, your substitute prey-of-the-sword,
+But, ye canny beasts of prey, they paid, in life and limb, for your
+     hoard.
+And, behold! you have other victims: a widow sobs by my side,
+Who clasps to her breast a girl-child. Men, she was my slain son's
+     bride!
+
+I can smell the stench of the shambles, where the mangled bodies lie;
+I can hear the moans of the wounded; I can see the brave lads die;
+And across the heaped, red trenches and the tortured, bleeding rows
+I cry out a mother's pity to all mothers of dear, dead "foes."
+In love and a common sorrow, I weep with them o'er our dead,
+And invoke my sister woman for a curse on each scheming head.
+
+Nay, why should we mothers curse you? Lo! flesh of our flesh are ye;
+But, by soul of Mary who bore the Christ-man murdered at Calvary,
+Into our own shall the mothers come, and the glad day speed apace
+When the law of peace shall be the law of the women that bear the race;
+When a man shall stand by his mother, for the worldwide common good,
+And not bring her tears and heart-break nor make mock of her motherhood.
+
+
+
+
+The Way to Peace
+
+AN INTERVIEW WITH JACOB H. SCHIFF.
+
+     One of the leading American financiers and noted
+     philanthropist; founder of Jewish Theological Seminary and of
+     Semitic Museum at Harvard University; a native of Germany and
+     member of the firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., bankers.
+
+By Edward Marshall.
+
+
+American as I am in every fibre, and in accord as I feel with every
+interest of the country of my adoption, I cannot find myself in
+agreement with what appears to be, to a considerable extent, American
+opinion as to the origin and responsibility for the deplorable conflict
+in which almost all of Europe has become involved.
+
+For many reasons my personal sympathies are with Germany. I cannot feel
+convinced that she has been the real aggressor; I believe that war was
+forced upon her, almost as if by prearrangement among the nations with
+whom she now contends; I cannot but believe that they had become jealous
+and envious of her rapid and unprecedented peaceful development and had
+concluded that the moment had arrived when all was favorable for a union
+against her.
+
+Although I left Germany half a century ago, I would think as little of
+arraying myself against her, the country of my birth, in this the moment
+of her struggle for existence, as of arraying myself against my parents.
+
+But while I steadfastly believe this war to have been forced upon
+Germany against her will, I also believe that circumstances which were
+stronger than the Governments of England and France, her present
+enemies, were necessary to overcome an equally definite reluctance upon
+their part.
+
+In other words, I cannot wholly blame the English Government, or the
+French Government, any more than I can wholly blame the German
+Government.
+
+Let us see how the great tragedy came about. It is safe to pass rapidly
+over the Servian-Bosnian-Herzegovinian-Austro-Hungarian complication
+which served as the immediate precipitant of hostilities. It has been
+detailed repeatedly in THE TIMES and other American publications.
+
+It had reached a point at which the Austro-Hungarian Government felt
+compelled to take extreme measures by means of which to safeguard the
+integrity of the empire.
+
+The firm but fatal ultimatum to Servia followed, the reply to which,
+suffice it to say, was unsatisfactory to Austria, who could not accept
+the suggestion of an investigation into the circumstances attending the
+assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand through a commission or court on
+which she was not represented.
+
+
+Like Maine Case.
+
+The situation really was analogous to that which existed between the
+United States and Spain when the Maine was blown up in Havana Harbor. In
+order to fix the responsibility for this dastardly affair we then
+similarly demanded an investigation by Spain, to be carried out with the
+assistance of representatives of this Government. Spain, too, then
+offered to conduct an investigation, but she peremptorily declined to
+allow us to take part in it.
+
+This attitude on her part quickly brought about our declaration of war
+against her. It is important that Americans should realize the
+similarity in the two situations and the likeness of the Austrian action
+of 1914 to that which our own Government took in 1898.
+
+As soon as Austria had rejected as unsatisfactory Servia's reply to her
+ultimatum she prepared to undertake a punitive armed expedition against
+Servia, and Russia at once declared that she would rank herself as
+Servia's protector.
+
+Indeed, without any further parley, and to give effect to this threat,
+Russia immediately mobilized her army. Since then it has been averred
+that this mobilization had been in progress for several weeks previous
+to Servia's rejection of the Austrian ultimatum.
+
+This made it obligatory upon Germany to go to Austria's aid, under the
+provisions of their treaty of alliance, although she was well aware that
+such an action would bring France into the conflict under the terms of
+her alliance with Russia. Indeed, an unsatisfactory reply had been
+received from France as to the latter's intentions, but Germany
+endeavored to secure at least an assurance of England's neutrality. This
+proved to be impossible.
+
+How the German Government could indulge for a moment in the hope that in
+a war with Russia and France on the one side and Germany and Austria on
+the other, England could be induced to remain neutral passes
+comprehension, but that it did believe this seems a certainty.
+
+The English Government, no doubt, correctly felt that without the aid of
+its immense resources, and particularly without the operations of its
+great navy against Germany and Austria, the latter nations would find it
+not so very difficult a task to dispose of both Russia and France.
+
+English statesmen very promptly must have become alive to the
+probability that a Germany which had subdued Russia and France, and thus
+had made itself master of the Continent, would be unlikely long to
+tolerate a continuance of England's world leadership.
+
+So, even if the neutrality of Belgium had not been violated, other
+reasons would have been found by England for joining France and Russia
+in the war against Germany, for England would not risk, without any
+effort to protect them, the loss of her continued domination of the
+high seas and her undisputed possession of her vast colonial empire.
+
+
+Germany Fighting for Life.
+
+I am not defending the violation of Belgian neutrality. This,
+undeniably, was a most unjustifiable action, in spite of German claims
+that she was forced into it by the necessities of the situation. But I
+am explaining that, even had it not occurred, still England would have
+gone to war.
+
+That was the situation.
+
+Germany is now fighting for her very existence, and I, who am not
+without knowledge of German conditions, am convinced that never has
+there been a war more wholly that of a whole people than is this present
+conflict, as far as Germany is concerned.
+
+Any one who has been in even superficial touch with German public
+opinion and individual feeling in any part of the empire, since the war
+began, must know that there is hardly a man, woman, or child throughout
+the empire who would hesitate if called upon to sacrifice possessions or
+life in order to insure victory to the Fatherland. Seventy million
+people who are animated by unanimous sentiment of this sort cannot be
+crushed, probably not subdued.
+
+And England is confronted by the certainty that her world leadership is
+the stake for which she is fighting; that her defeat would mean the end
+of the vast dominance which she has exercised throughout the world,
+since the time of the Armada, through the power of her great navy.
+
+Is it not apparent, therefore, that these nations, if left to
+themselves, inevitably must continue the war until one side or the
+other, or both, shall become exhausted--an eventuation which may be
+postponed not for mere months but for years?
+
+In our own civil war Grant for almost two years stood within a hundred
+or a hundred and fifty miles of Richmond, the heart of the Confederacy,
+and was not able to sufficiently subdue Lee's forces to enable him to
+get possession of the city until the complete exhaustion of the
+Confederacy's resources in men and money had been accomplished.
+
+[Illustration: VISCOUNT JAMES BRYCE
+
+_(Photo from George G. Bain.)_
+
+_See Page 477_]
+
+[Illustration: DR. BERNHARD DERNBURG
+
+_(Photo by Campbell Studios.)_
+
+_See Page 487_]
+
+[Illustration: DAVID STARR JORDAN
+
+_See Page 502_]
+
+[Illustration: JOHN GRIER HIBBEN
+
+_(Photo by McManus.)_
+
+_See Page 503_]
+
+While that situation may not offer a true parallel in all respects to
+that in which we find the belligerent forces in the present European
+war, it nevertheless may be taken as a precedent proving that frontal
+encounters of powerful opponents generally do not yield final results
+until actual exhaustion compels one side or the other to abandon hope.
+
+Such an exhaustion hardly can be expected within measurable time on the
+part of either one or the other of the combatants in the existing
+European conflict, and this means the probable continuation for a long
+period of the merciless slaughter which has marked the last few months.
+We hold up our hands in horror at the stories of human sacrifices in the
+early ages when, after all, these were, perhaps, less brutal and less
+appalling than the wholesale slaughter of the flower of these warring
+peoples of which we now read almost daily.
+
+As I see the situation there really are only three contestants in the
+war--England, Russia, and Germany. France, Belgium, and Austria are
+important auxiliaries, but they are playing to a certain extent
+secondary rôles.
+
+England's real object is the utter defeat of Germany--nothing more nor
+less than that--and if this is accomplished England will have control of
+Europe. It must be remembered that the English Government and English
+people frequently have asserted that they would not be satisfied with
+mere defeat of Germany's armed forces, but that her power must be
+permanently paralyzed.
+
+If England should accomplish this, with Germany, its army and its navy,
+thus wholly out of the way, no one would be left for England to fear in
+future upon the high seas.
+
+That might be the chief significance of England's complete victory, and
+its complete significance would be that every nation in the world would
+have to do the British bidding, for should any one refuse she could
+completely destroy its commerce and shut off its overseas supplies.
+
+In the cases of most nations overseas supplies include material vital
+to the continuance of life and happiness; to every nation, in these days
+of a developed and habitual foreign trade, overseas supplies are
+actually essential, even when they do not necessarily include meats and
+wheat and other foodstuffs.
+
+The effect upon the United States of such an English victory would be
+most disastrous.
+
+The alliance between England and Japan is likely to be permanent. That
+is something which Americans cannot afford to forget for a moment.
+
+England needs Japan in the Far East, especially as an ally in case of
+need, which at some time is certain to arrive, against Russia; and Japan
+for many reasons needs the strength of English backing, without which
+her financial and political situation soon would become most dangerous,
+if not collapse.
+
+Such a permanent alliance would have this consequence upon us, that
+without even the probability of difficulties with either England or
+Japan--and, personally, I do not believe that such a probability need be
+feared--we nevertheless year after year would be compelled to
+increasingly prepare for what may be defined as the disagreeable
+possibility of the eventuation of a disagreeable possibility.
+
+Certainly we should be under the necessity of notably and, therefore,
+very expensively, increasing our naval armament; we should be under the
+necessity of large expenditures for coast defense.
+
+Corollary military cost would be enormous and burdensome. The
+preparation which would be imposed on us as a necessity by such a
+permanent alliance would be sufficiently extensive and expensive to
+burden our people heavily and handicap our national progress.
+
+It might involve, perhaps, even a greater hardship in our case than
+militarism has involved in Germany. It is improbable that the average
+American realizes the part which absence of such burdens has played in
+our national development so far; it would be difficult for the average
+American who has not studied the whole subject carefully to estimate
+accurately the part which the imposition of such a burden would be sure
+to play in our future.
+
+We have been measurably a free people. If we were under the necessity of
+supporting vast military and naval establishments we should be that no
+longer, no matter how completely we adhered to our democratic political
+system and ideals. It is not Kings, but what they do, which burdens
+countries, and the most burdensome, act of any King is to load his
+country up with non-productive, threatening, and expensive war
+machinery.
+
+
+The Real Peril.
+
+I fear that the American people as a whole have visualized only
+slightly, if at all, the real peril involved in this contingency; but I
+cannot feel otherwise than sure that soon they must awake to the great
+danger that militarism and navalism may be imposed upon them through no
+fault of their own.
+
+American impulses trend away from armament toward peaceful development
+along industrial lines, but even now political leaders in Washington
+begin to see what may be coming. The propositions which already have
+been made for considerable increases in our naval and military forces
+may be regarded as only the forerunners of what is to be expected later.
+
+My sympathies and interests, in other words my patriotic sentiments, are
+definitely American. I must repeat that I am of German origin, and that
+as regards the present struggle I am pro-German, yet it would be
+impossible for me to say that I am anti-English, although I am
+anti-Russian for reasons that are obvious.
+
+I already have expressed the belief that the complete humiliation of
+England would be disastrous to us. Now, it seems to me that if Germany
+should be completely successful, if she should be able to wear out the
+Allies, break down France, hold Russia in check, and cripple or even
+invade England, (which many German leaders actually believe can be done,
+incredible as it may seem to us,) Germany would acquire a position such
+as never has been held by any nation since the beginning of history. Not
+even the power of the Roman Empire would approach it.
+
+The advance which has marked the development of every means of
+communication, transportation, manufacturing, &c., since Rome's day
+would give Germany, in the case of such an eventuation, a power which
+would have been inconceivable to the most ambitious Roman Emperor. It
+would make her a menace not only to her immediate neighbors, but to the
+entire globe.
+
+Could she be trusted with such power? Notwithstanding my personal
+sympathies, which I have taken pains to clearly outline, I must admit
+that I cannot think so. The German character is not only self-reliant,
+which is admirable, but it readily becomes domineering, particularly
+when in the ascendency.
+
+In the rôle of a world conqueror Germany would become a world
+dictator--would indulge in a domination which would be almost unbearable
+to every other nation. Particularly would this be the case in respect to
+her relations with the United States, a nation with which she always has
+had and always must have intimate trade and commercial relations.
+
+Should Germany make England impotent and France powerless we should
+become more or less dependent upon German good-will, and it is highly
+probable, indeed I regard it as a certainty, that before long, in such
+an event, the Monroe Doctrine would cease to exercise any important
+influence on world events. It would become a thing of the past--a "scrap
+of paper."
+
+You see that while I am not neutral to the extreme, while I fervently
+hope and pray that Germany may not be wrecked and that she may emerge
+from the war with full ability to maintain her own, I cannot believe
+that it would be good for her or good for the world in general if she
+found herself absolutely and incontrovertibly victorious at the end of
+the great struggle. In other words, I wish Germany to be victorious, but
+I do not wish her to be too victorious.
+
+This brings us definitely to the question as to what can be done to stop
+this war. Its continuance is infinitely costly of men and treasure; its
+prosecution to the bitter end would mean complete disaster for one
+contestant and only less complete destruction for the other, and it
+would give to the victor, no matter what his sufferings and losses might
+have been, a power dangerous to the entire world.
+
+How shall it end? We do not want its end to mean a new European map.
+Anything of the sort would include the seed of another European war, to
+be fought out later and at even greater probable cost, with all the
+world-disturbance implied in such an eventuation.
+
+What the United States should desire and does desire is an understanding
+between these nations, of just what they are fighting for, which I
+almost believe they no longer know themselves, and a conference between
+them now, a pause to think, which at least may help toward stimulating
+each side to make concessions, before the ultimate of damage has been
+done.
+
+Such a conference might be called even without any interval in warfare
+and induced without definite outside intervention from ourselves or any
+one else. I believe it not to be beyond the bounds of possibility that
+if this course could be brought about importantly enough, a way out of
+this brutal struggle and carnage might be discovered even now, and I
+know I am not alone in this belief.
+
+The situation is unprecedented. No congress such as in former times more
+than once has settled wars and brought about peace by the give-and-take
+process could be of avail in the existing circumstances. Something far
+higher than such a conference is needed. This peace must not be
+temporary. It must mark not the ending of this war alone but the ending
+of all war.
+
+Some means must be devised and generally agreed to which, after the
+re-establishment of peace, will do away with jealousies among European
+nations, so that the continual increase of armament on land and sea no
+longer will be necessary, and humanity will be freed from its tremendous
+burden.
+
+It is not at present possible to point out any concrete means by which
+these things may be accomplished, but it is not impossible that, when
+reason shall be returned to the Governments now at war, they themselves
+may suggest to one another plans and ways and means how this may be
+effectuated.
+
+Toward this end America may help tremendously, and herein lies, it seems
+to me, the greatest opportunity ever offered by events to the American
+press.
+
+Let the newspapers of America stop futile philosophizing upon the merits
+and demerits of each case, let them measurably cease their comment upon
+what each side has accomplished or failed to accomplish during the
+tragic four months which have traced their bloody mark on history.
+
+Let them begin to stimulate public opinion in favor of a rational
+adjustment of the points at issue--such an adjustment as will leave each
+contestant unhumiliated and intact, such an adjustment as will avoid, as
+far as may be possible, the complete defeat of any one, such an
+adjustment as will do what can be done toward righting wrongs already
+wrought, and such an adjustment as will let the world return as soon as
+may be to the paths of peace, productiveness, prosperity, and happiness.
+
+In suggesting that America should regard this effort as an obligation I
+am assuming for this country no rights which are not properly hers. We,
+a nation of a hundred million people, laboring constantly for peace and
+human progress, have a right to make our voice heard, and if we raise it
+properly it will find listeners among those who can help toward the
+accomplishment of what we seek. But if we would make it heard we must be
+earnest, be honest, and be ceaseless in the reiteration of our demand.
+
+Have we not the right to insist that the interests of neutral nations,
+of whom, with our South American cousins, (for the better intercourse
+with whom we have just spent several hundred millions upon the
+construction of the Panama Canal,) we form so large a percentage, shall
+before long be given some consideration by the nations whose great
+quarrel is harming us incalculably?
+
+
+Americans Should Speak Out.
+
+The interruption of our economic development already has become marked
+and the war's baneful influence upon moral conditions in our midst shows
+itself through constantly increasing unemployment and, as a logical
+consequence of that, the rapid filling of our eleemosynary and penal
+institutions. May we not reasonably demand that this shall speedily be
+brought to an end?
+
+It probably is true that under the rules of the game the President of
+the United States cannot offer his good offices again to the
+belligerents without first being invited by one or the other side to do
+this, but the people of the United States have a voice even more
+powerful than his; if that of the people of South America should be
+joined with it, and if the combined sound should be made unquestionably
+apparent to the warring nations, it could not pass unheeded.
+
+Public opinion in the United States should firmly seek to impress upon
+the warring nations the conviction that nothing can secure a lasting
+peace except assurance of conditions under which not mighty armies
+and tremendous navies are held to be the factors through which
+trade expansion and the conquest of the markets of the world are
+to be obtained, but that this can be accomplished better and more
+lastingly through rigid adherence to the qualities and methods which
+generally make for success in commercial or any other peaceful
+competition--fairness, thorough efficiency, and hard work.
+
+The concentrated power of the American press and people would be
+tremendous. I am sure that, in this instance, it is possible to
+concentrate it for righteousness and the future good of all humanity.
+
+
+
+
+Prof. Mather on Mr. Schiff
+
+     Professor of Art at Princeton University; editorial writer for
+     The New York Evening Post and Assistant Editor of The Nation,
+     1901-06.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+It seems to me that the Belgian previous question ought to be moved with
+all candid pro-Germans. Mr. Schiff is plainly candid, so I have framed
+an open letter to elicit his opinion:
+
+[_An Open Letter to Jacob H. Schiff._]
+
+Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, New York.
+
+My Dear Sir: The universal esteem which you enjoy in the country of your
+adoption lends great weight to any utterance of yours on public matters.
+Your interview on the war in THE TIMES of Nov. 22 will everywhere have
+influence for its gravity and fineness of feeling. It is with
+compunction that I call your attention to the fact that your statement
+is ambiguous on precisely those issues of the conflict which your
+fellow-citizens have nearest at heart.
+
+Your general position may be described as a desire for prompt peace and
+restoration of the former balance of power. More specifically you wish
+"Germany to be victorious, but not too victorious." If this be merely an
+instinctive expression of the residual German in you, an expression made
+with no practical implications of any sort, no American will do
+otherwise than respect such a sentiment. But if you deliberately desire
+a moderate victory for Germany, with all that such moderate victory
+practically implies, it behooves your fellow-citizens to judge your
+views in the light of what these really call for.
+
+An ever so slightly victorious Germany would presumably retain Belgium,
+in whole or in part. Does such a conquest have your moral assent?
+
+Or suppose the rather improbable event of a Germany driven out of
+Belgium, but otherwise slightly victorious. In such case not a pfennig
+of indemnity would come to Belgium. Do you believe that no indemnity is
+morally due Belgium?
+
+Knowing your reputation as a man and philanthropist, I can hardly
+believe that your desire for a "not too victorious" Germany includes its
+logical implication of a subjugated or uncompensated Belgium. But if
+this be so, candor expects an avowal. Until you have made yourself clear
+on the issue that most concerns your fellow-citizens they will remain in
+doubt as to your whole moral attitude on the war. Does your pacificism
+contemplate a German Belgium? I feel sure you will admit that no fairer
+question could be set to any one who comments on the sequels of the war.
+I am, most respectfully yours,
+
+FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jr.
+
+Princeton University, Oct. 23, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+The Eliot-Schiff Letters
+
+     _On Nov. 22_ THE NEW YORK TIMES _printed this interview with
+     Jacob H. Schiff on the European war reproduced above. Two days
+     later Dr. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard, who
+     is an old friend of Mr. Schiff, wrote him a letter of comment
+     on THE TIMES interview. This letter resulted in considerable
+     correspondence between the two. At the time this
+     correspondence was penned there was not the least thought in
+     the mind of either of the writers of giving the letters to the
+     public. It was simply an interchange of ideas between men who
+     had long known each other. When they were convinced, however,
+     that publication might serve a useful purpose in shaping
+     public opinion, both Mr. Schiff and Dr. Eliot cordially
+     assented to their being printed._
+
+
+Dr. Eliot to Mr. Schiff.
+
+CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 24, 1914.
+
+Dear Mr. Schiff: It was a great relief to me to read just now your
+interview in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Nov. 22, for I have been afraid that
+your judgment and mine, concerning the desirable outcome of this
+horrible war, were very different. I now find that at many points they
+coincide.
+
+One of my strongest hopes is that one result of the war may be the
+acceptance by the leading nations of the world of the precept or
+law--there shall be no world empire for any single nation. If I
+understand you correctly, you hold the same opinion. You wish neither
+Germany nor England to possess world empire. You also look forward, as I
+do, to some contract or agreement among the leading nations which shall
+prevent competitive armaments. I entirely agree with you that it is in
+the highest degree undesirable that this war should be prolonged to the
+exhaustion of either side.
+
+When, however, I come to your discussion of the means by which a good
+result toward European order and peace may be brought out of the present
+convulsion I do not find clear guidance to present action on your part
+or mine, or on the part of our Government and people. Was it your
+thought that a congress of the peoples of North and South America should
+now be convened to bring to bear American opinion on the actual
+combatants while the war is going on? Or is it your thought that the
+American nations wait until there is a lull or pause in the indecisive
+fighting?
+
+So far as I can judge from the very imperfect information which reaches
+us from Germany, the confidence of the German Emperor and people in
+their "invincible" army is not much abated, although it clearly ought to
+be. It is obvious that American opinion has some weight in Germany; but
+has it not enough weight to induce Germany to abandon her intense desire
+for Belgium and Holland and extensive colonial possessions? To my
+thinking, without the abandonment of that desire and ambition on the
+part of Germany, there can be no lasting peace in Europe and no
+reduction of armaments. Sincerely yours,
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Jacob H. Schiff, Esq.
+
+
+Mr. Schiff to Dr. Eliot.
+
+NEW YORK, Nov. 25, 1914.
+
+My Dear Dr. Eliot:
+
+I am just in receipt of your thoughtful letter of yesterday, which it
+has given me genuine pleasure to receive. While it is true that I have
+not found myself in accord with many of the views to which you have
+given public expression concerning the responsibility for this
+deplorable conflict and the unfortunate conditions it has created, I
+never doubted that as to its desirable outcome we would find ourselves
+in accord, and I am very glad to have this confirmed by you, though as
+to this our views could not have diverged.
+
+As to the means by which a desirable result toward European order and
+peace may be brought about out of the chaos which has become created, it
+is, I confess, difficult to give guidance at present. What needs first,
+in my opinion, to be done is to bring forth a healthy and insistent
+public opinion here for an early peace without either side becoming
+first exhausted, and it was my purpose in the interview I have given to
+set the American people thinking concerning this. I have no idea that I
+shall have immediate success; but if men like you and others follow in
+the same line, I am sure American public opinion can before long be made
+to express itself emphatically and insistently in favor of an early
+peace. Without this it is not unlikely that this horrible slaughter and
+destruction may continue for a very, very long time.
+
+Yours most faithfully,
+
+JACOB H. SCHIFF.
+
+President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot, Cambridge, Mass.
+
+
+Dr. Eliot to Mr. Schiff.
+
+CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 28, 1914.
+
+Dear Mr. Schiff:
+
+I think, just as you do, that the thing which most needs to be done is
+to induce Germany to modify its present opinion that the nation must
+fight for its very life to its last mark and the last drop of its blood.
+Now, every private letter that I have received from Germany, and every
+printed circular, pamphlet, or book on the war which has come to me from
+German sources insists on the view that, for Germany, it is a question
+between world empire or utter downfall. There is no sense or reason in
+this view, but the German philosophers, historians, and statesmen are
+all maintaining it at this moment.
+
+England, France, and Russia have no such expectations or desires as
+regards the fate of Germany. What they propose to do is to put a stop to
+Germany's plan of attaining world empire by militarism. Have you any
+means of getting into the minds of some of the present rulers of Germany
+the idea that no such alternative as life or death is presented to
+Germany in this war, and that the people need only abandon their
+world-empire ambitions while securing safety in the heart of Europe and
+a chance to develop all that is good in German civilization? Sincerely
+yours,
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Jacob H. Schiff, Esq.
+
+
+Mr. Schiff to Dr. Eliot.
+
+The Greenbrier,
+WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W. Va.,
+Dec. 1, 1914.
+
+Dear Dr. Eliot:
+
+I have received today your letter of the 28th ult., and I hasten to
+reply to it, for I know of nought that is of more importance than the
+discussion between earnest men of what might be done to bring to
+cessation this horrible and senseless war.
+
+I believe you are mistaken--though in this I am stating nothing,
+absolutely, but my personal opinion--that Germany would not listen to
+the suggestion for a restoration of peace until it has either come into
+a position to dictate the terms or until it is utterly crushed. Indeed,
+I rather feel, and I have indications that such is the case, that
+England is unwilling to stop short of crushing Germany, and it is now
+using all the influence it can bring to bear in this country to prevent
+public opinion being aroused in favor of the stoppage of hostilities and
+re-establishment of peace.
+
+The same mail which brought your letter this morning brought me also a
+letter from a leading semi-military man, whom I know by name, but not
+personally. It is so fine and timely that I venture to inclose a copy
+for your perusal. Why would not you, and perhaps Dr. Andrew D. White,
+who--is it not a coincidence--has likewise written me today on the
+subject of my recent TIMES interview, be the very men to carry out the
+suggestion made by my correspondent?
+
+Perhaps no other two men in the entire country are so greatly looked up
+to by its people for guidance as you--in the first instance--and Dr.
+White. You could surely bestow no greater gift upon the entire civilized
+world than if now, in the evening of a life which has been of such great
+value to mankind, you would call around you a number of leading, earnest
+Americans with the view of discussing and framing plans through which
+American public opinion could be crystallized and aroused to the point
+where it will insistently demand that these warring nations come
+together and, with the experience they have made to their great cost,
+make at least an attempt to find a way out. I cannot but believe that
+the Governments of England, France, and Germany--if not Russia--will
+have to listen, if the American people speak with no uncertain voice.
+Do it, and you will deserve and receive the blessing of this and of
+coming generations! Yours most faithfully,
+
+JACOB H. SCHIFF.
+
+
+Dr. Eliot to Mr. Schiff.
+
+CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 8, 1914.
+
+Dear Mr. Schiff:
+
+I thank you for your letter of Dec. 1 and its interesting inclosure.
+
+Although every thoughtful person must earnestly desire that the waste
+and destruction of this greatest of wars should be stopped as soon as
+possible, there is an overpowering feeling that the war should go on
+until all the combatants, including Germany, have been brought to see
+that the Governmental régime and the state of the public mind in Germany
+which have made this war possible are not consistent with the security
+and well-being of Europe in the future.
+
+Personally, I feel strongly that the war ought to go on so long as
+Germany persists in its policies of world empire, dynastic rule,
+autocratic bureaucracy, and the use of force in international dealings.
+If the war stops before Germany sees that those policies cannot prevail
+in twentieth-century Europe, the horrible wrongs and evils which we are
+now witnessing will recur; and all the nations will have to continue the
+destructive process of competitive armaments. If peace should be made
+now, before the Allies have arrived at attacking Germany on her own
+soil, there would result only a truce of moderate length, and then a
+renewal of the present horrors.
+
+I cannot but think that Europe now has a chance to make a choice between
+the German ideal of the State and the Anglo-American ideal. These two
+ideals are very different; and the present conflict shows that they
+cannot coexist longer in modern Europe.
+
+In regard to the suggestion which your correspondent made to you that a
+conference of private persons should now be called in the hope of
+arriving at an agreed-upon appeal to the combatants to desist from
+fighting and consider terms of settlement, I cannot but feel (1) that
+such a conference would have no assured status; (2) that the combatants
+would not listen; and (3) that the effort would, therefore, be untimely
+now, though perhaps useful later.
+
+One idea might possibly bring about peace, if it fructified in the mind
+of the German Emperor--the idea, namely, that the chance of Germany's
+obtaining dominating power in either Europe or the world having already
+gone, the wise thing for him to do is to save United Germany within her
+natural boundaries for secure development as a highly civilized strong
+nation in the heart of Europe. Surplus population can always emigrate
+happily in the future as in the past.
+
+The security of Germany would rest, however, on an international
+agreement to be maintained by an international force; whereas, the
+example which Germany has just given of the reckless violation of
+international agreements is extremely discouraging in regard to the
+possibility of securing the peace of Europe in the future.
+
+Although this war has already made quite impossible the domination of
+Germany in Europe or in the world, the leaders of Germany do not yet see
+or apprehend that impossibility. Hence, many earnest peace-seekers have
+to confess that they do not see any means whatever available for
+promoting peace in Europe now, or even procuring a short truce.
+
+I wish I could believe with you that the Governments of England, France,
+Germany, and Russia would listen to the voice of the American people.
+They all seem to desire the good opinion and moral support of America;
+but I see no signs that they would take American advice or imitate
+American example. President Wilson seems to think that this country will
+be accepted as a kind of umpire in this formidable contest; but surely
+we have no right to any such position. Our example in avoiding
+aggression on other nations, and in declining to enter the contest for
+world power, ought to have some effect in abating European ambitions in
+that direction; but our exhortations to peace and good-will will, I
+fear, have little influence. There is still a real contest on between
+democracy and oligarchical methods.
+
+You see, my dear Mr. Schiff, that I regard this war as the result of
+long-continuing causes which have been gathering force for more than
+fifty years. In Germany all the forces of education, finance, commercial
+development, a pagan philosophy, and Government have been preparing this
+war since 1860. To stop it now, before these forces have been
+overwhelmingly defeated, and before the whole German people is convinced
+that they are defeated, would be to leave humanity exposed to the
+certain recurrence of the fearful convulsions we are now witnessing.
+
+If anybody can show me any signs that the leaders of Germany are
+convinced that there is to be no world empire for Germany or any other
+nation, and no despotic Government in Europe, I shall be ready to take
+part in any effectual advocacy of peace. Sincerely yours.
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Jacob H. Schiff, Esq.
+
+
+Mr. Schiff to Dr. Eliot.
+
+NEW YORK, Dec. 5, 1914.
+
+President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot, Cambridge, Mass.
+
+Dear Dr. Eliot:
+
+Your letter of Dec. 3 reached me this morning, and has given me much
+food for thought.
+
+I wish I could follow you in the position you have taken, for I like
+nothing better than to sit at the feet of a master like you and be
+instructed. But, much as I have tried, even before our recent
+correspondence was begun, to get at your viewpoint as from time to time
+published, I have not been able to convince myself that you occupy a
+correct position. Please accept this as expressed in all modesty, for I
+know were you not thoroughly convinced of the justice of the position
+you have taken from the start you would not be so determined in holding
+to it.
+
+I am perfectly frank to say that I am amazed and chagrined when you say
+that you feel strongly that the war ought to go on until the Allies
+have arrived at attacking Germany on her own soil, which, if this is at
+all likely to come, may take many months yet, and will mean sacrifice of
+human life on both sides more appalling than anything we have seen yet
+since the war began. So you are willing that, with all the human life
+that has already perished, practically the entire flower of the warring
+nations shall become exterminated before even an effort be made to see
+whether these nations cannot be brought to reason, cannot be made to
+stop and to consider whether, with the experience of the past four
+months before them, it would not be better to even now make an effort to
+find a way in which the causes that have led to this deplorable conflict
+can be once and forever eradicated?
+
+That it will be possible to find at this time any method or basis
+through the adoption of which the world would become entirely immune
+against war I do not believe, even by the establishment of the
+international police force such as you and others appear to have in
+mind.
+
+The perpetual cessation of all war between the civilized nations of the
+world can, as I see it, only be brought about in two ways, both Utopian
+and likely impracticable, for many years to come. War could be made only
+to cease entirely if all the nations of Europe could be organized into a
+United States of Europe and if free trade were established throughout
+the world. In the first instance, the extreme nationalism, which has
+become so rampant during the past fifty years and which has been more or
+less at the bottom of every war, would then cease to exist and prevail,
+and in the second event, namely, if free trade became established
+throughout the world the necessity for territorial expansion and
+aggression would no longer be needed, for, with the entire world open on
+equal terms to the commerce and industry of every nation, territorial
+possession would not be much of a consideration to any peoples.
+
+You continually lay stress upon the danger of the domination of Germany
+in Europe and in the world. I believe I have already made myself quite
+clear in my recent NEW YORK TIMES interview, which has called forth this
+correspondence between us, that neither would I wish to have Germany
+come into a position where it might dominate Europe, and more or less
+the world, nor do I believe that the German Nation, except perhaps a
+handful of extremists, has any such desires.
+
+I believe I have also made myself quite clear in the interview to which
+I have referred that my feelings are not anti-English, for I shall never
+forget that liberal government and all forms of liberalism have had
+their origin, ever since the Magna Charta, in that great nation whom we
+so often love to call our cousins. But, with all of this, can you ignore
+the fact that England even today, without the further power and prestige
+victory in the present conflict would give her, practically dominates
+the high seas, that she treats the ocean as her own and enforces her
+dictates upon the waters even to our very shores? That this is true the
+past four months have amply proved. I am not one of those who fear that
+the United States, as far as can now be foreseen, will get into any
+armed conflict with Great Britain or with Japan, her permanent ally, but
+I can well understand that many in our country are of a different
+opinion, and it takes no prophet to foresee that, with England coming
+out of this war victorious and her and Japan's power on the high seas
+increased, the demand from a large section of our people for the
+acquisition and possession of the United States of an increased powerful
+navy and for the erection of vast coast defenses, both on the Atlantic
+and Pacific shores, will become so insistent that it cannot be
+withstood. What this will mean to the American people in lavish
+expenditures and in increased taxation I need not here further go into.
+
+Yes, my dear and revered friend, I can see nought but darkness if a way
+cannot be soon found out of the present deplorable situation as it
+exists in Europe.
+
+But even if the Allies are victorious it will mean, as I am convinced,
+the beginning of the descent of England as the world's leader and the
+hastened ascendency of Russia, who, not today or tomorrow, but in times
+to come, is sure to crowd out England from the world's leadership. A
+Russia that will have become democratic in its government, be it as a
+republic or under a truly constitutional monarchy; a Russia in which
+education will be as free as it is in our own country; a Russia in which
+the people can move about and make homes in the vast territory she
+possesses wherever they can find most happiness and prosperity; a Russia
+with its vast natural resources of every kind fully developed, is bound
+to be the greatest and most powerful nation on the earth.
+
+But I am going too far into the future and I must return to the sad and
+deplorable present. I only wanted to show how England's alliance with
+this present-day Russia and its despotic, autocratic, and inhuman
+Government may, if the Allies shall be victorious, prove possibly in the
+nearer future, but certainly in the long run, England's Nemesis.
+
+Before closing I want to correct the impression you appear to have
+received that I have meant to suggest a conference of private persons
+for the purpose of agreeing upon an appeal by them to the nations of
+Europe to desist from fighting and consider terms of settlement. I know
+this would be entirely impracticable and useless, but what I meant to
+convey to you was my conviction that if you and men like you, of whom I
+confess there are but too few, were to make the endeavor to rouse public
+opinion in the United States to a point where it should insistently
+demand that this terrific carnage of blood and destruction cease, it
+would not be long before these warring Governments would take notice of
+such sentiments on the part of the American people; and what should be
+done at once is the stoppage of the furnishing of munitions of war to
+any of the belligerents, as is unfortunately done to so great an extent
+at present from this country.
+
+We freely and abundantly give to the Red Cross and the many other relief
+societies, but we do this, even if indirectly, out of the very profits
+we derive from the war material we sell to the belligerents, and with
+which the wounds the Red Cross and other relief societies endeavor to
+assuage are inflicted. Yours most faithfully,
+
+JACOB H. SCHIFF.
+
+
+Dr. Eliot to Mr. Schiff.
+
+CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 8, 1914.
+
+Dear Mr. Schiff:
+
+Your letter of Dec. 5 tells me what the difference is between you and me
+in respect to the outcome of the war--I am much more hopeful or sanguine
+of the world's getting good out of it than you are. Since you do not
+hope to get any good to speak of out of it, you want to stop it as soon
+as possible. You look forward to future war from time to time between
+the nations of Europe and to the maintenance of competitive armaments.
+You think that the lust of dominion must continue to be felt and
+gratified, now by one nation and now by another; that Great Britain can
+gratify it now, but that she will be overpowered by Russia by and by.
+
+I am unwilling to accept these conditions for Europe, or for the world,
+without urging the freer nations to make extraordinary efforts to reach
+a better solution of the European international problem which, unsolved,
+has led down to this horrible pit of general war.
+
+I have just finished another letter to THE NEW YORK TIMES, which will
+probably be in print by the time you get back to New York, so I will not
+trouble you with any exposition of the grounds of my hopefulness. It is
+because I am hopeful that I want to see this war fought out until
+Germany is persuaded that she cannot dominate Europe, or, indeed, make
+her will prevail anywhere by force of arms. When that change of mind has
+been effected I hope that Germany will become a member of a federation
+firm enough and powerful enough to prevent any single nation from
+aiming at world empire, or even pouncing on a smaller neighbor.
+
+There is another point on which I seem to differ from you: I do not
+believe that any single nation has now, or can ever hereafter have, the
+leadership of the world, whereas you look forward to the existence of
+such leadership or domination in the hands of a single great power. Are
+there not many signs already, both in the East and in the West, that the
+time has past for world empire? Very sincerely and cordially yours,
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Jacob H. Schiff, Esq.
+
+
+Mr. Schiff to Dr. Eliot.
+
+NEW YORK, Dec. 14, 1914.
+
+Dear Dr. Eliot:
+
+I have delayed replying to your valued letter of the 8th inst. until
+after the appearance of your further letter to THE NEW YORK TIMES, to
+which you had made reference, and, like everything emanating from you,
+the contents of your last TIMES letter have evoked my deepest interest.
+
+Had our recent correspondence not already become more extended than you
+likely had intended it to become when you first wrote me on the subject
+of my TIMES interview of some weeks ago, I should go into your latest
+arguments at greater length. As it is, I shall only reiterate that I
+find myself unable to follow you in your belief and hope, that world
+empire and world leadership, as this now exists, is likely to cease as a
+consequence of the present war, much as we all may desire this.
+
+England has taken up arms to retain her world dominion and leadership;
+and to gain it, Germany is fighting. How can you, then, expect that
+England, if victorious, would be willing to surrender her control of the
+oceans and the dominion over the trade of the world she possesses in
+consequence, and where is there, then, room for the hope you express
+that world leadership may become a thing of the past with the
+termination of the present conflict?
+
+I repeat, with all my attachment for my native land and its people, I
+have no inimical feeling toward England, have warm sentiments for
+France, and the greatest compassion for brave, stricken Belgium.
+
+Thus, "with malice toward none," and with the highest respect for your
+expressed views, I am still of the opinion that there can be no greater
+service rendered to mankind than to make the effort, either through the
+force of public opinion of the two Americas, or otherwise, to bring
+these warring Governments together at an early moment, even if this can
+only be done without stopping their conflict, so that they may make the
+endeavor, whether--with their costly experience of the last five months,
+with the probability that they now know better what need be done to make
+the extreme armaments on land and sea as unnecessary as they are
+undesirable in the future--a basis cannot be found upon which
+disarmament can be effectively and permanently brought about.
+
+This, at some time, they will have come to, in any event, and must there
+first more human lives be sacrificed into the hundreds and hundreds of
+thousands, and still greater havoc be wrought, before passions can be
+made to cease and reason be made to return?
+
+If, as you seem to think, the war need go on until one country is beaten
+into a condition where it must accept the terms the victor chooses to
+impose, because it can no longer help itself to do else, the peace thus
+obtained will only be the harbinger of another war in the near or
+distant future, bloodier probably than the present sanguinary conflict,
+and through no compact which might be entered into will it be possible
+to actually prevent this.
+
+Twenty centuries ago Christianity came into the world with its lofty
+message of "peace on earth and good-will to men," and now, after two
+thousand years, and at the near approach of the season when Christianity
+celebrates the birth of its founder, it is insisted that the merciless
+slaughter of man by man we have been witnessing these last months must
+be permitted to be continued into the infinite. Most faithfully yours,
+
+JACOB H. SCHIFF.
+
+President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot, Cambridge, Mass.
+
+
+
+
+LA CATHEDRALE.
+
+From Figaro.
+
+By EDMOND ROSTAND.
+
+
+    Ils n'ont fait que la rendre un peu plus immortelle.
+    L'Oeuvre ne périt pas, que mutile un gredin.
+    Demande ŕ Phidias et demande ŕ Rodin
+    Si, devant ses morceaux, on ne dit plus: "C'est Elle!"
+
+    La Forteresse meurt quand on la démantčle.
+    Mais le Temple, brisé, vit plus noble; et soudain
+    Les yeux, se souvenant du toit avec dédain,
+    Préfčrent voir le ciel dans la pierre en dentelle.
+
+    Rendons grace--attendu qu'il nous manquait encor
+    D'avoir ce qu'ont les Grecs sur la colline d'or;
+    Le Symbole du Beau consacré par l'insulte!--
+
+    Rendons grace aux pointeurs du stupide canon,
+    Puisque de leur adresse allemande il résulte
+    Une Honte pour eux, pour nous un Parthénon!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE CATHEDRAL.
+
+A Free Translation of Rostand's Sonnet.
+
+By FRANCES C. FAY.
+
+    "Deathless" is graven deeper on thy brow;
+    Ghouls have no power to end thy endless sway.
+    The Greek of old, the Frenchman of today,
+    Before thy riven shrine are bending now.
+
+    A wounded fortress straightway lieth prone,
+    Not so the Temple dies; its roof may fall,
+    The sky its covering vault, an azure pall,
+    Doth droop to crown its wealth of lacework stone.
+
+    Praise to you, Vandal guns of dull intent!
+    We lacked till now our Beauty's monument
+    Twice hallowed o'er by insult's brutal hand,
+
+    As Pallas owns on Athens' golden hill,
+    We have it now, thanks to your far-flung brand!
+    Your shame--our gain, misguided German skill!
+
+
+
+
+Probable Causes and Outcome of the War
+
+By Charles W. Eliot.
+
+     President Emeritus of Harvard University; Officer Legion
+     d'Honneur (France); Imperial Order of the Rising Sun, first
+     class (Japan); Royal Prussian Order of the Crown, first class;
+     Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy; Member of the General
+     Education Board, and an original investigator for the cause of
+     international peace.
+
+     _Following Is Reproduced a Series of Five Letters to_ THE NEW
+     YORK TIMES _from Dr. Eliot, Together with the Comments Thereon
+     by Eminent Critics._
+
+
+DR. ELIOT'S FIRST LETTER.
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+The American people without distinction of party are highly content with
+the action of their National Administration on all the grave problems
+presented to the Government by the sudden outbreak of long-prepared war
+in Europe--a war which already involves five great States and two small
+ones. They heartily approve of the action of the Administration on
+mediation, neutrality, aid to Americans in Europe, discouragement of
+speculation in foods, and, with the exception of extreme protectionists,
+admission to American registery of foreign-built ships; although the
+legislation on the last subject, which has already passed Congress, is
+manifestly inadequate.
+
+Our people cannot see that the war will necessarily be short, and they
+cannot imagine how it can last long. They realize that history gives no
+example of such a general interruption of trade and all other
+international intercourse as has already taken place, or of such a
+stoppage of the production and distribution of the necessaries of life
+as this war threatens. They shudder at the floods of human woe which are
+about to overwhelm Europe.
+
+Hence, thinking Americans cannot help reflecting on the causes of this
+monstrous outbreak of primitive savagery--part of them come down from
+the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and part developed in the
+nineteenth--and wondering what good for mankind, if any, can possibly
+come out of the present cataclysm.
+
+The whole people of the United States, without regard to racial origin,
+are of one mind in hoping that mankind may gain out of this prodigious
+physical combat, which uses for purposes of destruction and death all
+the new forces of nineteenth-century applied science, some new liberties
+and new securities in the pursuit of happiness; but at this moment they
+can cherish only a remote hope of such an issue. The military force
+which Austria-Hungary and Germany are now using on a prodigious scale,
+and with long-studied skill, can only be met by similar military force,
+and this resisting force is summoned more slowly than that of
+Austria-Hungary and Germany, although the ultimate battalions will be
+heavier. In this portentous physical contest the American people have no
+part; their geographical position, their historical development, and
+their political ideals combine to make them for the present mere
+spectators, although their interests--commercial, industrial, and
+political--are deeply involved. For the moment, the best thing our
+Government can do is to utilize all existing neutrality rights, and, if
+possible, to strengthen or develop those rights, for out of this war
+ought to come more neutral States in Europe and greater security for
+neutralized territory.
+
+
+The Need for Discussion.
+
+The chances of getting some gains for mankind out of this gigantic
+struggle will be somewhat increased if the American people, and all
+other neutral peoples, arrive through public discussion at some clear
+understanding of the causes and the possible and desirable issues of the
+war, and the sooner this public discussion begins, and the more
+thoroughly it is pursued, the sounder will probably be the tendencies of
+public sentiment outside of the contending nations and the conclusions
+which the peace negotiations will ultimately reach.
+
+When one begins, however, to reflect on the probable causes of the
+sudden lapse of the most civilized parts of Europe into worse than
+primitive savagery, he comes at once on two old and widespread evils in
+Europe from which America has been exempt for at least 150 years. The
+first is secret diplomacy with power to make issues and determine
+events, and the second is autocratic national Executives who can swing
+the whole physical force of the nation to this side or that without
+consulting the people or their representatives.
+
+The actual catastrophe proves that secret negotiations like those
+habitually conducted on behalf of the "concert of Europe," and alliances
+between selected nations, the terms of which are secret, or at any rate
+not publicly stated, cannot avert in the long run outrageous war, but
+can only produce postponements of war, or short truces. Free
+institutions, like those of the United States, take the public into
+confidence, because all important movements of the Government must rest
+on popular desires, needs, and volitions. Autocratic institutions have
+no such necessity for publicity. This Government secrecy as to motives,
+plans, and purposes must often be maintained by disregarding truth, fair
+dealing, and honorable obligations, in order that, when the appeal to
+force comes, one Government may secure the advantage of taking the other
+by surprise. Duplicity during peace and the breaking of treaties during
+war come to be regarded as obvious military necessities.
+
+The second great evil under which certain large nations of
+Europe--notably Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary--have long suffered
+and still suffer is the permanent national Executive, independent of
+popular control through representative bodies, holding strong views
+about rights of birth and religious sanctions of its authority, and
+really controlling the national forces through some small council and a
+strong bureaucracy. So long as Executives of this sort endure, so long
+will civilization be liable to such explosions as have taken place this
+August, though not always on so vast a scale.
+
+Americans now see these things more clearly than European lovers of
+liberty, because Americans are detached from the actual conflicts by the
+Atlantic, and because Americans have had no real contact with the feudal
+or the imperial system for nearly 300 years. Pilgrim and Puritan,
+Covenanter and Quaker, Lutheran and Catholic alike left the feudal
+system and autocratic government behind them when they crossed the
+Atlantic. Americans, therefore, cannot help hoping that two results of
+the present war will be: (1) The abolition of secret diplomacy and
+secret understandings, and the substitution therefor of treaties
+publicly discussed and sanctioned, and (2) the creation of national
+Executives--Emperors, Sultans, Kings, or Presidents--which cannot use
+the national forces in fight until a thoroughly informed national
+assembly, acting with deliberation, has agreed to that use.
+
+
+Opposite Tendencies.
+
+The American student of history since the middle of the seventeenth
+century sees clearly two strong though apparently opposite tendencies in
+Europe: First, the tendency to the creation and maintenance of small
+States such as those which the Peace of Westphalia (1648) recognized and
+for two centuries secured in a fairly independent existence, and,
+secondly, a tendency from the middle of the nineteenth century toward
+larger national units, created by combining several kindred States
+under one executive. This second tendency was illustrated strongly in
+the case of both Germany and Italy, although the Prussian domination in
+Germany has no parallel in Italy. Somewhat earlier in the nineteenth
+century the doctrine of the neutralization of the territories of small
+States was established as firmly as solemn treaties could do it. The
+larger national units had a more or less federative quality, the
+components yielding some of their functions to a central power, but
+retaining numerous independent functions. This tendency to limited
+unification is one which Americans easily understand and appreciate. We
+believe in the federative principle, and must therefore hope that out of
+the present European horror will come a new development of that
+principle, and new security for small States which are capable of
+guaranteeing to their citizens "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
+happiness"--a security which no citizen of any European country seems
+today to possess.
+
+Some of the underlying causes of the horrible catastrophe the American
+people are now watching from afar are commercial and economic. Imperial
+Germany's desire for colonies in other continents--such as Great Britain
+and France secured earlier as a result of keen commercial ambitions--is
+intense. Prussia's seizure of Schleswig in 1864-5 had the commercial
+motive; and it is with visions of ports on the North Sea that Germany
+justifies her present occupation of Belgium. The Russians have for
+generations desired to extend their national territory southward to the
+Aegean and the Bosphorus, and eastward to good harbors on the Pacific.
+Later they pushed into Mongolia and Manchuria, but were resisted
+successfully by Japan. Austria-Hungary has long been seeking ports on
+the Adriatic, and lately seized without warrant Herzegovina and Bosnia
+to promote her approach toward the Aegean, and is now trying to seize
+Servia with the same ends in view. With similar motives Italy lately
+descended on Tripoli, without any excuse except this intense desire for
+colonies--profitable or unprofitable. On the other hand, the American
+people, looking to the future as well as to the past, object to
+acquisitions of new territory by force of arms; and since the twentieth
+century opened they have twice illustrated in their own practice--first
+in Cuba, and then in Mexico--this democratic objection. They believe
+that extensions of national territory should be brought about only with
+the indubitable consent of the majority of the people most nearly
+concerned. They also believe that commerce should always be a means of
+promoting good-will, and not ill-will, among men, and that all
+legitimate and useful extensions of the commerce of a manufacturing and
+commercial nation may be procured through the policy of the "open
+door"--which means nothing more than that all nations should be allowed
+to compete on equal terms for the trade of any foreign people, whether
+backward or advanced in civilization. No American Administration has
+accepted a "concession" of land in China. They also believe that
+peaceable extensions of territory and trade will afford adequate relief
+from the economic pressure on a population too large for the territory
+it occupies, and that there is no need of forcible seizure of territory
+to secure relief. It is inevitable, therefore, that the American people
+should hope that one outcome of the present war should be--no
+enlargement of a national territory by force or without the free consent
+of the population to be annexed, and no colonization except by peaceable
+commercial and industrial methods.
+
+
+Aggressive Force a Failure.
+
+One of the most interesting and far-reaching effects of the present
+outbreak of savagery is likely to be the conviction it carries to the
+minds of thinking people that the whole process of competitive
+armaments, the enlistment of the entire male population in national
+armies, and the incessant planning of campaigns against neighbors, is
+not a trustworthy method for preserving peace. It now appears that the
+military preparations of the last fifty years in Europe have resulted
+in the most terrific war of all time, and that a fierce ultimate
+outbreak is the only probable result of the system. For the future of
+civilization this is a lesson of high value. It teaches that if modern
+civilization is to be preserved, national Executives--whether imperial
+or republican--must not have at their disposal immense armaments and
+drilled armies held ready in the leash; that armaments must be limited,
+an international Supreme Court established, national armies changed to
+the Swiss form, and an international force adequate to deal with any
+nation that may suddenly become lawless agreed upon by treaty and held
+always in readiness. The occasional use of force will continue to be
+necessary even in the civilized world; but it must be made not an
+aggressive but a protective force and used as such--just as protective
+force has to be used sometimes in families, schools, cities, and
+Commonwealths.
+
+At present Americans do not close their eyes to the plain fact that the
+brute force which Germany and Austria-Hungary are now using can only be
+overcome by brute force of the same sort in larger measure. It is only
+when negotiations for peace begin that the great lesson of the futility
+of huge preparations for fighting to preserve peace can be given effect.
+Is it too much to expect that the whole civilized world will take to
+heart the lessons of this terrible catastrophe and co-operate to prevent
+the recurrence of such losses and woes? Should Germany and
+Austria-Hungary succeed in their present undertakings, the whole
+civilized world would be obliged to bear continuously, and to an
+ever-increasing amount, the burdens of great armaments, and would live
+in constant fear of sudden invasion, now here, now there--a terrible
+fear, against which neither treaties nor professions of peaceable
+intentions would offer the least security.
+
+It must be admitted, however, that the whole military organization,
+which has long been compulsory on the nations of Continental Europe, is
+inconsistent in the highest degree with American ideals of individual
+liberty and social progress. Democracies can fight with ardor, and
+sometimes with success, when the whole people is moved by a common
+sentiment or passion; but the structure and discipline of a modern army
+like that of Germany, Austria-Hungary, or Russia, has a despotic or
+autocratic quality which is inconsistent with the fundamental principles
+of democratic society. To make war in countries like France, Great
+Britain, and the United States requires the widespread, simultaneous
+stirring of the passions of the people on behalf of their own ideals.
+This stirring requires publicity before and after the declaration of war
+and public discussion; and the delays which discussion causes are
+securities for peace. Out of the present struggle should come a check on
+militarism--a strong revulsion against the use of force as means of
+settling international disputes.
+
+
+America Cannot Be Indifferent.
+
+It must also be admitted that it is impossible for the American people
+to sympathize with the tone of the imperial and royal addresses which,
+in summoning the people to war, use such phrases as "My monarchy," "My
+loyal people," "My loyal subjects"; for there is implied in such phrases
+a dynastic or personal ownership of peoples which shocks the average
+American. Americans inevitably think that the right way for a ruler to
+begin an exhortation to the people he rules is President Wilson's way:
+"My fellow-countrymen."
+
+It follows from the very existence of these American instincts and hopes
+that, although the people of the United States mean to maintain
+faithfully a legal neutrality, they are not, and can not be, neutral or
+indifferent as to the ultimate outcome of this titanic struggle. It
+already seems to them that England, France, and Russia are fighting for
+freedom and civilization. It does not follow that thinking Americans
+will forget the immense services which Germany has rendered to
+civilization during the last hundred years, or desire that her power to
+serve letters, science, art, and education should be in the least
+abridged in the outcome of this war upon which she has entered so
+rashly and selfishly and in so barbarous a spirit. Most educated
+Americans hope and believe that by defeating the German barbarousness
+the Allies will only promote the noble German civilization.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN W. BURGESS
+
+_(Photo by Alman & Co.)_
+
+_See Page 507_]
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM M. SLOANE
+
+_(Photo by Pach.)_
+
+_See Page 515_]
+
+The presence of Russia in the combination against Germany and
+Austria-Hungary seems to the average American an abnormal phenomenon;
+because Russia is itself a military monarchy with marked territorial
+ambitions; and its civilization is at a more elementary stage than that
+of France or England; but he resists present apprehension on this score
+by recalling that Russia submitted to the "Concert of Europe" when her
+victorious armies were within seventeen miles of Constantinople, that
+she emancipated her serfs, proposed The Hague Conferences, initiated the
+"Duma," and has lately offered--perhaps as war measures only--autonomy
+to her Poles and equal rights of citizenship to her Jews. He also
+cannot help believing that a nation which has produced such a literature
+as Russia has produced during the last fifty years must hold within its
+multitudinous population a large minority which is seething with high
+aspirations and a fine idealism.
+
+For the clarification of the public mind on the issue involved, it is
+important that the limits of American neutrality should be discussed and
+understood. The action of the Government must be neutral in the best
+sense; but American sympathies and hopes cannot possibly be neutral, for
+the whole history and present state of American liberty forbids. For the
+present, thinking Americans can only try to appreciate the scope and
+real issues of this formidable convulsion, and so be ready to seize
+every opportunity that may present itself to further the cause of human
+freedom, and of peace at last.
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Asticou, Me., Sept. 1, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Appreciation from Lord Bryce
+
+     Late Ambassador at Washington from Great Britain; Chief
+     Secretary for Ireland, 1905-6; author of "The American
+     Commonwealth," and of studies in history and biography.
+
+
+It has been a great pleasure to see from your published letter, which
+has just reached us, that you so clearly understand the motive and
+feelings with which Great Britain has entered on the present war.
+Neither commercial rivalry nor any fancied jealousy of Germany's
+greatness has led us into it, and to the German people our people bear
+no ill-will whatever. Along with many others I have worked steadily
+during long years for the maintenance of friendship with Germany,
+admiring the splendid gifts of the German race, and recognizing their
+enormous services to science, philosophy, and literature. We had hoped,
+as some thoughtful statesmen in Germany had also hoped, that by a
+cordial feeling between Germany and Britain the peace of Europe might be
+secured and something done to bring about permanently better relations
+between Germany and her two great neighbors with whom we found ourselves
+on friendly terms; and we had confidently looked to the United States to
+join with us in this task. But the action of the German Government in
+violating the neutrality of Belgium when France had assured us that she
+would respect it, the invasion of a small State whose neutrality and
+independence she and England had joined in guaranteeing, evoked in this
+country an almost unanimous sentiment that the faith of treaties and the
+safety of small States must be protected. There has been no war for more
+than a century--perhaps two centuries--into which the nation has entered
+with so general a belief that its action is justified. We rejoice to be
+assured that this is the general feeling of the people of the United
+States, whose opinion we naturally value more than we do that of any
+other people.
+
+Most persons in this country, including all those who work for peace,
+agree with you in deploring the vast armaments which European States
+have been piling up, and will hope with you that after this war they may
+be reduced--and safely reduced--to slender dimensions. Their existence
+is a constant menace to peace. They foster that spirit of militarism
+which has brought these horrors on the world; for they create in the
+great countries of the Continent a large and powerful military and naval
+caste which lives for war, talks and writes incessantly of war, and
+glorifies war as a thing good in itself.
+
+It is (as you say) to the peoples that we must henceforth look to
+safeguard international concord. They bear the miseries of war, they
+ought to have the power to arrest the action of those who are hurrying
+them into it.
+
+To get rid of secret diplomacy is more difficult in Europe than in
+America, whose relations with foreign States are fewer and simpler, but
+what you say upon that subject also will find a sympathetic echo here
+among the friends of freedom and of peace. I am always sincerely yours,
+
+JAMES BRYCE.
+
+Forest Row, Sussex, Sept. 17, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+A Reply by Dr. Francke
+
+     Professor of the History of German Culture at Harvard
+     University and Curator of the Germanic Museum; author of works
+     on German literature.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+In his letter of Sept. 1 President Eliot expresses the opinion that in
+the present war "England, France, and Russia are fighting for freedom
+and civilization." And he adds:
+
+     It does not follow that thinking Americans will forget the
+     immense services which Germany has rendered to civilization
+     during the last hundred years, or desire that her power to
+     serve letters, science, art, and education should be in the
+     least abridged in the outcome of this war, upon which she has
+     entered so rashly and selfishly and in so barbarous a spirit.
+     Most educated Americans hope and believe that by defeating the
+     German barbarousness the Allies will only promote the noble
+     German civilization.
+
+In other words, German military and political power is to be crushed in
+order to set free the German genius for science, literature, and art. It
+is interesting to contrast with such views as these the following words
+of Goethe, uttered in 1813:
+
+     I have often felt a bitter grief at the thought of the German
+     people, which is so noble individually and so wretched as a
+     whole. A comparison of the German people with other nations
+     gives us painful feelings, which I try to overcome by all
+     possible means; and in science and art I have found the wings
+     which lift me above them. But the comfort which they afford
+     is, after all, only a miserable comfort, and does not make up
+     for the proud consciousness of belonging to a nation strong,
+     respected, and feared. However, I am comforted by the thought
+     of Germany's future. Yes, the German people has a future. The
+     destiny of the Germans is not yet fulfilled. The time, the
+     right time, no human eye can foresee, nor can human power
+     hasten it on. To us individuals, meanwhile, is it given, to
+     every one according to his talents, his inclinations, and his
+     position, to increase, to strengthen, and to spread national
+     culture. In order that in this respect, at least, Germany may
+     be ahead of other nations and that the national spirit,
+     instead of being stifled and discouraged, may be kept alive
+     and hopeful and ready to rise in all its might when the day of
+     glory dawns.
+
+If I am not mistaken, these words of Germany's greatest poet express
+accurately what the German people during the last hundred years has been
+striving for--national culture and national pre-eminence in every field
+of human activity. To advocate the reduction of Germany to a land of
+isolated scientists, poets, artists, and educators is tantamount to a
+call for the destruction of the German Nation.
+
+KUNO FRANCKE.
+
+Harvard University, Sept. 5, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+DR. ELIOT'S SECOND LETTER
+
+The Stout and Warlike Breed
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+There is nothing new in the obsession of the principal European nations
+that, in order to be great and successful in the world as it is, they
+must possess military power available for instant aggression on weak
+nations, as well as for effective defense against strong ones.
+
+When Sir Francis Bacon wrote his essay on "The True Greatness of
+Kingdoms and Estates" he remarked that forts, arsenals, goodly races of
+horses, armaments, and the like would all be useless "except the breed
+and disposition of the people be stout and warlike." He denied that
+money is the sinews of war, giving preference to the sinews of men's
+arms, and quoted Solon's remark to Croesus, "Sir, if any other come that
+hath better iron than you, he will be master of all this gold"--a truly
+Bismarckian proposition. Indeed, Sir Francis Bacon says explicitly "that
+the principal point of greatness in any State is to have a race of
+military men."
+
+Goethe, reflecting on the wretchedness of the German people as a whole,
+found no comfort in the German genius for science, literature, and art,
+or only a miserable comfort which "does not make up for the proud
+consciousness of belonging to a nation strong, respected, and feared."
+Because Germany in his time was weak in the military sense, he could
+write: "I have often felt a bitter grief at the thought of the German
+people, which is so noble individually, and so wretched as a whole"; and
+he longed for the day when the national spirit, kept alive and hopeful,
+should be "ready to rise in all its might when the day of glory dawns."
+
+"The day of glory" was to be the day of military power. Carlyle said of
+Germany and France in November, 1870, "that noble, patient, deep, pious,
+and solid Germany should be at length welded into a nation, and become
+Queen of the Continent, instead of vaporing, vainglorious,
+gesticulating, quarrelsome, restless, and oversensitive France, seems to
+me that hopefulest public fact that has occurred in my time." How did
+Germany attain to this position of "Queen of the Continent"? By creating
+and maintaining, with utmost intelligence and skill, the strongest army
+in Europe--an army which within six years had been used successfully
+against Denmark, Austria, and France. Germany became "Queen" by virtue
+of her military power.
+
+In the same paper Carlyle said of the French Revolution, of which he was
+himself the great portrayer: "I often call that a celestial infernal
+phenomenon, the most memorable in our world for a thousand years; on the
+whole, a transcendent revolt against the devil and his works, (since
+shams are all and sundry of the devil, and poisonous and unendurable to
+man.)" Now, the French Revolution was an extraordinary outbreak of
+passionate feeling and physical violence on the part of the French
+Nation, both at home and abroad; and it led on to the Napoleonic wars,
+which were tremendous physical struggles for mastery in Europe.
+
+In a recent public statement two leading philosophical writers of modern
+Germany, Profs. Eucken and Haeckel, denounce the "brutal national
+egoism" of England, which they say "recognizes no rights on the part of
+others, and, unconcerned about morality or unmorality, pursues only its
+own advantage"; and they attribute to England the purpose to hinder at
+any cost the further growth of German greatness. But what are the
+elements of that German greatness which England is determined to arrest
+by joining France and Russia in war against Germany and Austria-Hungary?
+The three elements of recent German greatness are the extension of her
+territory; contiguous territories in Europe and in other continents
+colonial possessions; the enlargement of German commerce and wealth, and
+to these ends the firm establishment of her military supremacy in
+Europe. These are the ideas on the true greatness of nations which have
+prevailed in the ruling oligarchy of Germany for at least sixty years,
+and now seem to have been accepted, or acquiesced in, by the whole
+German people. In this view, the foundation of national greatness is
+fighting power.
+
+This conception of national greatness has prevailed at many different
+epochs--Macedonian, Roman, Saracen, Spanish, English, and French--and,
+indeed, has appeared from time to time in almost all the nations and
+tribes of the earth; but the civilized world is now looking for better
+foundations of national greatness than force and fighting.
+
+The partial successes of democracy in Europe have much increased the
+evils of war. Sir Francis Bacon looked for a fighting class; under the
+feudal system when a Baron went to war he took with him his vassals, or
+that portion of them that could be spared from the fields at home.
+Universal conscription is a modern invention, the horrors of which, as
+now exhibited in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and France, much exceed those
+of earlier martial methods. There has never been such an interruption of
+agricultural and industrial production, or such a rending of family ties
+in consequence of war as is now taking place in the greater part of
+Europe. Moreover, mankind has never before had the use of such
+destructive implements as the machine gun, the torpedo, and the dynamite
+bomb. The progress of science has much increased the potential
+destructiveness of warfare.
+
+Thinking people in all the civilized countries are asking themselves
+what the fundamental trouble with civilization is, and where to look for
+means of escape from the present intolerable conditions. Christianity in
+nineteen centuries has afforded no relief. The so-called mitigations of
+war are comparatively trivial. The recent Balkan wars were as ferocious
+as those of Alexander. The German aviators drop aimless bombs at night
+into cities occupied chiefly by non-combatants. The North Sea is strewn
+with floating mines which may destroy fishing, freight, or passenger
+vessels of any nation, neutral or belligerent, which have business on
+that sea. The ruthless destruction of the Louvain Library by German
+soldiers reminds people who have read history that the destroyers of the
+Alexandria Library have ever since been called fanatics and barbarians.
+The German Army tries to compel unfortified Belgian cities and towns to
+pay huge ransoms to save themselves from destruction--a method which the
+Barbary States, indeed, were accustomed to use against their Christian
+neighbors, but which has long been held to be a method appropriate only
+for brigands and pirates--Greek, Sicilian, Syrian, or Chinese.
+
+
+What Is Wrong with Civilization?
+
+How can it be that the Government of a civilized State commits, or
+permits in its agents, such barbarities? The fundamental reason seems to
+be that most of the European nations still believe that national
+greatness depends on the possession and brutal use of force, and is to
+be maintained and magnified only by military and naval power.
+
+In North America there are two large communities--heretofore inspired
+chiefly by ideals of English origin--which have never maintained
+conscripted armies, and have never fortified against each other their
+long frontier--Canada and the United States. Both may fairly be called
+great peoples even now; and both give ample promise for the future.
+Neither of these peoples lacks the "stout and warlike" quality of which
+Sir Francis Bacon spoke; both have often exhibited it. The United States
+suffered for four years from a civil war, characterized by determined
+fighting, in indecisive battles, in which the losses, in proportion to
+the number of men engaged, were often much heavier than any thus far
+reported from the present battlefields in Belgium and France. There
+being then no lack of martial spirit in these two peoples, it is an
+instructive phenomenon that power to conquer is not their ideal of
+national greatness. Much the same thing may be said of some other
+self-governing constituents of the British Empire, such as Australia,
+New Zealand, and South Africa. They, too, have a better ideal of
+national greatness than that of military supremacy.
+
+What are the real ambitions and hopes of the people of the United States
+and the people of Canada in regard to their own future? Their
+expectations of greatness certainly are not based on any conception of
+invincible military force, or desire for the physical means of enforcing
+their own will on their neighbors. They both believe in the free
+commonwealth, administered justly, and with the purpose of securing for
+each individual all the freedom he can exercise without injury to his
+neighbors and the collective well-being. They desire for themselves,
+each for itself, a strong Government, equipped to perform its functions
+with dignity, certainty, and efficiency; but they wish to have that
+Government under the control of the deliberate public opinion of free
+citizens, and not under the control of any Prćtorian Guard, Oligarchic
+Council, or General Staff, and they insist that the civil authority
+should always control such military and police forces as it may be
+necessary to maintain for protective purposes.
+
+
+True National Greatness.
+
+They believe that the chief object of government should be the promotion
+of the public welfare by legislative and administrative means; that the
+processes of government should be open and visible, and their results be
+incessantly published for approval or disapproval. They believe that a
+nation becomes great through industrial productiveness and the resulting
+internal and external commerce, through the gradual increase of comfort
+and general well-being in the population, and through the advancement of
+science, letters, and art. They believe that education, free intercourse
+with other nations, and religious enthusiasm and toleration are means of
+national greatness, and that in the development and use of these means
+force has no place. They attribute national greatness in others, as well
+as in themselves, not to the possession of military force, but to the
+advance of the people in freedom, industry, righteousness, and
+good-will.
+
+They believe that the ideals of fighting power and domination should be
+replaced by the ideals of peaceful competition in production and trade,
+of generous rivalry in education, scientific discovery, and the fine
+arts, of co-operation for mutual benefit among nations different in
+size, natural abilities, and material resources, and of federation among
+nations associated geographically or historically, or united in the
+pursuit of some common ends and in the cherishing of like hopes and
+aspirations. They think that the peace of the world can be best promoted
+by solemn public compacts between peoples--not Princes or
+Cabinets--compacts made to be kept, strengthened by mutual services and
+good offices, and watched over by a permanent International Judicial
+Tribunal authorized to call on the affiliated nations for whatever force
+may be necessary to induce obedience to its decrees.
+
+Will not the civilized world learn from this horrible European war--the
+legitimate result of the policies of Bismarck and his associates and
+disciples--that these democratic ideals constitute the rational
+substitute for the imperialistic ideal of fighting force as the
+foundation of national greatness? The new ideals will still need the
+protection and support, both within and without each nation, of a
+restrained public force, acting under law, national and international,
+just as a sane mind needs as its agent a sound and strong body. Health
+and vigor will continue to be the safeguards of morality, justice, and
+mercy.
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Asticou, Me., Sept. 14, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+DR. ELIOT'S THIRD LETTER.
+
+Why Is America Anti-German?
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+The numerous pamphlets which German writers are now distributing in the
+United States, and the many letters about the European war which
+Americans are now receiving from German and German-American friends, are
+convincing thoughtful people in this country that American public
+opinion has some weight with the German Government and people, or, at
+least, some interest for them; but that the reasons which determine
+American sympathy with the Allies, rather than with Germany and
+Austria-Hungary, are not understood in Germany, and are not always
+appreciated by persons of German birth who have lived long in the United
+States.
+
+It would be a serious mistake to suppose that Americans feel any
+hostility or jealousy toward Germany, or fail to recognize the immense
+obligations under which she has placed all the rest of the world,
+although they now feel that the German Nation has been going wrong in
+theoretical and practical politics for more than a hundred years, and is
+today reaping the consequences of her own wrong-thinking and
+wrong-doing.
+
+There are many important matters concerning which American sympathy is
+strongly with Germany: (1) The unification of Germany, which Bismarck
+and his co-workers accomplished, naturally commended itself to
+Americans, whose own country is a firm federation of many more or less
+different States, containing more or less different peoples; while most
+Americans did not approve Bismarck's methods and means, they cordially
+approved his accomplishment of German unification; (2) Americans have
+felt unqualified admiration for the commercial and financial growth of
+Germany during the past forty years, believing it to be primarily the
+fruit of well-directed industry and enterprise; (3) all educated
+Americans feel strong gratitude to the German Nation for its
+extraordinary achievements in letters, science, and education within the
+last hundred years. Jealousy of Germany in these matters is absolutely
+foreign to American thought, and that any external power or influence
+should undertake to restrict or impair German progress in these respects
+would seem to all Americans intolerable, and, indeed incredible; (4) all
+Americans who have had any experience in Governmental or educational
+administration recognize the fact, that German administration--both in
+peace and in war--is the most efficient in the world, and for that
+efficiency they feel nothing but respect and admiration, unless the
+efficiency requires an inexpedient suppression or restriction of
+individual liberty; (5) Americans sympathize with a unanimous popular
+sentiment in favor of a war which the people believe to be essential to
+the greatness, and even the safety, of their country--a sentiment which
+prompts to family and property sacrifices very distressing at the
+moment, and irremediable in the future; and they believe that the German
+people today are inspired by just such an overwhelming sentiment.
+
+How is it, then, that, with all these strong American feelings tending
+to make them sympathize with the German people in good times or bad, in
+peace or in war, the whole weight of American opinion is on the side of
+the Allies in the present war? The reasons are to be found, of course,
+in the political and social history of the American people, and in its
+Governmental philosophy and practice today. These reasons have come out
+of the past, and are intrenched in all the present ideals and practices
+of the American Commonwealth. They inevitably lead Americans to object
+strongly and irrevocably to certain German national practices of great
+moment, practices which are outgrowths of Prussian theories, and
+experiences that have come to prevail in Germany during the past hundred
+years. In the hope that American public opinion about the European war
+may be a little better understood abroad it seems worth while to
+enumerate those German practices which do not conform to American
+standards in the conduct of public affairs:
+
+(a) Americans object to the committal of a nation to grave measures of
+foreign policy by a permanent Executive--Czar, Kaiser, or King--advised
+in secret by professional diplomatists who consider themselves the
+personal representatives of their respective sovereigns. The American
+people have no permanent Executive, and the profession of diplomacy
+hardly exists among them. In the conduct of their national affairs they
+utterly distrust secrecy, and are accustomed to demand and secure the
+utmost publicity.
+
+(b) They object to placing in any ruler's hands the power to order
+mobilization or declare war in advance of deliberate consultation with a
+representative assembly, and of co-operative action thereby. The fact
+that German mobilization was ordered three days in advance of the
+meeting of the Reichstag confounds all American ideas and practices
+about the rights of the people and the proper limits of Executive
+authority.
+
+(c) The secrecy of European diplomatic intercourse and of international
+understandings and terms of alliance in Europe is in the view of
+ordinary Americans not only inexpedient, but dangerous and
+unjustifiable. Under the Constitution of the United States no treaty
+negotiated by the President and his Cabinet is valid until it has been
+publicly discussed and ratified by the Senate. During this discussion
+the people can make their voice heard through the press, the telegraph,
+and the telephone.
+
+(d) The reliance on military force as the foundation of true national
+greatness seems to thinking Americans erroneous, and in the long run
+degrading to a Christian nation. They conceive that the United States
+may fairly be called a great nation; but that its greatness is due to
+intellectual and moral forces acting through adequate material forces
+and expressed in education, public health and order, agriculture,
+manufacturing, and commerce, and the resulting general well-being of the
+people. It has never in all its history organized what could be called a
+standing or a conscripted army; and, until twenty years ago, its navy
+was very small, considering the length of its sea coasts. There is
+nothing in the history of the American people to make them believe that
+the true greatness of nations depends on military power.
+
+
+Object to Extension by Force.
+
+(e) They object to the extension of national territory by force,
+contrary to the wishes of the population concerned. This objection is
+the inevitable result of democratic institutions; and the American
+people have been faithful to this democratic opinion under circumstances
+of considerable difficulty--as, for example, in withdrawing from Cuba,
+the rich island which had been occupied by American troops during the
+short war with Spain, (1898,) and in the refusing to intervene by force
+in Mexico for the protection of American investors, when that contiguous
+country was distracted by factional fighting. This objection applies to
+long-past acts of the German Government an well as to its proceedings in
+the present war--as, for example, to the taking of Schleswig-Holstein
+and Alsace-Lorraine, as well as to the projected occupation of Belgium.
+
+(f) Americans object strenuously to the violation of treaties between
+nations on the allegation of military necessity or for any other reason
+whatever. They believe that the progress of civilization will depend in
+future on the general acceptance of the sanctity of contracts or solemn
+agreements between nations and on the development by common consent of
+international law. The neutralization treaties, the arbitration
+treaties, The Hague Conferences, and some of the serious attempts at
+mediation, although none of them go far enough, and many of them have
+been rudely violated on occasion, illustrate a strong tendency in the
+civilized parts of the world to prevent international wars by means of
+agreements deliberately made in time of peace. The United States has
+proposed and made more of these agreements than any other power, has
+adhered to them, and profited by them. Under one such agreement, made
+nearly a hundred years ago, Canada and the United States have avoided
+forts and armaments against each other, although they have had serious
+differences of opinion and clashes of interests, and the frontier is
+3,000 miles long and for the most part without natural barriers.
+Cherishing the hope that the peace of Europe and the rights of its
+peoples may be secured through solemn compacts, (which should include
+the establishment of a permanent international judicial tribunal,
+supported by an international force,) Americans see, in the treatment by
+the German Government of the Belgian neutralization treaty as nothing
+but a piece of paper which might be torn up on the ground of military
+necessity, evidence of the adoption by Germany of a retrograde policy of
+the most alarming sort. That single act on the part of Germany--the
+violation of the neutral territory of Belgium--would have determined
+American opinion in favor of the Allies, if it had stood alone by
+itself--the reason being that American hopes for the peace and order of
+the world are based on the sanctity of treaties.
+
+(g) American public opinion, however, has been greatly shocked in other
+ways by the German conduct of the war. The American common people see no
+justification for the dropping of bombs, to which no specific aim can be
+given, into cities and towns chiefly inhabited by non-combatants, the
+burning or blowing up of large portions of unfortified towns and cities,
+the destruction of precious monuments and treasuries of art, the
+strewing of floating mines through the North Sea, the exacting of
+ransoms from cities and towns under threat of destroying them, and the
+holding of unarmed citizens as hostages for the peaceable behavior of a
+large population under threat of summary execution of the hostages in
+case of any disorder. All these seem to Americans unnecessary,
+inexpedient, and unjustifiable methods of warfare, sure to breed hatred
+and contempt toward the nation that uses them, and therefore to make it
+difficult for future generations to maintain peace and order in Europe.
+They cannot help imagining the losses civilization would suffer if the
+Russians should ever carry into Western Europe the kind of war which the
+Germans are now waging in Belgium and France. They have supposed that
+war was to be waged in this century only against public, armed forces
+and their supplies and shelters.
+
+These opinions and prepossessions on the part of the American people
+have obviously grown out of the ideals which the early English colonists
+carried with them to the American wilderness in the seventeenth century,
+out of the long fighting and public discussion which preceded the
+adoption of the Constitution of the United States in the eighteenth
+century, and out of the peculiar experiences of the free Commonwealths
+which make up the United States, as they have spread across the almost
+uninhabited continent during the past 125 years.
+
+The experience and the situation of modern Germany have been utterly
+different. Germany was divided for centuries into discordant parts, had
+ambitious and martial neighbors, and often felt the weight of their
+attacks. Out of war came accessions of territory for Prussia, and at
+last German unity. The reliance of intelligent and patriotic Germany on
+military force as the basis of national greatness is a natural result of
+its experiences. Americans, however, believe that this reliance is
+unsound both theoretically and practically. The wars in Europe since
+1870-71, the many threatenings of war, and the present catastrophe seem
+to Americans to demonstrate that no amount of military preparedness on
+the part of the nations of Europe can possibly keep the peace of the
+Continent, or indeed prevent frequent explosions of destructive warfare.
+They think, too, that preparation for war on the part of Germany better
+than any of her neighbors can make will not keep her at peace or protect
+her from invasion, even if this better preparation include advantages of
+detail which have been successfully kept secret. All the nations which
+surround Germany are capable of developing a strong fighting spirit; and
+all the countries of Europe, except England and Russia, possess the
+means of quickly assembling and getting into action great bodies of men.
+In other words, all the European States are capable of developing a
+passionate patriotism, and all possess the railroads, roads,
+conveyances, telegraphs, and telephones which make rapid mobilization
+possible. No perfection of military forces, and no amount of previous
+study of feasible campaigns against neighbors, can give peaceful
+security to Germany in the present condition of the great European
+States. In the actual development of weapons and munitions, and of the
+art of quick intrenching, the attacking force in battle on land is at a
+great disadvantage in comparison with the force on the defensive. That
+means indecisive battles and ultimately an indecisive war, unless each
+party is resolved to push the war to the utter exhaustion and
+humiliation of the other--a long process which involves incalculable
+losses and wastes and endless miseries. Americans have always before
+them the memory of their four years' civil war, which, although
+resolutely prosecuted on both sides, could not be brought to a close
+until the resources of the Southern States in men and material were
+exhausted. In that dreadful process the whole capital of the Southern
+States was wiped out.
+
+
+But One Possible Issue.
+
+Now that the sudden attack on Paris has failed, and adequate time has
+been secured to summon the slower-moving forces of Russia and England,
+and these two resolute and persistent peoples have decided to use all
+their spiritual and material forces in co-operation with France against
+Germany, thoughtful Americans can see but one possible issue of the
+struggle, whether it be long or short, namely, the defeat of Germany and
+Austria-Hungary in their present undertakings, and the abandonment by
+both peoples of the doctrine that their salvation depends on militarism
+and the maintenance of autocratic Executives intrusted with the power
+and the means to make sudden war. They believe that no human being
+should ever be trusted with such power. The alternative is, of course,
+genuine constitutional government, with the military power subject to
+the civil power.
+
+The American people grieve over the fruitless sacrifices of life,
+property, and the natural human joys which the German people are making
+to a wrong and impossible ideal of national power and welfare. The
+sacrifices which Germany is imposing on the Allies are fearfully heavy,
+but there is reason to hope that these will not be fruitless, for out of
+them may come great gains for liberty and peace in Europe.
+
+All experienced readers on this side of the Atlantic are well aware that
+nine-tenths of all the reports they get about the war come from English
+and French sources, and this knowledge makes them careful not to form
+judgments about details until the events and deeds tell their own story.
+They cannot even tell to which side victory inclines in a long,
+far-extended battle until recognizable changes in the positions of the
+combatants show what the successes or failures must have been. The
+English and French win some advantage so far as the formation of public
+opinion in this country is concerned, because those two Governments send
+hither official reports on current events more frequently than the
+German Government does, and with more corroborative details. The amount
+of secrecy with which the campaign is surrounded on both sides is,
+however, a new and unwelcome experience for both the English and the
+American public.
+
+
+German Ignorance of Events.
+
+The pamphlets by German publicists and men of letters which are now
+coming to this country, and the various similar publications written
+here, seem to indicate that the German public is still kept by its
+Government in ignorance about the real antecedents of the war and about
+many of the incidents and aspects of the portentous combat. These
+documents seem to Americans to contain a large amount of misinformation
+about the attack of Austria-Hungary on Servia, the diplomatic
+negotiations and the correspondence between the sovereigns which
+immediately preceded the war, and the state of mind of the Belgian and
+English peoples. American believers in the good sense and good feeling
+of the common people naturally imagine, when an awful calamity befalls a
+nation, that the people cannot have been warned of its approach, else
+they would have avoided it. In this case they fear that the Emperor, the
+Chancellery, and the General Staff have themselves been misinformed in
+important respects, have made serious miscalculations which they are
+proposing to conceal as long as possible, and are not taking the common
+people into their confidence. American sympathies are with the German
+people in their sufferings and losses, but not with their rulers, or
+with the military class, or with the professors and men of letters who
+have been teaching for more than a generation that might makes right.
+That short phrase contains the fundamental fallacy which for fifty years
+has been poisoning the springs of German thought and German policy on
+public affairs.
+
+Dread of the Muscovite does not seem to Americans a reasonable
+explanation of the present actions of Germany and Austria-Hungary,
+except so far as irrational panic can be said to be an explanation.
+Against possible, though not probable, Russian aggression, a firm
+defensive alliance of all Western Europe would be a much better
+protection than the single might of Germany. It were easy to imagine
+also two new "buffer" States--a reconstructed Poland and a Balkan
+Confederation. As to French "revenge," it is the inevitable and
+praiseworthy consequence of Germany's treatment of France in 1870-71.
+The great success of Germany in expanding her commerce during the last
+thirty years makes it hard for Americans to understand the hot
+indignation of the Germans against the British because of whatever
+ineffective opposition Great Britain may have offered to that expansion.
+No amount of commercial selfishness on the part of insular England can
+justify Germany in attempting to seize supreme power in Europe and
+thence, perhaps, in the world.
+
+Finally, Americans hope and expect that there will be no such fatal
+issue of the present struggle as the destruction or ruin of the German
+Nation. On the contrary, they believe that Germany will be freer,
+happier, and greater than ever when once she has got rid of the
+monstrous Bismarck policies and the Emperor's archaic conception of his
+function, and has enjoyed twenty years of real peace. Your obedient
+servant,
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Asticou, Me., Sept. 28, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Dr. Dernburg's Reply to the Third Letter
+
+     Late German Secretary of State for the Colonies; lived for
+     several years in the United States as member of the banking
+     firm of Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co., New York.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Prof. Eliot is conferring a great favor on the exponents of the German
+side in the present struggle in explaining to them what he thinks of the
+so-called anti-German feeling in the United States. I am sure his views
+will be read also in Germany with a great deal of attention, although he
+will certainly not remain unchallenged in nearly all essential points.
+The compliment that Prof. Eliot pays to the German people as a whole
+must be specially appreciated, the more so as it comes from a scientist
+whose great authority is equally recognized on both sides of the
+Atlantic.
+
+The anti-German feeling, according to Prof. Eliot, takes its source from
+the American objection to the committal of a nation to grave mistakes by
+a permanent Executive. But then, with the exception of France, all the
+warring nations have permanent Executives, professional diplomatists;
+all their affairs are conducted in secret, and all their rulers have the
+power, including the President of France, to embroil their nations in
+war. The German Emperor is in this respect certainly more restricted
+than the other heads of State, and I have not read that the declaration
+of war has been expressly sanctioned by the English Parliament, and
+certainly the mobilization of the English fleet that took place in July,
+and the mobilization of the Russian Army that took place at the same
+time, have not even been brought to the knowledge of the respective
+Parliaments. When, therefore, the same conditions prevail in all the
+warring States, how can they be made the reason for such an anti-German
+feeling?
+
+The same objection holds good with the American antipathy against the
+power of rulers to order mobilization or declare war in advance without
+consultation of Parliament, to which I have only to say that the English
+fleet was mobilized without consulting the English Parliament, while in
+Germany the Bundesrat, the representatives of the Federal States, as
+well as of the Federal Diets, has been duly consulted. I may add that
+also the party leaders of the Reichstag, which could not be convoked
+earlier than two days after the declaration of the war, have been
+continuously informed and consulted.
+
+Against the next paragraph, where Prof. Eliot complains of the secrecy
+of European diplomacy and of international treaties and understandings,
+the same objection must be made. The state described here as particular
+to Germany prevails in all European countries, and neither the treaty of
+the Russian-French alliance, nor the arrangements of the Triple Entente
+have ever been submitted to the French or British Parliaments. As
+regards the American attitude toward armaments, I purposely refrain from
+adducing the American example into my argument, much as I could show
+that with a very large part of the American Nation the idea of defending
+the American coast against any invader and the maintenance of a strong
+Pan-American policy, if need be by arms, is just as fixed a tenet as the
+German idea that the Fatherland should be held safe from invasion or
+destruction by the will and the strength of its people. England has
+always held the same, if not through her army so through her navy, and
+so did the rest of Europe; and there is no argument to be gotten from
+that for an anti-German feeling.
+
+
+No Seizure of Schleswig-Holstein.
+
+Americans object to the extension of territory by force. Germany has
+never done that, even if one goes back as far as Prof. Eliot wishes to
+go. Mr. Eliot is absolutely mistaken as to the history of the
+incorporation of Schleswig-Holstein into Prussia. Schleswig-Holstein was
+a Dual-Dukedom that never belonged to Denmark, but having as its Duke
+the King of Denmark as long as he belonged to the elder line of the
+House of Oldenburg. This elder line was extinct when King Christian
+VIII. died without male issue. His successor wanted to incorporate the
+two German Dukedoms into Denmark. Then the people stood up and expressed
+the desire to remain with the German Federation, to which it had always
+belonged, and there it is now, of its own free will. The natural
+dividing line between Denmark and Germany, however, is the River Eider.
+There are about 30,000 Danes south of the Eider, who have been absorbed
+against their will, a thing that can never be avoided, and that has
+sometimes given Prussia a little trouble.
+
+
+Alsace-Lorraine Originally German.
+
+As to Alsace-Lorraine, the facts are known to be that it had belonged to
+Germany until it had been taken, against the will of the people, by
+France under Louis XIV., and it was returned to Germany as a matter of
+right, more than three-quarters of the population being of German
+descent and speaking the German language.
+
+But let me ask in return, Mr. Eliot, when did ever in her political
+career England consult the will of the people when she took a country?
+Can he say that, when England tore the treaty of Majuba Hill, like a
+"scrap of paper," and made war on the Boers? Did she consult the people
+of Cyprus in 1878? Does he know of any plébiscite in India? Has she
+consulted the Persians, or has France consulted the people of Morocco,
+or of Indo-China, Italy the people of Tripoli? Since Germany has not
+acted here in any other way forty years ago than all the other nations,
+why does Dr. Eliot consider the American people justified in taking
+anti-German views for reasons of such an old date, while he forgives the
+nations of the party he favors for much more recent infringement of his
+rule?
+
+"Americans object to the violation of treaties." So do the Germans. We
+have always kept our treaties, and mean to do so in the future. The fact
+with Belgium is that her neutrality was very one-sided; that, as can be
+proved, as early as the 25th of June, Ličge was full of French soldiers,
+that Belgian fortifications were all directed against Germany, and that
+for years past it was the Belgian press that outdid the French press in
+attacks against Germany. But I can give Mr. Eliot here some authority
+that he has so far not challenged. When Sir Edward Grey presented the
+English case in the House of Commons on the 3d of August he declared
+that the British attitude was laid down by the British Government in
+1870, and he verbally cited Mr. Gladstone's speech, in which he said he
+could not subscribe to the assertion that the simple fact of the
+existence of a guarantee was binding on every party, irrespective
+altogether of the particular position in which it may find itself at the
+time when the occasion for acting on the guarantee arises. He called
+that assertion a "stringent and impracticable" view of the guarantee and
+the whole treaty a "complicated question." So Mr. Gladstone, and with
+him Sir Edward Grey, has held the Belgian neutrality treaty not binding
+on every party, when it was against the interest which the particular
+situation dictated, when the war broke out. It was the interest of Great
+Britain to maintain the treaty, and that is why she acted. It was
+against German interest to maintain the treaty, and that is why she
+broke it. That is the British and not the German theory, and I could
+very well rest my case here. My theory is with the German Chancellor,
+that I greatly regret the necessity of violating the Belgian neutrality,
+after Belgium had chosen to repel the German overtures for a free
+passage.
+
+It is quite certain that the breach of the Belgian neutrality by Germany
+was used in Great Britain as a powerful instrument to influence the
+public sentiment. Every war must be borne by national unity, and it is
+the duty of the nation's leaders to secure such unity by all practicable
+means. But has it been forgotten that the attitude of Sir Edward Grey
+caused such excellent men as Lord Morley, John Burns, and Sir John
+Trevelyan to leave the Cabinet, where they were looked upon as the best
+and most liberal members of the ruling combination? Bernard Shaw says of
+Great Britain that she has never been at a loss for an effective moral
+attitude. Such an attitude is a powerful weapon in diplomatical and
+actual warfare, and it must be resorted to, if the necessity arises. But
+that cannot blind us to the fact that the British Government allowed the
+political interest to be the paramount consideration in this Belgian
+neutrality matter. The German interest for not acting on the guarantee
+was just as strong as the English to act for it.
+
+The proof is found in the English "White Paper." I cite the famous
+reprint of THE TIMES, (Dispatch No. 148 of Aug. 2 to Paris.) Here Sir
+Edward Grey says: "We were considering ... whether we should declare
+violation of Belgian neutrality to be a casus belli."
+
+
+"Treaties Must Not Be Overrated."
+
+I am an ardent believer in all international arrangements to prevent
+difficulties and wars between nations, and I rejoice with the American
+people in the signal success this policy is now having in this country.
+But international treaties must not be overrated. There are questions
+which cannot be settled by them. It is too difficult to explain just the
+nature of such situations as arose in Europe, so I may be permitted for
+once to ask this question: Does Prof. Eliot believe that the majority of
+the American people think that the unwritten Monroe Doctrine could be
+made the subject of arbitration, whether it had a right to exist or to
+be enforced? I must emphatically say, No, it could not. It can be as
+little arbitrated upon as a matter of religion or of personal morals.
+
+Mr. Eliot thinks a happy result of the war would be that American
+institutions should prevail in Germany thereafter. Why should Germany
+only become a representative republic? Does he not demand the same
+regarding Russia, England, Italy, Austria, and Japan? And if not, why
+not?
+
+From all this I fail to see the point in the reasons given by Prof.
+Eliot why fair-minded Americans should side with the Allies because the
+objections made against German procedure, down to the breach of the
+Belgian neutrality, must be made against all other European States.
+British history is just teeming with examples of broken treaties and
+torn "scraps of paper." The chasing of German diplomatic representatives
+out of neutral Egypt is a case in point.
+
+I must insist that whatever anti-German feeling there is is not fully
+explained by Prof. Eliot, and his article cannot be made a code by which
+German behavior could be regulated in the future. Prof. Eliot is a
+scholar; business interests do not come very near him. So he is
+especially concerned with the ethical aspect of the matter. He believes
+the Germans think that "might is right." This is very unjust. Our
+history proves that we have never acted on this principle. We have never
+got or attempted to get a world empire such as England has won, all of
+which, with a very few exceptions, by might, by war, and by conquest.
+The German writers who have expounded this doctrine have only shown how
+the large world empires of England and France were welded together, what
+means have been adopted for that purpose, and against what sort of
+political doctrines we must beware.
+
+
+Our Sympathy for the Under Dog.
+
+As Dr. Eliot makes his remarks for the benefit of his German confrčres,
+may I be permitted to say to them what I consider the reason for the
+American attitude? There is, in the first place, the ethical side.
+Americans have a very strong sense of generosity, and are, as a rule,
+very good sports. They think Belgium a small nation, brutally attacked
+by a much bigger fellow; they feel that the little man stands up bravely
+and gamely, and fights for all he is worth. Such a situation will always
+command American sympathy and antagonism against the stronger. Then
+there is the business side. Americans feel that this war is endangering
+their political and commercial interests, so they are naturally angry
+against the people who, they believe, have brought the war about.
+
+As Germany has not had an opportunity to make herself heard as amply as
+her adversaries, they think that it was Germany which set the world
+afire, and that is what they resent, and in which they were justified,
+if it were true. But the question of the hour is not the question of the
+past, but of the present and of the future, and the people on this side
+who will give Germany fair play because it is just in them will examine
+the situation in the light of their interests. Then they will find that
+Belgium had been in league with the Allies long before the conflagration
+broke out, only to be left to its own resources when the critical hour
+arose. They will further find that it is not Germany but England and her
+allies that are throttling commerce, maiming cables, stopping mails,
+and breaking neutrality and other treaties to further their aims; that,
+finally, today England has established a world rule on the sea to which
+even America must submit. They will then soon come to the conclusion
+that, no matter what happened in the past, the peace of the world can
+only be assured by a good understanding between Germany and the United
+States as a sort of counterbalance against the unmeasured aggrandizement
+of English sea power. Then the feeling toward Germany will be
+considerably better, and I may add that even now it is not so very bad
+after all.
+
+I make these remarks with due respect to Prof. Eliot and his views, and
+with great reluctance for being compelled to enter the field against a
+personality whose undoubted superiority I wish to be the first to
+acknowledge.
+
+BERNHARD DERNBURG.
+
+New York, Oct. 4, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Dr. Jordan's Reply to Dr. Dernburg
+
+     Daniel Jordan is Assistant Professor of Roman Languages and
+     Literature at Columbia University.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+President Eliot is as fair a judge of the present European situation as
+can be found anywhere, and is well qualified to explain the almost
+unanimous attitude of thoughtful Americans in regard to Germany. Dr.
+Dernburg, on the other hand, has been officially sent from Germany to
+expound the German official version; both his point of view and his
+treatment of facts are essentially un-American.
+
+He says: "Americans object to the extension of territory by force.
+Germany has never done that." Apparently he believes that the Poles
+asked Prussia to become her subjects. The facts are that they have
+fought and begged for autonomy for nearly 150 years, and that at the
+present time high German officials are members of the Anti-Polish
+League.
+
+Dr. Dernburg, when he comes to Schleswig-Holstein, states that 30,000
+Danes south of the Eider River (this is in Holstein) have been absorbed
+against their will, "a thing that can never be avoided, and that has
+sometimes given Prussia a little trouble." But what about the Danes
+north of the Eider River? Schleswig and Holstein are really two
+provinces. Holstein is German, but the northern part of Schleswig, north
+of Fiensburg, is inhabited by Danes who are longing to join Denmark and
+who number about 200,000. Article 5 of the Treaty of Prague, signed on
+Aug. 23, 1866, after Sadowa, between Prussia and Austria, states that
+the inhabitants of Northern Schleswig shall be given a chance to join
+Denmark, "if they should so express the desire by a free vote." Prussia
+has not respected this solemn promise any more than former promises
+concerning Schleswig. The frequently renewed protests of the annexed
+Danes have remained unanswered. The best proof that Prussia's title to
+Danish Schleswig was not considered as very substantial is that in
+October, 1878, Prussia finally obtained from Austria the annulment of
+Article 5 of the Treaty of Prague, which dealt with the taking of a
+plébiscite in Danish Schleswig.
+
+To decide the fate of a province without consulting the inhabitants
+seems perfectly natural to German Kultur, but to Americans it is not;
+the days of slavery have gone, and wherever slavery still exists it is
+time to make a change.
+
+As to Alsace-Lorraine, says Dr. Dernburg, "the facts are known that it
+had belonged to Germany until it was taken by Louis XIV., against the
+will of the people, and that it was returned to Germany as a matter of
+right." Such an argument is mediaeval, and it might just as well be
+argued that Germany should now belong to France, because Germany was
+once conquered, civilized, and organized by inhabitants of France, led
+by their Frankish King. And it is not sure that in 1648 Alsace was not
+glad to become French, because Louis XIV., by the Treaty of Westphalia,
+then granted perfect religious freedom to the Alsatians, who unlike
+their neighbors, lived ever since without fear of religious
+persecutions. Lorraine itself was not annexed by Louis XIV., nor by
+force, as it was peacefully united to France at the death of Stanislas,
+father of the Queen of France, Marie-Lesinzka. As for the inhabitants of
+Metz, they were considered long ago as French. Metz was annexed to
+France in 1552, with the full consent of the then allies of the French
+King, Henri II., the German Princes, who recognized by the Treaty of
+Cateau-Cambresis, (1559,) that Metz, Toul, and Verdun were French
+cities, and could not be considered as a part of the German
+Confederation. So there were at one time German Princes who accepted
+the dogma of the consent of the governed!
+
+Attacking the record of England in order to defend the record of
+Germany, as Dr. Dernburg does, is no justification for the necessary
+German aggression of today. Even granting that the English record is
+poor, which is a matter open to discussion, two wrongs would not make
+things right.
+
+Dr. Dernburg also compares the policy of aggrandizement of Germany in
+Schleswig, Alsace, &c., with that of other countries in Morocco,
+Tripoli, &c. Even school children know that two things which are
+entirely unlike must not be compared. Northern Africa had too long been
+a den of pirates and brigands, and Latin Europe has rendered an immense
+service to the world in establishing order there. Algeria has been
+conquered in the same way as Morocco is now being conquered, and her
+natives enjoy more genuine liberty than they ever did before; they are
+even willing to fight as volunteers for the country they consider now as
+their own. Neither Danish Schleswig nor Alsace-Lorraine, which were as
+civilized as any other European country when they were last annexed, can
+be compared to Morocco any more than to the Philippines. So this
+comparison made by Dr. Dernburg also falls to pieces.
+
+The case of the German point of view is not entirely without hope. In
+THE TIMES of Oct. 5 Dr. Dernburg approves the annexation of Holstein
+because the Germans of Holstein wanted to belong to Germany. This is a
+sound conclusion, and Dr. Dernburg will doubtless acknowledge
+later--better late than never--that the Alsatians and the Danish of
+Schleswig should have had their say, just like the Germans of Holstein.
+It cannot be possible that to him the wish of the inhabitants of a
+province is the voice of God when it suits Germany and the voice of the
+devil when it suits somebody else.
+
+DANIEL JORDAN.
+
+Columbia University, Nov. 6, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Dr. Irene Sargent's Reply to Dr. Dernburg
+
+     Professor of the History of Fine Arts, Syracuse University.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Contradicting Dr. Eliot, Dr. Bernhard Dernburg says:
+
+     Schleswig-Holstein was a dual Dukedom that never belonged to
+     Denmark; but, having as its Duke the King of Denmark, as long
+     as he belonged to the elder line of the house of Oldenburg ...
+     Frederick VII. wanted to incorporate the two German Dukedoms
+     into Denmark.... Then the people stood up and expressed the
+     desire to remain with the German Federation.
+
+Such an assertion is a summary, inaccurate, and unfair manner of dealing
+with perhaps the most complex series of diplomatic, legal, and racial
+questions that arose in the nineteenth century. It would appear from the
+best evidence that Schleswig was indissolubly united with the Crown of
+Denmark. To maintain this principle Christian VIII. in 1846 issued
+letters patent declaring that the royal line of succession (female) was
+in full force, as far as Schleswig was concerned. As to Holstein, the
+King stated that he was prevented from giving an equally clear decision,
+and the reason of his hesitation lay in the assumption that the law of
+the Salic Saxons excluding women from the throne would naturally prevail
+in Holstein, where the Germans, their customs, and their language were
+dominant. Two years later, Prussia sought to restore her prestige, lost
+in the Revolution of 1848, by sending troops into the Duchies in order
+to enforce the principle that this territory constituted two independent
+and indivisible States, the government of which was hereditary in the
+male line alone. The Prussian troops were afterward withdrawn by the
+hesitating Frederic William, and there followed a succession of
+protocols, constitutions, and compacts until the time of Bismarck, who,
+in his "Reflections," Volume II., Page 10, in writing of the Duchies,
+acknowledges:
+
+"From the beginning I kept annexation steadily before my eyes."
+
+The master of statecraft conquered. But did the people "stand up and
+express their desire to remain with the German Federation," as Dr.
+Dernburg asserts?
+
+If his assertion be true, why were the Danish "optants" subjected to
+domiciliary visits, perquisitions, arrest, and expulsion? And why--only
+to mention one instance of espionage--did the Prussian police confiscate
+the issue of a Danish newspaper published in Schleswig because it
+contained a reference to that Duchy under its historic name of South
+Jutland?
+
+The truth stands that the whole Schleswig-Holstein question is one that
+involves the modern principle of "nationality," and, as such, enters of
+necessity into the present European crisis. It is broadly understood by
+Dr. Eliot and willfully misapprehended by his critic.
+
+Passing on to consider Alsace-Lorraine, Dr. Dernburg declares that "it
+had belonged to Germany until it was taken, against the will of the
+people, under Louis XIV."
+
+In this statement, as in the treatment of the previous question, facts
+are mutilated and wrong impressions are given. Alsace, it is well known,
+was included within the confines of ancient Gaul, its original
+population was Celtic, and it passed, late in the fifth Christian
+century, under the rule of the Franks, one of whose chieftains, Clovis,
+became the founder of the first French monarchy. In dealing with its
+later history Dr. Dernburg confuses the Holy Roman (Germanic) Empire
+with Germany, considered in its modern sense. He appears to forget that
+the reign of Louis XIV. was an age of absolutism and not of plébiscites.
+
+He also ignores that the most strenuous efforts on the part of Germany
+to strangle the French nationality and language in the imperial
+territory (Alsace-Lorraine) have proved useless, although they have been
+exerted constantly for almost a half century.
+
+IRENE SARGENT.
+
+Professor of the History of Fine Arts.
+
+Syracuse University, Nov. 3, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+DR. ELIOT'S FOURTH LETTER.
+
+Germany and World Empire
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Each one of the principal combatants in Europe seems to be anxious to
+prove that it is not responsible for this cruelest, most extensive, and
+most destructive of all wars. Each Government involved has published the
+correspondence between its Chief Executive and other Chief Executives,
+and between its Chancellery or Foreign Office and the equivalent bodies
+in the other nations that have gone to war, and has been at pains to
+give a wide circulation to these documents. To be sure, none of these
+Government publications seems to be absolutely complete. There seems to
+be in all of them suppressions or omissions which only the future
+historian will be able to report--perhaps after many years. They reveal,
+however, the dilapidated state of the Concert of Europe in July, 1914,
+and the flurry in the European Chancelleries which the ultimatum sent by
+Austria-Hungary to Servia produced. They also testify to the existence
+of a new and influential public opinion, about war and peace, to which
+nations that go to war think it desirable to appeal for justification or
+moral support.
+
+These publications have been read with intense interest by impartial
+observers in all parts of the world, and have in many cases determined
+the direction of the readers' sympathy and good will; and yet none of
+them discloses or deals with the real sources of the unprecedented
+calamity. They relate chiefly to the question who struck the match, and
+not to the questions who provided the magazine that exploded, and why
+did he provide it. Grave responsibility, of course, attaches to the
+person who gives the order to mobilize a national army or to invade a
+neighbor's territory; but the real source of the resulting horrors is
+not in such an order, but in the Governmental institutions, political
+philosophy, and long-nurtured passions and purposes of the nation or
+nations concerned.
+
+
+German Desire for World Empire.
+
+The prime source of the present immense disaster in Europe is the desire
+on the part of Germany for world empire, a desire which one European
+nation after another has made its supreme motive, and none that has once
+adopted it has ever completely eradicated. Germany arrived late at this
+desire, being prevented until 1870 from indulging it, because of her
+lack of unity, or rather because of being divided since the Thirty
+Years' War into a large number of separate, more or less independent,
+States. When this disease, which has attacked one nation after another
+through all historic times, struck Germany it exhibited in her case a
+remarkable malignity, moving her to expansion in Europe by force of
+arms, and to the seizure of areas for colonization in many parts of the
+world. Prussia, indeed, had long believed in making her way in Europe by
+fighting, and had repeatedly acted on that belief. Shortly before the
+achievement of German unity by Bismarck she had obtained by war in 1864
+and 1866 important accessions of territory and leadership in all
+Germany.
+
+With this desire for world empire went the belief that it was only to
+be obtained by force of arms. Therefore, united Germany has labored with
+utmost intelligence and energy to prepare the most powerful army in the
+world, and to equip it for instant action in the most perfect manner
+which science and eager invasion could contrive. To develop this supreme
+military machine universal conscription--an outgrowth of the conception
+of the citizens' army of France during the Revolution--was necessary; so
+that every young man in Germany physically competent to bear arms might
+receive the training of a soldier, whether he wished it or not, and
+remain at the call of the Government for military duty during all his
+years of competency, even if he were the only son of a widow, or a
+widower with little children, or the sole support of a family or other
+dependents. In order to the completeness of this military ideal the army
+became the nation and the nation became the army to a degree which had
+never before been realized in either the savage or the civilized world.
+This army could be summoned and put in play by the Chief Executive of
+the German Nation with no preliminaries except the consent of the
+hereditary heads of the several States which united to form the empire
+in 1870-71 under the domination of Prussia, the Prussian King, become
+German Emperor, being Commander in Chief of the German Army. At the word
+of the Emperor this army can be summoned, collected, clothed, equipped
+and armed, and set in motion toward any frontier in a day. The German
+Army was thus made the largest in proportion to population, the best
+equipped, and the most mobile in the world. The German General Staff
+studied incessantly and thoroughly plans for campaigns against all the
+other principal States of Europe, and promptly utilized--secretly,
+whenever secrecy was possible--all promising inventions in explosives,
+ordnance, munitions, transportation, and sanitation. At the opening of
+1914 the General Staff believed that the German Army was ready for war
+on the instant, and that it possessed some significant advantages in
+fighting--such as better implements and better discipline--over the
+armies of the neighboring nations. The army could do its part toward the
+attainment of world empire. It would prove invincible.
+
+
+A Great German Navy.
+
+The intense desire for colonies, and for the spread of German commerce
+throughout the world, instigated the creation of a great German navy,
+and started the race with England in navy building. The increase of
+German wealth, and the rapid development of manufactures and commercial
+sea power after 1870-71, made it possible for the empire to devote
+immense sums of money to the quick construction of a powerful navy, in
+which the experience and skill of all other shipbuilding nations would
+be appropriated and improved on. In thus pushing her colonization and
+sea-power policy Germany encountered the wide domination of Great
+Britain on the oceans; and this encounter bred jealousy, suspicion, and
+distrust on both sides. That Germany should have been belated in the
+quest for foreign possessions was annoying; but that England and France
+should have acquired early ample and rich territories on other
+continents, and then should resist or obstruct Germany when she aspired
+to make up for lost time, was intensely exasperating. Hence chronic
+resentments, and--when the day came--probably war. In respect to its
+navy, however, Germany was not ready for war at the opening of 1914;
+and, therefore, she did not mean to get into war with Great Britain in
+that year. Indeed, she believed--on incorrect information--that England
+could not go to war in the Summer of 1914. Neither the Government nor
+the educated class in Germany comprehends the peculiar features of party
+government as it exists in England, France, and the United States; and,
+therefore, the German leaders were surprised and grievously disappointed
+at the sudden popular determination of Great Britain and Ireland to lay
+aside party strife and take strenuous part in the general European
+conflict.
+
+The complete preparation of the German Army for sudden war, the
+authority to make war always ready in the hands of the German Emperor,
+and the thorough studies of the German Staff into the most advantageous
+plans of campaign against every neighbor, conspired to develop a new
+doctrine of "military necessity" as the all-sufficient excuse for
+disregarding and violating the contracts or agreements into which
+Prussia or the new Germany had entered with other nations. To gain
+quickly a military advantage in attacking a neighbor came to be regarded
+as proper ground for violating any or all international treaties and
+agreements, no matter how solemn and comprehensive, how old or how new.
+The demonstration of the insignificance or worthlessness of
+international agreements in German thought and practice was given in the
+first days of the war by the invasion of Belgium, and has been continued
+ever since by violation on the part of Germany of numerous agreements
+concerning the conduct of war into which Germany entered with many other
+nations at the Second Hague Conference.
+
+
+Sanctity of National Contracts.
+
+This German view of the worthlessness of international agreements was
+not a cause of the present war, because it was not fully evident to
+Europe, although familiar and of long standing in Germany; but it is a
+potent reason for the continuance of the war by the Allies until Germany
+is defeated; because it is plain to all the nations of the world, except
+Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey at the moment, that the hopes of
+mankind for the gradual development of international order and peace
+rest on the sanctity of contracts between nations, and on the
+development of adequate sanctions in the administration of international
+law. The new doctrine of military necessity affronts all law and is
+completely and hopelessly barbarous.
+
+World empire now, as always, is to be won by force--that is, by conquest
+and holding possession. So Assyria, Israel, Macedonia, Athens, Rome,
+Islam, England, and France have successively believed and tried to
+accomplish in practice. United Germany has for forty years been putting
+into practice, at home and abroad, the doctrine of force as the source
+of all personal and national greatness and all worthy human
+achievements. In the support of this doctrine, educated Germany has
+developed and accepted the religion of valor and the dogma that might
+makes right. In so doing it has rejected with scorn the Christian
+teachings concerning humility and meekness, justice and mercy,
+brotherhood and love. The objects of its adoration have become Strength,
+Courage, and ruthless Will-power; let the weak perish and help them to
+perish; let the gentle, meek, and humble submit to the harsh and proud;
+let the shiftless and incapable die; the world is for the strong, and
+the strongest shall be ruler. This is a religion capable of inspiring
+its followers with zeal and sustained enthusiasm in promoting the
+national welfare at whatever cost to the individual of life, liberty, or
+happiness, and also of lending a religious sanction to the extremes of
+cruelty, greed, and hate. It were incredible that educated people who
+have been brought up within earshot of Christian ethics and within sight
+of gentle men and women should all be content with the religion-of-valor
+plan. Accordingly, the finer German spirits have invented a supplement
+to that Stone Age religion. They have set up for worship a mystical
+conception of the State as a majestic and beneficent entity which
+embraces all the noble activities of the nation and guides it to its
+best achievements. To this ideal State every German owes duty,
+obedience, and complete devotion. The trouble with this supplement to
+the religion of valor is that it dwells too much on submission,
+self-sacrifice, and discipline, and not enough on individual liberty and
+self-control in liberty. Accordingly, when the valiant men got control
+of the Government and carried the nation into a ferocious war, they
+swept away with them all the devotees of this romantic and spiritual
+State. The modern German is always a controlled, directed, and drilled
+person, who aspires to control and discipline his inferiors; and in his
+view pretty much all mankind are his inferiors. He is not a freeman in
+the French, English, or American sense; and he prefers not to be.
+
+
+What German Domination Would Mean.
+
+The present war is the inevitable result of lust of empire, autocratic
+government, sudden wealth, and the religion of valor. What German
+domination would mean to any that should resist it the experience of
+Belgium and Northern France during the past three months aptly
+demonstrates. The civilized world can now see where the new German
+morality--be efficient, be virile, be hard, be bloody, be rulers--would
+land it. To maintain that the power which has adopted in practice that
+new morality, and in accordance with its precepts promised Austria its
+support against Servia and invaded Belgium and France in hot haste, is
+not the responsible author of the European war, is to throw away memory,
+reason, and common sense in judging the human agencies in current
+events.
+
+The real cause of the war is this gradually developed barbaric state of
+the German mind and will. All other causes--such as the assassination of
+the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, the sympathy of Russia with
+the Balkan States, the French desire for the recovery of
+Alsace-Lorraine, and Great Britain's jealousy of German
+aggrandizement--are secondary and incidental causes, contributory,
+indeed, but not primary and fundamental. If any one ask who brought the
+ruling class in Germany to this barbaric frame of mind, the answer must
+be Bismarck, Moltke, Treitschke, Nietzsche, Bernhardi, the German
+Emperor, their like, their disciples, and the military caste.
+
+
+Germany Never Dreaded Russia.
+
+Many German apologists for the war attribute it to German fear of
+Russia. They say that, although Germany committed the first actual
+aggression by invading Belgium and Luxemburg on the way to attack France
+with the utmost speed and fierceness, the war is really a war of
+defense against Russia, which might desirably pass over, after France
+has been crushed, into a war against Great Britain, that perfidious and
+insolent obstacle to Germany's world empire. The answer to this
+explanation is that, as a matter of fact, Germany has never dreaded, or
+even respected, the military strength of Russia, and that the recent
+wars and threatenings of war by Germany have not been directed against
+Russia, but against Denmark, Austria, France, and England. In her
+colonization enterprises it is not Russia that Germany has encountered,
+but England, France, and the United States. The friendly advances made
+within the last twenty years by Germany to Turkey were not intended
+primarily to strengthen Germany against Russia, but Germany against
+Great Britain through access by land to British India. In short,
+Germany's policies, at home and abroad, during the last forty years have
+been inspired not by fear of Russia, or of any other invader, but by its
+own aggressive ambition for world empire. In the present war it thinks
+it has staked its all on "empire or downfall."
+
+
+Germany Should Be Defeated.
+
+Those nations which value public liberty and believe that the primary
+object of Government is to promote the general welfare by measures and
+policies founded on justice, good-will, and respect for the freedom of
+the individual cannot but hope that Germany will be completely defeated
+in its present undertakings; but they do not believe that Germany is
+compelled to choose between a life of domination in Europe and the world
+and national death. They wish that all her humane culture and her genius
+for patient and exact research may survive this hideous war and guide
+another Germany to great achievements for humanity.
+
+If the causes of the present immense catastrophe have been have
+correctly stated, the desirable outcomes of the war are, no world empire
+for any race or nation, no more "subjects," no Executives, either
+permanent or temporary, with power to throw their fellow-countrymen
+into war, no secret diplomacy justifying the use for a profit of all the
+lies, concealments, deceptions, and ambuscades which are an inevitable
+part of war and assuming to commit nations on international questions,
+and no conscription armies that can be launched in war by Executives
+without consulting independent representative assemblies. There should
+come out from this supreme convulsion, a federated Europe, or a league
+of the freer nations, which should secure the smaller States against
+attack, prevent the larger from attempting domination, make sure that
+treaties and other international contracts shall be public and be
+respected until modified by mutual consent, and provide a safe basis for
+the limitation and reduction of armaments on land and sea, no basis to
+be considered safe which could fail to secure the liberties of each and
+all the federated States against the attacks of any outsider or
+faithless member. No one can see at present how such a consummation is
+to be brought about, but any one can see already that this consummation
+is the only one which can satisfy the lovers of liberty under law, and
+the believers in the progress of mankind through loving service each to
+all and all to each.
+
+Extreme pacificists shrink from fighting evil with evil, hell with
+hell, and advise submission to outrage, or at least taking the risk of
+being forced into resigned submission. The believers in the religion of
+valor, on the other hand, proclaim that war is a good thing in itself,
+that it develops the best human virtues, invigorates a nation become
+flaccid through ease and luxury, and puts in command the strong,
+dominating spirit of a valid nation or race. What is the just mean
+between these two extremes? Is it not that war is always a hideous and
+hateful evil, but that a nation may sometimes find it to be the least of
+two evils between which it has to choose? The justifiable and indeed
+necessary war is the war against the ravager and destroyer, the enemy of
+liberty, the claimant of world empire. More and more the thinkers of the
+world see, and the common people more and more believe instinctively,
+that the cause of righteous liberty is the cause of civilization. In the
+conference which will one day meet to settle the terms of peace, and
+therefore the future conditions of life in Europe, the example of the
+American Republic in regard to armaments and war, the publicity of
+treaties, and public liberty, security and prosperity may reasonably
+have some influence.
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 14, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+DR. ELIOT'S FIFTH LETTER.
+
+A Hopeful Road to Lasting Peace
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+The great war has now been going on long enough to enable mankind to
+form approximately correct views about its vast extent and scale of
+operations, its sudden interference with commerce and all other helpful
+international intercourse, its unprecedented wrecking of family
+happiness and continuity, its wiping out, as it proceeds, of the
+accumulated savings of many former generations in structures, objects of
+art, and industrial capital, and the huge burdens it is likely to impose
+on twentieth century Europe. From all these points of view, it is
+evidently the most horrible calamity that has ever befallen the human
+race and the most crucial trial to which civilization has been exposed.
+It is, and is to be, the gigantic struggle of these times between the
+forces which make for liberty and righteousness and those which make
+for the subjection of the individual man, the exaltation of the State,
+and the enthronement of physical force directed by a ruthless collective
+will. It threatens a sweeping betrayal of the best hopes of mankind.
+
+Each of the nations involved, horrified at the immensity of the
+disaster, maintains that it is not responsible for the war; and each
+Government has issued a statement to prove that some other Government is
+responsible for the outbreak. This discussion, however, relates almost
+entirely to actions by monarchs and Cabinets between July 23 and Aug.
+4--a short period of hurried messages between the Chancelleries of
+Europe--actions which only prove that the monarchs and Ministers for
+Foreign Affairs could not, or at least did not, prevent the
+long-prepared general war from breaking out. The assassination of the
+Archduke and Duchess of Hohenberg on the 28th of June was in no proper
+sense a cause of the war, except as it was one of the consequences of
+the persistent aggressions of Austria-Hungary against her southeastern
+neighbors. Neither was Russian mobilization in four military districts
+on July 29 a cause of the war; for that was only an external
+manifestation of the Russian state of mind toward the Balkan peoples, a
+state of mind well known to all publicists ever since the Treaty of
+Berlin in 1878. No more was the invasion of Belgium by the German Army
+on Aug. 4 a true cause of the war, or even the cause, as distinguished
+from the occasion, of Great Britain's becoming involved in it. By that
+action Germany was only taking the first step in carrying out a
+long-cherished purpose and in executing a judicious plan of campaign
+prepared for many years in advance. The artificial panic in Germany
+about its exposed position between two powerful enemies, France and
+Russia, was not a genuine cause of the war; for the General Staff knew
+they had crushed France once, and were confident they could do it again
+in a month. As to Russia, it was, in their view, a huge nation, but
+very clumsy and dull in war.
+
+The real causes of the war are all of many years' standing; and all the
+nations now involved in the fearful catastrophe have contributed to the
+development of one or more of these effective causes. The fundamental
+causes are: (1) The maintenance of monarchical Governments, each
+sanctioned and supported by the national religion, and each furnished
+with a Cabinet selected by the monarch--Governments which can make war
+without any previous consultation of the peoples through their elected
+representatives; (2) the constant maintenance of conscript armies,
+through which the entire able-bodied male population is trained in youth
+for service in the army or navy, and remains subject to the instant call
+of the Government till late in life, the officering of these permanent
+armies involving the creation of a large military class likely to become
+powerful in political, industrial, and social administration; (3) the
+creation of a strong, permanent bureaucracy within each nation for the
+management of both foreign and domestic affairs, much of whose work is
+kept secret from the public at large; and, finally, (4) the habitual use
+of military and naval forces to acquire new territories, contiguous or
+detached, without regard to the wishes of the people annexed or
+controlled. This last cause of the war is the most potent of the four,
+since it is strong in itself, and is apt to include one or more of the
+other three. It is the gratification of the lust for world empire.
+
+Of all the nations taking part in the present war, Great Britain is the
+only one which does not maintain a conscript army; but, on the other
+hand, Great Britain is the earliest modern claimant of world empire by
+force, with the single exception of Spain, which long since abandoned
+that quest. Every one of these nations except little Servia has yielded
+to the lust for empire. Every one has permitted its monarch or its
+Cabinet to carry on secret negotiations liable at any time to commit the
+nation to war, or to fail in maintaining the peace of Europe or of the
+Near East. In the crowded diplomatic events of last July, no phenomenon
+is more striking than the exhibition of the power which the British
+people confide to the hands of their Foreign Secretary. In the interests
+of public liberty and public welfare no official should possess such
+powers as Sir Edward Grey used admirably--though in vain--last July. In
+all three of the empires engaged in the war there has long existed a
+large military caste which exerts a strong influence on the Government
+and its policies, and on the daily life of the people.
+
+These being the real causes of the terrific convulsion now going on in
+Europe, it cannot be questioned that the nation in which these complex
+causes have taken strongest and most complete effect during the last
+fifty years is Germany. Her form of government has been imperialistic
+and autocratic in the highest degree. She has developed with great
+intelligence and assiduity the most formidable conscript army in the
+world, and the most influential and insolent military caste. Three times
+since 1864 she has waged war in Europe, and each time she has added to
+her territory without regard to the wishes of the annexed population.
+For twenty-five years she has exhibited a keen desire to obtain colonial
+possessions; and since 1896 she has been aggressive in this field. In
+her schools and universities the children and youth have been taught for
+generations that Germany is surrounded by hostile peoples, that her
+expansion in Europe and in other continents is resisted by jealous
+powers which started earlier in the race for foreign possessions, and
+that the salvation of Germany has depended from the first, and will
+depend till the last, on the efficiency of her army and navy and the
+warlike spirit of her people. This instruction, given year after year by
+teachers, publicists, and rulers, was first generally accepted in
+Prussia, but now seems to be accepted by the entire empire as unified in
+1871.
+
+The attention of the civilized world was first called to this state of
+the German mind and will by the triumphant policies of Bismarck; but
+during the reign of the present Emperor the external aggressiveness of
+Germany and her passion for world empire have grown to much more
+formidable proportions. Although the German Emperor has sometimes played
+the part of a peacemaker, he has habitually acted the war lord in both
+speech and bearing, and has supported the military caste whenever it has
+been assailed. He is by inheritance, conviction, and practice a
+Divine-right sovereign whose throne rests on an "invincible" army, an
+army conterminous with the nation. In the present tremendous struggle he
+carries his subjects with him in a rushing torrent of self-sacrificing
+patriotism. Mass fanaticism and infectious enthusiasm seem to have
+deprived the leading class in Germany, for the moment, of all power to
+see, reason, and judge correctly--no new phenomenon in the world, but
+instructive in this case because it points to the grave defect in German
+education--the lack of liberty and, therefore, practice in self-control.
+
+The twentieth century educated German is, however, by no means given
+over completely to material and physical aggrandizement and the worship
+of might. He cherishes a partly new conception of the State as a
+collective entity whose function is to develop and multiply, not the
+free, healthy, and happy individual man and woman, but higher and more
+effective types of humanity, made superior by a strenuous discipline
+which takes much account of the strong and ambitious, and little of the
+weak or meek. He rejects the ethics of the Beatitudes as unsound, but
+accepts the religion of valor, which exalts strength, courage,
+endurance, and the ready sacrifice by the individual of liberty,
+happiness, and life itself for Germany's honor and greatness. A nation
+of 60,000,000 holding these philosophical and religious views, and
+proposing to act on them in winning by force the empire of the world,
+threatens civilization with more formidable irruptions of a destroying
+host than any that history has recorded. The rush of the German Army
+into Belgium, France, and Russia and its consequences to those lands
+have taught the rest of Europe to dread German domination, and--it is to
+be hoped--to make it impossible.
+
+The real cause of the present convulsion is, then, the state of mind or
+temper of Germany, including her conception of national greatness, her
+theory of the State, and her intelligent and skillful use of all the
+forces of nineteenth century applied science for the destructive
+purposes of war. It is, therefore, apparent that Europe can escape from
+the domination of Germany only by defeating her in her present
+undertakings; and that this defeat can be brought about only by using
+against her the same effective agencies of destruction and the same
+martial spirit on which Germany itself relies. Horrible as are the
+murderous and devastating effects of this war, there can be no lasting
+peace until Europe as a whole is ready to make some serious and
+far-reaching decisions in regard to Governmental structures and powers.
+In all probability the sufferings and losses of this widespread war must
+go further and cut deeper before Europe can be brought to the decisions
+which alone can give securities for lasting peace against Germany on the
+one hand and Russia on the other, or to either of these nations, or can
+give security for the future to any of the smaller nations of
+Continental Europe. There can, indeed, be no security for future peace
+in Europe until every European nation recognizes the fact that there is
+to be no such thing in the world as one dominating nation--no such thing
+as world empire for any single nation--Great Britain, Germany, Russia,
+Japan, or China. There can be no sense of security against sudden
+invasion in Europe so long as all the able-bodied men are trained to be
+soldiers and the best possible armies are kept constantly ready for
+instant use. There can be no secure peace in Europe until a federation
+of the European States is established, capable of making public
+contracts intended to be kept, and backed by an overwhelming
+international force subject to the orders of an international tribunal.
+The present convulsion demonstrates the impotence toward permanent
+peace of secret negotiations, of unpublished agreements, of treaties and
+covenants that can be broken on grounds of military necessity, of
+international law if without sanctions, of pious wishes, of economic and
+biological predictions, and of public opinion unless expressed through a
+firm international agreement, behind which stands an international
+force. When that international force has been firmly established it will
+be time to consider what proportionate reductions in national armaments
+can be prudently recommended. Until that glorious day dawns, no patriot
+and no lover of his kind can wisely advocate either peace in Europe or
+any reduction of armaments.
+
+The hate-breeding and worse than brutal cruelties and devastations of
+the war, with their inevitable moral and physical degradations, ought to
+shock mankind into attempting a great step forward. Europe and America
+should undertake to exterminate the real causes of the catastrophe. In
+studying that problem the coming European conference can profit by the
+experience of the three prosperous and valid countries in which public
+liberty and the principle of federation have been most successfully
+developed--Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States.
+Switzerland is a democratic federation which unites in a firm federal
+bond three different racial stocks speaking three unlike languages, and
+divided locally and irregularly between the Catholic Church and the
+Protestant. The so-called British Empire tends strongly to become a
+federation; and the methods of Government both in Great Britain itself
+and in its affiliated Commonwealths are becoming more and more
+democratic in substance. The war has brought this fact out in high
+relief. As to the United States, it is a strong federation of
+forty-eight heterogeneous States which has been proving for a hundred
+years that freedom and democracy are safer and happier for mankind than
+subjection to any sort of autocracy, and affords far the best training
+for national character and national efficiency. Republican France has
+not yet had time to give this demonstration, being incumbered with many
+survivals of the Bourbon and Napoleonic régimes, and being forced to
+maintain a conscript army.
+
+It is an encouraging fact that every one of the political or
+Governmental changes needed is already illustrated in the practice of
+one or more of the civilized nations. To exaggerate the necessary
+changes is to postpone or prevent a satisfactory outcome from the
+present calculated destructions and wrongs and the accompanying moral
+and religious chaos. Ardent proposals to remake the map of Europe,
+reconstruct European society, substitute republics for empires, and
+abolish armaments are in fact obstructing the road toward peace and
+good-will among men. That road is hard at best.
+
+The immediate duty of the United States is presumably to prepare, on the
+basis of its present army and navy, to furnish an effective quota of the
+international force, servant of an international tribunal, which will
+make the ultimate issue of this most abominable of wars not a truce, but
+a durable peace.
+
+In the meantime the American peoples cry with one voice to the German
+people, like Ezekiel to the House of Israel: "Turn ye, turn ye from your
+evil ways; for why will ye die?"
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 8, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+THE LORD OF HOSTS.
+
+By JOSEPH B. GILDER.
+
+
+"He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh."
+
+    The warring hosts that gather
+      To ravage, burn, and slay,
+    Turn first to that dread Father
+      To whom the nations pray:
+
+    "O God, our hearts Thou knowest,
+      Our minds Thou readest clear;
+    Where we go, there Thou goest--
+      With Thee we have no fear.
+
+    "The folk that harm and hate us--
+      Thy enemies, O Lord--
+    Thou knowest how they bait us:
+      Make brittle their strong sword!
+
+    "Against the foe that goaded
+      We heed Thy call to fight:
+    Our guns are primed and loaded,
+      Our swords, how keen and bright!
+
+    "Make strong our hearts to serve Thee,
+      Uphold our lifted hands;
+    Let no petition swerve Thee
+      To succor alien bands.
+
+    "So shall we burn and slaughter,
+      Spread desolation wide,
+    If still, by land and water,
+      Thou fightest on our side."
+
+    The Lord of Hosts had listened--
+      Had heard the rivals' prayer,
+    Upraised where bayonets glistened
+      And banners dyed the air;
+
+    And as His people waited
+      An answer to their cry,
+    Two bolts with lightning freighted
+      Flashed from the angry sky.
+
+    To left, to right they darted,
+      Impartially they fell:
+    The hosts in terror started
+      As they envisaged hell.
+
+    For wide their ranks were riven,
+      Night blotted out the sky,
+    As prostrate, dazed or driven,
+      They caught their God's reply.
+
+    Then, as the blinding levin's
+      Twin bolts were buried deep,
+    Who dwelleth in the heavens
+      Was heard to laugh--and weep!
+
+
+
+
+A War of Dishonor
+
+By David Starr Jordan.
+
+     Late President of Leland Stanford Junior University, now its
+     Chancellor; Chief Director of the World Peace Foundation since
+     1910.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+In this war what of right and what of wrong? Not much of right, perhaps,
+and very much of wrong. But there are degrees in wrong, and sometimes,
+by comparison, wrong becomes almost right.
+
+The armed peace, the peace of guns and dreadnoughts and sabre rattlers,
+has come to its predestined end. Its armaments were made for war. Its
+war makers and war traders, the Pan-Germanists in the lead, have done
+their worst for the last nine years. They have been foiled time after
+time, but they have their way at last. Their last and most fatal weapon
+was the ultimatum. If Servia had not given them their chance they would
+have found their pretext somewhere else. When a nation or a continent
+prepares for war it will get it soon or later. To prepare for war is to
+breed a host of men who have no other business, and another host who
+find their profits in blood.
+
+When the war began it had very little meaning. It was the third Balkan
+war, brought on, as the others were, by intrigues of rival despotisms.
+The peoples of Europe do not hate each other. The springs of war come
+from a few men impelled by greed and glory. Diplomacy in Europe has been
+for years the cover for robbery in Asia or Africa. Of all the nations
+concerned not one had any wish to fight, and Belgium alone could fight
+with clean hands.
+
+And this fact gave the war its meaning. The invasion of Belgium changed
+the whole face of affairs. As by a lightning flash the issue was made
+plain: the issue of the sacredness of law; the rule of the soldier or
+the rule of the citizen; the rule of fear or the rule of law. Germany
+stands for army rule. This was made clear when, a year ago, she passed
+under the yoke at Zabern. However devious her diplomacy in the past,
+Britain stands today for the rule of law. The British soldier is the
+servant of the British people, not their master.
+
+The highest conception of human relations is embodied in the word law.
+Law is the framework of civilization. Law is the condition of security,
+happiness, and progress. War is the denial of all law. It makes scrap
+paper of all the solemn agreements men and nations have established for
+their mutual good.
+
+The rape of Belgium made scrap paper of international law. The sowing of
+mines in the fairways of commerce made scrap paper of the rights of
+neutral nations. The torture of the Belgian people made scrap paper of
+the rights of non-combatants.
+
+War may be never righteous, but it is sometimes honorable. In honorable
+war armies fight against armies, never against private citizens. If
+armies give no needless provocation, they will receive none. The sacking
+of Malines, Aerschot, Dinant--these are not acts of honorable war. The
+wreck of Louvain, historic Louvain, the venerable centre for 500 years
+of Catholic erudition, at the hands of blood-drunk soldiers was an act
+of dishonorable war. It marks a stain on the record of Germany which the
+ages will not efface.
+
+"A needed example," say the apologists for this crime. The Duke of Alva
+gave the same "needed example" to these same people in his day. For
+centuries the words "Spanish blood" struck terror into peoples' hearts
+throughout the Netherlands. For centuries to come the word Prussian will
+take its hated place.
+
+The good people of Germany do not burn universities. Neither do they
+make war for war's sake. They are helpless in the hands of a monster of
+their own creation. The affair at Zabern a year ago testifies to their
+complete subjugation. All the virtues are left to them, save only the
+love of freedom. This the mailed fist has taken away.
+
+The Germany of today is an anachronism. Her scientific ideals are of the
+twentieth century. Her political ideals hark back to the sixteenth. Her
+rulers have made her the most superb fighting machine in a world which
+is soul-weary of fighting. For a nation in shining armor the civilized
+World has no place. It will not worship them, it will not obey them. It
+will not respect those who either worship or obey. It finds no people
+good enough to rule other people against their will.
+
+A great nation which its own people do not control is a nation without a
+Government. It is a derelict on the international sea. It is a danger to
+its neighbors, a greater danger to itself. Of all the many issues, good
+or bad, which may come from this war, none is more important than this,
+that the German people should take possession of Germany.
+
+DAVID STARR JORDAN.
+
+Berkeley, Cal., Sept. 19, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Might or Right
+
+By John Grier Hibben.
+
+     President of Princeton University; author of works on logic
+     and philosophy.
+
+
+_The address printed below was delivered by President Hibben at the
+opening of the Laymen's Efficiency Convention in New York City, Oct. 16,
+1914._
+
+We are all of us sadly conscious of our failure to realize in any
+adequate measure the standards of right conduct which we set for
+ourselves. Attainment falls far short of purpose and desire. Through
+want of courage, or it may be of inclination, or of sheer inertia, we
+fail to obey perfectly the law of duty which we recognize as
+imperatively binding upon us. There is, however, a more subtle kind of
+failure as regards our moral endeavor and achievement which is due to
+the unconscious shifting of these standards of right and wrong
+themselves. It is not merely that we fail to do that which we know to be
+right, but at times the very idea of right itself is strangely altered.
+The good insensibly assimilates to itself certain elements of evil which
+we allow and accept without full realization of the significance of this
+moral alchemy to which the most fundamental of our ideas are often times
+subjected. The idea of right no longer stands in its integrity, but is
+compromised and even neutralized by conflicting thoughts and sentiments.
+The things which at one time held first place in our estimate of life
+become secondary. Our attitude toward men, and manners, and affairs
+experiences a radical change. This in most cases takes place
+unconsciously, or if conscious of it, we refrain from confessing it even
+to ourselves.
+
+There are some, however, who are both frank enough and bold enough to
+announce their belief in the radical doctrine which demands a complete
+transformation of essential values. For them, good is evil and evil
+good, and they seem not ashamed to avow it. The conspicuous German
+philosopher of later years, Nietzsche, with a naďve simplicity insists
+that the great need of our modern civilization is that which he
+designates as "the transvaluation of all values." By this he means the
+complete transformation of certain ideas of supreme value into their
+direct opposites. He declares, for instance, that the central virtues of
+Christianity, such as those of self-sacrifice, pity, mercy, indicate an
+inherent weakness of the human race, and that the strong man dissipates
+his energies through the offices of kindness and helpfulness. Thus the
+law which commands us to bear one another's burdens must be regarded as
+obsolete. Every man should be strong enough to bear his own burdens. If
+not, he is a drag to the onward progress of humanity, and to assist him
+is to do evil and not good. If you help the weak, you so far forth
+assist in perpetuating an inferior type of manhood.
+
+
+Nietzsche's "Moralic Acid."
+
+From this point of view, the definition of religion given in the Old
+Testament should be revised, "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly
+before thy God." In doing justice we must first be just to self; in
+loving mercy it must not be at the expense of our own interests and
+advantage, and we must not walk so humbly before our God as to give to
+the world the appearance of weakness or lack of independence. As
+Nietzsche insists, "The man who loves his neighbor as himself must have
+an exceedingly poor opinion of himself." If the race is to be perfected,
+everything and every person must be sacrificed in order to produce and
+preserve the strong man at all hazards. There is a kind of "moralic
+acid," as Nietzsche styles it, which is corroding the strength of
+humanity in our modern day. We have discoursed too much of character,
+too little of power; too much of self-sacrifice and too little of
+self-assertion; too much of right, too little of might. Conscience not
+only interferes with success, but also prevents the evolution of a
+superior type of man, that superman who is not constrained by duty nor
+limited by law, living his life "beyond good and evil."
+
+The serious question which presents itself to our minds at this time is
+whether our modern world has not been unconsciously incorporating these
+ideas into its living beliefs--that is, those beliefs which reveal
+themselves in actual living and doing, in daily purpose, in the
+adaptation of means to ends, in the deeds which the world honors, and in
+the achievements which it crowns with glory. There are many persons who
+would not have the frankness of Nietzsche to say that might makes right,
+and that a moral sense is the great obstacle to progress, and that in
+"vigorous eras noble civilizations see something contemptible in
+sympathy, in brotherly love, in the lack of self-assertion and
+self-reliance." Our modern world may not explicitly subscribe to such
+doctrines in their extreme and exaggerated expression, but nevertheless
+may be unconsciously influenced by them. Our real opinions, however, are
+to be tested by our sense of values as revealed by the things which we
+crave, which we set our hearts upon, which we strive early and late to
+gain, and sacrifice all else in order to secure. Have we not offered our
+prayers to the God of might rather than the God of righteousness, to the
+God of power rather than the God of justice, the God of mercy and of
+love?
+
+The time has come, in my opinion, for us to take account of the things
+which we really believe, and of the God Whom we really worship. If we
+have been following false gods, let us honestly endeavor to re-establish
+fundamental and essential values, to discover anew what is of supreme
+worth and set our faces resolutely toward its realization. The need of
+our modern world today is the same as that of the ancient world at the
+time of the coming of Christ. His message to the world as indicated by
+His teaching, and His life was an arraignment of the ancient régime as
+regards three crucial points.
+
+
+The Brotherhood of Man.
+
+First, the religious and moral beliefs of that age had become purely
+formal. There was the letter of conviction, but not the spirit of it.
+The creed, the ritual, the ceremony were there, but the life had
+departed. And so today our beliefs have lost vitality to a large extent
+because we have been content to indulge in formulas oft repeated, which
+have ceased to have significance for our thoughts or for our feelings.
+We have allowed ourselves to be betrayed by words which are mere sounds
+without substance. We have verbalized our beliefs, and have
+depotentialed them of vital significance. Take, for instance, the
+phrases, "The fatherhood of God" and "The brotherhood of man." They have
+been so often upon our lips as to become trite; their real meaning has
+disappeared. It is easy to repeat the words, and to be satisfied with
+the repetition, and nevertheless remain wholly insensible to their
+profound import, and under no compulsion whatsoever to obey their
+sublime command. We assent to the formula: but it does not become a
+determining factor in our purposes and plans. There is perhaps no age in
+the history of the world which has so emphasized the idea of the
+brotherhood of man as our own, and never in all history has there been
+such a denial of this idea as by the present European war. If the
+brotherhood of man had been the living, dominant idea of our
+civilization, could this present tragedy of the nations have occurred?
+If the world had believed profoundly in the idea of God, would we now be
+daily reading of the ghastly scenes where human life is no longer
+sacred, where love gives place to hate, where the constructive forces of
+the world are superseded by the destructive, and all the passions of
+man's brute inheritance are given full play and scope?
+
+Second--In the teachings of Christ there was a remarkable expansion of
+the idea of God. Instead of the tribal God worshipped as the God of
+Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, He substituted the idea of God, as the
+God of all peoples and all races, the God of the Jew and Gentile, of the
+Greek and barbarian, of the bond and the free. It was the great apostle
+of the Gentiles who at the centre of Greek civilization announced this
+fundamental conception of Christianity to the old world:
+
+     God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on
+     all the face of the earth.
+
+This was the sublime idea of the God of a united humanity. The God of
+the tribe had given place to the God of the whole world. That conception
+was very foreign to the popular religious notions current at the time
+of Christ, and it seems still further away from our ideas of the present
+day. It is a very narrow and circumscribed view of God to regard Him as
+concerned merely for our little insular affairs, to regard Him simply as
+a God of the individual or of the home, or even one's nation. He
+transcends all these limitations of particular interests and particular
+needs. He is not merely our God but the God of all mankind. The children
+of Israel called Him the God of battle, the God of hosts, that is, the
+one who would give victory to them in their battles, and who would prove
+the leader of their hosts. But Christ came to the world in God's name to
+universalize this narrow tribal idea of God, proclaiming peace on earth
+and good will to men. It was the dawn of a new era, the Christian era.
+That light which shone upon the old world is darkened by the cloud
+hanging low over Europe at the present time. We cannot think, however,
+that it is permanently extinguished. To that light the nations of the
+earth must again return.
+
+
+The Area of Moral Obligation.
+
+Third--Christ gave to the world of His day an enlarged idea of the area
+of moral obligation. He insisted most stoutly upon the expansion of the
+scope of individual responsibility. This freeing of the idea of duty
+from the limitations of race prejudice is a natural corollary to the
+idea of the universality of God's relation to the world. Corresponding
+to the tribal view of God there is always an accompanying idea of the
+restricted obligation of the individual. To care for one's own family or
+one's own clan or tribe and present a hostile front to the rest of
+mankind has always been the characteristic feature of primitive
+morality. It was peculiarly the teaching of Christ which brought to the
+world the idea that the area of moral obligation is co-extensive with
+the world itself. There are no racial or national lines which can limit
+the extent of our responsibility. The world today needs to learn this
+lesson anew, and it is evident that it must acquire this knowledge
+through bitter and desperate experiences. We must interpret in this
+large sense the great moral dictum of the German philosopher, Kant, that
+every one in a particular circumstance should act as he would wish all
+men to act if similarly circumstanced and conditioned. This is the
+complete universalizing of our moral obligations--stripping our sense of
+duty of everything that is particular and local and isolated. The
+natural tendency of human nature is to particularize our relations to
+God and bound our relations to our fellow-men; to narrow our relations
+to God so as to embrace only our direst needs, and to circumscribe our
+relations to man so as to include in the field of responsibility only
+those who are our kin or our own kind. The time has certainly come for
+us to take larger views of the world, of man, and of God.
+
+After the great calamity of this present war is passed there must
+necessarily follow a period of reconstruction. It will not be merely the
+reconstruction of national resources and international relations, but
+it must be also a reconstruction of our fundamental conceptions of man
+and of the relation of man to man the world over, and of the relation
+also of man to God. We must ask anew the question, Who is our neighbor?
+In this great moral enterprise you will naturally play a large and
+significant part, for you belong to the class of men who are expected to
+have strong and decided opinions in the face of a great world crisis,
+and are capable of leading others toward the goal of a regenerated
+humanity. To know the right and to maintain it, to fight against the
+wrong, to impart courage to the timid, strength to the weak, and hope to
+the faint-hearted; to forget self in the service of others and extend a
+human sympathy to the ends of the earth, this is your vocation. It is
+the call of the world, it is the voice of one calling to you out of a
+distant past across the nineteen Christian centuries; it is the "spirit
+of the years to come," summoning you to establish the Kingdom of God
+upon earth.
+
+
+
+
+JEANNE D'ARC--1914.
+
+By ALMA DURANT NICOLSON.
+
+
+    Rise from the buried ages, O thou Maid,
+    Rise from thy glorious ashes, unafraid,
+    And wheresoe'er thy Brothers need thee most,
+    Arise again, to lead thy tireless host.
+    France calls thee as she called in days gone by!
+    She calls thy spirit where her soldiers die;
+    She knows thy courage and thy sacrifice,
+    And wills today to pay the selfsame price,
+    All-confident that when the work is done,
+    She shall behold her Honor saved and Victory won.
+
+    God calls thee, Maid, from out the Past--
+    The Past of France where thy strange lot was cast--
+    And bid'st thee fling about this fearful hour
+    Thy dauntless Faith, that was thy magic Power.
+    And Freedom calls, with all-impelling voice,
+    She calls the Sons of France, and leaves no choice,
+    No waver and no alternating will;
+    Where Freedom calls, all other calls are still,
+    All-confident that when her work is done
+    Ye shall behold your Country saved and Victory won.
+
+
+
+
+The Kaiser and Belgium
+
+By John W. Burgess.
+
+     Dean of the Faculties of Political Science, Philosophy, Pure
+     Science, and the fine Arts at Columbia University; Roosevelt
+     Professor of American History and Institutions at Friedrich
+     Wilhelms University, Berlin, 1906-7; Visiting American
+     Professor to Austrian Universities, 1914-15; Decorated, Order
+     of Prussian Crown by the German Emperor and Order of the
+     Albrechts by the King of Saxony.
+
+
+FIRST ARTICLE.
+
+It is often said by historians that no truly great man is every really
+understood by the generation, and in the age, for which he labors. Many
+instances of the truth of this statement can be easily cited. Two of the
+most flagrant have come within the range of my own personal experience.
+The first was the character of Abraham Lincoln as depicted by the
+British press of 1860-64 and as conceived by the British public opinion
+of that era. Mr. Henry Adams, son and private secretary of Mr. Charles
+Francis Adams, our Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain during that
+critical era in our history, writes, in that fascinating book of his
+entitled "The Education of Henry Adams,"
+
+     that "London was altogether beside itself on one point, in
+     especial; it created a nightmare of its own, and gave it the
+     shape of Abraham Lincoln. Behind this it placed another demon,
+     if possible more devilish, and called it Mr. Seward. In regard
+     to these two men English society seemed demented. Defense was
+     useless: explanation was vain. One could only let the passion
+     exhaust itself. One's best friends were as unreasonable as
+     enemies, for the belief in poor Mr. Lincoln's brutality and
+     Seward's ferocity became a dogma of popular faith."
+
+Adams relates further that the last time he saw Thackeray at Christmas
+of 1863 they spoke of their mutual friend Mrs. Frank Hampton of South
+Carolina, whom Thackeray had portrayed as Ethel Newcome, and who had
+recently passed away from life. Thackeray had read in the British papers
+that her parents had been prevented by the Federal soldiers from passing
+through the lines to see her on her deathbed. Adams writes that
+
+     in speaking of it Thackeray's voice trembled and his eyes
+     filled with tears. The coarse cruelty of Lincoln and his
+     hirelings was notorious. He never doubted that the Federals
+     made a business of harrowing the tenderest feelings of
+     women--particularly of women--in order to punish their
+     opponents. On quite insufficient evidence he burst into
+     reproach. Had he (Adams) carried in his pocket the proofs that
+     the reproach was unjust he would have gained nothing by
+     showing them. At that moment Thackeray, and all London society
+     with him, needed the nervous relief of expressing emotions;
+     for if Mr. Lincoln was not what they said he was, what were
+     they?
+
+Mr. Lincoln sent over our most skillful politician, Thurlow Weed, and
+our most able constitutional lawyer, William M. Evarts, and later our
+most brilliant orator, Henry Ward Beecher, followed, for the purpose of
+bringing the British people to their senses and correcting British
+opinion, but all to little purpose. Gettysburg and Vicksburg did far
+more toward modifying that opinion than the persuasiveness of Weed, the
+logic of Evarts, or the eloquence of Beecher, and it took Chattanooga,
+the March to the Sea, and Appomattox to dispel the illusion entirely.
+
+Today we are laboring under a no less singular illusion than were the
+English in 1862. The conception prevailing in England and in this
+country concerning the physical, mental, and moral make-up of the German
+Emperor is the monumental caricature of biographical literature. I have
+had the privilege of his personal acquaintance now for nearly ten years.
+I have been brought into contact with him in many different ways and
+under many varying conditions, at Court and State functions, at
+university ceremonies and celebrations, at his table, and by his
+fireside surrounded by his family, when in the midst of his officials,
+his men of science, and his personal friends, and, more instructive than
+all, alone in the imperial home in Berlin and at Potsdam and in the
+castle and forest at Wilhelmshöhe. With all this experience, with all
+this opportunity for observation at close range, I am hardly able to
+recognize a single characteristic usually attributed to him by the
+British and American press of today.
+
+In the first place, the Emperor is an impressive man physically. He is
+not a giant in stature, but a man of medium size, great strength and
+endurance, and of agile and graceful movement. He looks every inch a
+leader of men. His fine gray-blue eyes are peculiarly fascinating. I saw
+him once seated beside his uncle, King Edward VII., and the contrast was
+very striking, and greatly in his favor.
+
+In the second place, the Emperor is an exceedingly intelligent and
+highly cultivated man. His mental processes are swift, but they go also
+very deep. He is a searching inquirer, and questions and listens more
+than he talks. His fund of knowledge is immense and sometimes
+astonishing. He manifests interest in everything, even to the smallest
+detail, which can have any bearing upon human improvement. I remember a
+half hour's conversation with him once over a cupping glass, which he
+had gotten from an excavation in the Roman ruin called the Saalburg,
+near Homburg. He always appeared to me most deeply concerned with the
+arts of peace. I have never heard him speak much of war, and then always
+with abhorrence, nor much of military matters, but improved agriculture,
+invention, and manufacture, and especially commerce and education in all
+their ramifications, were the chief subjects of his thought and
+conversation. I have had the privilege of association with many highly
+intelligent and profoundly learned men, but I have never acquired as
+much knowledge, in the same time, from any man whom I have ever met, as
+from the German Emperor. And yet, with all this real superiority of mind
+and education, his deference to the opinions of others is remarkable.
+Arrogance is one of the qualities most often attributed to him, but he
+is the only ruler I ever saw in whom there appeared to be absolutely no
+arrogance. He meets you as man meets man and makes you feel that you are
+required to yield to nothing but the better reason.
+
+
+A Man of Warm Affections.
+
+In the third place, the Emperor impressed me as a man of heart, of warm
+affections, and of great consideration for the feelings and well-being
+of others. He can not, at least does not, conceal his reverence for, and
+devotion to, the Empress, or his love for his children, or his
+attachment to his friends. He always speaks of Queen Victoria and of the
+Empress Friedrich with the greatest veneration, and once when speaking
+to me of an old American friend who had turned upon him he said that it
+was difficult for him to give up an old friend, right or wrong, and
+impossible when he believed him to be in the right. His manifest respect
+and affection for his old and tried officials, such as Lucanus and zu
+Eulenburg and von Studt and Beseler and Althoff, give strong evidence of
+the warmth and depth of his nature. His consideration for Americans,
+especially, has always been remarkable. It was at his suggestion that
+the exchange of educators between the universities of Germany and of the
+United States was established, and it has been his custom to be present
+at the opening lecture of each new incumbent of these positions at
+the University of Berlin, and to greet him and welcome him to his work.
+He is also the first to extend to these foreign educators hospitality
+and social attention. To any one who has experienced his hearty welcome
+to his land and his home the assertion that he is arrogant and
+autocratic is so far away from truth as to be ludicrous. Again I must
+say that I have never met a ruler, in monarchy or republic, in whom
+genuine democratic geniality was a so predominant characteristic.
+
+[Illustration: FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS
+
+_(Photo by the Misses Selby.)_
+
+_See Page 526_]
+
+[Illustration: RUDOLF EUCKEN
+
+_See Page 534_]
+
+But the characteristic of the Emperor which struck me most forcibly is
+his profound sense of duty and his readiness for self-sacrifice for the
+welfare of his country. This is a general German trait. It is the most
+admirable side of German nature. And the Emperor is, in this respect
+especially, their Princeps. I remember sitting beside him one day, when
+one of the ladies of his household asked me if I were acquainted with a
+certain wealthy ultra-fashionable New York social leader. I replied, by
+name only. She pressed me to know why not more nearly, why not
+personally. And to this, I replied that I was not of her class; that I
+could not amuse her, and that I did not approve of the frivolous and
+demoralizing example and influence of one so favorably circumstanced for
+doing good. The Emperor had heard the conversation, and he promptly
+said: "You know in Germany we do not rate and classify people by their
+material possessions, but by the importance of the service they render
+to country, culture, and civilization." One of his sons once told me
+that from his earliest childhood his father had instilled into his mind
+the lesson that devotion to duty and readiness for sacrifice were the
+cardinal virtues of a German, especially of a Hohenzollern. His days are
+periods of constant labor and severe discipline. He rises early, lives
+abstemiously and works until far into the night. There is no day laborer
+in his entire empire who gives so many hours per diem to his work. His
+nature is manifestly deeply religious and, in every sentence he speaks,
+evidence of his consciousness that the policeman's club cannot take the
+place of religious and moral principle is revealed. His frequent appeal
+for Divine aid in the discharge of his duties is prompted by the
+conviction that the heavier the duty the more need there is of that aid.
+
+
+His Passion for German Greatness.
+
+He undoubtedly has an intense desire, almost a passion, for the
+prosperity and greatness of his country, but his conception of that
+prosperity and greatness is more spiritual and cultural than material
+and commercial. More than once have I heard him say that he desired to
+see Germany a wealthy country, but only as the result of honest and
+properly requited toil, and that wealth acquired by force or fraud was
+more a curse than a blessing, and was destined to go as it had come. His
+conception of the greatness of Germany is as a great intellectual and
+moral power rather than anything else. Its physical power he values
+chiefly as the creator and maintainer of the conditions necessary to the
+production and influence of this higher power. I have often heard him
+express this thought.
+
+And in spite of this terrible war, the responsibility for which is by so
+many erroneously laid at his door, I firmly believe him to be a man of
+peace. I am absolutely sure that he has entered upon this war only under
+the firm conviction that Great Britain, France, and Russia have
+conspired to destroy Germany as a world power, and that he is simply
+defending, as he said in his memorable speech to the Reichstag, the
+place which God had given the Germans to dwell on. For seven years I
+myself have witnessed the growth of this conviction in his mind and that
+of the whole German Nation as the evidences of it have multiplied from
+year to year until at last the fatal hour at Serajevo struck. I firmly
+believe that there is no soul in this wide world upon whom the burden
+and grief of this great catastrophe so heavily rest as upon the German
+Emperor. I have heard him declare with the greatest earnestness and
+solemnity that he considered war a dire calamity; that Germany would
+never during his reign wage an offensive war, and that he hoped God
+would spare him from the necessity of ever having to conduct a defensive
+war. For years he has been conscious that British diplomacy was seeking
+to isolate and crush Germany by an alliance of Latin, Slav, and Mongol
+under British direction, and he sought in every way to avert it. He
+visited England himself frequently. He sent his Ministers of State over
+to cultivate the acquaintance and friendship of the British Ministers,
+but rarely would the British King go himself to Germany or send his
+Ministers to return these visits. More than once have I heard him say
+that he was most earnestly desirous of close friendship between Germany,
+Great Britain, and the United States, and had done, was doing, and would
+continue to do, all in his power to promote it; but that while the
+Americans were cordially meeting Germany half way, the British were
+cold, suspicious, and repellent.
+
+I know that the two things which are giving him the deepest pain in this
+world catastrophe, excepting only the sufferings of his own kindred and
+people, are the enmity of Great Britain and the misunderstanding of his
+character, feelings, and purposes in America. To remedy the first we
+here can do nothing, but to dispel the second is our bounden duty; and I
+devoutly hope that other evidence may prove sufficient to do this to the
+satisfaction of the minds of my countrymen than was necessary to
+convince the British Nation that the great-hearted Abraham Lincoln was
+not a brute nor the urbane William H. Seward a demon of ferocity.
+
+
+
+
+Reply to Prof. Burgess
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+The Burgess Kaiser is a truly admirable person. Every right-minded man
+will be only too glad to believe all that Prof. Burgess affirms of him.
+To be sure, there is a lurking sense that the professor "doth protest
+too much." But let that go. In the present topsy-turvy state of the
+world it is refreshing to hear of a man who loves his wife and children
+in the good, old way. But just now the world is not interested in the
+private, personal, peculiarly German characteristics of the Kaiser. We
+outsiders must take him as he is known to the international world. We of
+course trust that he is an able, cultivated, attractive gentleman. There
+are many such in the world. But this gentleman happens to be the head of
+one of the great nations. Our interest in him centres in his relations
+to his neighbor nations.
+
+An English friend of mine was appointed to duty in a tribe of savages in
+Africa. I dislike to call them savages after the testimony of my friend.
+But they were just plain, naked folk, living in primitive simplicity in
+their native land. The chief of this little tribe was, as my friend
+asserts, a superior man, and, in spite of his undress, a good deal of a
+gentleman. In physique he was superb. A sculptor's heart would have
+leaped for joy at sight of him. My friend said to see him teaching his
+young son to throw a spear was a sort of physical music. He himself
+could throw a spear to an incredible distance with the precision of a
+rifle shot. He ruled his little kingdom with surprising wisdom and
+fairness. He was welcomed everywhere among his people as the friend and
+counselor. His family relations were unimpeachable. The same was true
+throughout the tribe. He was devoutly pious. In short, he was a Burgess
+Kaiser in the small. But he was the war lord of all that region. He was
+fiercely jealous of all the neighboring tribes. He kept his own people
+armed and drilled to the top of efficiency, ready for attack or
+defense. He was noted for his hatred and contempt for his people except
+his own. His forays were marked by savage cruelty. His military
+necessities stopped at nothing.
+
+Need it be said that the surrounding tribes were in nowise interested in
+this chief's physique or domestic virtues, or in his fidelity to his own
+people? It is safe to affirm that the British Government did not ask
+whether he had the body of a Michael Angelo's David or of a baboon from
+the jungle. It did not ask whether he was good to his wife and children.
+Most animals are. It did not care how devoted he was to his fetich. The
+sole question was, What sort of public citizen is he? How does he stand
+related to surrounding peoples? On what terms does he propose to live
+with them? That precisely is what we want to know about the Kaiser.
+
+Fortunately, we do not have to ask Prof. Burgess, or any group of
+savants, or the German people. The Kaiser's record is known and read of
+all men.
+
+JAMES H. ECOB,
+
+American Institute of Social Service.
+
+New York, Oct. 21, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+PROF. BURGESS'S SECOND ARTICLE.
+
+The Guarantee of Belgian Neutrality
+
+
+So much has been said about Belgian neutrality, so much assumed, and it
+has been such a stumbling block in the way of any real and comprehensive
+understanding of the causes and purposes of the great European
+catastrophe, that it may be well to examine the basis of it and endeavor
+to get an exact idea of the scope and obligation.
+
+Of course, we are considering here the question of guaranteed
+neutrality, not the ordinary neutrality enjoyed by all States not at
+war, when some States are at war; the difference between ordinary
+neutrality and guaranteed neutrality being that no State is under any
+obligation to defend the ordinary neutrality of any other State against
+infringement by a belligerent, and no belligerent is under any special
+obligation to observe it. Guaranteed neutrality is, therefore, purely a
+question of specific agreement between States.
+
+On the 19th day of April, 1839, Belgium and Holland, which from 1815 to
+1830 had formed the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, signed a treaty
+of separation from, and independence of, each other. It is in this
+treaty that the original pledge of Belgian neutrality is to be found.
+The clause of the treaty reads: "Belgium in the limits above described
+shall form an independent neutral State and shall be bound to observe
+the same neutrality toward all other States." On the same day and at the
+same place, (London,) a treaty, known in the history of diplomacy as the
+Quintuple Treaty, was signed by Great Britain, France, Prussia, Austria,
+and Russia, approving and adopting the treaty between Belgium and
+Holland. A little later, May 11, the German Confederation, of which both
+Austria and Prussia were members, also ratified this treaty.
+
+In the year 1866 the German Confederation was dissolved by the war
+between Austria and Prussia, occasioned by the Schleswig-Holstein
+question. In 1867 the North German Union was formed, of which Prussia
+was the leading State, while Austria and the German States south of the
+River Main were left out of it altogether. Did these changes render the
+guarantees of the Treaty of 1839 obsolete and thereby abrogate them, or
+at least weaken them and make them an uncertain reliance? The test of
+this came in the year 1870, at the beginning of hostilities between
+France and the North German Union. Great Britain, the power most
+interested in the maintenance of Belgian neutrality, seems to have had
+considerable apprehension about it. Mr. Gladstone, then Prime Minister,
+said in the House of Commons: "I am not able to subscribe to the
+doctrine of those who have held in this House what plainly amounts to an
+assertion that the simple fact of the existence of a guarantee is
+binding on every party to it, irrespective altogether of the particular
+position in which it may find itself when the occasion for acting on the
+guarantee arises."
+
+
+A One-Year Treaty.
+
+Proceeding upon this view, the British Government then sought and
+procured from the French Government and from the Government of the North
+German Union separate but identical treaties guaranteeing with the
+British Government the neutrality of Belgium during the period of the
+war between France and the North German Union, the so-called
+Franco-Prussian war, which had just broken out, and for one year from
+the date of its termination. In these treaties it is also to be remarked
+that Great Britain limited the possible operation of her military force
+in maintaining the neutrality of Belgium to the territory of the State
+of Belgium.
+
+These treaties expired in the year 1872, and the present German Empire
+has never signed any treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium.
+Moreover, between 1872 and 1914 Belgium became what is now termed a
+world power; that is, it reached a population of nearly 9,000,000
+people, it had a well-organized, well-equipped army of over 200,000 men
+and powerful fortifications for its own defense; it had acquired and was
+holding colonies covering 1,000,000 square miles of territory, inhabited
+by 15,000,000 men, and it had active commerce, mediated by its own
+marine, with many, if not all, parts of the world. Now, these things are
+not at all compatible in principle with a specially guaranteed
+neutrality of the State which possesses them. The State which possesses
+them has grown out of its swaddling clothes, has arrived at the age and
+condition of maturity and self-protection, and has passed the age when
+specially guaranteed neutrality is natural.
+
+From all these considerations, I think it extremely doubtful whether, on
+the first day of August, 1914, Belgium should have been considered as
+possessing any other kind of neutrality than the ordinary neutrality
+enjoyed by all States not at war, when some States are at war. In fact,
+it remains to be seen whether Belgium itself had not forfeited the
+privilege of this ordinary neutrality before a single German soldier had
+placed foot on Belgian soil. A few days ago I received a letter from one
+of the most prominent professors in the University of Berlin, who is
+also in close contact with the Prussian Ministry of Education, a man in
+whose veracity I place perfect confidence, having known him well for ten
+years. He writes: "Our violation of the neutrality of Belgium was
+prompted in part by the fact that we had convincing proof that there
+were French soldiers already in Belgium and that Belgium had agreed to
+allow the French Army to pass over its soil in case of a war between
+France and us." Moreover, in the British "White Paper" itself, No. 122,
+is to be found a dispatch from the British Ambassador in Berlin, Sir E.
+Goschen, to Sir Edward Grey, containing these words: "It appears from
+what he [the German Secretary of Foreign Affairs] said that the German
+Government consider that certain hostile acts have already been
+committed by Belgium. As an instance of this, he alleged that a
+consignment of corn for Germany had been placed under an embargo
+already." The date of this dispatch is July 31, days before the Germans
+entered Belgium.
+
+But placing these two things entirely aside, as well as the new
+evidence, said to have just been found in the archives at Brussels, that
+Belgium had by her agreements with Great Britain forfeited every claim
+to even ordinary neutrality in case of a war between Germany and Great
+Britain, I find in the British "White Paper" itself, No. 123, not only
+ample justification, but absolute necessity, from a military point of
+view, for a German army advancing against France, not only to pass
+through Belgium, but to occupy Belgium. This number of the "White Paper"
+is a communication dated Aug. 1 from Sir Edward Grey to Sir E. Goschen,
+British Ambassador in Berlin. In it Sir Edward Grey informed Sir E.
+Goschen that the German Ambassador in London asked him "whether, if
+Germany gave a promise not to violate Belgian neutrality, we, Great
+Britain, would remain neutral," and that he [Grey] replied that he
+"could not say that," that he did not think Great Britain "could give a
+promise of neutrality on that condition alone"; further, Sir Edward Grey
+says: "The Ambassador pressed me as to whether I could not formulate
+conditions on which we would remain neutral. He even suggested that the
+integrity of France and her colonies might be guaranteed. I said that I
+felt obliged to refuse definitely any promise to remain neutral on
+similar terms, and I could only say that we must keep our hands free."
+
+
+The Necessary Invasions.
+
+After this Sir Edward Grey declared in Parliament, according to
+newspaper reports, that Great Britain stood, as to Belgian neutrality,
+on the same ground as in 1870. With all due respect, I cannot so
+understand it. In 1870 Great Britain remained neutral in a war between
+the North German Union and France, and, with the North German Union,
+guaranteed Belgium against invasion by France, and, with France,
+guaranteed Belgium against invasion by the North German Union. On Aug.
+1, 1914, the German Empire asked Great Britain to do virtually the same
+thing, and Great Britain refused. It is, therefore, Germany who stood in
+1914 on the same ground, with regard to Belgium neutrality, as she did
+in 1870, and it is Great Britain who shifted her position and virtually
+gave notice that she herself would become a belligerent. It was this
+notice served by Sir Edward Grey on the German Ambassador in London on
+Aug. 1, 1914, which made the occupation of Belgium an absolute military
+necessity to the safety of the German armies advancing against France.
+Otherwise they would, so far as the wit of man could divine, have left
+their right flank exposed to the advance of a British army through
+Belgium, and there certainly was no German commander so absolutely
+bereft of all military knowledge or instinct as to have committed so
+patent an error.
+
+Belgium has Great Britain to thank for every drop of blood shed by her
+people, and every franc of damage inflicted within her territory during
+this war. With a million of German soldiers on her eastern border
+demanding unhindered passage through one end of her territory, under the
+pledge of guarding her independence and integrity and reimbursing every
+franc of damage, and no British force nearer than Dover, across the
+Channel, it was one of the most inconsiderate, reckless, and selfish
+acts ever committed by a great power when Sir Edward Grey directed, as
+is stated in No. 155 of the British "White Paper," the British Envoy in
+Brussels to inform the "Belgian Government that if pressure is applied
+to them by Germany to induce them to depart from neutrality, his
+Majesty's Government expects that they will resist by any means in their
+power."
+
+It is plain enough that Great Britain was not thinking so much of
+protecting Belgium as of Belgium protecting her, until she could prepare
+to attack Germany in concert with Russia and France. She was willing to
+let Belgium, yea almost to command Belgium, to take the fearful risk of
+complete destruction in order that she might gain a little time in
+perfecting the co-operation of Russia and France with herself for the
+crushing of Germany, and in order to hold the public opinion of neutral
+powers, especially of the United States of America, in leash under the
+chivalrous issue of protecting a weaker country, which she has done
+little or nothing to protect, but which she could have effectively
+protected by simply remaining neutral herself.
+
+We Americans have been greatly confused in mind in regard to the issues
+of this war. We have confounded causes and occasions and purposes and
+incidents until it has become almost impossible for any considerable
+number of us to form a sound and correct judgment in regard to it. But
+we shall emerge from that nebulous condition. We are beginning to see
+more clearly now, and it would not surprise me greatly if the means used
+for producing our confusion would some day come back, if not to plague
+the consciences, at least to foil the purposes of their inventors.
+
+
+
+
+Reply to Prof. Burgess
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Prof. Burgess's amazing communication on Belgian neutrality omits an
+essential piece of evidence. Granting, for the sake of argument, that
+the German Empire might repudiate all treaty obligations of the earlier
+German confederations, (very odd law, this;) granting also the still
+more novel plea that Belgium had outgrown the need, and the privilege of
+neutralization, Germany had agreed to treat all neutral powers under the
+following provisions of The Hague Conventions of 1907 concerning the
+rights and duties of neutral powers:
+
+     1. The territory of neutral powers is inviolable.
+
+     2. Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or either
+     munitions of war or supplies across the territory of a neutral
+     power.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     5. A neutral power must not allow any of the acts referred to
+     in Articles 2 to 4 to occur on its territory.
+
+This pledge the German Empire had solemnly made only seven years ago. It
+would seem that Prof. Burgess may accept the distinction ably made by
+Prof. Münsterberg between "pledges of national honor" and mere "routine
+agreements," placing Hague treaties in the latter category.
+
+The allegation that France and England secretly did unneutral acts in
+Belgium is as yet without proof of any sort, and must be interpreted by
+the commonsense consideration that a neutral Belgium was a defensive
+bulwark for France and England. To have tampered with her neutrality
+would have been motiveless folly. How much more decent and moral than
+Prof. Burgess's meticulous weighing of national reincorporation as a
+means of evading national obligations is Chancellor Hollweg's robust
+plea of national necessity! Prof. Burgess's whole moral and mental
+attitude in this case seems to be that of a corporation lawyer getting a
+trust out of a hole under the Statute of Limitations or by some
+reorganizing dodge.
+
+FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jr.
+
+Princeton, N.J., Nov. 4, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+America's Peril in Judging Germany
+
+By William M. Sloane.
+
+     Late Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University;
+     ex-President National Institute of Arts and Letters and of the
+     American Historical Association; was secretary of George
+     Bancroft, the historian, in Berlin, 1873-5; author of works on
+     French History.
+
+
+The American public has been carefully trained to avoid entanglement
+with foreign affairs. This European war was so unexpected, so entirely
+unforeseen, that we were at first bewildered, and then exasperated, by
+our unreadiness to meet our own emergencies.
+
+In our effort to fix responsibility we then became partisan to the verge
+of moral participation and had to be called to our senses by the wise
+proclamation and warning of our Chief Magistrate.
+
+Western Europe is a nearer neighbor than either Central or Eastern, and
+what stern censors permit us to know is nicely calculated to arouse our
+prejudice on one side or the other. Believing that, owing to cable
+cutting and neutrality restrictions of wireless, as yet the plain truth
+is not available, we ask for a suspension of judgment on both sides in
+order that our Government may enjoy the undivided support of all
+American citizens in its desire to secure a minimum of disturbance to
+the normal course of our commercial, industrial, and agricultural life
+by convulsions that are not of our making.
+
+Fairness to ourselves means justice in the formation and expression of
+opinion about not one or two but all the participants in a struggle for
+European ascendency, with which we have nothing to do except as
+overwhelming victory for either side might bring on a struggle for world
+ascendency, with which, unhappily, we might have much to do. To
+contemplate such a terrible event should sober us; the best preparation
+for it is absolute neutrality in thought, speech, and conduct.
+
+Our own history since independence is an unbroken record of expansion
+and imperialism. Our contiguous territories have been acquired by
+compulsion, whether of war, of purchase, of occupation, or of exchange.
+We have taken advantage of others' dire necessity in the case of Great
+Britain, France, Spain, Russia, and Mexico.
+
+To rectify our frontier we compelled the Gladsden Purchase within the
+writer's lifetime. As to our non-contiguous possessions, we hold them by
+the right of conquest or revolution, salving our consciences with such
+cash indemnity as we ourselves have chosen to pay, and even now we are
+considering what we choose to pay, not what a disinterested court might
+consider adequate, for the good-will of the United States of Colombia, a
+good-will desired solely and entirely for an additional safeguard to the
+Panama Canal and a prop to the policy or doctrine substituted by the
+present Administration for the moribund Monroe Doctrine.
+
+In no single instance of virtual annexation or protectorate have we
+consulted by popular vote either the desires of those inhabiting the
+respective territories annexed or The Hague Tribunal. In every case we
+have had one single plea and one only--self-interest.
+
+The entire American continent south of our frontier we have closed to
+all European settlement, thereby maintaining for more than a century in
+a magnificent territory an imperfect civilization which makes a sorry
+use of natural resources which could vastly improve the condition of all
+mankind if properly used.
+
+This is the light in which European nations see us; our identity in
+this policy from the dawn of our national existence onward they consider
+a proof of our national character. It differs in no respect from their
+own policies except in one.
+
+But for them this exception is basic. We are a composite folk and they
+are homogeneous, their blend being approximately complete. They have one
+language, one tradition, one set of institutions and laws; a unity of
+literature, habits, and method in life. Some European States are
+composite, but each component part claims and cultivates its own style
+and its own principles; each announces itself as a nationality with a
+life to be maintained and a destiny to be wrought out somehow, either in
+peace or in conflict.
+
+With perhaps a single exception, they have an overflow of population,
+due to natural generation, for the comfort and happiness of which they
+seek either an expansion of territory or an improvement in the
+productivity of their home lands; for those who must emigrate they
+passionately desire the perpetuation of their nationality, with all it
+implies.
+
+In these respects they do not differ from us, except that perhaps we are
+more determined and imperious. We cannot think politically in any other
+terms than those of democratic government, either direct or
+representative.
+
+At the present hour we are engaged in the very dubious experiment of
+direct popular legislation and administration. We are trying to change
+our Government radically, discarding its representative form for that of
+delegation. The remotest cause of this is the desire to amalgamate all
+our elements into homogeneity. So far this policy has resulted in a
+demand, not for equality of political and civil rights, but for its
+overthrow, substituting laws intended to create social and economic
+equality by means of class legislation.
+
+These facts are not to the edification of other civilized States, and
+subject us to harsh and contemptuous criticism.
+
+It is likewise very interesting that apparently the American people
+believe in a monarchical democracy. One of our typical first citizens
+has recently expressed his antipathy to the phrases "My monarchy," "My
+loyal people," "My loyal subjects," used by one of the German monarchs
+in summoning the nation to war, as implying a dynastic or personal
+ownership of men.
+
+
+Averse from Militarism.
+
+The American masses dislike the sound of supreme war lord, but gladly
+admit their own Chief Magistrate to be Commander in Chief of the army
+and navy. To our ears the three German words are offensive, and well
+they may be, for in the treacherous literal translation they are willful
+perversion; but the much stronger English words are a delight to our
+democracy.
+
+The phrases of monarchy are constantly used in Great Britain by its King
+and its Emperor, but give no offense to his "loyal subjects," even the
+most radical, who delight in them, as apparently do our people of
+British origin. Why do they give such deep offense when employed by the
+German Government through its King and Emperor? The social
+stratification of Germany is not as marked as that of Great Britain; its
+aristocracy is far less powerful; and Edward VII. proved that an adroit
+and willful English monarch could involve his "loyal people" deeper in
+harmful, secret alliances than William II., whose alliances and policies
+were and are unconcealed.
+
+One of our greatest historians has earned a brilliant reputation in the
+conclusive proof that oceans are the world's highways, while its
+continents are its barriers. To the term "militarism" we attach an
+opprobrious meaning; militarism is the more infamous in exact proportion
+to its efficiency. We have been at little pains to define it, and as to
+certain of its aspects are curiously complacent.
+
+The basic principle of our own nationality has long been the very vague
+Monroe Doctrine, by the assertion of which we have prevented the
+establishment on our nearest and remotest frontiers of strong military
+powers, which might in certain events compel us to maintain a powerful
+and numerous standing army, or even introduce the compulsory military
+service of all voters, (women, of course, excepted.)
+
+Yet we propose to fight if necessary in order to prevent fighting, and
+to this end maintain the second strongest and, for its size, the most
+efficient fleet in the world. This is our militarism; that of Great
+Britain has been to maintain a fleet double our own or any other in
+size, for it is her basic principle to maintain an unquestioned
+supremacy on the highways of commerce. To this we have meekly assented,
+while other nations absorb our carrying trade and our flag waves over a
+fleet of perhaps a dozen respectable oceangoing trading and passenger
+ships. It is under her rather patronizing protection that we fight our
+foreign wars and by pressure from her that we manage the Panama Canal
+with nice and honorable attention to her interpretation of a treaty
+capable of quite a different one. Whether or not this be "militarism" of
+the utmost efficiency by sea is not difficult to decide. But we have
+never styled it infamous.
+
+While I am writing, Germans, whose basic principle is the most efficient
+"militarism" by land, are publishing all abroad that the "militarism" of
+France must be forever stamped out, so that they may dwell at peace in
+the lands which are their home.
+
+Within a generation France has accumulated a colonial empire second only
+to that of Great Britain, while she has incessantly demanded the
+reintegration of German lands, and especially a German city which she
+arbitrarily annexed and held by "militarism" for about five generations.
+The "militarism" of a republic and a democracy which retains the
+essential features of Napoleonic administration has been quite as
+efficient as that of a monarchical democracy like Great Britain, and may
+easily prove more efficient than that of a monarchy like Germany.
+
+Why should it be more infamous or barbarous in one case than the other?
+And with what is this efficient military democracy allied in the
+closest ties?
+
+With Russia, an Oriental despotism which by the aid of French money has
+developed a "militarism" by land so portentous in numbers, dimension,
+and efficiency that its movements are comparable to those of Attila's
+Huns. Escaped Russians in Western lands are denouncing German
+"militarism" as the incubus of the world.
+
+Which of the two should Americans regard as the greater danger?
+
+
+Menaces to Our Neutrality.
+
+It has wrung our hearts to consider the violation of Belgian neutrality,
+for which both France and eventually even Great Britain have long been
+prepared, but the latter has with little or no protest arranged with the
+"bear that walks like a man" to disregard contemptuously the neutrality
+of Persia in arranging spheres of influence, exactly as Japan, another
+ally, is contemptuously disregarding the neutrality of China, the new
+"republic" we were in such haste to recognize that we had to use the
+cable. And what about Korea? It is a Japanese province in contravention
+of the most solemn guarantees of its integrity.
+
+Leaving aside for the moment certain considerations like these, and they
+might easily be indefinitely amplified, which should compel Americans to
+unbiased consideration for others and preclude a dangerous partiality,
+let us ask ourselves how in the event of mediation we could be an
+impartial pacificator, behaving as we have hitherto done. The attitude
+of our Government has been strictly neutral, neutral to the verge of
+utter self-abnegation; and, as some regard it, timidity.
+
+But rock-fast as any democratic magistrate may be, public opinion must
+and does influence him. Rightly or wrongly his agents would be even more
+completely dominated, and rightly or wrongly they would be suspect in
+view of our terrific partisanship on both sides since the commencement
+of hostilities.
+
+The efficiency of Government organs in "producing the goods," the
+terrific power of organization on one side and mass on the other, have
+been considered a menace to world equilibrium.
+
+Whichever way the decision falls, the scrutiny of Europe will be turned
+to us. Unless observation and instinct be utterly at fault, we have for
+more than a decade been, after Germany, the worst-hated nation of all
+that are foremost.
+
+It is pre-eminently our affair to mind our own business, as others have
+minded theirs. Without cessation of noise and fury in America this is
+impossible.
+
+Indeed, our emotional storms have already furnished proof of how we are
+incapacitated from either enforcing our rights as neutrals or seizing by
+the forelock the opportunity afforded to us as neutrals and from
+enjoying the unquestioned privileges of neutrality.
+
+It is not altogether edifying to think that the close of the European
+struggle, be it long or short, will probably find our ocean commerce
+substantially where it was at the beginning, and that conflicts which
+were not of our making will have been fought out before we are able to
+secure our share of the world markets. Apparently the leaders in
+commerce, industry, and trade, like the lawmakers and administrators,
+are paralyzed by the imperative necessity of aiding panicstricken
+tourists and panicstricken stay-at-homes. Apparently, too, our people
+are suffering more in purse and general comfort than the actual
+combatant nations.
+
+Clamorous for American sympathy and cash, we have on our shores
+embassies from the belligerents, pleading their respective virtues and
+sorrows.
+
+Why, after all, should our chiefest concern be with them? Surely we may
+be good Samaritans without a total disregard of our own interests and a
+blindness to opportunity verging on impotency. There is no immorality in
+the proper play of self-interest. It is the conflict of interests which
+creates morality. But the spectators, even the maddest baseball "fans,"
+do not play the game nor train for it. It is high time we ceased wasting
+our energies in emotions and vain babble.
+
+At this writing the first line of defense against the Oriental deluge is
+endangered. The Slav individually and in his primitive culture is
+altogether charming. He is a son of the soil, picturesque in life and
+creative; he is minstrel and poet, seer. But so far he is the carrier of
+a low civilization, the prophet, priest, and king of autocracy and
+absolutism. Never has there been a time in history when the higher
+civilization was not in a savage struggle for existence. It is almost
+the first time in three centuries that the highest civilizations were in
+alliance with the lowest; not since the pugnacious Western powers of
+Europe sued for favor at the Sublime Porte.
+
+
+In Peril of the Whirlwind.
+
+This ought to be a very sobering spectacle, but it seems to arouse the
+delighted enthusiasm of an American majority. For such an aberration
+there is but a single and efficient remedy: absorption in our own
+affairs, the discriminating study of efficient methods to prevent our
+being caught up by a whirlwind, even the outer edges of which may snatch
+us into the vortex.
+
+To change the metaphor, we revel in the pleasant propulsion of the
+maelstrom's rim, unaware that every instant brings us closer to dangers,
+escape from which would demand herculean effort. Irresponsible emotions
+are, like those of the novel and the stage, when intensified to excess
+utterly incompatible with action. And just such a paralysis seems for
+six long weeks to have lamed the highest powers of America.
+
+The proportionate increase in population among the European powers is
+overwhelmingly in favor of the Slavs. Their rate of increase by natural
+generation is nearly three times that of even the Germans, with the
+result that by the introduction of enforced military service into
+Eastern Europe, (excepting Hungary and perhaps Rumania,) the military
+balance of power has been completely changed.
+
+The wars among the Balkan States, including Turkey, have put on foot
+armies of a dimension hitherto undreamed of among the South Slavs, and
+the army of Russia is probably two and a half times larger than it
+could have been thirty-five years ago.
+
+The method by which Eastern Europe has succeeded in financing itself is
+rather mysterious. We know, of course, that the original Franco-Russian
+Alliance was based on reciprocal interests, and that large sums of
+French money flowed into Russia, which partly developed the natural
+resources of Russia and were partly in the shape of loans that in all
+likelihood were used for war material.
+
+
+Slavs in Germany.
+
+The conflict between the Slavs and the Teutons all along the line on
+which they border has therefore been in two ways intensified. In the
+first place, just in proportion as Germany has become an industrial
+State, the field work has been intrusted to immigrant Slavs, some of
+whom come only for the season and return, but a very large number of
+them--estimated at the present moment at close to a million--have
+substantially settled within the borders of the German Empire. That is
+to say, there is a constant injection of 1-1/2 per cent. of Slavic blood
+into the territories of the German Empire.
+
+Suppose now that Russia should succeed in establishing the protectorate
+over all Slavs which she desires, and at the same time should press back
+the Germans on that border line, something very closely approximating a
+new migration of peoples in Europe will take place.
+
+As far as I know the German feeling, expressed both privately and
+publicly, officially and unofficially, they have hoped to maintain their
+complete consanguinity, if not homogeneity, within the lands they regard
+as their home; and their preparations for war, their increase of their
+military strength, have been made, professedly at least, solely in the
+interest of defense. Americans can simply not realize--it is impossible
+for them to realize--the difference in the degree of civilization and
+culture on either side of a purely artificial boundary line.
+
+Very fortunately it has entered the minds of several people lately to
+write to the newspapers about the unhappy confusion that comes from the
+use of words in a meaning which at home they do not connote at all.
+Take, for example, the whole question of militarism. As we see it, it is
+a matter altogether of degree. For defense against what the German
+considers the most terrible danger that he personally has to confront,
+it has been necessary from time to time to change both the size and the
+composition of his forces, whether offensive or defensive, and they
+therefore have introduced compulsory military service, an idea which has
+always been very offensive to Anglo-Saxons, but which in cases of dire
+necessity they have been compelled to utilize themselves, as, for
+example, during our own civil war, the abandonment of voluntary
+enlistment and the introduction of the draft.
+
+Now, the compulsory military service of the German means that every man
+is for a period of his life drafted and trained as a soldier. Forty
+years ago there were a great many men who escaped by reason of one or
+another provision of the law. That number was steadily diminished until
+within eighteen months, when finally it was proclaimed that every German
+who could endure the severity of that training must undergo it, and that
+was due to the fact that the military balance of power of which I spoke
+had been so completely changed by the re-armament of Russia and by the
+formation of the South Slav armies in the Balkan Peninsula.
+
+As a parallel we might imagine, not one troublesome neighbor, but four.
+We might imagine a tremendous military power developed in Canada, and we
+might imagine a hostile military power on the Atlantic side and another
+one on the Pacific side, in which case we would beyond a question have
+to expand our inchoate militarism, just in proportion as we came to feel
+the necessity for a strong physical defensive or offensive in the way of
+a great standing army, and we probably would do it without any
+hesitation.
+
+Now, Germany has not any really bitter foe on the north, although there
+is no love lost between the Germans and the Scandinavians; but it has an
+embittered foe on the east, and another one on the west, and what has
+proved to be an embittered foe upon the water and a very lukewarm
+neutral State on the south, a State which had joined in alliance with
+her.
+
+Italy had joined what Italy considered a defensive alliance, but not an
+offensive alliance, and chose to regard the outbreak of this war as an
+offensive movement on the part of Germany, and for that reason has
+refused to participate in the struggle.
+
+I say for that reason because, having been accustomed to reading, all my
+life, long diplomatic documents, really having been trained, you might
+say, almost in the school of Ranke, who was the inaugurator of an
+entirely new school of historical writing based on the criticism of
+historical papers, I have come to realize that the dispatches of trained
+diplomats are for the most part purely formal, and that while these
+respective publications of Great Britain and of Germany have a certain
+value, yet nevertheless the most important plans are laid in the
+embrasures of windows, where important men stand and talk so that no one
+can hear, or they are arranged and often times amplified in private
+correspondence which does not see the light until years afterward, and
+that the most important historical documents are found in the archives
+of families, members of which have been the guiding spirits of European
+policy and politics.
+
+So that what the secret diplomacy of the last years may have been is as
+yet utterly unknown, and certainly will not be known for the generation
+yet to come and perhaps for several generations. The student in almost
+any European capital is given complete access to everything on file in
+the archives, including secret documents, only down to a certain date.
+That date differs in various of these storehouses, but I think in no
+case is it later than 1830.
+
+If you ask why, there are the sensibilities of families to be
+considered, there is the question of hidden policies which they do not
+care to reveal, and then there is the whole matter of who the examining
+student is. For instance, certain very important papers were absolutely
+denied to me, as an American, in Great Britain--or at least excuses were
+made if they were not absolutely denied--which were opened to an
+Englishman who was working upon the same subject at about the same time.
+
+The reason for such observations at the present hour is plain enough.
+Public opinion is formed upon what the public is permitted to know, and
+is not formed upon the actual facts which the public is not permitted to
+know. And for that reason Americans, remote as we are from the sources
+of information, and especially remote from that most delicate of all
+indications, the pulse of public opinion in foreign countries, ought to
+be extremely slow to commit themselves to anything.
+
+
+Attack on Sir Edward Grey.
+
+Now, we have just had a very interesting incident. THE NEW YORK TIMES
+printed recently what the British call their "White Paper," as well as
+the German "White Paper." The editors of our most important journals
+announced that they had read and studied those papers with care, and
+that on the face of those papers, beyond any peradventure, Germany was
+the aggressor. German militarism had flaunted itself as an insult in the
+face of Europe. Germany had violated neutrality, Germany had committed
+almost every sin known to international law, and therefore the whole
+German procedure was to be reprobated.
+
+Within a very short time a Labor member of Parliament, J. Ramsay
+Macdonald, rises in his place, able and fearless, and, on the basis of
+the "White Paper," as published and put in the hands of the British
+public, attacks Sir Edward Grey for having so committed Great Britain in
+advance to both Russia and France that, in spite of the representations
+of the German Ambassador, he dared not discuss the question of
+neutrality. This member of Parliament manifestly belongs to the powerful
+anti-war party of Great Britain, a party two of whose members, John
+Burns and Lord Morley, resigned from the Cabinet rather than condone
+iniquity; a party which before the outbreak of the war made itself
+heard and felt, and protested against the participation of Great
+Britain, desiring localization of the struggle.
+
+Mr. Macdonald says that in his opinion this talk about the violation of
+Belgian neutrality, from the point of view of British statesmen, is
+absurd, because as long ago as 1870 the plans for the use of Belgium,
+both by France and by Germany--in other words, the violation of its
+neutrality--were in the British War Office, and that Mr. Gladstone rose
+in his place and said he was not one of those whose opinion was that a
+formal guarantee should stand so far in thwarting the natural course of
+events as to commit Great Britain to war; and that has been the
+announced and avowed policy of Great Britain all the way down since
+1870, and that therefore talk about the violation of Belgian neutrality
+is a mere pretext.
+
+That is another instance of this secret agreement that goes on, which so
+commits a man like Sir Edward Grey that in the pinch, when the German
+Ambassador substantially proposed to yield everything to him and asked
+him for his proposition, he cannot make any.
+
+These facts are in the "White Paper." As far as I know, no editor in the
+United States who claims to have studied thoroughly that "White Paper"
+has ever brought this out, and they had not been published in that paper
+at the time when Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith made their respective
+speeches and committed the British Nation to the war.
+
+Another unhappy use of language which has been noted in the public press
+is due to the literal translation of words. Americans simply do not know
+what the word Emperor means. To most of them it connotes the later Roman
+Emperors, or the autocratic Czar of Russia, or the short-lived but
+autocratic quality of Napoleon III., so that when we use the word
+Emperor we are thinking of an absolutely non-existing personage, unless
+it be the Czar of Russia.
+
+We like very much to make sport of phrases from languages unfamiliar to
+us, and we enjoy the jokes of ludicrous translations, and so we take
+the term "Oberster Kriegsherr" and we translate it "Supreme War Lord."
+What conception the average American forms of that is manifest. Whereas,
+as a matter of fact--and this has already been pointed out both in
+conversation and in public prints--the term means nothing in the world
+but Commander in Chief of the German Empire, has not any different
+relation whatsoever in the substance of its meaning than that which
+Presidents of the United States have been in time of supreme danger to
+the country. Mr. Lincoln was just as much an "Oberster Kriegsherr" at
+one period of his term as the German Emperor could ever be; in fact,
+rather more.
+
+
+Sherman's March to the Sea.
+
+In truth, the sense of outrage which Americans feel over the horrors of
+war, while most creditable to them, is very often based upon an
+ignorance of the rules and regulations of so-called civilized warfare,
+and upon a sentimentality, which, though also very creditable, is
+unfortunately not one of the factors in the world's work. It would not
+hurt Americans occasionally to recall Sherman's march to the sea, during
+which every known kind of devastation occurred, or to recall Gen.
+Hunter's boast that he had made the Valley of Virginia such a desert
+that a crow could not find sustenance enough in it to fly from one side
+to the other, and yet at that time, in what we considered the supreme
+danger to our country, the conduct of those men was approved, and they
+themselves were almost deified for their actions.
+
+While parallels are dangerous and the existence of one wrong does not
+make another action right, yet at the same time a very considerable
+amount of open-mindedness must be exercised in a neutral country when
+regarding the passionate devotions of combatant nations to their
+culture, to their safety, to their interest; and it should be recalled
+that in the heats and horrors of war it is extremely difficult, however
+trained or disciplined troops may be, to prevent outrages, and that so
+far as we have gone in accurate information the least that can be said
+is that it is slowly dawning upon us that horror for horror and outrage
+for outrage there has been no overwhelming balance on either side.
+
+The Allies (this interview was received Tuesday morning) firmly believe
+that the struggle on the west is so indecisive up to this time that what
+will count for them is the duration of the war. Lloyd George has just
+said, not in the exact language, but virtually, what Disraeli said in
+1878: "We don't want to fight; but, by jingo, if we do we have got the
+ships, we have got the men, we have got the money, too." Those are the
+words that brought into use the expression "jingoists."
+
+Now, Lloyd George said the other day that it was the money which in the
+long run would count and that Great Britain had that; and the meetings
+that are held to induce Englishmen to enlist are addressed by speakers
+who meet with lots of applause when they say: "We may not be able to put
+the same number of men into the field immediately that Germany was able
+to put or Russia was able to put, but in the long run, considering the
+attitude of all the different parts of our empire, we will be able to
+put just as many men, and therefore time is on our side both as regards
+force in the field and money to sustain it." (The London Times confesses
+that enlistment in Ireland is a failure.)
+
+Lloyd George says that for a comparatively short time England's enemies
+can finance themselves and be very efficient, but that as time passes
+they unquestionably will exhaust not only their pecuniary means but
+their resources of men as well. That is his position at this time.
+Therefore, it does appear as if the long duration of the war was a thing
+desired, at least in Great Britain, as being their hope of victory. Both
+Great Britain and France are wealthy countries. Just how wealthy Germany
+is I do not think they realize, nor do we know, nor what its ultimate
+resources can be.
+
+Now, looking at the allied line as a whole, we will suppose that the
+German forces were overwhelmingly triumphant in France, and suppose,
+likewise, which is by no means as strong a hypothesis, that Russia is
+overwhelmingly victorious against Austria and the Eastern German Army;
+then, of course, you have the situation in which that one of the Allies
+which is triumphant will assert its leadership in the terms of peace
+that will be reached, and would have the hegemony, as we call it, of all
+Europe.
+
+
+Russia's Position.
+
+So that the defeat of the Allies in the west and their overwhelming
+success in the east would compel the acceptance, in any peace that might
+be made, of such terms as Russia chose to dictate. She would have to be
+satisfied, otherwise there would only be one outcome of it; that is, of
+course, if Great Britain and France could not accept those terms, there
+would be a rupture, and stranger things have been seen than Germany,
+France, and Great Britain fighting against Russia.
+
+Stranger things than that have been seen; such changes in the alliances
+between States have occurred at intervals from the seventeenth century
+onward in Europe, a phase of the subject that is too lengthy to discuss
+here, but which every student of history knows all about. And it is
+thinkable that they might occur again.
+
+Suppose, on the other hand, that the Germans should imitate Frederick
+the Great, which is not so preposterous as appears on the face of it,
+because of comparatively easy means of transportation, and should be
+able to make successive victorious dashes, first in the east and then in
+the west, backward and forward; leadership would be hers, and France
+would be a minor power for years to come.
+
+Probably peace might come more quickly if neither side should be
+absolutely victorious than otherwise. But for the moment I think that
+the agreement among the Allies is a very portentous thing, as far as the
+duration of the war is concerned.
+
+"Do you think that any secret agreement may exist; that France even now
+may have made an agreement with Germany?" Mr. Sloane was asked.
+
+I cannot think so. I think it very evident there is no such secret
+agreement. If one existed it would be much more likely to be between
+Russia and Germany. You remember the development of Prussia, which is,
+of course, the commanding State in the German Empire, occurred by its
+careful conservation of the policy which was laid down in the political
+will of Frederick the Great, that of keeping friends with Russia.
+
+The fact of the matter is, Prussia was saved in the Napoleonic wars by
+the act of Gen. Yorck at Tauroggen, when he suddenly abandoned the
+French and went over to the Prussians, and while Russia has within half
+a generation become intensely bitter against Germany, yet it is true
+that the Baltic Provinces, in which the gentry and the burghers are
+Germans, have furnished most important administrators to the Russian
+Empire, a fact that causes much of the jealousy in Russia on the part of
+the native-born Russians against the Germans of the Baltic Provinces.
+Nevertheless, self-interest is a very important thing, and if Russia
+thought for a moment that France was going to abandon her I think she
+would turn to Germany right away.
+
+As time has developed the nations of today, it has come to be understood
+by hard-headed statesmen that those who conduct their respective affairs
+can have no other guiding principle than the interest of their own
+State, no other.
+
+There is a persistent feeling throughout the world that there is an
+analogy between the individual man and organized society. There are
+books written to show that States must and do pass through the various
+stages through which an individual passes, namely, infancy, childhood,
+youth, middle age, old age, decay. By a perfectly natural parallel the
+majority of men apply the same morality to the State which they apply to
+the individual, and they insist upon it that a State must be moral in
+every respect; that it must have a conscience; that it must have virtue;
+that it must practice self-denial; that it must not lay its hands on
+what does not belong to it. In short, that it must as a State or as a
+nation be "good," in exactly the same sense in which a person is "good."
+In other words, they personify the State.
+
+I have never heard of any speaker or writer who would not approve of
+that as an ideal, and who would not desire that the millennium should
+come upon earth now, and that exactly the same virtues that are held up
+for personal ideals should be held up for national ideals.
+
+I think we all believe that, but, as a matter of fact, in a world
+constituted as ours is, the one test of a good Government, applied by
+every individual, is the material prosperity of the people who live
+under it, and for that reason if the people do not at first put in power
+men who can give them material prosperity they will put such failures
+out and try another set of rulers, and they will go on and on that way
+until necessarily the policies of statesmen must be based upon the
+interest of that State whose destinies are in their hands. So that the
+only hope of relations between nations similar to those that exist
+between good men and good women is that the individuals of that nation,
+its population, its inhabitants, should consent to exercise the
+self-denying virtues; and until that point is reached there can be no
+good State in the sense in which there can be a good man. We ought all
+to work for it, but it is not here now, and there are no signs on the
+horizon of its approach.
+
+In a war, therefore, every statesman studies the resources of his
+nation, and when the time comes that it is manifestly his duty to put an
+end to warfare, it is only by the public approval that he dares do it,
+by showing that it is to their advantage to give up the things for which
+they went to war, in greater or less degree.
+
+
+Armed Peace Not Disarmament.
+
+And the man of shrewd insight, who knows when that point is reached, is
+the leader who saves the face, so to speak, of these nations and steps
+in and says:
+
+"Now, the whole moral force of the civilized world must be brought to
+bear upon you to make a peace, the terms of which, if possible, shall
+not discredit any of you, but at the same time shall be as elastic and
+as proportionate to your respective gains and losses as will insure at
+least a considerable period of peace, not an armistice, not an armed
+armistice, though it may be an armed peace."
+
+We see no signs anywhere in Europe that disarmament has any substantial
+body of advocates in any nation. The basic principle hitherto of the
+German people has been to have, not the largest, but the strongest army;
+the basic principle of Great Britain, which sneers at militarism, has
+been not only to have the most powerful fleet, but twice the most
+powerful fleet.
+
+And what is the basic principle of the United States? The Monroe
+Doctrine, to have no armed neighbor which shall compel us to violate by
+its presence our dislike for compulsory military service or to expend
+great sums for armament.
+
+These are basic principles in each of us. Now, we have been able to
+maintain the Monroe Doctrine by simply showing our teeth, but whether we
+could maintain it in the future without an armed force sufficient to
+give it sanction I think is doubtful, and for that reason the Monroe
+Doctrine has undergone quite a number of modifications which I do not
+need to explain here.
+
+But this basic principle of ours that from Patagonia to the Mexican
+frontier we will suffer no armed nation of Europe to make permanent
+settlement and endanger our peace is exactly the same sort of principle
+that the German holds when he says, "We must have the strongest army,"
+and the same which the Englishman holds when he says, "We must have the
+strongest fleet."
+
+I want it distinctly understood that I am not a partisan. I am not pro
+this or pro that or pro anything except pro-American, and the principal
+impulse I have in trying to clarify my mind is my hope that there may be
+an end to these hysterical exhibitions of partisanship, in which
+(throughout this neutral nation) men indulge who still hold too
+strongly, as I think, to the glory, honor, dignity, and traditions of
+the lands of their origin.
+
+
+
+
+An Answer by Prof. Ladd
+
+     Emeritus Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at Yale
+     University; Lecturer on Philosophy in India and Japan; has
+     received numerous decorations in Japan, where he was guest and
+     unofficial adviser of Prince Ito; ex-President of American
+     Psychological Association.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+It seems strange to me that a student of history with the training and
+acumen of Prof. Sloane should overlook or minimize the important
+distinction that must hold the chief place in enabling us to understand
+the issues and appreciate the merits of the war now raging in Europe.
+This distinction is that between the German people and Germanic
+civilization, on the one hand, and, on the other, the present
+Constitution and cherished ambitions of the German Empire under the
+dominance of Prussia. The German people, by genuine processes of
+self-development, have worked out for themselves a veritable spiritual
+unity which manifests itself in language, laws, customs, and a large
+measure of substantial uniformity in moral and religious ideals.
+Germanic civilization, with its love of order, its high estimate of
+education, its notable additions to science, philosophy, and art,
+constitutes one of the most noble and beneficent contributions to the
+welfare of mankind.
+
+But the case is not at all the same with the German Empire as at present
+constituted. It is not a historical development, a truly national
+affair, as are the Empire of Great Britain, the Republics of France and
+the United States, or the Empires of Russia and Japan. It is a modern
+combination of politically divergent unities, forced by the ruthless but
+infinitely shrewd policy of Bismarck and his coadjutors, misdirected and
+perhaps driven to ruin by the man and his entourage, who, even if he is
+King of Prussia "by the grace of God," is only Emperor of Germany "by
+the will of the Princes."
+
+We are diligently given to understand that all these "Princes" and all
+the German people have entered heart and soul into this war, and without
+the slightest doubt as to its righteousness and as to the destiny of the
+empire, this modern military autocracy, ultimately to be completely
+victorious. This is hard to believe, although it must be admitted that
+the cowardice of the Socialists and the obsession of the professors are
+remarkable phenomena. As to the latter, however, we must remember their
+dependence on the Government, not only for their information and their
+"call" to speak, but also for their positions in the Government system
+of education.
+
+As to the significance of the two names most prominently quoted in this
+connection, I am not at all impressed, as so many of my colleagues
+appear to be. An intimate friend of mine some twenty years ago was
+several weeks en pension in the same house where Haeckel had his
+apartment, and even then he was notorious for his hatred of foreigners
+and of women. Those of us who have followed closely his career know how
+often he has written with more than German professorial virulence
+against those who differed from his theory of evolution, and that he is
+at present scarcely more abusive of England than he has several times
+been of his own Government and of the State Church because his system
+was not made a matter of compulsory teaching. As to Eucken, the reasons
+for his obsession are quite different. In his case the feeling and the
+utterance are due to intellectual weakness rather than to virulence of
+passion.
+
+After all, however, the temper of military and imperial Germany under
+the dominance of Prussia has been essentially the same from the
+beginning. In illustration of this, let me quote for your readers from a
+poem of Heine, written as long ago as 1842. I do this the more readily
+because I have recently seen, to my astonishment, Heine placed beside
+Goethe as representing the better temper of the Germanic civilization as
+opposed to the blinded judgment and immoral hatred of the modern German
+Empire:
+
+    Germany's still a little child,
+      But he's nursed by the sun, though tender;
+    He is not suckled on soothing milk,
+      But on flames of burning splendor.
+
+    One grows apace on such a diet;
+      It fires the blood from languor;
+    Ye neighbor's children, have a care,
+      This urchin how ye anger!
+
+    He is an awkward infant giant,
+      The oak by the roots uptearing;
+    He'll beat you till your backs are sore,
+      And crack your crowns for daring.
+
+    He is like Siegfried, the noble child,
+      That song-and-saga wonder,
+    Who, when his fabled sword was forged,
+      His anvil cleft in sunder!
+
+    To you, who will our Dragon slay,
+      Shall Siegfried's strength be given;
+    Hurrah! how joyfully your nurse
+      Will laugh on you from heaven!
+
+    The Dragon's hoard of royal gems
+      You'll win, with none to share it;
+    Hurrah! how bright the golden crown
+      Will sparkle when you wear it!
+
+But it would not be stranger than many other things which have happened
+in human history if the defeat of German military imperialism should
+result in restoring to Europe and spreading more widely over the world
+the beneficent influence of Germanic civilization. Certainly they are
+not the same thing, and they do not stand or fall together.
+
+GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD.
+
+Yale University, Oct. 20, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Possible Profits From War
+
+INTERVIEW WITH FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS.
+
+     Dr. Giddings is Professor of Sociology and the History of
+     Civilization at Columbia University; author of many works on
+     sociology and political economy; President of Institut
+     Internationale de Sociologie, 1913.
+
+By Edward Marshall.
+
+
+No man in the United States is better entitled to estimate the probable
+social and economic outcome of the present European debacle than Prof.
+Franklin H. Giddings of Columbia, one of the most distinguished
+sociologists and political economists in the United States.
+
+"Today all Europe fights," he said to me, "but, also, today all Europe
+thinks."
+
+That is an impressive sentence, with which he concluded our long talk,
+and with which I begin my record of it.
+
+He believes that this thinking of the men who crouch low in the drenched
+trenches and of the women who tragically wait for news of them will
+fashion a new Europe.
+
+He agrees with the remarkable opinions of President Butler, that that
+new Europe will be marked by the rise of democracy.
+
+He sees the probability of broadened individual opportunity in it,
+accompanied by the breaking down of international suspicions; and he
+thinks that all these processes, which surely make for peace, will
+surely bring a lasting peace.
+
+In the following interview, which Prof. Giddings has carefully reread,
+will be found one of the most interesting speculative utterances born of
+the war.
+
+"The immediate economic cause of the war," said Prof. Giddings, "lay in
+the affairs of Servia and Austria. Servia had been shut in. She had been
+able to get practically nothing from, and sell practically nothing to,
+the outside world, save by Austria's permission, while Austria, with
+Germany professing fear of Slavic development, for years had been taking
+every care to prevent the Balkan peoples from having free access to the
+Adriatic.
+
+"Some financial profit arose from this interning of the little States,
+but it is probable that the desire for this was all along entirely
+secondary to the fear of Balkan, especially Servian, political and
+economic development.
+
+"In the larger economic question Germany felt especial interest.
+
+"In a comparatively few years she had made the greatest progress ever
+made by any nation in an equal time, with the possible exception of that
+made by the United States in a similar period after our civil war, and
+it is probable that not even our own advance has equaled hers in
+rapidity or extent, if all could be tabbed up.
+
+"She had worked out a great manufacturing scheme, she had developed an
+immense internal commerce by means of her railroads and her Rhine and
+other waterways, she had built up an enormous trade with Eastern Europe,
+Western Asia, South America, and the United States.
+
+"She had highly specialized in and become somewhat dependent on the
+production of articles like dyestuffs and the commodities of the
+pharmacopoeia.
+
+"Her shipping had advanced until it closely crowded England's; her
+finances, on the whole, were well handled and her credit was excellent,
+while her wonderful system of co-operation between the Government and
+manufacturing producers and commercial distributers of all kinds had
+become the admiration of all nations. The extent to which her Government
+facilitated foreign trade through obtaining and distributing costly
+information might well be taken as the world's model.
+
+"Whatever claims be made or contested about her contributions to culture
+and theoretical science, there can be no argument about her material
+achievements."
+
+
+German Achievements.
+
+"Along every line her social organization of co-operation between the
+Government and the people successfully handled problems feared by all
+the outside world. While, as a result of the development of humane
+feeling, England and the United States have been saying that ignorance,
+vagabondage, and misery ought to be abolished, Germany has said, 'They
+shall be!' And, saying it, she had actually commenced to abolish them.
+
+"She had cut down enormous wastes of human energy and, for the first
+time in the history of the world, had established an economic minimum
+below which men and families were not permitted to sink.
+
+"The cost of this was large; for insurance, colonies for tramps and
+vagabonds, employment agencies, and the like; but Germany made it pay in
+the creation of a nation built of loyal and efficient people. Both their
+loyalty and their efficiency have been proved and reproved in the course
+of the present struggle. They had accomplished marvels, they were ready
+for amazing sacrifices.
+
+"Now, one of the principal reasons why Germany was able to do these
+things, although, she probably ignored it and possibly would deny it, is
+to be found in the free-trade policy of England.
+
+"At any time during the past twenty years England could have checked
+German progress effectively by the establishment of a protective tariff
+system designed to encourage her own colonies and other nations with
+whom she had long been on friendly and influential terms, to the utmost
+development of exclusive trade privileges designed to shut out Germany.
+Except for the long-established English policy of commercial freedom
+Germany could not have accomplished for herself what she has.
+
+"Germany has been growing rapidly. Her birth rate has been high, but of
+late it has been falling, and when the war began there were indications
+that she soon would approach the low ratio of population increase
+already characteristic of France, of New England and the Middle West in
+the United States, and lately of England. But Germany's population was
+still a growing one and, in a sense, a restive one.
+
+"The Malthusian theory has not worked out in the civilized world as
+Malthus supposed it would, for the application of science to
+manufacturing, agriculture, &c., has prevented increasing populations
+from pressing upon the means of subsistence; but in all parts of the
+Western World the standards of living have been raised, the ambitions of
+the average man and woman have expanded. They have lived better than
+their parents lived, and they have wished their children to live better
+still.
+
+"However, we can place no limit upon the probable expansion of human
+desires, and it is true that a population unchecked by the intelligent
+action of the human will tends to increase at a rate more rapid than
+that at which it is possible to raise the actual plane of human living.
+
+"The speed of the working of the two rules is different, perhaps, but
+both are dynamic, and the population of Germany tended to grow more
+rapidly than betterment of conditions could be provided, even under the
+nation's splendid governmental and commercial efficiency.
+
+"The natural yearning of the nation, therefore, was toward colonial
+expansion, and, although note that I make no charges against either the
+German Government or German people, the nation probably has wished
+sovereignty over Western Europe, through Belgium and Holland to the sea.
+Its narrow outlet through Hamburg and Bremen was insufficient for its
+needs.
+
+"Of course, its trade and economic advance has sometimes conflicted
+with that of other nations. It is natural for Germany to suppose that
+England tried to block it. However, I think that all the evidence which
+Germany has brought forward in proof of this is weak and improbable,
+because England's great source of revenue has been her foreign trade,
+and, above all, her carrying trade, and I am not partisan but stating
+the obvious when I say that England prospers when the rest of the world
+prospers, and that she has profited mightily through Germany's
+commercial advance.
+
+"These facts point to the conclusion that Germany really had everything
+to gain by avoiding war and continuing her prosperous expansion along
+commercial lines, increasing the strength of her grip in foreign
+countries, as, for example, in South America."
+
+
+Germany's Prosperous Commerce.
+
+"In South America we Americans were not really competing with her. She
+had studied the market and adopted the methods necessary to its
+satisfaction; we had not. England was relatively losing her hold there.
+In another twenty years Germany surely would have been one of the
+greatest commercial and manufacturing nations which the world has ever
+known. So it was not economic necessity, nor pressure approaching
+economic necessity, which precipitated this war.
+
+"I think the German people, as they professed to do, did become greatly
+alarmed over a possibility, magnified into a probability, that Russia,
+taking up the cause of the Balkan peoples, would obtain Constantinople,
+that Servia would make her way to the Adriatic, and that all possibility
+of the expansion of Germany to the southeast would be blocked, and
+Germany probably became alarmed over England's intentions--there were
+many indications of something close to panic in Germany after it was
+generally understood that King Edward figured in the pact with France.
+
+"I, for one, do not believe that the German fears of England were well
+grounded; I do not believe that in the excitement the German mind worked
+discriminatingly or that it is working with discrimination today. I
+think that Germany has presented an extraordinary example of nation-wide
+mobmindedness in a situation which offered nothing but ruin through war
+and boundless advantages if she sat tight and waited for some one else
+to strike the first blow, which, then, probably never would have been
+struck.
+
+"So, although I have outlined what I think may fairly be regarded as
+some of the economic conditions contributing to the war, I do not think
+that it is entirely to be explained by economic causes.
+
+"They fail to account for the actual precipitation of the conflict. I
+think that there is no explanation of that, short of recognition of an
+abnormal reaction of the German mind to a situation the nature of which
+was mistaken, or, at least, exaggerated.
+
+"And, of course, there were other factors concerning which we shall not
+know the truth for years, such as the personal influence of individual
+minds in the German and other Governments. It will be long before the
+complete history of the acts and negligence of diplomats and other
+responsible Ministers will be written."
+
+I asked Prof. Giddings if, in his opinion, the struggle is likely to
+result in any wide and profound change in the economic life of the
+world.
+
+"Yes," he replied, "I think it is sure to. In the first place, for at
+least half a generation, and perhaps longer, the producing capital of
+the world will be much smaller than it was before the war.
+
+"But in this speculation we must be cautious, because, so far, the
+costly war material which has been consumed, such as fortresses
+destroyed, guns worn out, ammunition consumed, soldiers' clothing, and
+in general food, were principally accumulated and paid for long ago.
+They have come out of the world's past production, and their cost
+already has been written off.
+
+"The real loss, the new waste, over and above the devastation of Belgium
+and other lands, has been of labor, productive activity which would have
+been carried on during the period of the war had the struggle been
+avoided, the destruction of the lives of men in their economic prime,
+the maiming of others to the depletion of their future usefulness and
+the loss to European fatherhood.
+
+"But if the war lasts a long time, necessitating the general renewal of
+ships, fortresses, weapons, and stores, the waste will be enormous, for
+the actual money expenditure will then come out of funds newly
+accumulated or charged against the future, and not out of those set
+aside in the past for war purposes."
+
+
+One Great Change Occurring.
+
+"Thus one great economic change already is occurring--the devastation
+wrought, the destruction of hoarded funds and supplies and of useful
+human life.
+
+"There are others which are probable, but also problematical, although I
+think we fairly may take them into account.
+
+"Will the European nations, in settlement of their differences through
+final terms of peace, simply endeavor to restore the old order, drawing
+their lines of demarkation very strictly, enacting, for example, higher
+tariffs, thinking that along that line will lie the easiest way of
+re-establishing national finances?
+
+"If so, the old contentions will be perpetuated. It will be the old
+order of things over again.
+
+"We shall again have the spirit of exclusiveness fostered and the old
+suspicions bred. The old intense competition of nation with nation for
+trade to the exclusion of other nations from the markets of the world
+will return with its attendant inefficiency.
+
+"But, on the other hand, the world will be an immense gainer through the
+war if it is followed by a broad and rational review of the whole
+situation and an adjustment of the map of Europe with due regard to the
+ambitions and legitimate economic opportunities and capabilities of the
+various peoples.
+
+"This war may be the greatest good the world has ever known if it leaves
+Europe in a mental state disposed to Broaden opportunity, to break down
+suspicions, to eliminate barriers, and make commerce much freer than it
+has been.
+
+"Then Europe's economic recovery will be rapid, animosities will die
+quickly away, and every nation which is now involved will progress with
+a new speed, seeing that opportunity is created only through superiority
+in fair competition.
+
+"The next possibility, one far more nearly a probability, I think, than
+the somewhat Utopian speculation in which I have just indulged, is that
+after the war the world will have been deeply impressed by the
+tremendous activity of Germany, whether she be victor or vanquished.
+
+"What is the secret of her efficiency as manifested in the mobilization
+of her vast army, in her use of science in new military devices, in her
+holding of the elements of her national life together during the
+struggle, in her keeping her industries going in the face of
+unprecedented difficulties--all to a degree never before dreamed of?
+will be a general query.
+
+"Other nations will study the German plan, asking whether it is true, as
+has been taught in America, that that Government is best which governs
+least.
+
+"It may be that this war will result, entirely apart from the urgency of
+the labor problem which it will magnify, and wholly on the grounds of
+general efficiency, in a general inquiry as to whether or not the time
+has come for quasi-socialistic national developments.
+
+"I think it unlikely that the war will give impetus to that proletarian
+socialism which is founded on class consciousness and class struggle;
+but it may urge forward a socialistic movement based upon the large and
+fruitful idea that the best hope for the future is offered by the most
+complete and highly organized co-operation of all elements, all
+interests, all agencies which in their combination make up national
+structures.
+
+"As a matter of fact, I am an optimist, and I believe that this is about
+what will come after this war ends.
+
+"To put my theory in slightly different terms, I believe that the
+conflict will greatly further the development of what perhaps may be
+called 'public socialism,' and I mean by that the highest attainable
+organization of whole peoples for the production of commodities, the
+furtherance of enterprise, and the promotion of the general well-being.
+
+"I think that when the world sobers up it will ask: 'How did Germany do
+it?'
+
+"Whether she wins or loses that must be the universal query, for whether
+she wins or loses her achievement has been in many ways unprecedented.
+
+"There can be but one answer to this query: She did it by an
+organization which brought together in efficient co-operation the
+individual, the quasi-private corporation, the public corporation, and
+the Government upon a scale never before seen.
+
+"The world is bound to take notice of this."
+
+
+Will Fear Loss of Liberty.
+
+I asked Prof. Giddings to go beyond economics and to consider the war's
+probable results in their broader sociological aspects.
+
+"If what I have predicted happens," he replied, "the democratic elements
+of society in all nations will become apprehensive of the loss of
+liberty.
+
+"They will fear that in the interests of efficiency the perfected social
+order will impose minute and unwelcome regulations upon individual life
+and effort, and that a degree of coercive control will be established
+which will end by making individuals mere cogs in the machine,
+diminishing their importance, curtailing their usefulness and initiative
+far more than is done by the great industrial corporations against which
+the working classes already are protesting so loudly.
+
+"And not only the working people but a large proportion of all other
+classes will develop these fears, especially in those nations which,
+during the last century, have built up popular sovereignty and
+democratic freedom, as the terms are understood in England and America.
+
+"We shall hear the argument that the loss of individual initiative and
+personal self-reliance is too great a price to pay even for supreme
+efficiency and the maximum production of material comforts.
+
+"The problem which such a conflict of interests and opinions will
+present may be speculatively defined as that of trying to find a way to
+reconcile a maximum of efficiency organization with a maximum of
+individual freedom.
+
+"So stating it, we have to recognize that this has been the biggest
+problem, in fact the comprehensive problem, that man, has faced
+throughout human history, and the one which, really, he has been trying
+to solve by the trial and error method in all his social experiments.
+
+"It is the sociological as distinguished from the merely economic
+problem.
+
+"Human society exists because early in his career man discovered that
+mutual aid, or team work, is, on the whole, in the struggle for
+existence and the pursuit of happiness, a more effective factor than
+physical strength or individual cleverness.
+
+"Natural selection has acted not only upon individuals, but, in the
+large sense, upon groups and aggregates of groups. The restrictions upon
+individual life have developed in the interests of groups, or collective
+efficiency.
+
+"On the other hand, collective efficiency has no meaning, it serves no
+purpose apart from the amelioration of individual life and the
+development of individual personality.
+
+"So long as groups fear one another and fight with one another the
+restrictions upon individual liberty must be extreme in the interests of
+the collective fighting efficiency of each group as a whole.
+
+"All the possibilities of personal development, of individual freedom,
+are involved in the larger possibilities of friendly relations between
+nation and nation.
+
+"Already the co-operative instinct has so grown that if war and the fear
+of war could be eliminated, mankind would have relatively little
+difficulty in working out ways and means of combining Governmental
+action with individual initiative for purposes of economic production,
+education, the promotion of the public health, and the administration
+of justice.
+
+"All those principles and rules which we call Morality are, in fact,
+mere rules of the game of life. We play the game or do not play it; we
+are fair or unfair.
+
+"On the whole, most of us try to be fair because it has been found that
+playing the game with a sense of fairness is the only way in which we
+can succeed in working together for common ends without the necessity of
+imposing upon ourselves coercive rules to hold our organization together
+for possible mass attack upon the end in view.
+
+"Social life, in this sense of playing the game fairly, has made man the
+superior of the brutes he sprang from. There is nothing mysterious or
+recondite about it.
+
+"In order to work together men must understand one another. Therefore,
+natural selection has picked out the intelligent for survival in the
+social world; and in order to work together intelligent men must depend
+on one another, abiding by their covenants.
+
+"Therefore, again, natural selection has picked out what we call
+Morality for survival in the social world. The whole further progress of
+mankind would seem to hang upon the possibility that we can find a way
+to limit and, if possible, to terminate wars between nations, for only
+in that contingency can we hope to develop a social system in which a
+supreme efficiency with a maximum of individual liberty can be combined
+upon a working basis."
+
+
+Application of the Facts.
+
+"These are incontrovertible facts, and they find their application to
+the existing European situation in various ways, the most important of
+which will appear in the discovery that, valuable as conventions and
+covenants of nation with nation may be, and intolerable as any violation
+of them surely is, we cannot hope for general and unfailing observance
+of them until the feeling of mankind and the whole attitude of the world
+in respect to international as well as private conduct shall be that the
+covenants and conventions shall become, in a degree, unnecessary.
+
+"Already it is apparent that the entire world, including the peoples of
+the nations at war as well as the peoples of the nations remaining
+happily at peace, have, begun to think these thoughts and reflect upon
+their momentous importance.
+
+"Shocked and stunned as never before by a calamity for which we find no
+measure in past human experience, mankind is bound to take at this
+moment a more sober view, a broader and more rational view, of the
+problems of responsibility and collective conduct than it hitherto has
+been able even to attempt.
+
+"The world is sure to ask what things make for sobriety of judgment and
+integrity of purpose. It is sure in future more carefully to weigh
+relative values, and will be disposed to count as unimportant many
+things for which hitherto the armed men of nations have rushed into war.
+
+"In a word, this war has made the whole world think as no one thing ever
+has made it think before, and, after all, it is upon the habit of
+thought that we must depend for all rational progress.
+
+"Other wars and other great events have fostered sentiment, much of
+which has been hopeful and useful; they have accomplished far-reaching
+economic changes, many of them necessary.
+
+"But the reactions of this war will surely go beyond all previous
+experience. They already are and must be, in a far greater measure,
+profoundly intellectual, and one of the consequences of this fact
+inevitably will be the broadening and deepening of the democratic
+current.
+
+"When peace returns it will be seen that democracy has received a
+hitherto unimagined impetus. Then it will be understood that democracy,
+in one of its most important aspects, is popular thinking, that it is
+the widest possible extension of the sense of responsibility.
+
+"A democratic world will be, all in all, a peace-loving world.
+
+"We may confidently expect far-reaching changes in the internal
+political organization of the nations now involved. In every nation of
+Europe the people are asking: What, after all, is this conflict all
+about?
+
+"They will ask this many times, and however they may answer it they
+will, by consequence, follow the question with another: Shall we go on
+fighting wars about the necessity, expedience, and righteousness of
+which we have not been consulted?
+
+"And to this query they will find only one answer--an emphatic negative.
+
+"Sooner or later there will be a comprehensive political reorganization
+of Europe, and when its day comes the rearrangement will be along the
+lines of a republic rather than along the lines of any monarchy, however
+liberal.
+
+"Then international agreements will be unnecessary and there will be no
+treaties to be broken--no 'scraps of paper' to be disregarded.
+
+"Apparently Germany has been as successful in training her people to
+think accurately along economic lines as she has been in training them
+to work efficiently along such lines; and that accurate thought
+undoubtedly is bearing startling fruit among the men today crouched in
+the trenches on the firing lines."
+
+
+Era of Individual Thought.
+
+"England, on the other hand, and France have encouraged the free and
+spontaneous life of democratic peoples. France and England, like the
+United States, have been training their peoples to think efficiently of
+and to appreciate and use liberty and initiative. And the men of these
+two nations are, in turn, exercising that ability as they crouch in
+their trenches.
+
+"In other words, this war has precipitated an era of sober individual
+thought about the individual's rights and responsibilities. It will
+everywhere bring about a wider political organization of mankind, a
+greater freedom of trade and opportunity, a more serious and thorough
+education, a more earnest attention and devotion to the higher interests
+of life, giving such thought preference above that overemphasis of
+material comforts which has been so marked a feature of recent human
+history.
+
+"All these things will make for peace; and another and potent influence
+will be the exhaustion of the weakened nations which will follow the
+conflict. Because of that very weakness Europe will turn its unanimous
+attention to the things of peace rather than to the things of war.
+
+"The new Europe is being fashioned by those questioning men who now are
+lying in the trenches.
+
+"They are searching in the universe for answers to such inquiries as
+they never dreamed about before, and the women, worrying at home--they,
+too, are busy with a search for answers to hitherto undreamed-of
+questions.
+
+"They all are pondering great things for the first time. Their pondering
+will be fruitful.
+
+"Today all Europe fights, but, also, today all Europe thinks. And,
+thinking, perhaps it may devise a better order, so that it may not ever
+fight again."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+"To Americans Leaving Germany"
+
+A FAREWELL WORD.
+
+
+AMERICANS!
+
+Citizens of the United States!
+
+In this earnest moment in which you are leaving the soil of Germany and
+Berlin, take with you from German citizens, from representatives of
+trade and industry, who are proud to entertain friendly commercial
+relations with the United States, a hearty farewell coupled with the
+desire of a speedy return.
+
+Together with this farewell we beg you to do us a favor. As our guests,
+whom we have always honored and protected, we ask you to take this paper
+with you as a memorial and to circulate the same among your authorities,
+press, friends, and acquaintances.
+
+For, we are well aware that the enemies of Germany are at work to make
+you the instruments to lower Germany's people and army in the face of
+the whole world in order to deceive foreign nations as to Germany's
+policy and economical power. We ask you, as free citizens face to face
+with free citizens, to circulate the real truth about Germany among your
+people as compared to the lies of our enemies.
+
+We beg you to take the following main points to heart:
+
+     1. The German Emperor and the German Nation wanted peace. The
+     cunning and breach of faith of our opponents have forced the
+     sword into the hands of Germany.
+
+     2. After war has been forced on us the German Nation, Emperor,
+     and Reichstag have granted everything in the most brilliant
+     unanimity for the war. No difference prevails in Germany any
+     longer, no difference between party, confession, rank or
+     position, but we are a united nation and army.
+
+     3. Our military organization and our mobilization has
+     proceeded with splendid precision. The mobilization was
+     accomplished during the course of a few days. In addition to
+     those who are compelled to serve, more than 1,200,000
+     volunteers have offered their services. All civil
+     organizations, from the head of industry and finance to the
+     smallest man downward, vie with each other in works of
+     voluntary aid and welfare.
+
+     4. In the field German arms have had splendid successes in the
+     first days of mobilization.
+
+In the east the Russian enemy has been driven from the German frontier,
+in numerous small fights by our troops in conjunction with those of the
+Austro-Hungarian monarchy. By successful coup de mains our navy has been
+successful in damaging and alarming our Russian opponent in her Baltic
+naval ports. The Russian port of Libau has been burned down and in
+Russian Poland revolution has already begun. Russian mobilization is a
+long way from being accomplished, the troops are badly, poorly
+nourished, and many deserters sell their weapons and horses.
+
+In the west the German Army has gained imposing victories over Belgium
+and France.
+
+In Belgium, where the population unfortunately committed the most
+barbarous atrocities against peaceful Germans before the war broke out,
+comparatively weak German forces conquered the strong fortress of Ličge
+a few days after the mobilization, inflicting severe damage on the enemy
+and opening up the way via Belgium to France.
+
+Valuable victories have been obtained over France on the Alsatian
+frontier toward the strong French fortress of Belfort as well as in the
+direction of the fortress Lunéville. At Mülhausen one and a half French
+Army divisions were overthrown and driven back over the frontier with
+heavy losses.
+
+The strong and effective German fleet is on the watch against the
+English fleet.
+
+England's risk is great in staking her reputation as the strongest
+naval power on one throw against the German fleet. Further, England runs
+the danger that her large colonies, such as India and Egypt, will seize
+a moment that has been long desired to revolt.
+
+It is for the United States to utilize the present moment to frustrate
+by powerful initiative England's endeavors to keep down all nations,
+including America, in the trade and traffic of the world.
+
+Citizens of the United States! Take the conviction with you to your
+homes that Germany will stake her last man and her last penny for
+victory. Germany must conquer and will conquer.
+
+Remember! That after a successful victory Germany will make new
+political and economical progress, and that America, as a shrewd
+businesslike State and as a friend of Germany, will participate in such
+progress.
+
+Today we beg you earnestly to convey to your fellow-citizens that the
+German Nation, as the safe refuge of civilization and culture, has
+always protected the loyal citizens of its enemies in every manner in
+contrast to Russia, France, and Belgium. By circulating this short
+memorial among your fellow-citizens you are likewise insuring that also
+in the future the United States will learn the truth about Germany's
+battles and victories. Your friends here will always do the best in
+their power to supply you with genuine news. We wish you a happy voyage
+toward your home, so appreciated by all Germans, and hope to see you
+again in a victorious and prosperous Germany.
+
+REPRESENTATIVES OF GERMAN INDUSTRY.
+
+Berlin, Aug. 13, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+German Declarations
+
+By Rudolf Eucken and Ernst Haeckel.
+
+     Dr. Eucken is Privy Councilor and Professor of Philosophy in
+     the University of Jena; won the Nobel Prize for Literature in
+     1908; has received many foreign honorary degrees and his
+     philosophy has been expounded in English.
+
+     Ernst Haeckel is Privy Councilor and late Professor of Zoology
+     at the University of Jena; has written many works on evolution
+     which have been translated into English.
+
+
+The whole German world of letters is today filled with deep indignation
+and strong moral resentment at the present behavior of England. Both of
+us, for many years bound to England by numerous scientific and personal
+ties, believe ourselves prepared to give open expression to this inward
+revulsion. In close co-operation with like-minded English investigators
+we have zealously exerted ourselves to bring the two great peoples
+closer together in spirit and to promote a mutual understanding. A
+fruitful reciprocal interchange of English and German culture seemed to
+us worth while, indeed necessary, for the spiritual advance of mankind,
+which today confronts such great problems. Gratefully we recall in this
+connection the friendly reception which our efforts received in England.
+So great and noble were the traits of English character which revealed
+themselves to us that we were permitted to hope that in their sure
+growth they would come to be superior to the pitfalls and seamy sides of
+this character. And now they have proved inferior, inferior to the old
+evil of a brutal national egotism which recognizes no rights on the
+part of others, which, unconcerned about morality or unmorality, pursues
+only its own advantage.
+
+History furnishes in abundance examples of such an unscrupulous egotism;
+we need recall here only the destruction of the Danish fleet (1807) and
+the theft of the Dutch colonies in the Napoleonic wars. But what is
+taking place today is the worst of all; it will be forever pointed at in
+the annals of world history as England's indelible shame. England fights
+in behalf of a Slavic, half-Asiatic power against Germanism; she fights
+on the side not only of barbarism but also of moral injustice, for it is
+indeed not forgotten that Russia began the war because she would permit
+no radical reparation for a shameful murder.
+
+It is England whose fault has extended the present war into a world war,
+and has thereby endangered our joint culture. And all this for what
+reason? Because she was jealous of Germany's greatness, because she
+wanted to hinder at any price a further growth of this greatness. For
+there cannot be the least doubt on this point that England was
+determined in advance to cast as many obstacles as possible in the way
+of Germany's great struggle for national existence, and to hinder her as
+much as possible in the full development of her powers. She (England)
+was watching only for a favorable opportunity when she could break out
+suddenly against Germany, and she therefore promptly seized on the
+necessary German invasion of Belgium in order that she might cover with
+a small cloak of decency her brutal national egotism. Or is there in the
+whole wide world any one so simple as to believe that England would have
+declared war on France also if the latter had invaded Belgium? In that
+event she would have wept hypocritical tears over the unavoidable
+violation of international law; but as for the rest she would have
+laughed in her sleeve with great satisfaction. This hypocritical
+Pharisaism is the most repugnant feature of the whole matter; it
+deserves nothing but contempt.
+
+The history of the world shows that such sentiments lead the nations not
+upward but downward. For the present, however, we trust firmly in our
+just cause, in the superior strength and the unyielding victorious
+spirit of the German people. Yet we must at the same time lament deeply
+that the boundless egotism we have referred to has disturbed for an
+immeasurable period of time the spiritual co-operation of the two
+peoples which promised so much good for the development of mankind. But
+they wished it so on their side--on England alone falls the monstrous
+guilt and the historical responsibility.
+
+RUDOLF EUCKEN.
+
+ERNST HAECKEL.
+
+Jena, Aug. 18, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+A Second Appeal
+
+
+_To the Universities of America:_
+
+In a time when half of the world falls upon Germany full of hatred and
+envy, we Germans derive great benefit from the idea of our being sure of
+the friendly feeling of the American universities. If from any quarter
+in the world, it must be from them that we expect the right
+comprehension of the present situation and present attitude of Germany.
+Numerous American scholars who received their scientific training at our
+universities have convinced themselves of the quality and the peaceful
+tendency of German work, the exchange of scientists has proved of
+deepening influence on the mutual understanding, the lasting intercourse
+of scholarly research gives us the feeling of being members of one great
+community. This is why we entertain the hope that the scientific
+circles of America will not give credit to the libels our enemies
+propagate against us.
+
+These libels, above all, accuse Germany of having brought about the
+present war, she being responsible for the monstrous struggle which is
+extending more and more over the whole world. The truth points to the
+contrary. Our foes have disturbed us in our peaceful work, forcing the
+war upon us very much against our desire. We are at a righteous war for
+the preservation of our existence and at the same time of sacred goods
+of humanity. The murder of Serajevo was not our work; it was the outcome
+of a widely extending conspiracy pointing back to Servia, where for many
+years already a passionate agitation against Austria had been carried
+on, supported by Russia. It was Russia, therefore, that took the
+assassins under her wings, and some weeks already before the war broke
+out she promised her assistance to that blood-stained State. Nobody but
+Russia has given the dangerous turn to the conflict; nobody but Russia
+is to blame for the outbreak of the war. The German Emperor, who has
+proved his love of peace by a peaceful reign of more than twenty-five
+years, in face of the imminent danger, tried to intermediate between
+Austria and Russia with the greatest zeal, but while he was negotiating
+with the Czar Russia was busy with the mobilization of a large army
+toward the German frontier. This necessitated an open and decisive
+inquiry that led to the war. This only happened because Russia wanted it
+so, because she wanted to raise the Muscovites against the Germans and
+the Western Slavs and to lead Asia into the field against Europe.
+
+France, too, might have kept the peace, the decision resting solely with
+her. The security of Germany demanded that she should inquire what
+France would do in the impending war; the answer of France unmistakably
+betrayed her intention to join in the war. As a matter of fact, it was
+not Germany but France who commenced the war.
+
+England already before the war stood in close relations to France. From
+the very beginning she has clearly shown that she by no means wanted to
+keep absolutely neutral. From the very beginning she made endeavors to
+protect France against Germany. Undoubtedly the German invasion in
+Belgium served England as a welcome pretext to openly declare her
+hostility. In reality, before the German invasion, already the
+neutrality of Belgium had been given up in favor of the French. It has
+been officially stated, e.g., that not only before but also after the
+outbreak of the war French officers have been at Ličge in order to
+instruct the Belgian soldiers as to the fortification service. England's
+complaints of the violation of international law, however, are the most
+atrocious hypocrisy and the vilest Pharisaism. At all times English
+politics have unscrupulously disregarded all forms of law as soon as
+their own interest was touched. During the last few weeks the same
+method has been quite sufficiently manifested in the unlawful capture of
+the Turkish warships, and still more so in the instigation of the
+Japanese to undertake the detestable raid upon the German territory in
+China, which needs must end in strengthening the power of that Mongolian
+nation at the costs of Europeans and Americans.
+
+How it is possible for a nation that in such a way has betrayed precious
+interests of Western culture as soon as it seems to benefit them, how is
+it possible for these accomplices of the Japanese robbery to put on the
+air of being the guardians of morality?
+
+We Germans did not want this war, but as it has been forced upon us we
+shall carry it on bravely and vigorously. In the face of all envy and
+hatred, all brutality and hypocrisy, Germany feels unshakably conscious
+of serving a righteous cause and of standing up for the preservation of
+her national self as well as for sacred goods of humanity; indeed, for
+the very progress of true culture. It is from this conviction that she
+draws her unrelenting force and the absolute certainty that she will
+beat back the assault of all her enemies. This conviction does not stand
+in need of any encouragement from abroad; our country absolutely relies
+upon itself and confides in the strength of its right.
+
+Nevertheless, the idea of our American friends' thoughts and sympathies
+being with us gives us a strong feeling of comfort in this gigantic
+struggle. We both of us feel especially justified in pronouncing this as
+being the conviction of all German scientists, as so many scientific and
+personal relations connect us both with the universities of America.
+These universities know what German culture means to the world, so we
+trust they will stand by Germany.
+
+RUDOLF EUCKEN.
+
+ERNST HAECKEL.
+
+Jena, Aug. 31, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+The Eucken and Haeckel Charges
+
+By John Warbeke.
+
+     Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at Mount Holyoke
+     College.
+
+_A Letter to the Springfield Republican._
+
+
+_To the Editor of The Springfield Republican:_
+
+The approval of President Wilson for neutrality of language can hardly
+be construed into complacency in the face of monstrous evil. If a
+judicial attitude of mind be not jeopardized a discussion of the issues
+raised by Profs. Eucken and Haeckel ought to help us in the attainment
+of impartial judgment. A long acquaintance with both these men makes it
+hard for the present writer to give expression to such negative
+criticism as he is constrained to do. But his plea can be only this: Not
+truth but only passion can separate, and truth is greater even than
+friendship.
+
+The charge of "brutal national egoism" is laid at England's door. She is
+declared to be the instigator of the present world war. "Upon her alone
+falls the monstrous guilt and the judgment of history." Such language
+from two benevolent philosophers, one of them a winner of the Nobel
+Peace Prize for Idealistic Literature, seems to suggest a lack of
+information among the German people, including its most enlightened
+exponents, of not only their own published "White Paper" dispatches, but
+also of the events of the last two months. It seems hardly possible that
+in the case of these two gentlemen a deliberate campaign of vituperation
+could have been inaugurated with determination to blind themselves to
+facts clearly stated in the reports of both contending parties--
+
+First--That Servia, in reply to ten urgent demands on the part of
+Austria, acquiesced in nine and proposed to submit the tenth, as
+concerning her national integrity, to The Hague Tribunal. Austria,
+nevertheless, declared war, with Germany's self-confessed assurances of
+support.
+
+Secondly--Germany was the second to declare war, the mobilization of
+Russia being assigned as the reason for this step. The objection of
+Germany's initial campaign, as shown by events, was not defense against
+the confessedly slowly mobilizing Russians, however, but the humiliation
+and subjugation of France. And the means employed to that end included
+the treaty-breaking invasion, and more than invasion, of Belgium, who is
+suffering because of this step "so necessary for Germany."
+
+Thirdly--England, as is repeatedly demonstrated by the official
+documents, of both sides, strained every means to bring about a common
+understanding. The appeals of Sir Edward Grey for more time in the
+Servian ultimatum and for a council of Ambassadors were met by the
+Austrian and German Governments respectively with evasion. And England
+was the last of the great powers to enter the conflict, her plea being
+the moral obligation of supporting treaties in which she guaranteed the
+integrity of a weak neighbor and undertook to defend her ally, France,
+when attacked.
+
+
+The Case of England.
+
+We may justifiably ask, then, What basis is there for the charge that
+England's "brutal, national egoism" provoked the world war? The answer
+is a two-fold one. Historically, England has exhibited aggression in the
+extension of her interests; morally, England supports the Russian
+aggressor, who declined "to allow Austria the thoroughgoing punishment
+of an ignominious murder," cloaking her real intentions behind the
+mantle of a "contemptible sanctimoniousness" and "hypocrisy" concerning
+treaty obligations.
+
+The first charge against England is unfortunately true. History records
+instances of British aggression in the extension of her interests and
+the cases cited (destruction of the Danish fleet and the taking of Dutch
+colonies) are good examples. The implication, however, involved in the
+statement is that such aggression is not to be found in the history of
+Prussia. This is clearly an error.
+
+From the time of the Markgrafen even unto the Agadir incident it has
+been characteristic of Prussia to extend her boundaries and interests
+under the plea of military necessity. Aggression is the only word to
+characterize Frederick's seizure of Silesia and part of Poland. South
+and East Prussia were added by the same forcible means (1793-1795). In
+the Napoleonic wars Swedish Pomerania fell as the booty of military
+necessity. Schleswig-Holstein was filched from Denmark (1866) by the
+same "extension of her greatness." Once more it was the plea in
+Alsace-Lorraine--"so necessary for Germany."
+
+Nor are we here urging immunity of criticism for ourselves. It is sadly
+true that the history of many nominally Christian States, including that
+of the United States, and not excluding the Papacy, includes chapters of
+aggression. But the point involved, namely, the charge of England's
+aggression in the present instance, is clearly an a priori one, based on
+a presupposition of monopoly which lacks material support. No evidence
+is presented to justify the statement, nor do the facts seem to allow of
+any such construction.
+
+The second argument, England's support of Russia's unwillingness to
+permit the expiation of an ignominious murder, is a strange and
+unfortunate commentary on how even in philosophic minds a preconceived
+idea will distort the most unmistakable evidence. For Servia in her
+reply to the Austrian demands agreed to have just punishment inflicted
+upon the murderers, even going so far as to cause the arrest of those
+perhaps unjustly suspected by the Austrian committee and to suggest an
+international court. How, then, did Russia stand in the way of the
+punishment? Austria declared war, with the self-confessed assurances of
+German support, all too obviously for reasons other than the ones
+mentioned in the ultimatum to which Servia acquiesced. The charge of
+Russian mobilization in view of such a situation suggests the temper of
+the man who, when caught in his own bear trap, tries to find his
+neighbor at fault. Suppose Germany had remained on the defensive, would
+war have been likely? Suppose Germany had not backed up the entirely
+unjustifiable military movement of Austria, would the general war have
+been probable?
+
+
+Where Nietzsche Comes In.
+
+It seems more likely when one passes in review the extant data that at
+least one and a crucial cause for the present situation is the
+"overwhelming power and unbending will to victory in the German people"
+when confronted with an opportunity for the "further expansion of their
+greatness." That such phrases should be in the mouths of our apologists
+for the war is significant. And that the invasion of Belgium "so
+necessary for the Germans" is treated by the spokesmen of morality
+solely and confessedly from the standpoint of military expediency seems
+to indicate the permeation of the Nietzsche superman into the very
+stronghold of idealistic philosophy.
+
+It would, of course, be as absurd to suppose Nietzsche a direct cause of
+this war as it would be to regard the Serajevo murderers as the sole
+cause. Nietzsche was and is an exponent of his time, as well as one
+reciprocally fostering such movements as Bernhardi militarism and the
+Crown Prince's war book. Perhaps it will not be inappropriate here to
+cite from "War and the People of War," in "Also Sprach Zarathustra,"
+(Pages 67-68,) the magnum opus of Nietzsche:
+
+     You should love peace as a means to new war and brief peace
+     more than a long one. Do you say, "It is a good cause by which
+     a war is hallowed"? I say unto you, It is a good war which
+     hallows every cause. War and courage have done greater things
+     than the love of one's neighbor. "What, then, is good?" you
+     ask. To be brave is good. Let young maidens say, "Good is to
+     be pretty and touching." But you are hateful? Well, so be it,
+     my brethren! Cast about you a mantle of the sublimely hateful.
+     And when your soul has become great it will become wanton; in
+     your greatness there will be malice, I know, and in malice the
+     proud heart will meet the weakling.
+
+This, we are told, is not to be taken literally--all is symbolism and
+has a meaning other than the more direct one. But the fact remains, as
+can be testified by the present writer from three years' residence as a
+university student in Germany, that the rank and file as well as the
+aristocracy--from laborers and small shopkeepers, petty officials, and
+students to Judges of the Supreme Court and university professors who
+have become "secret councilors" (Geheimrat)--not only in Berlin and Bonn
+but in Munich and Heidelberg, all have become ominously full of the
+doctrine of the survival of the fittest and the consequent expediency of
+power, not only in intellectual rivalry but in Krupps and high
+explosives.
+
+The Nietzsche fire may, perhaps, serve a purpose on the hearthstone of
+our inmost life if it be to rescue us from complacency and secure
+inanity, but in the form of electrically connected lyddite stores and
+gasoline bombs it drives those who believe in a supernation to a
+literal interpretation of the above widely popular philosophy. And, as
+demonstrated at Louvain and Rheims, it goes far to obliterate the
+memorials of a past which Nietzsche thought so contemptible a check upon
+the prowess of the "blonde Bestie" as he progressed toward--toward the
+superman.
+
+It was wide of the mark, therefore, to attribute that which bears the
+stamp "made in Germany" to England. Bernhardi and the Crown Prince with
+their thousands of officers and the multitudes in the ranks to whom
+Nietzsche has become an inspiring motive are not to be construed as
+English surely. Nor does the English "culture," so far as the present
+writer is informed, contain a superman, unless it be Bernard Shaw!
+English people have to import "beyond good and evil" philosophy, and as
+historians of thought Profs. Eucken and Haeckel must know that it has
+never had a foothold there. Had it been "brutal national egoism, knowing
+no rights of others," which motivated Britain, she would not now have
+gone to war--in order that she might profit finally by the inevitable
+exhaustion of the Continent. And having taken the clear stand she has,
+what but good-will and the consciousness of a just cause brought support
+and sacrifice from the hands and lives of her grateful peoples all over
+the earth? Would brutality have done it? The same question might be
+asked concerning France's empire from which she derives chiefly the
+consciousness of an extending civilization.
+
+
+The Claims of German Culture.
+
+A word more should be added concerning the condescending tone generally
+of the exponents of German culture and more specifically that of the
+distinguished writers of the circular letter. They had up to the present
+continued to hope for growth in English literary and scientific
+development. Before this dismal egoism got the upper hand the English
+people really and truly possessed some noble traits and so forth. As for
+Russian culture, supposedly including its science and literature, music,
+architecture and the rest, it is all effaced by a single "barbarism"!
+The implication of such an attitude and such words is that the Kremlin
+or Rheims, Shakespeare and Rembrandt, Michaelangelo, Darwin, Spinoza and
+the treasures of Louvain might be easily paralleled or surpassed by
+German cathedrals, German sculpture, German paintings, German literature
+and so forth. It is not our present purpose to dispute the claim, but
+only to remind the Teutons that in France and Belgium they have declared
+war, not indeed upon supermen, but upon many gentlemen and some worthy
+fruits of their spirits, and that they have destroyed much which
+formerly enriched the life of the world.
+
+It is the claim of some objective German writers that a modicum of
+modesty would prove the most substantial contribution to Teutonic
+civilization. Defeat of German arms might, therefore, prove a blessing
+to the self-lauded culture as well as call a halt to the brutal science
+of Krupps. As instances of authors mentioned above, a passage from the
+lamented Friedrich Paulsen's "System der Ethic" (Page 582) may, justly,
+be cited: "Insolence still continues to impress the average German. The
+spirit of English scientific intercourse forms a highly pleasing
+contrast to the German habit. Take such writers as Mill and Darwin; they
+speak to the reader as though he did them a favor by listening to them,
+and whenever they enter upon a controversy, they do it in a manner
+which expresses respect and a desire for mutual understanding. The
+German scholar believes that it will detract from the respect due him if
+he does not assume a tone of condescension or overbearing censure.
+Examine the first scientific journal you may happen to pick up; even the
+smallest anonymous announcement breathes the air of infinite
+superiority."
+
+A second passage is quoted from the great work of Wilhelm Scherer,
+"Geschichte der Deutschen Litteratur" (Pages 20-21): "Recklessness seems
+to be the curse of our spiritual development ... obstinacy in good and
+in evil. Beauty we have not often served, nor long at a time." These
+are, of course, not the judgments of the present writer.
+
+Conviction does not flow from the argument concerning England's brutal
+egoism and reckless immorality under the cloak of sanctimoniousness; nor
+is there strength in the appeal for Teuton culture. All has the tone of
+special pleading and makes doubly significant a sentence from Nietzsche
+when he pleads for an overcoming of our ideals of veracity: "'I have
+done this thing,' says my memory, 'I could not have done this thing,'
+says my pride and remains inexorable. Finally memory yields." ("Beyond
+Good and Evil," Page 94.)
+
+JOHN WARBEKE.
+
+Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Sept. 23, 1914.
+
+[Illustration: BRANDER MATTHEWS
+
+_(Photo by Brown Bros.)_
+
+_See Page 541_]
+
+[Illustration: NEWELL DWIGHT HILL
+
+_See Page 573_]
+
+
+
+
+Concerning German Culture
+
+By Brander Matthews.
+
+     Professor of Dramatic Literature at Columbia University;
+     author of many works on literature and the development of the
+     drama.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+In the earnest and sincere appeals of various distinguished Germans,
+Prof. Eucken, Prof. Haeckel, and the several authors of "The Truth About
+Germany," we find frequent references to "German culture" as though it
+was of a superior quality to the culture of every other nationality; and
+we seem to perceive also a sustaining belief that Germany is not only
+the defender of civilization, but its foremost exponent. We have no
+right to question the good faith of scholars of the high character of
+Eucken and Haeckel; and we cannot doubt their being honestly possessed
+of the conviction that Germany is the supreme example of a highly
+civilized State and the undisputed leader in the arts and sciences which
+represent culture. It is plain that these German writers take this for
+granted and that they would be indignantly surprised if it should be
+questioned.
+
+To an American who feels himself a sharer of the noble heritage of
+English literature, and who has sat for more than forty years at the
+feet of the masters of French literature, this claim cannot but come as
+a startling surprise.
+
+The most obvious characteristic of a highly civilized man is his
+willingness to keep his word, at whatever cost to himself. For reasons
+satisfactory to itself, Germany broke its pledge to respect the
+neutrality of Luxemburg and of Belgium. It is another characteristic of
+civilization to cherish the works of art which have been bequeathed to
+us by the past. For reasons satisfactory to itself Germany destroyed
+Louvain, more or less completely. It is a final characteristic of
+civilized man to be humane and to refrain from ill-treating the
+blameless. For reasons satisfactory to itself Germany dropped bombs in
+the unbesieged City of Antwerp and caused the death of innocent women
+and children. Here are three instances where German culture has been
+tested and found wanting.
+
+
+The Standard Bearer of Culture.
+
+But it may be urged that war has its own exigencies and that these three
+instances of uncivilized conduct partook of the nature of military
+necessities. Turning from the outrages of war to the triumphs of peace,
+let us make a disinterested attempt to find out just what foundation
+there may be for the implicit assertion that Germany is the standard
+bearer of civilization.
+
+Perhaps it is too petty to point out that manners are the outward and
+visible sign of civilization, and that in this respect the Germans have
+not yet attained to the standard set by the French and the English. But
+it is not insignificant to record that the Germans alone retain a
+barbaric mediaeval alphabet, while the rest of Western Europe has
+adopted the more legible and more graceful Roman letter; and it is not
+unimportant to note that German press style is cumbrous and uncouth.
+Taken collectively, these things seem to show German culture is a little
+lacking in the social instinct, the desire to make things easy and
+pleasant for others. It is this social instinct which is the dominating
+influence in French civilization and which has given to French
+civilization its incomparable urbanity and amenity. It is to the absence
+of this social instinct, to the inability to understand the attitude of
+other parties to a discussion, to the unwillingness to appreciate their
+point of view, that we may ascribe the failure of German diplomacy, a
+failure which has left her almost without a friend in her hour of need.
+And success in diplomacy is one of the supreme tests of civilization.
+
+The claim asserted explicity or implicitly in behalf of German culture
+seems to be based on the belief that the Germans are leaders in the arts
+and in the sciences. So far as the art of war is concerned there is no
+need today to dispute the German claim. It is to the preparation for war
+that Prussia has devoted its utmost energy for half a century--in fact,
+ever since Bismarck began to make ready for the seizing of unwilling
+Schleswig-Holstein. And so far as the art of music is concerned there is
+also no need to cavil.
+
+But what about the other and more purely intellectual arts? How many are
+the contemporary painters and sculptors and architects of Germany who
+have succeeded in winning the cosmopolitan reputation which has been the
+reward of a score of the artists of France and of half a dozen of the
+artists of America?
+
+
+Since Goethe, Who?
+
+When we consider the art of letters we find a similar condition. Germany
+has had philosophers and historians of high rank; but in pure
+literature, in what used to be called "belles-lettres," from the death
+of Goethe in 1832 to the advent of the younger generation of dramatists,
+Sudermann and Hauptmann and the rest, in the final decade of the
+nineteenth century--that is to say, for a period of nearly sixty
+years--only one German author succeeded in winning a worldwide
+celebrity--and Heine was a Hebrew, who died in Paris, out of favor with
+his countrymen, perhaps because he had been unceasing in calling
+attention to the deficiencies of German culture. There were in Germany
+many writers who appealed strongly to their fellow-countrymen, but
+except only the solitary Heine no German writer attained to the
+international fame achieved by Cooper and by Poe, by Walt Whitman and by
+Mark Twain. And it was during these threescore years of literary aridity
+in Germany that there was a superb literary fecundity in Great Britain
+and in France, and that each of these countries produced at least a
+score of authors whose names are known throughout the world. Even
+sparsely settled Scandinavia brought forth a triumvirate, Björnsen,
+Ibsen, and Brandes, without compeers in Germany. And from Russia the
+fame of Turgenef and of Tolstoy spread abroad a knowledge of the heart
+and mind of a great people who are denounced by Germans as barbarous.
+
+It is probably in the field of science, pure and applied, that the
+defenders of the supremacy of German culture would take their last
+stand. That the German contribution to science has been important is
+indisputable; yet it is equally indisputable that the two dominating
+scientific leaders of the second half of the nineteenth century are
+Darwin and Pasteur. It is in chemistry that the Germans have been
+pioneers; yet the greatest of modern chemists is Mendeleef. It was Hertz
+who made the discovery which is the foundation of Marconi's invention;
+but although not a few valuable discoveries are to be credited to the
+Germans, perhaps almost as many as to either the French or the British,
+the German contribution in the field of invention, in the practical
+application of scientific discovery, has been less than that of France,
+less than that of Great Britain, and less than that of the United
+States. The Germans contributed little or nothing to the development of
+the railroad, the steamboat, the automobile, the aeroplane, the
+telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the photograph, the moving
+picture, the electric light, the sewing machine, and the reaper and
+binder. Even those dread instruments of war, the revolver and the
+machine gun, the turreted ship, the torpedo, and the submarine, are not
+due to the military ardor of the Germans. It would seem as though the
+Germans had been lacking in the inventiveness which is so marked a
+feature of our modern civilization.
+
+In this inquiry there has been no desire to deny the value of the German
+contributions to the arts and to the sciences. These contributions are
+known to all; they speak for themselves; they redound to the honor of
+German culture; and for them, whatever may be their number, the other
+nations of the world are eternally indebted to Germany. But these German
+contributions are neither important enough nor numerous enough to
+justify the assumption that German culture is superior or that Germany
+is entitled to think herself the supreme leader of the arts and of the
+sciences. No one nation can claim this lofty position, although few
+would be so bold as to deny the superior achievement of the French in
+the fine arts and of the English in pure science.
+
+Nations are never accepted by other nations at their own valuation; and
+the Germans need not be surprised that we are now astonished to find
+them asserting their natural self-appreciation, with the apparent
+expectation that it will pass unchallenged. The world owes a debt to
+modern Germany beyond all question, but this is far less than the debt
+owed to England and to France. It would be interesting if some German,
+speaking with authority, should now be moved to explain to us Americans
+the reasons which underlie the insistent assertion of the superiority of
+German civilization. Within the past few weeks we have been forced to
+gaze at certain of the less pleasant aspects of the German character;
+and we have been made to see that the militarism of the Germans is in
+absolute contradiction to the preaching and to the practice of the great
+Goethe, to whom they proudly point as the ultimate representative of
+German culture.
+
+BRANDER MATTHEWS.
+
+Columbia University in the City of New York, Sept. 18, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Culture vs. Kultur
+
+By Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Current discussion of the worth of German culture has been almost
+hopelessly clouded by the fact that when a German speaks of Kultur he
+means an entirely different thing from what a Latin or Briton means by
+culture. Kultur means the organized efficiency of a nation in the
+broadest sense--its successful achievement in civil and military
+administration, industry, commerce, finance, and in a quite secondary
+way in scholarship, letters, and art. Kultur applies to a nation as a
+whole, implying an enlightened Government to which the individual is
+strictly subordinated. Thus Kultur is an attribute not of
+individuals--whose particular interests, on the contrary, must often be
+sacrificed to it--but of nations.
+
+Culture, for which nearest German equivalent is Bildung, is the opposite
+of all this. It is an attribute not of nations as a whole but of
+accomplished individuals. It acquires national import only through the
+approval and admiration of these individuals by the rest, who share but
+slightly in the culture they applaud. The aim of culture is the
+enlightened and humane individual, conversant with the best values of
+the past and sensitive to the best values of the present. The
+open-mindedness and imagination implied in culture are potentially
+destructive to a highly organized national Kultur. A cultured leader is
+generally too much alive to the point of view of his rival to be a
+wholly convinced partisan. Hence he lacks the intensity, drive, and
+narrowness that make for competitive success. He keeps his place in the
+sun not by masterfully overriding others, but by a series of delicate
+compromises which reconcile the apparently conflicting claims. Moreover,
+he has too great a respect for the differences between men's gifts to
+formulate any rigid plan which, requires for its execution a strictly
+regimented humanity. He will sacrifice a little efficiency that life may
+be more various, rich, and delightful.
+
+Hence nations with cultured leaders have generally been beaten by those
+whose leaders had merely Kultur. The Spartans and Macedonians had
+abundant Kultur; they generally beat the Athenians, who had merely very
+high culture. The Romans had Kultur, and the Hellenistic world wore
+their yoke. Germany unquestionably has admirable Kultur, and none of the
+mere cultured nations who are leagued against her could hope to beat her
+singly.
+
+
+She Does Not Desire Culture.
+
+On the other hand, Germany has singularly little culture, has less than
+she had a hundred years ago, does not apparently desire it. She has
+willingly sacrificed the culture of a few leading individuals to the
+Kultur of the empire as a whole. Thus it is not surprising that Germany,
+as measured by the production of cultured individuals, takes a very low
+place today. Not only France and England, Italy and Spain, but also
+Russia and America, may fairly claim a higher degree of culture. Here
+the fetich of German scholarship should not deceive us. Culture--a
+balanced and humanized state of mind--is only remotely connected with
+scholarship or even with education. A Spanish peasant or an Italian
+waiter may have finer culture than a German university professor. And in
+the field of scholarship, Germany is in the main chiefly laborious,
+accurate, and small-minded. Her scholarship is related not to culture,
+but is a minor expression of Kultur. Such scholarly men of letters as
+Darwin, Huxley, Renan, Taine, Boissier, Gaston Paris, Menendez y Pelayo,
+Francis J. Child, Germany used to produce in the days of the Grimms and
+Schlegels. She rarely does so now. Her culture has been swallowed up in
+her Kultur.
+
+The claim of Germany to realize her Kultur at the expense of her
+neighbors is at first sight plausible. Her Kultur is unquestionably
+higher than theirs. She has a sharply realized idea of the State, and
+she has justified it largely in practice. In a certain patience,
+thoroughness, and perfection of political organization her pre-eminence
+is unquestionable. The tone of her apologists shows amazement and
+indignation over the fact that the world, so far from welcoming the
+extension of German Kultur, is actively hostile to that ambition. Yet,
+even if it be conceded that Germany's Kultur is wholly good for
+herself--surely a debatable proposition--it does not follow that it is
+or would be a universal benefit. Nations may deliberately and
+legitimately prefer their culture, with its admitted disadvantages, to
+the Kultur which pleases Germany. England is often mocked for the way in
+which she "muddles through" successive perils, yet she may feel that the
+stereotyping of her people in a rigid administrative frame might be too
+high a price to pay for constant preparedness. As for us Americans, we
+have made a virtue, perhaps overdone it, of avoiding a mechanical
+Kultur. We prefer the greatest freedom for the individual to the
+perfectly regimented state. We will move toward culture and cheerfully
+assume the necessary risks of the process.
+
+
+Unlovely and Impressive.
+
+In a broader view, the war may be regarded as a contest between the
+metallic, half-mechanical Kultur of Prussianized Germany and the more
+flexible civilizations of States that have inherited culture or aspire
+to it. Germany herself has rejected the humane and somewhat hazardous
+ideal of culture, so she cannot wonder or complain when she sees that
+the culture of the world is almost unanimously hostile to her. There is
+no quarrel with German Kultur itself; merely a feeling that it has its
+drawbacks, that it is, on the whole, as unlovely as it is impressive,
+that there is quite enough of it in the world already, and that its
+broad extension would be disastrous.
+
+Meanwhile the nations of culture have much to learn from Germany's
+Kultur. Flexibility may mean weakness. The United States, for example,
+could well have a standing army and an army reserve commensurate with
+its history and prospects without incurring any danger of militarism.
+There is, finally, some disadvantage in being merely a culture nation,
+for such a nation can add a large measure of Kultur without belying
+itself. On the contrary, so highly developed a Kultur nation as the
+German Empire puts itself in a position where it is almost impossible to
+acquire any considerable degree of culture. Culture is the enemy of such
+a state--it must remain in the Spartan or Macedonian stage. Rome began
+to decline as soon as Hellenistic culture got the ascendency over the
+old Latin Kultur. Kultur, in short, galvanizes; culture liberates. A
+survey of modern Germany hardly warrants a desire for her world
+dominion.
+
+If any reader is still unclear about the distinction between culture and
+Kultur, let him examine his most-gifted friends as to their sympathies
+in the present war, choosing, of course, persons who have no racial
+reasons for taking sides. Almost without exception he will find they
+fall into two sharply defined classes. The mental characteristics of his
+pro-German friends will pretty certainly illustrate Kultur quite
+concretely, while he may read the meaning of culture in his more-gifted
+friends who favor the Allies.
+
+FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jr.
+
+Princeton, Nov. 6, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+The Trespass in Belgium
+
+By John Grier Hibben.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Some time ago I received with many others an appeal "To the Civilized
+World!" from certain distinguished representatives of German science and
+art. I at once wrote to Prof. Eucken, whom I know, and who is one of the
+signers of this document. I wished to draw his attention particularly to
+the second statement of this appeal, which is as follows:
+
+     It is not true that we trespassed in neutral Belgium. It has
+     been proved that France and England had resolved on such a
+     trespass, and it has likewise been proved that Belgium had
+     agreed to their doing so,
+
+and I stated to him that "It is naturally to be expected of a group of
+scholars that where reference is made to proof, some citation should be
+given both of the sources of the proof and of its nature. I am sure you
+will agree with me that it is of the very essence of scholarly method in
+the treatment of any subject whatsoever that one should cite his
+authority as regards every important and significant statement that is
+made. No one of the distinguished group of scholars signing their names
+to this letter would think of writing an article in his own specialty
+and not add in the text or in a footnote the complete list of
+authorities for his several assertions.
+
+"In your appeal, however, the most important statement by far which you
+make, and the one bearing most intimately upon the honor and integrity
+of your nation, is left without even the attempt to support it, save the
+bare assertion by you and your colleagues. In the interests of a fair
+understanding of Germany's position, I feel that it is incumbent upon
+you to give us who are under such a deep debt of gratitude to German
+scholarship in our own lives the opportunity of a full knowledge of all
+the facts which definitely bear upon this present situation."
+
+At the time of writing Prof. Eucken, I also wrote to a friend of mine,
+Dr. A.E. Shipley, the Master of Christ's College, Cambridge, England,
+asking him if he could get for me some authoritative statement from the
+British Foreign Office concerning the assertion that "it has been proved
+that France and England had resolved on such a trespass, and it has
+likewise been proved that Belgium had agreed to their doing so." I have
+just received a letter from Mr. Shipley, stating that Lord Haldane had
+prepared a statement in answer to this question. Thinking that your
+readers would be interested in seeing this, I am sending it to you.
+Faithfully yours,
+
+JOHN GRIER HIBBEN.
+
+Princeton, N.J., Nov. 24, 1914.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _(Inclosure from Lord Haldane to the Master of Christ's
+     College, Cambridge.)_
+
+     10 Downing St., Whitehall, S.W., Nov. 14.
+
+     Dear Master of Christ's: The inclosed memoranda have been
+     specially prepared for me by the Foreign Office in answer to
+     your question. Yours truly,
+
+     HALDANE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     (MEMORANDUM.)
+
+     It is quite untrue that the British Government had ever
+     arranged with Belgium to trespass on her country in case of
+     war, or that Belgium had agreed to this. The strategic
+     dispositions of Germany, especially as regards railways, have
+     for some years given rise to the apprehension that Germany
+     would attack France through Belgium. Whatever military
+     discussions have taken place before this war have been limited
+     entirely to the suggestion of what could be done to defend
+     France if Germany attacked her through Belgium.
+
+     The Germans have stated that we contemplated sending troops to
+     Belgium. We had never committed ourselves at all to the
+     sending of troops to the Continent, and we had never
+     contemplated the possibility of sending troops to Belgium to
+     attack Germany.
+
+     The Germans have stated that British military stores had been
+     placed at Maubeuge, a French fortress near the Belgian
+     frontier, before the outbreak of the war, and that this is
+     evidence of an intention to attack Germany through Belgium. No
+     British soldiers and no British stores were landed on the
+     Continent till after Germany had invaded Belgium and Belgium
+     had appealed to France and England for assistance. It was only
+     after this appeal that British troops were sent to France;
+     and, if the Germans found British munitions of war in
+     Maubeuge, these munitions were sent with our expedition to
+     France after the outbreak of the war. The idea of violating
+     the neutrality of Belgium was never discussed or contemplated
+     by the British Government.
+
+     The extract inclosed, which is taken from an official
+     publication of the Belgian Government, and the extract from an
+     official statement by the Belgian Minister of War, prove that
+     the Belgian Government had never connived, or been willing to
+     connive, at the breach of the treaty that made the maintenance
+     of Belgian neutrality an international obligation. The moment
+     that there appeared to be danger that this treaty might be
+     violated the British Government made an appeal for an
+     assurance from both France and Germany, as had been done in
+     1870 by Mr. Gladstone, that neither of those countries would
+     violate the neutrality of Belgium if the other country
+     respected it. The French agreed, the Germans declined to
+     agree. The appeal made by the British Government is to be
+     found in our first "White Paper" after the outbreak of the
+     war.
+
+     The reason why Germany would not agree was stated very frankly
+     by Herr von Jagow, the German Minister for Foreign Affairs, to
+     Sir Edward Goschen, our Ambassador in Berlin; and it is
+     recorded in the second "White Paper" that we published. The
+     attitude of the British Government throughout has been to
+     endeavor to preserve the neutrality of Belgium, and we never
+     thought of sending troops to Belgium until Germany had invaded
+     it and Belgium had appealed for assistance to maintain the
+     international treaty.
+
+     We have known for some years past that in Holland, in Denmark,
+     and in Norway the Germans have inspired the apprehension that,
+     if England was at war with Germany, England would violate the
+     neutrality of those countries and seize some of their harbors.
+     This allegation is as baseless as the allegation about our
+     intention to violate the neutrality of Belgium, and events
+     have shown it to be so. But it seems to be a rule with Germany
+     to attribute to others the designs that she herself
+     entertains; as it is clear now that, for some long time past,
+     it has been a settled part of her strategic plans to attack
+     France through Belgium. A statement is inclosed, which was
+     issued by us on Oct. 14 last, dealing with this point.
+
+     This memorandum and its inclosures should provide ample
+     material for a reply to the German statements.
+
+     Foreign Office, Nov. 9, 1914.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Belgian Official Denials.
+
+Here is inclosed a copy of the note of Aug. 3 sent by M. Davignon,
+Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Herr von Below Saleske, the
+German Minister at Brussels, included in the Belgian "Gray Paper," and
+printed in full in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Oct. 18 and reprinted in THE
+TIMES'S pamphlet of the war's diplomatic papers. This is the note
+expressing the "profound and painful surprise" caused to King Albert's
+Government by the German invitation to it to abandon Belgian neutrality
+and denying that France had, as alleged by Germany, manifested any such
+intention.
+
+A second inclosure gives this clipping from The London Times of Sept.
+30:
+
+     OFFICIAL STATEMENT.
+
+     The German press has been attempting to persuade the public
+     that if Germany herself had not violated Belgian neutrality,
+     France or Great Britain would have done so. It has declared
+     that French and British troops had marched into Belgium before
+     the outbreak of war. We have received from the Belgian
+     Minister of War an official statement which denies absolutely
+     these allegations. It declares, on the one hand, that "before
+     Aug. 3 not a single French soldier had set foot on Belgian
+     territory," and, again, "it is untrue that on Aug. 4 there was
+     a single English soldier in Belgium." It adds:
+
+     "For long past Great Britain knew that the Belgian Army would
+     oppose by force a 'preventive' disembarkation of British
+     troops in Belgium. The Belgian Government did not hesitate at
+     the time of the Agadir crisis to warn foreign Ambassadors, in
+     terms which could not be misunderstood, of its formal
+     intention to compel respect for the neutrality of Belgium by
+     every means at its disposal, and against attempts upon it from
+     any and every quarter."
+
+
+The "Agreement" of 1903.
+
+The third inclosure is this British official communiqué:
+
+     14 October, 1914.
+
+     The story of an alleged Anglo-Belgian agreement of 1906
+     published in the German press, and based on documents said to
+     have been found at Brussels, is only a fresh edition of a
+     story which has been reproduced in various forms and denied
+     on several occasions. No such agreement has ever existed.
+
+     As the Germans well know, Gen. Grierson is dead and Col. (now
+     Gen.) Barnardiston is commanding the British forces before
+     Tsing-tau. In 1906 Gen. Grierson was on the General Staff at
+     the War Office, and Col. Barnardiston was Military Attaché at
+     Brussels. In view of the solemn guarantee given by Great
+     Britain to protect the neutrality of Belgium against violation
+     from any side, some academic discussions may, through the
+     instrumentality of Col. Barnardiston, have taken place between
+     Gen. Grierson and the Belgian military authorities as to what
+     assistance the British Army might be able to afford to Belgium
+     should one of her neighbors violate that neutrality. Some
+     notes with reference to the subject may exist in the archives
+     at Brussels.
+
+     It should be noted that the date mentioned, namely, 1906, was
+     the year following that in which Germany had, as in 1911,
+     adopted a threatening attitude toward France with regard to
+     Morocco, and, in view of the apprehensions existing of an
+     attack on France through Belgium, it was natural that possible
+     eventualities should be discussed.
+
+     The impossibility of Belgium having been a party to any
+     agreement of the nature indicated or to any design for the
+     violation of Belgian neutrality is clearly shown by the
+     reiterated declarations that she has made for many years past
+     that she would resist to the utmost any violation of her
+     neutrality from whatever quarter and in whatever form such
+     violation might come.
+
+     It is worthy of attention that these charges of aggressive
+     designs on the part of other powers are made by Germany, who,
+     since 1906, has established an elaborate network of
+     strategical railways leading from the Rhine to the Belgian
+     frontier through a barren, thinly populated tract,
+     deliberately constructed to permit of the sudden attack upon
+     Belgium, which was carried out two months ago.
+
+
+
+
+Apportioning the Blame
+
+By Arthur v. Briesen.
+
+     Of the law firm of Briesen & Knauth; Doctor of Laws, New York
+     University; philanthropist; has served the American public as
+     head of important civic bodies and Governmental commissions.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Having been requested by you to express my views with reference to the
+war which is now lacerating Europe, I take pleasure to comply with your
+desire.
+
+As an American citizen I am, of course, under obligations to be neutral
+and to send no ammunition to either belligerent. At the same time the
+German blood in my veins naturally causes me to sympathize with Germany
+in this conflict. But even if we leave out of consideration any matter
+of sympathy, if we look upon the situation in an entirely unbiased
+spirit, the conclusion which I propose to lay before you appears to be
+irresistible.
+
+The questions that seem to have agitated the American public mostly in
+connection with this awful conflict have been:
+
+     _First_--Who is to blame for bringing about this war, and,
+
+     _Second_--Assuming that Germany was not to blame for beginning
+     the war, is she to blame for violating the neutrality of
+     Belgium?
+
+If we should find the fault regarding the first question to lie
+primarily with England and secondarily with Russia, we should at once
+clear the German people and their Government from the charge that has
+heretofore been brought against them for having incited the war. And if
+we should find that the neutrality of Belgium was not binding upon any
+country whose existence or whose interests were threatened by other
+countries, that fact would then absolve either country from a charge
+which thus far seems to have been brought against one of them.
+
+_How was the war brought about?_ As far back as 1906 it is known, and
+can be proved by the files of New York papers, to say nothing of
+official correspondence now found in Brussels and elsewhere, that
+measures were started by England to circumscribe or isolate the German
+Empire, and treaties were entered between England, France, and Russia
+(the Triple Entente) to insure joint action against Germany when
+necessary.
+
+Germany herself has been peaceful, progressive, and anxious to retain
+her position as a nation undisturbed by others, as a nation that should
+advance in art, in science, in population, and in all things that make
+happiness through peace. What was the situation in other countries?
+
+Since 1870 _France_ had cried for revenge (_revanche_). Its school
+books, newspapers, public speakers, and political leaders were all
+charged with the one great idea of seeking revenge against Germany for
+having retaken Alsace and Lorraine in 1870, which France had wrongfully
+occupied since the time of Louis XIV. Alsace and Lorraine had been
+German for centuries before; they were wrested from Germany without even
+a semblance of an excuse at the close of the seventeenth century, and
+were largely German in language and in spirit in 1870. Goethe's studies
+in Strassburg and his visits to Frederica von Sesenheim in the
+eighteenth century show that he was living in a German country whenever
+he was in Alsace. A _united_ Germany did not exist prior to 1870.
+However, the cry for revenge was there, and France distinctly declared
+it to be her policy to take her revenge as soon as opportunity offered.
+France was, therefore, a pronounced enemy of Germany ever since 1870,
+and when asked by the German Government on July 31, 1914, whether she
+would remain neutral in a Russian-German war (Annex 25, German "White
+Paper") she answered: "France would do that which might be required of
+her _by her interests_." This answer was given on Aug. 1, 1914, (Annex
+27, German "White Paper.") Today we may well ask France whether, since
+Aug. 1, 1914, she has done that which was required by her interests.
+
+_Russia_ may next be looked at. How did Russia become involved in this
+contest? The little kingdom of Servia, which had familiarized itself
+with the fine art of disposing of crowned heads by throwing its King and
+Queen, Alexandra and Draga, out of the window of their castle, caused
+through its officials and its followers to have the heir to the Austrian
+throne and his wife cruelly assassinated on June 28, 1914. This
+assassination was an act of enmity toward Austria and a step toward the
+enlargement of Servia. Deeming her existence threatened and her national
+dignity offended, Austria sent a rather sharp demand under date of July
+23, 1914, to Servia, requiring prompt and thorough satisfaction for the
+gross attack made upon her and her reigning family through Servia's
+official directions.
+
+Strange to say, however, the British "White Book" shows that three days
+before, on July 20, 1914, Sir Edward Grey, (Paper 1, British "White
+Book,") wrote to Sir E. Goschen, British Ambassador at Berlin, a letter
+in which he states:
+
+     In fact, the more Austria could keep her demand within
+     reasonable limits, and the stronger the justification she
+     could produce for making any demand, the more chance there
+     would be of smoothing things over. _I hated the idea of a war
+     between any of the great powers_, and that any of them should
+     be dragged into a war by Servia would be detestable.
+
+On July 24, 1914, the Austrian message to Servia became known to all
+countries, and on the same day Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador
+at St. Petersburg, wrote that he had been asked by Mr. Sazonof, Russian
+Minister of Foreign Affairs, to meet him at the French Embassy to
+discuss matters, as Austria's step clearly meant that war was imminent.
+He wrote that Mr. Sazonof expressed himself as follows (British Paper
+6):
+
+     He hoped that his Majesty's Government would not fail to
+     _proclaim their solidarity with Russia and France_. The French
+     Ambassador gave me to understand that France would fulfill all
+     the obligations entailed by her alliance with Russia, if
+     necessity arose, besides supporting Russia strongly in any
+     diplomatic negotiations.
+
+Later, on July 29, 1914, Sir George Buchanan wrote to Sir Edward Grey
+(Paper 72, English "White Book") as follows:
+
+     I made it clear to his Excellency that, _Russia being
+     thoroughly in earnest, a general war could not be averted_ if
+     Servia were attacked by Austria.
+
+Sir George Buchanan would not have said that if he had not been
+authorized to do so. He would not have said a "general war could not be
+averted if Servia were attacked by Austria"; and by "general war" he
+meant, and we all understand he meant, a war between England, France,
+and Russia on one side and Germany and Austria on the other.
+
+Servia's reply to the demand of Austria, which was dated July 25, 1914,
+not being deemed satisfactory, Austria proceeded to a punitive
+expedition against Servia, and she repeatedly asserted and assured all
+the other powers that the expedition was merely punitive and that
+neither the independence nor the territorial integrity of Servia were at
+all involved or in any danger.
+
+But all this had no effect upon Russia. In fact, when Russia was first
+informed of the Austrian demand (Annex 4, German "White Book") Minister
+of Foreign Affairs Sazonof made wild complaints on _July_ 24, 1914,
+against Austria-Hungary. What he said most definitely was this:
+
+     _That Russia could not possibly permit the Servian-Austrian
+     dispute to be confined to the parties concerned._
+
+This was the keynote of the Russian situation and of the Russian
+intention. Russia wanted, of course, to expand its realm as far
+westward as possible, and it wanted to take advantage of the opportunity
+offered by the necessary consequences of the dreadful insult and cruelty
+practiced by Servia on Austria, not only to prevent the punishment of
+Servia, but also to proceed against Germany, for, as Paper 4 says:
+"Russia could not possibly permit the Servian-Austrian dispute to be
+_confined_ to the parties concerned."
+
+Who, then, was to blame for not allowing the war to be confined, for not
+permitting Austria to punish the murderers of her King, but utilizing
+this opportunity for the purpose of bringing about the great war which
+Russia and France had carefully prepared long ago? The great war which
+should involve all the civilized nations in a conflict, and threaten to
+extinguish Austria and to carry barbarism into the heart of Europe! She
+_did_ not permit the Servian-Austrian dispute to be confined to the
+parties concerned.
+
+Again, in Paper 56, (English "White Book,") we find the English
+Ambassador to Austria writing to Sir Edward Grey on July 27, 1914, the
+following:
+
+     If actual war broke out with Servia it would be _impossible_
+     to localize it, for _Russia_ was not prepared to give way
+     again.
+
+Again, in Paper 72, (English "White Book,") dated July 28, 1914, from
+the English Ambassador in Russia to Sir Edward Grey:
+
+     I made it clear to his Excellency (German Ambassador) that,
+     _Russia being thoroughly in earnest_, a general war could not
+     be averted if Servia were attacked by Austria.
+
+Paper 121, (English "White Book,") British Ambassador in Berlin to Sir
+Edward Grey under date of July 31, 1914:
+
+     He (the German Secretary of State) again assured me that both
+     the Emperor William, at the request of the Emperor of Russia,
+     and the German Foreign Office had even up till last night been
+     urging Austria to show willingness to continue
+     discussions--and telegraphic and telephonic communications
+     from Vienna had been of a promising nature--_but Russia's
+     mobilization had spoiled everything_.
+
+I could repeat, _ad infinitum_, quotations from these books to show
+that Russia not only wanted this war if Austria wanted to punish Servia
+for her misdeeds, but started it against the protest of Germany, and
+started it, I sincerely believe, largely because encouraged by Great
+Britain.
+
+_England_: The letter written by the Belgian Chargé at St. Petersburg to
+his Government on July 30, 1914, which letter was published in THE NEW
+YORK TIMES on Oct. 7, 1914, and which letter, nearly a month before, had
+been published abroad and never disavowed by the Belgian Government,
+states distinctly on the part of Belgium:
+
+     _What is incontestable is that Germany has striven here, as
+     well as at Vienna, to find some means of avoiding a general
+     conflict...._ M. Sazonof, Russian Foreign Minister, has
+     declared that it would be impossible for Russia not to hold
+     herself ready and to mobilize, but that these preparations
+     were not directed against Germany. This morning an official
+     communiqué to the newspapers announces that "the reserves have
+     been called under arms in a certain number of Governments."
+     Knowing the discreet nature of the official communiqué one can
+     without fear assert that _mobilization is going on
+     everywhere_.
+
+     ... One can truly ask one's self whether the whole world does
+     not desire war and is trying merely to retard its declaration
+     a little in order to gain time. England began by allowing it
+     to be understood that she did not want to be drawn into a
+     conflict. Sir George Buchanan (British Ambassador) said that
+     openly. Today one is firmly convinced at St. Petersburg--one
+     has even the assurance of it--that England will support
+     France. This support is of enormous weight, and _has
+     contributed not a little to give the upper hand to the war
+     party_.
+
+The German Emperor during these times believed England to be really and
+honestly striving to avoid the war; he went so far as to announce in one
+of his letters published in the "White Book" that "he had shoulder to
+shoulder with England tried to bring about a peaceful solution." It
+certainly now appears that all this while England had made her
+arrangements with France and with Russia, and had strengthened the war
+party in Russia to such an extent that Russia's desire to set Europe
+afire was rendered possible.
+
+_Belgian neutrality._ It is charged that Germany violated an alleged
+treaty with Belgium, which treaty is supposed to have guaranteed the
+integrity of Belgium. When Germany found her efforts to maintain peace
+frustrated, Russian troops having crossed the German frontier on the
+afternoon of Aug. 1, while France opened hostilities on Aug. 2, she
+announced to Belgium on Aug. 2, 1914, that she found herself under
+obligation, to prevent a French attack through Belgium, to pass through
+Belgian territory; she expressed her readiness to guarantee the
+integrity of the kingdom and its possessions and to pay any damage
+caused if Belgium would, in a friendly way, permit such a passage of
+troops through it.
+
+The English "White Book" contains, Paper 151, dated Aug. 3, 1914, which
+paper we repeat in full:
+
+(British Minister to Belgium to Sir Edward Grey.)
+
+     French Government have offered through their Military Attaché
+     the support of five French Army corps to the Belgian
+     Government. Following reply has been received today: We are
+     sincerely grateful to the French Government for offering
+     eventual support. In the actual circumstances, however, _we do
+     not propose to appeal to the guarantee of the powers_. Belgian
+     Government will decide later on the action which they may
+     think it necessary to take.
+
+In short, Belgium says in the foregoing notice to France, that she does
+not propose to appeal to the guarantee of the powers.
+
+Was Germany justified in disregarding any previous treaty which related
+to Belgium if her interests required her so to do?
+
+_United States Supreme Court:_ In its unanimous opinion in the Chinese
+exclusion cases, reported on Pages 581 to 611 of Vol. 130 of United
+States Reports, the Supreme Court of the United States had this very
+question before it. A treaty had been entered into by the United States
+and China, allowing Chinese subjects the right to visit and reside in
+the United States and to there enjoy the same privileges that are
+enjoyed by citizens of the United States. After that treaty an act of
+Congress was passed in violation of the treaty, providing it to be
+unlawful thereafter for Chinese laborers to enter the United States. The
+question was, whether we had the right to violate a treaty solemnly
+entered into with another country? On this subject the court said (Page
+600):
+
+     The effect of legislation upon conflicting treaty stipulations
+     was elaborately considered in THE HEAD MONEY CASES, and it was
+     there adjudged: "that so far as a treaty made by the United
+     States with any foreign nation can become the subject of
+     judicial cognizance in the courts of this country, it is
+     subject to such acts as Congress may pass for its enforcement,
+     modification, or repeal," 112 U.S. 580, 599. This doctrine was
+     affirmed and followed in WHITNEY v. ROBERTSON, 124 U.S. 190,
+     195. It will not be presumed that the legislative department
+     of the Government will lightly pass laws which are in conflict
+     with the treaties of the country; _but that circumstances may
+     arise which would not only justify the Government in
+     disregarding their stipulations, but demand in the interests
+     of the country that it should do so, there can be no question.
+     Unexpected events may call for a change in the policy of the
+     country._
+
+In the same opinion the Supreme Court calls attention to an act passed
+in 1798, declaring that the United States were freed and exonerated from
+the stipulations of previous treaties with France. This subject was
+fully considered by Justice Curtis, who held, as the Supreme Court says
+(Page 602): "That whilst it would always be a matter of the utmost
+gravity and delicacy to refuse to execute a treaty, the power to do so
+was a prerogative of which no nation could be deprived without deeply
+affecting its independence."
+
+We observe, therefore, that under our own ideas of international law the
+United States claims the right to disregard its stipulations if the
+interests of the country should require it. And the same right we should
+concede to other nations. Particularly to Germany in the present
+instance, when we find her battling for her very existence against
+enemies that seek to destroy her, against enemies that surround her on
+all sides, against enemies that do not hesitate to bring troops into the
+conflict from the wilds of Africa and Asia, and who do not hesitate to
+drag Japan into this war, causing her to disregard Chinese neutrality in
+her effort to capture a small settlement, lawfully occupied in China by
+a handful of German soldiers.
+
+In this connection I quote the British sentiment, as expressed by
+Gladstone regarding Belgium neutrality in the year 1870:
+
+     But I am not able to subscribe to the doctrine of those who
+     have held in this House, what plainly amounts to the assertion
+     that the simple fact of the existence of a guarantee is
+     binding to every party to it, irrespective altogether of the
+     particular position in which it may find itself at the time
+     when the occasion for _acting on the question arises_.
+
+This shows that England herself reserved the right, whenever her
+interests required her to do so, to act in violation of the treaty with
+Belgium. That, at least, is my understanding of Gladstone's language.
+England did not respect Danish neutrality a hundred years ago, when she
+destroyed the Danish fleet at Copenhagen because her interests required,
+and England does not now, through its Asiatic ally, and directly,
+respect Chinese neutrality, claiming the right primarily to consult her
+own interests. Should this right, asserted by our own Supreme Court, and
+actually assumed by England and Japan, be denied to Germany? Finally, I
+understand that The Hague Conference of 1907 drafted a convention which
+reads:
+
+     The territory of neutral powers is inviolable. Belligerents
+     are forbidden to move troops or convoys of either munitions of
+     war or supplies across the territory of a neutral power. Great
+     Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy refused to sign
+     it and did not sign it. Russia was not represented.
+
+MILITARISM. There is one more subject which many people in this country
+have failed to understand, and that is the matter of militarism. German
+militarism is supposed to be something dreadful, and many good people
+believe that it would be a great advance toward eternal peace if that
+militarism could be wiped out. Well, now, let us see.
+
+If Germany did not require every one of her sons to spend a year, or at
+most two years, in the army, and if she had not provided for all these
+men sufficient arms and accoutrements for immediate use in case of war,
+what would have happened when Russia entered her territory, or when
+France came on a like errand?
+
+Any one who lives among enemies is expected to be sufficiently prepared
+to defend himself should they attack him, be he ever so peaceful.
+
+At the time the United States of America was born there was no such
+thing as Germany. Every country around it had a slice of it. Napoleon
+took the larger western part of Germany as his property, England held
+Hanover, the former Kingdom of Poland held Saxony, Austria held Silesia,
+and so there was no Germany. The Teutonic races had no home in which
+they could develop and live without interference by others. To prevent
+such interference Germany of all nations needed an army; to prevent
+similar interference at sea England of all nations needed a navy. That
+great British Navy bears precisely the same relation to the protection
+of Great Britain at sea which the German Army bears to the protection of
+Germany on land.
+
+To sum up, what are the countries fighting for? Russia for her
+enlargement; she has no grudge whatever against Germany except that it
+exists. France for revenge; she has no grudge whatever against Germany
+except that she wants revenge for 1870. What grudge has England against
+Germany, except that Germany has grown commercially, financially, and
+industrially to a position which threatens to crowd England into a
+second rank? Jealousy appears to control the English attitude.
+
+The position apparently assumed by England is best expressed by the King
+of England in his telegram to Prince Henry of Prussia, dated July 30,
+1914:
+
+     My Government is doing its utmost, suggesting to Russia and
+     France to _suspend further military preparations_ if Austria
+     will consent to be satisfied with occupation of Belgrade and
+     neighboring Servian territory as a hostage for satisfactory
+     settlement of her demands, other countries meanwhile
+     suspending their war preparations. Trust William will use his
+     great influence to induce Austria to accept this proposal,
+     thus proving that Germany and England are working together to
+     prevent what would be an international catastrophe.
+
+On July 31, the very next day, Sir Edward Grey wrote the telegram, No.
+111, (English "White Book,") to the British Ambassador at Berlin, in
+which we find the following:
+
+     I would undertake to sound St. Petersburg, whether it would be
+     possible for the four disinterested powers to offer to Austria
+     that they would undertake to see that she obtained full
+     satisfaction of her demands on Servia, provided that they did
+     not impair Servian sovereignty and the integrity of Servian
+     territory. _As your Excellency is aware, Austria has already
+     declared her willingness to respect them._ (Established by
+     Paper 3, July 24, and Paper 5, July 26, German "White Book.")
+
+Hence, we find that all King George said he wanted had been granted, and
+yet England entered into the war. Why? Probably because she thought, as
+France had expressed it, that she acted in pursuance of her interests.
+
+And what is Germany fighting for? Does she want anything from anybody?
+She wants to be left alone; she always wanted to be left alone; she
+prospered while she was left alone; she grew while she was left alone.
+Not being left alone she has to defend herself. Hence, I bespeak for
+Germany and for her side fair play, just judgment on behalf of the
+American people.
+
+ARTHUR v. BRIESEN.
+
+New York, Oct. 17, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+PARTING.
+
+By LOUISE VON WETTER.
+
+
+    Sodger lad, O sodger lad,
+      The dawn will see ye marchin'--
+    The nicht drag's on--its dark is out
+      Wi' searchlichts, shiftin', archin'.
+
+    Sodger lad, O sodger lad,
+      D'ye mind our Summer meetin'?
+    And noo, ye'll gang. The heather's dead ...
+      I canna keep frae greetin'.
+
+    Sodger lad, my sodger lad--
+      D'ye mind, my time is nearin'?
+    Alone--alone--wi'out yer hand!
+      How shall I keep frae fearin'?
+
+    Sodger lad, O sodger lad,
+      Far, far awa' ye're goin'--
+    I'll not dare count the leagues an' days--
+      _Gude God! The cocks are crowin'!_
+
+    Sodger lad, my luve, my dear,
+      Awake! The morn is grayin'!
+    E'en tho' my heart drags, sick wi' dread,
+      I wouldna have ye stayin'.
+
+
+
+
+French Hate and English Jealousy
+
+By Kuno Francke.
+
+
+It is easy to see why American public opinion should have condemned by
+an overwhelming majority the diplomatic acts of Austria and Hungary
+which have been the immediate occasion of the terrific explosion which
+now shakes the foundations of the whole civilized world. Austria's break
+with Servia and Germany's violation of Belgian neutrality--the one
+leading to war between Russia and Germany, the other bringing England
+into the fray--must appear to the uninitiated as reckless and
+indefensible provocations and as wanton attacks upon the laws of
+nations.
+
+The thoughtful observer, however, should look beyond the immediate
+occasion of this world conflict and try to understand its underlying
+causes. By doing so he will, I believe, come to the conclusion that
+fundamental justice is to be found on the German side, and that Germany
+has been forced to fight for her life.
+
+It is an unquestionable fact that the unification of Germany and the
+establishment of a strong German Empire, half a century ago, were
+brought about against the bitter opposition of France, and that the
+defeat incurred by France in 1870, in her attempt to prevent German
+unification, is at the bottom of the constant irritation that has
+agitated Europe during the last forty-three years. Germany's policy
+toward France during these forty-three years has been one of utmost
+restraint and forbearance, and has been dictated by the one desire of
+making her forget the loss of the two provinces, German until the
+seventeenth century and inhabited by German stock, which were won back
+from France in 1870. Whether the acquisition of these provinces was a
+fortunate thing for Germany may be doubted. The possession of
+Alsace-Lorraine has certainly robbed Germany of the undivided sympathy
+of the world, which she otherwise would have had. But it is probably
+true that from the military point of view Alsace-Lorraine was needed by
+Germany as a bulwark against the repetition of the many wanton French
+invasions from which Germany has had to suffer since the time of the
+Thirty Years' War and the age of Louis XIV.
+
+
+Sought to Heal the Breach.
+
+However this may be, Germany has done her best during the last four
+decades to heal the wounds struck by her to French national pride. She
+abetted French colonial expansion in Cochin-China, Madagascar, Tunis.
+She yielded to France her own well-founded claims to political influence
+in Morocco. In Alsace-Lorraine itself she introduced an amount of local
+self-government and home rule such as England has not accorded even now
+to Ireland. While Ireland still is waiting for a Parliament at Dublin,
+Strassburg has been for years the seat of the Alsace-Lorraine Diet, a
+provincial Parliament based on universal suffrage. And even in spite of
+the incessant and inflammatory French propaganda which last year led to
+such unhappy counter-strokes as the deplorable Zabern affair, there can
+be no reasonable doubt that the people of Alsace-Lorraine have been
+gradually settling down to willing co-operation with the German
+administration--an administration which insures them order, justice, and
+prosperity. Nothing is a clearer indication of the peaceable trend which
+affairs have lately taken in Alsace-Lorraine than the fact that the
+Nationalists, i.e., French party, in the Strassburg Diet has never been
+able to rise above insignificance, and that, on the other hand, a
+considerable number of responsible officers in the civil administration,
+including the highest Governmental positions, have been occupied by
+native Alsatians.
+
+While Germany has thus repeatedly shown her willingness and desire to
+end the ancient feud, France has remained irreconcilable; and
+particularly the intellectual class of France cannot escape the charge
+that they have persistently and willfully kept alive the flame of
+discord.
+
+It surely cannot be said that the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine is a
+vital necessity to France. Without Alsace-Lorraine France has recovered
+her prosperity and her prestige in a manner that has been the admiration
+of the world. It is a mere illusion to think that the reconquest of
+Alsace-Lorraine would add to her glory. It would have been a demand of
+patriotism for the intellectual class to combat this illusion. Instead
+of this, every French writer, every French scholar, every French orator,
+except the Socialists, year in and year out, has been dinning into the
+popular ear the one word revenge.
+
+
+France to Blame.
+
+There can be little doubt that Prof. Gustave Lanson, the distinguished
+literary historian, voiced the sentiments of the vast majority of his
+countrymen when in a lecture, delivered some years ago at Harvard, he
+stated that France could not and would not reorganize the peace of
+Frankfurt as a final settlement, and that the one aim of the French
+policy of the last forty years had been to force Germany to reopen the
+Alsace-Lorraine question.
+
+If there were people in Germany inclined to overlook or to minimize this
+constantly growing menace from France, their eyes must have been opened
+when in 1912 the French Government, having previously abolished the
+one-year volunteers, raised the duration of active military service for
+every Frenchman from two years to three, and, in addition to this,
+called out in the Autumn of 1913 the recruits not only of the year whose
+turn had come, namely, the recruits born in 1892, but also those born
+in 1893. This was a measure nearly identical with mobilization; it was a
+measure which clearly showed that France would not delay much longer
+striking the deadly blow. For no nation could possibly stand for any
+length of time this terrific strain of holding under the colors its
+entire male population from the twentieth to the twenty-fourth year. No
+wonder that the Paris papers were speaking as long ago as the Summer of
+1912 of the regiments stationed in the Eastern Departments as the
+"vanguard of our glorious army," and were advocating double pay for
+them, as being practically in contact with the enemy.
+
+The second foe now threatening the destruction of Germany is England.
+Can it truly be said that England's hostility has been brought about by
+German aggression? True, Germany has built a powerful navy; but so have
+Japan, the United States, France, and even Italy. Has England felt any
+menace from these? Why, then, is the German Navy singled out as a
+specially sinister threat to England? Has German diplomacy during the
+last generation been particularly menacing to England? Germany has
+acquired some colonies in Africa and in the Far East. But what are
+Kamerun and Dar-es-Salaam and Kiao-Chau compared with the colonial
+possessions of the other great powers? Where has Germany pursued a
+colonial aggressiveness that could in any way be compared with the
+British subjugation of the South African republics or the Italian
+conquest of Tripoli or the French expansion in Algiers, Tunis, and
+Morocco, or the American acquisition of the Philippines?
+
+
+Her Open-Door Policy.
+
+Wherever Germany has made her influence felt on the globe she has stood
+for the principle of the open door. Wherever she has engaged in colonial
+enterprises, she has been willing to make compromises with other nations
+and to accept their co-operation, notably so in the Bagdad railway
+undertaking. And yet, the colonial expansion of every other nation is
+hailed by England as "beneficial to mankind," as "work for
+civilization"; the slightest attempt of Germany to take part in this
+expansion is denounced as "intolerable aggression," as evidence of the
+"bullying tendencies of the War Lord."
+
+What is the reason for this singular unfairness of England toward
+Germany, of this incessant attempt to check her and hem her in? Not so
+much the existence of a large German Navy as the encroachment upon
+English commerce by the rapidly growing commerce of Germany has made
+Germany hateful to England. The navy has simply added to this hate of
+Germany the dread of Germany. But if there had been no German Navy, and
+consequently no dread of Germany, this hate of Germany might have come
+to an explosion before now. For the history of the last 300 years proves
+that England has habitually considered as her mortal enemy any nation
+which dared to contest her commercial and industrial supremacy--first
+Spain, then Holland, then France, and now Germany. As long as German
+firms, by the manufacture of artificial indigo, keep on ruining the
+English importation of indigo from India, and as long as the German
+steamship lines keep on outstripping the prestige of the English boats,
+there can be no real friendship between England and Germany. Although
+England has repeatedly proposed to Germany naval agreements, these
+agreements were avowedly meant to perpetuate the overwhelming
+preponderance of England's fighting power, so that she would at any
+moment be in a position to crush German commercial rivalry for all time.
+She apparently thinks that this moment has now come.
+
+That Germany's third implacable enemy, Russia, is clearly the aggressor,
+and not the defender of her own national existence, need hardly be
+demonstrated. She poses as the guardian of the Balkan States. But is
+there any case on record where Russia has really protected the
+independence of smaller neighboring countries? Has she not crushed out
+provincial and racial individuality wherever she has extended her power?
+Is it not the sole aim of her national policy to Russianize forcibly
+every nationality under her sway?
+
+In Finland she has gone back on her solemnly pledged word to maintain
+the Finnish Constitution, and is ruthlessly reducing one of her most
+highly developed provinces to the dead level of autocratic rule. In her
+Baltic provinces she is trying to destroy, root and branch, whatever
+there is left of German culture. Wherever the Russian Church holds
+dominion intellectual blight is sure to follow.
+
+To think, therefore, that Russia would promote the free development of a
+number of independent Balkan States under her protectorate is to shut
+one's eyes to the whole history of Russian expansion. No, Russian
+expansion in the Balkans means nothing less than the extinction of all
+local independence and the establishment of Russian despotism from the
+Black Sea to the Adriatic.
+
+
+Why Germany Supports Austria.
+
+Not Russia, but Austria, is the natural protector of the equilibrium
+between the existing States on the Balkan Peninsula and their natural
+guardian against Russian domination. Austria is their nearest neighbor;
+indeed, the possession of Bosnia and Herzegovina makes her a Balkan
+State herself.
+
+Being herself more than half of Slavic stock, she has every reason for
+living on good terms with the various Slav kingdoms south of her. Being
+herself forced, through the conglomerateness of her population, to
+constant compromises in her internal affairs between conflicting
+nationalities within her borders, she could not possibly absorb a large
+additional amount of foreign territory. She is bound to respect the
+existing lines of political demarkation in the Balkans, and her sole
+object can be through commercial treaties and tariff legislation to open
+up what used to be European Turkey to her trade and her civilizing
+influence.
+
+In this she must clearly be supported by Germany. For only if Austria is
+left free to exercise her natural protectorate over the Balkan States
+can the passage between Germany and the Near Orient, one of the most
+important routes of German commerce, be kept open.
+
+Russia's unwillingness, then, to allow Austria a free hand in her
+dealings with Servia was an open menace to Germany, a challenge which
+had to be accepted unless Germany was prepared to abdicate all her
+influence in the Near Orient and to allow Russia to override the
+legitimate claims and aspirations of her only firm and faithful ally.
+
+This formidable coalition of the three greatest European powers,
+threatening the very existence of Germany, has now been joined by Japan,
+openly and boldly for the purpose of snatching from Germany her one
+Asiatic possession.
+
+If any additional proof had been needed to make it clear that, if
+Germany wanted to retain the slightest chance of extricating herself
+from this worldwide conspiracy against her, she had to strike the first
+blow, even at the risk of offending against international good manners,
+this stab in the back by Japan would furnish such proof.
+
+
+
+
+Dr. Sanderson Replies
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Although I hate to enter into a controversy with Prof. Kuno Francke, who
+was once my excellent friend, I cannot refrain from answering his
+article which appeared in last Sunday's NEW YORK TIMES.
+
+How can any one say, in all fairness, that Germany's policy toward
+France during the last forty-three years has been one of the utmost
+restraint and forbearance, and has been dictated by the one desire to
+make her forget the loss of the two provinces? What are the facts? We
+know that not once, but again and again, since 1878, Germany has tried
+to provoke France into war. We know that on one occasion Queen Victoria
+herself threatened the Kaiser with Great Britain's intervention if he
+did not desist from his intended attack on France. And to cite only the
+two most recent instances, the Agadir affair and the enforced
+resignation of the French Premier, Delcassé! Would Germany have
+swallowed such insults?
+
+This may be the German conception of "utmost restraint and forbearance,"
+but it appeared to the French, as it did to the rest of the world, that
+it required their utmost restraint and forbearance to remain calm under
+the affronts.
+
+The fact that Alsace-Lorraine was German up to the seventeenth century,
+and inhabited by German stock, cannot be brought forward today, after
+more than 200 years, to justify the retaking of those provinces by the
+Germans. The whole world would be in a state of continual warfare if
+nations claimed provinces or States that belonged to them once upon a
+time. Richelieu's idea was that the Rhine was the natural and
+geographical frontier between France and Germany, and the war was
+undertaken to carry out that plan. Since then the inhabitants have
+become French, and the attempts to re-Germanize them have proved futile.
+Prof. Francke may well doubt if the acquisition of these provinces was a
+fortunate thing for Germany. It was undoubtedly the most unfortunate
+thing not only for Germany but for France and the rest of Europe, for it
+kept open a wound which might have been healed either by a return of the
+lost provinces, with or without compensation, or by granting them
+autonomy, or, better still, by leaving it to the inhabitants to choose
+for themselves, as France did with Nice and Savoy.
+
+The ruthless methods of a Bismarck are no longer of this age. They are
+too odious, and the human conscience revolts at them. What a
+preposterous idea, in this twentieth century, to compel by force
+millions of people to renounce their traditions and even their
+language! If Great Britain had followed the same method in dealing with
+the French Canadians, instead of loyal subjects she would have made
+rebels of them all.
+
+It is neither right nor just nor truthful to say that Germany has done
+her best during the last four decades to heal the wounds struck by her
+to French national pride. On the contrary, Germany's attitude has been
+all along one of studied provocation; and if the instances already
+mentioned are not sufficient, many others could be added.
+
+Germany abetted French colonial expansion. Well, by what right should
+she have opposed it? And if she yielded to France in Morocco, it was
+only after France had given Germany part of her African possessions
+rather than go to war with her.
+
+It will be news to the world to be informed that there can be no
+reasonable doubt that the people of Alsace-Lorraine have been gradually
+settling down to willing co-operation with the German administration.
+Certainly such a statement is in violent contradiction with all we hear
+and read and know of the state of mind, the feelings, and aspirations of
+the inhabitants of those two provinces.
+
+To argue that the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine is not a vital
+necessity to France; that without these provinces she has recovered her
+prosperity and her prestige, and that it is mere illusion to think that
+the reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine would add to her glory is pure
+sophistry. It is just as if you said to a man whom you had robbed of
+some valuable property: "What does it matter? You are just as well off
+without it." Yes, Prof. Larson did voice the sentiment of the vast
+majority of his countrymen when he stated that France could not and
+would not recognize the treaty of Frankfurt. If I have an enemy who
+takes me by surprise and with revolver leveled at my head compels me to
+sign a paper by which I despoil myself to his advantage, what is the
+validity of such a document?
+
+That is the way that all Frenchmen of all classes look upon the treaty
+of Frankfurt, wrung from them under duress.
+
+The term "revanche" is a slogan. It simply typifies in one word the
+reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine; but it does not carry with it the idea of
+willfully laying waste the enemy's country, burning and pillaging,
+shooting inoffensive non-combatants, and cleaning banks of all the gold
+they contain.
+
+Another statement which is misleading in Prof. Francke's article is the
+one which refers to the "growing menace from France," in which he speaks
+of the increasing armament that has been going on in that country since
+1912. But what is called in Germany "the menace from France" is called
+in the latter country "the menace from Germany." Who started these
+enormous armaments? Each time Germany increased her army France was
+forced to do the same; and when France recently increased from two to
+three years the duration of military service, it was her only way of
+meeting Germany's increase of 500,000 men.
+
+The attempt to change the rôles and present France to the world as the
+aggressor, or even as premeditating an attack upon Germany, is futile.
+It is a strange and yet not uncommon psychological fact that the hate of
+the conqueror is often greater than that of the conquered; and it is
+German, not French, hate which has forced Germany into this savage war.
+France had recovered too rapidly from her disasters; she was too rich;
+her colonies were too vast and too prosperous; she must be crushed. What
+right had she to have large colonies when Germany, the superior nation,
+had none worth mentioning? There you have the key to the Kaiser's
+repeated provocations and to his final attack.
+
+In regard to England and Russia, the writer will simply confine himself
+to the statement that if the German Imperial Government can produce as
+clean a bill of health as the "White Paper" of the British Foreign
+Office, just published, it will do more to convince American public
+opinion of the justice of its cause than anything that has yet been
+written in the press by Germans and their sympathizers.
+
+R.L. SANDERSON.
+
+Yale University, New Haven, Conn., Sept. 5, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+In Defense of Austria
+
+By Baron L. Hengelmuller.
+
+     Late Austro-Hungarian Ambassador to the United States.
+
+
+_The following letter was written by Baron Hengelmuller to Col. Theodore
+Roosevelt._
+
+ABBAZIA, Sept. 25, 1914.
+
+My Dear Mr. Roosevelt:
+
+Our correspondence has suffered a long interruption. Your last letter
+was from July of last year. I do not know whether you ever received my
+answer, by which I thanked you for your preface to my book. You were in
+Arizona when I wrote it, and soon after your return you started for
+Brazil. At the occasion of your son's wedding I sent him a telegram to
+Madrid, but I had no chance to write to you because I had no information
+with regard to the length of your stay and your whereabouts in Europe.
+
+Now I write to you at the time of a most momentous crisis in the world's
+history, and I do so impelled by the desire to talk with you about my
+country's cause and to win your just and fair appreciation for the same.
+I wish I could address my appeal to the American people, but having no
+standing and no opportunity to do so, I address it to you as to one of
+America's most illustrious citizens with whom it has been my privilege
+to entertain during many years the most friendly relations.
+
+Since the outbreak of the war our communications with America are slow
+and irregular. In the beginning they were nil. From the end of July to
+the middle of August we received neither letters, telegrams, nor papers.
+I suppose it was the same with you concerning direct news from us. Our
+adversaries had the field all for themselves and they seem to have made
+the most of it. To judge from what I have learned since and from what I
+could glean in our papers, the New York press seem to have written about
+us and Germany very much in the same tone and spirit as they did about
+you during your last Presidential campaign. I have seen it stated that
+The Outlook published an article in which Austro-Hungary was accused of
+having brought about the war through her greed of conquest and the
+overbearing arrogance of her behavior toward Servia. I do not know
+whether I cite correctly, as I have not seen the article, and I am aware
+that you have severed your connection with The Outlook after your return
+from Brazil. I only mention the statement as an illustration of what I
+have said above, for if a review of the standing of The Outlook opens
+its columns to such a glaringly false accusation the daily papers have
+certainly not lagged behind.
+
+It is natural that our adversaries should be anxious to win the
+sympathies of the American people. So are we. But it is not for this
+purpose that I now write to you. Sympathy is a sentiment and, as a rule,
+not to be won by argument. What I want to discuss with you are the
+causes of this war and the issues at stake.
+
+
+The Cause of the War.
+
+Undoubtedly the war broke out over our conflict with Servia, but this
+conflict was not of our seeking. We had no wish of aggrandizement or
+extension of power at the expense of Servia, but Servia covets territory
+which belongs to us, and for years has pursued her ends by the most
+nefarious and criminal means. The assassination of our heir to the crown
+and his consort was not an isolated fact, but only the most glaring
+link in a long chain of plotting and agitating against us. This
+attitude of Servia toward us dates back to the day when the gang of
+officers who murdered their own King came to power, and when it became
+their policy to keep a hold over their own people by exciting their
+ambitions against us. This policy reached its first climax when we
+declared the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which we had occupied
+and developed for thirty years. You were in office then, and the events
+of the time are familiar to you. The crisis ended then by Servia's
+formal acknowledgment that our annexation violated none of her rights,
+and by her promise to cultivate henceforth correct and friendly
+relations with us. This promise was not kept. The plotting continued,
+lies were disseminated about a pretended oppression of our South Slav
+population, and associations were formed for the purpose of stirring
+them to discontent and if possible to treason.
+
+Things came to a second climax with the murder of Archduke Francis
+Ferdinand. The plot for this crime was hatched in Servia, the bombs and
+revolvers for its execution were furnished there, and Servian officers
+instructed the murder candidates in their use. At last we could stand it
+no longer. What we wanted from Servia was the punishment of the plotters
+and accomplices and a guarantee for normal relations in the future. This
+was the object of our ultimatum. Servia made a show of complying with
+some of our demands, but in reality her answer was evasive.
+
+These facts are exposed and authenticated in the note which we sent to
+the powers after having presented our ultimatum in Belgrade and in the
+memorandum which accompanied it. I do not know whether the American
+papers published these documents at the time. Today they are outstripped
+by greater events, but for the just appreciation of our proceedings in
+regard to Servia they are indispensable.
+
+In reality, however, our conflict with Servia was not the cause of the
+great war now raging, but only the spark which brought the overloaded
+powder barrel to explosion. Who talks of Servia today, and who believes
+that France, England, and Japan are making war on Germany and on us
+because of Servia? The war broke out because Russia decided to shield
+Servia against the consequences of her provocations and because, owing
+to preconcerted arrangements, the situation in Europe was such that the
+action of one great power was bound to bring all or nearly all the
+others into the field. And again those preconcerted arrangements were
+the outcome of a mass of pent-up passions, of hatred, envy, and
+jealousy, the like of which--all Hague conferences and pacific unions
+notwithstanding--the world has never seen before.
+
+We are fully aware of the danger which threatened us from Russia when we
+formulated our demands in Belgrade. Russia's population is three times
+as large as ours and it was not with a light heart that our Emperor-King
+took his final resolution. But our national honor and our very existence
+as a self-respecting power were at stake. We could not hesitate. Now we
+are in a struggle for life or death and we mean to carry it through with
+full confidence in the rightfulness of our cause and in the force of our
+arms. In one respect events have already belied the calculations of our
+enemies, who counted on internal dissensions within our own borders. I
+am happy to say that Croatians, Slovenes, and a large majority of our
+own Servians are fighting in our ranks with the same valor and
+enthusiasm as Czechs, Rumanians, Poles, Magyars, and Germans.
+
+But why did Russia decide to assail us? During the whole nineteenth
+century she has shown herself a very shifty and unreliable protectress
+of Servia. She made use of the smaller country when it suited her own
+aggressive purposes against others, and she dropped it whenever it
+served her ends. It was so at the time of the Turkish war of 1877 and of
+the Berlin Congress, and it remained so until with the advent of the
+present dynasty Servia offered a sure prospect of becoming and remaining
+a permanent tool in Russia's hands and a thorn in our flesh.
+
+Russia is an aggressive power. For 200 years she has extended her
+dominions at the cost of Sweden first, of Poland and Turkey afterward.
+Now she thinks our turn has come. Finding us to be in the way of her
+ultimate aims in the Balkan Peninsula, she began to regard us as her
+enemy. For years the propaganda for undermining the bases of our empire
+has been carried on in the name of Pan-Slavism. It seems that she judged
+that now the time had come to draw the consequences and to bring things
+to a final issue. With what result remains to be seen.
+
+
+Germany Bound to Aid Austria.
+
+By the terms of our treaty of alliance Germany was bound to come to our
+assistance if we were attacked by Russia. There was no secrecy about
+that treaty. Its text had been made public long ago and its purely
+defensive character brought to the knowledge of the world. No more than
+we did Germany entertain hostile intentions or nourish hostile feelings
+against Russia. There were no clashing interests to excite the first, no
+historical reminiscences to justify the second. If it is otherwise in
+Russia, it is because her present leaders find German power in the way
+of their conquering aspirations against us. Germany, true to her
+obligations, hastened to our side when she saw us menaced, and when she
+declared war she did it because she had positive information that in
+spite of formal and solemn assurances to the contrary Russia
+mobilization was proceeding.
+
+The terms of the Franco-Russian alliance have never been made public.
+Whether it was concluded merely for defensive or also for offensive
+purposes, and whether France was obliged by her treaty to draw the sword
+in the present case, remains therefore a matter of surmise. But there is
+no mystery about the feelings of France with regard to Germany, and no
+doubt about the greed for revenge which during the last forty-four years
+has swayed the overwhelming majority of her people and been the
+dominant factor of her foreign policy. It was for this object that she
+entered into her alliances and agreements, and it is for this cause that
+she is fighting now.
+
+It is simple hypocrisy to talk about German aggressiveness against
+France. France stood in no danger of being attacked by Germany if she
+had chosen to remain neutral in the latter's war with Russia. Asked
+whether she would do so, she replied that her actions would be guided by
+her interests. The meaning of this reply was clear, and left Germany no
+choice. The formal declaration of war became then a mere matter of
+political and military convenience, and has no bearing on the moral
+issue of the case.
+
+But why has England plunged into this war? Officially and to the world
+at large she has explained her resolution by Germany's violation of
+Belgian neutrality, and in the royal message to Parliament it was
+solemnly declared that England could not stand by and passively tolerate
+such a breach of international law and obligations.
+
+No Austrian can read this declaration otherwise than with a mournful
+smile. Its futility has been exposed by the question which Englishmen of
+standing and renown have put to their Government, viz., whether they
+would equally have declared war on France if that violation of
+neutrality had first come from her side. In face of this question having
+remained unanswered, and in face of what has come to light since about
+French preparations in Belgium, there is no need to expiate on this
+subject. All that there is to be said about it has been said by the
+German Chancellor in open session of the Reichstag, and all that may be
+added is the remark that, considering England's history and what she did
+before Copenhagen in 1807, she of all nations should be the last to put
+on airs of moral indignation over the application of the principle that
+in time of war "salus reipublicae suprema lex est."
+
+The existence of a convention binding England to France in case of war
+has--as far as I know--never been admitted officially by England. As I
+see now from manifestations of Englishmen disapproving of their
+country's participation in the war, the belief exists nevertheless that
+such a convention had been concluded. But whether England's declaration
+of war was the consequence of previously entered obligations or the
+outcome of present free initiative, the main fact remains that in the
+last resort it sprang from jealousy of Germany's growing sea power and
+commercial prosperity. This feeling was the dominant factor in English
+foreign policy, just as greed for revenge was in France. It was the
+propelling power for the agreements which England has made and for
+others which she endeavored but did not succeed in bringing about.
+
+England claims the dominion over the seas as her native right, and, what
+is more, she holds it. Her title is no better and no worse than that of
+the Romans when they conquered the world, or of the Turkish Sultans in
+the days of their power. Like them, she has succeeded in making good her
+claim. For three centuries the nations of Continental Europe have been
+hating, fighting, and devastating each other for the sake of strips of
+frontier land and a shadowy balance of power. These centuries were
+England's opportunity, and she has made the most of it. That she should
+mean to keep what she has and hold to her maritime supremacy as to the
+apple of her eye is natural. Whether it is for the benefit of mankind
+that it should be so, and whether the world in general would not be
+better off if there existed a balance of power on sea as well as on
+land, does not enter into the present discussion. What is more to the
+purpose is that in reality England's sea power stood in no danger at
+all. To any thinking and fair-minded observer it must be clear that
+Germany, hemmed in by hostile neighbors in the east and west, and
+obliged, therefore, to keep up her armaments on land, would not have
+been able to threaten England's maritime superiority for generations to
+come. If the issue has been thrown into the balance, it has been done so
+by England's own doing.
+
+But it is not only the nascent German Navy that excited the distrust
+and envy of England. German colonies and every trading German vessel
+seem equally to have become thorns in English eyes. The wish to sweep
+those vessels from off the seas, to destroy all German ports, in one
+word, to down Germany, has long been nourished and lately openly avowed
+in England. Norman Angell's theories about the great illusion of the
+profitability of modern warfare seem to have made mighty small
+impression on his countrymen.
+
+Russian lust of conquest, French greed of revenge, and English envy were
+the forces at work in the European powder magazine. The Servian spark
+ignited it, but the explosion was bound to come sooner or later. What
+alone could have stopped it would have been England's stepping out of
+the conspiracy. That she did not do so, in fact became its really
+directing power, will forever remain a blot on her history.
+
+About Japan's motives and methods I do not think it necessary to write.
+American public opinion will hardly need any enlightenment on this
+subject. America forced Japan out of the isolation in which she had
+lived during centuries. I hope the day may not come when she will wish
+that she had not done so.
+
+The issues of the war stand in relation to its causes and the same
+attempts have been made to distort and falsify them in the eyes of the
+American public. I have seen it stated in a New York paper that this war
+is a fight between civilization and barbarism, and I have seen a member
+of the present English Cabinet quoted as having said that the issue was
+one between militarism and freedom, civilization and freedom standing,
+of course, in both cases on the side of our enemies.
+
+
+Not a War for Civilization.
+
+More idiotic rot--excuse the expression--I have never read in my life.
+What has civilization to do with Servia's murderous plotting against
+us? What with Russia's desire to shield her from the consequences
+of her aggressions and to demonstrate to the world that we are of
+no account in the Balkans and to establish her own--more or less
+veiled--protectorate there? And if the case of civilization is advanced
+by Japan's ousting Germany from Kiao-Chau, why should it not be equally
+furthered if Japan did the same to England in Hongkong, Singapore, or,
+if the opportunity offered, in India itself? And a person must be indeed
+at his wits' end for arguments to proclaim Russia as a standard bearer
+of freedom in her war against us. Compare her treatment of Poles, Finns,
+Ukrainanians (small Russians) and Hebrews with the freedom which the
+different nationalities enjoy in our empire! And England herself. Is it
+for freedom's sake that she holds Gibraltar and that she subjugated the
+Boers?
+
+No! Civilization and freedom have nothing to do with the issues at stake
+now, least of all in the sense that our enemies have drawn the sword for
+their cause. It is a war for conquest and supremacy stirred up by all
+the hateful passions in human nature, fully as much as any war that has
+ever been waged before. But we did not stir it up. We are fighting for
+our existence, right and justice are on our side, and so we trust will
+victory be.
+
+The causes of the war are clear. To make its issues still clearer,
+imagine for a moment and merely for argument's sake the consequences of
+our adversaries being successful. Russia, England, and Japan would
+remain masters of the field. Is this a consummation any thinking
+American can wish for?
+
+These are the considerations I wished to lay before you, and I ask your
+assistance to bring them before the American people. I ask for no reply,
+no manifestation of feelings or opinion from you. What I ask you is to
+publish this letter as an open letter addressed by me to you, signed
+with my full name. How to do this I leave entirely to you. It goes
+without saying that your private reply, if you favor me with one, will
+be treated as such.
+
+Hoping to meet you in better times, and sending our kindest regards to
+Mrs. Roosevelt, believe me, yours most sincerely,
+
+BARON L. HENGELMULLER.
+
+Abbazia, Sept. 25, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Russian Atrocities
+
+By George Haven Putnam.
+
+     Publisher, Director of the Knickerbocker Press, Secretary
+     American Copyright League; decorated with the Cross of the
+     Legion of Honor, France.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+It is possible that the letter presented herewith from a German neighbor
+(who is a stranger to me) may be of interest to your readers as an
+example of a curious confusion of thought into which have fallen Germans
+on both sides of the Atlantic in regard to the issues of the present
+struggle and the conduct and the actions of the German Army. I am
+inclosing a copy of my reply to Mr. Thienes.
+
+GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM.
+
+New York, Nov. 4, 1914.
+
+
+THE LETTER.
+
+NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 1914.
+
+Mr. George Haven Putnam.
+
+DEAR SIR: Now that you have shown your "true" spirit of neutrality
+toward Germany, would you not be kind enough to give us a similar piece
+of your wisdom and describe in detail the way the Russians acted in East
+Prussia during their short stay there, and how they murdered, tortured,
+and assaulted women and girls, and cut children and infants to pieces
+without even the provocation of "sniping"?
+
+This, your new article in THE TIMES, I anticipate with the greatest
+interest.
+
+RUDOLF F. THIENES.
+
+
+THE REPLY.
+
+Rudolf F. Thienes, Esq.
+
+MY DEAR SIR: Your letter of the 28th inst., intended as a rejoinder to a
+letter recently printed by me in THE TIMES, is written under a
+misapprehension in regard to one important matter.
+
+The Americans, who are in a position to judge impartially in regard to
+the issues of the war, have criticised the official acts which have
+attended the devastation of Belgium, not because these acts were
+committed by Germans, but because they were in themselves abominable and
+contrary to precedents and to civilized standards.
+
+If the Russians had, under official order, burned Lemburg, including the
+university and the library, and executed the Burgomaster, they would
+have come under the same condemnation from Americans that has been given
+to Germans for the burning of Louvain and Aerschot and the shooting of
+the Aerschot Burgomaster. I am myself familiar with Germany. I am an
+old-time German student, and I have German friends on both sides of the
+Atlantic, and I am in a position to sympathize with legitimate
+aspirations and ideals of these German friends.
+
+I am convinced, however, that no nation can secure in this twentieth
+century its rightful development unless its national conduct is
+regulated with a "decent respect to the opinions of mankind." The
+references made in my TIMES letters were restricted to official actions;
+things done under the direction of the military commanders acting in
+accord with the instructions or the general policy of the Imperial
+Government.
+
+The misdeeds of individual soldiers are difficult to verify. While these
+are always exaggerated, it remains the sad truth that every big army
+contains a certain percentage of ruffians, and that when these ruffians
+are let loose in a community, with weapons and with military power
+behind them, bad things are done. It is my own belief that the material
+in the German Army (which is the best fighting machine that the world
+has ever seen) will compare favorably with that of any army in the
+world, and that the percentage of wrongful acts on the part of the
+German soldiers has been small. Such misdeeds, sometimes to be
+characterized as atrocities, are the inevitable result of war, and they
+bring a grave responsibility upon a Government which (to accept as well
+founded the frank utterances of the leaders of opinion in Germany) has
+initiated this war for the purpose of "crushing France and of breaking
+up the British Empire."
+
+You appear to think that it is in order for Germany to visit upon
+unoffending Belgians reprisal for the misdeeds (as far as such misdeeds
+may be in evidence) committed by Russians in East Prussia. I cannot see
+that this contention is in accord with justice or with common sense.
+
+GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM.
+
+New York, Oct. 28, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+"The United States of Europe"
+
+INTERVIEW WITH NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER.
+
+     Dr. Butler is President of Columbia University; received
+     Republican electoral vote for Vice President of the United
+     States, 1913; President of American Branch of Conciliation
+     Internationale; President American Historical Association;
+     Trustee Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Commander
+     Order of the Red Eagle (with Star) of Prussia; Commandeur de
+     Legion d'Honneur of France.
+
+By Edward Marshall.
+
+
+The United States of Europe.
+
+Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, firmly
+believes that the organization of such a federation will be the outcome,
+soon or late, of a situation built up through years of European failure
+to adjust government to the growth of civilization.
+
+He thinks it possible that the ending of the present war may see the
+rising of the new sun of democracy to light a day of freedom for our
+transatlantic neighbors.
+
+He tells me that thinking men in all the contending nations are
+beginning vividly to consider such a contingency, to argue for it or
+against it; in other words, to regard it as an undoubted possibility.
+
+Dr. Butler's acquaintance among those thinking men of all shades of
+political belief is probably wider than that of any other American, and
+it is significant of the startling importance of what he says that by
+far the greater number of his European friends, the men upon whose views
+he has largely, directly or indirectly, based his conclusions, are not
+of the socialistic or of any other revolutionary or semi-revolutionary
+groups, but are among the most conservative and most important figures
+in European political, literary, and educational fields.
+
+This being unquestionably true, it is by no means improbable that in the
+interview which follows, fruit of two evenings in Dr. Butler's library,
+may be found the most important speculative utterance yet to appear in
+relation to the general European war.
+
+Dr. Butler's estimate of the place which the United States now holds
+upon the stage of the theatre of world progress and his forecast of the
+tremendously momentous rôle which she is destined to play there must
+make every American's heart first swell with pride and then thrill with
+a realization of responsibility.
+
+The United States of Europe, modeled after and instructed by the United
+States of America! The thought is stimulating.
+
+Said Dr. Butler:
+
+"The European cataclysm puts the people of the United States in a unique
+and tremendously important position. As neutrals we are able to observe
+events and to learn the lesson that they teach. If we learn rightly we
+shall gain for ourselves and be able to confer upon others benefits far
+more important than any of the material advantages which may come to us
+through a shrewd handling of the new possibilities in international
+trade.
+
+"I hesitate to discuss any phase of the great conflict now raging in
+Europe. By today's mail, for example, I received long, personal letters
+from Lord Haldane, from Lord Morley, from Lord Weardale, and from Lord
+Bryce. Another has just come from Prof. Schiemann of Berlin, perhaps the
+Emperor's most intimate adviser; another from Prof. Lamasch of Austria,
+who was the Presiding Judge of the British-American arbitration in
+relation to the Newfoundland fisheries a few years ago, and is a member
+of the Austrian House of Peers. Still others are from M. Ribot, Minister
+of Finance in France, and M. d'Estournelles de Constant. These
+confidential letters give a wealth of information as to the intellectual
+and political forces that are behind the conflict.
+
+"You will understand, then, that without disloyalty to my many friends
+in Europe, I could not discuss with freedom the causes or the progress
+of the war, or speculate in detail about the future of the European
+problem. My friends in Germany, France, and England all write to me with
+the utmost freedom and not for the public eye; so you see that my great
+difficulty, when you ask me to talk about the meaning of the struggle,
+arises from the obligation that I am under to preserve a proper personal
+reserve regarding the great figures behind the vast intellectual and
+political changes which really are in the background of the war.
+
+"If such reserve is necessary in my case, it seems to me that it also is
+necessary for the country as a whole. The attitude of the President has
+been impeccable. That of the whole American press and people should be
+the same.
+
+"Especially is it true that all Americans who hope to have influence, as
+individuals, in shaping the events which will follow the war, must avoid
+any expression which even might be tortured into an avowal of
+partisanship or final judgment.
+
+"Even the free expression of views criticising particular details of the
+war, which might, in fact, deserve criticism, might destroy one's chance
+of future possible usefulness. A statement which might be unquestionably
+true might also be remembered to the damage of some important cause
+later on.
+
+"There are reasons why my position is, perhaps, more difficult than that
+of some others. Talking is often a hazardous practice, and never more so
+than now.
+
+"The World is at crossroads, and everything may depend upon the United
+States, which has been thrust by events into a unique position of moral
+leadership. Whether the march of the future is to be to the right or to
+the left, uphill or down, after the war is over, may well depend upon
+the course this nation shall then take, and upon the influence which it
+shall exercise.
+
+"If we keep our heads clear there are two things that we can bring
+insistently to the attention of Europe--each of vast import at such a
+time as that which will follow the ending of this war.
+
+"The first of these is the fact that race antagonisms die away and
+disappear under the influence of liberal and enlightened political
+institutions. This has been proved in the United States.
+
+"We have huge Celtic, Latin, Teutonic and Slavic populations all living
+here at peace and in harmony; and, as years pass, they tend to merge,
+creating new and homogeneous types. The Old World antagonisms have
+become memories. This proves that such antagonisms are not mysterious
+attributes of geography or climate, but that they are the outgrowth
+principally of social and political conditions. Here a man can do about
+what he likes, so long as he does not violate the law; he may pray as he
+pleases or not at all, and he may speak any language that he chooses.
+
+"The United States is itself proof that most of the contentions of
+Europeans as to race antagonisms are ill-founded. We have demonstrated
+that racial antagonisms need not necessarily become the basis of
+permanent hatreds and an excuse for war."
+
+
+Hyphens Are Going.
+
+"If human beings are given the chance they will make the most of
+themselves, and, by living happily--which means by living at peace--they
+will avoid conflict. The hyphen tends to disappear from American
+terminology. The German-American, the Italio-American, the
+Irish-American all become Americans.
+
+"So, by and large, our institutions have proved their capacity to
+amalgamate and to set free every type of human being which thus far has
+come under our flag. There is in this a lesson which may well be taken
+seriously to heart by the leaders of opinion in Europe when this war
+ends.
+
+"The second thing which we may press, with propriety, upon the attention
+of the people of Europe after peace comes to them is the fact that we
+are not only the great exponents but the great example of the success of
+the principle of federation in its application to unity of political
+life regardless of local, economic, and racial differences.
+
+"If our fathers had attempted to organize this country upon the basis of
+a single, closely unified State, it would have gone to smash almost at
+the outset, wrecked by clashing economic and personal interests. Indeed,
+this nearly happened in the civil war, which was more economic than
+political in its origin.
+
+"But, though we had our difficulties, we did find a way to make a
+unified nation of a hundred million people and forty-eight
+Commonwealths, all bound together in unity and in loyalty to a common
+political ideal and a common political purpose.
+
+"Just as certainly as we sit here this must and will be the future of
+Europe. There will be a federation into the United States of Europe.
+
+"When one nation sets out to assert itself by force against the will, or
+even the wish, of its neighbors, disaster must inevitably come. Disaster
+would have come here if, in 1789, New York had endeavored to assert
+itself against New England or Pennsylvania.
+
+"As a matter of fact, certain inhabitants of Rhode Island and
+Pennsylvania did try something of the sort after the Federal Government
+had been formed, but, fortunately, their effort was a failure.
+
+"The leaders of our national life had established such a flexible and
+admirable plan of government that it was soon apparent that each State
+could retain its identity, forming its own ideals and shaping its own
+progress, and still remain a loyal part of the whole; that each State
+could make a place for itself in the new federated nation and not be
+destroyed thereby.
+
+"There is no reason why each nation in Europe should not make a place
+for itself in the sun of unity which I am sure is rising there behind
+the war clouds. Europe's stupendous economic loss, which already has
+been appalling and will soon be incalculable, will give us an
+opportunity to press this argument home.
+
+"True internationalism is not the enemy of the nationalistic principle.
+
+"On the contrary, it helps true nationalism to thrive. The Vermonter is
+more a Vermonter because he is an American, and there is no reason why
+Hungary, for example, should not be more than ever before Hungarian
+after she becomes a member of the United States of Europe.
+
+"Europe, of course, is not without examples of the successful
+application of the principle of federation within itself. It so happens
+that the federated State next greatest to our own is the German Empire.
+It is only forty-three years old, but their federation has been notably
+successful. So the idea of federation is familiar to German publicists.
+
+"It is familiar, also, to the English, and has lately been pressed there
+as the probable final solution of the Irish question.
+
+"It has insistently suggested itself as the solution of the Balkan
+problem.
+
+"In a lesser way it already is represented in the structure of
+Austria-Hungary."
+
+
+America's Great Work.
+
+"This principle of nation building, of international building through
+federation, certainly has in it the seeds of the world's next great
+development--and we Americans are in a position both to expand the
+theory and to illustrate the practice. It seems to me that this is the
+greatest work which America will have to do at the end of this war.
+
+"These are the things which I am writing to my European correspondents
+in the several belligerent countries by every mail.
+
+"The cataclysm is so awful that it is quite within the bounds of truth
+to say that on July 31 the curtain went down upon a world which never
+will be seen again.
+
+"This conflict is the birth-throe of a new European order of things. The
+man who attempts to judge the future by the old standards or to force
+the future back to them will be found to be hopelessly out of date. The
+world will have no use for him. The world has left behind forever the
+international policies of Palmerston and of Beaconsfield and even those
+of Bismarck, which were far more powerful.
+
+"When the war ends conditions will be such that a new kind of
+imagination and a new kind of statesmanship will be required. This war
+will prove to be the most effective education of 500,000,000 people
+which possibly could have been thought of, although it is the most
+costly and most terrible means which could have been chosen. The results
+of this education will be shown, I think, in the process of general
+reconstruction which will follow.
+
+"All the talk of which we hear so much about, the peril from the Slav or
+from the Teuton or from the Celt, is unworthy of serious attention. It
+would be quite as reasonable to discuss seriously the red-headed peril
+or the six-footer peril.
+
+"There is no peril to the world in the Slav, the Teuton, the Celt, or
+any other race, provided the people of that race have an opportunity to
+develop as social and economic units, and are not bottled up so that an
+explosion must come.
+
+"It is my firm belief that nowhere in the world, from this time on, will
+any form of government be tolerated which does not set men free to
+develop in this fashion."
+
+I asked Dr. Butler to make some prognostication of what the United
+States of Europe, which he so confidently expects, will be. He answered:
+
+
+Has Advanced Much.
+
+"I can say only this: The international organization of the world
+already has progressed much further than is ordinarily understood. Ever
+since the Franco-Prussian war and the Geneva Arbitration, both
+landmarks in modern history, this has advanced inconspicuously, but by
+leaps and bounds.
+
+"The postal service of the world has been internationalized in its
+control for years. The several Postal Conventions have been evidences of
+an international organization of the highest order.
+
+"Europe abounds in illustrations of the international administration of
+large things. The very laws of war, which are at present the subject of
+so much and such bitter discussion, are the result of international
+organization.
+
+"They were not adopted by a Congress, a Parliament, or a Reichstag. They
+were agreed to by many and divergent peoples, who sent representatives
+to meet for their discussion and determination."
+
+
+One of the Examples.
+
+"In the admiralty law we have a most striking example of uniformity of
+practice in all parts of the world. If a ship is captured or harmed in
+the Far East and taken into Yokohama or Nagasaki, damages will be
+assessed and collected precisely as they would be in New York or
+Liverpool.
+
+"The world is gradually developing a code for international legal
+procedure. Special arbitral tribunals have tended to merge and grow into
+the international court at The Hague, and that, in turn, will develop
+until it becomes a real supreme judicial tribunal.
+
+"Of course the analogy with the federated State fails at some points,
+but I believe the time will come when each nation will deposit in a
+world federation some portion of its sovereignty.
+
+"When this occurs we shall be able to establish an international
+executive and an international police, both devised for the especial
+purpose of enforcing the decisions of the international court.
+
+"Here, again, we offer a perfect object lesson. Our Central Government
+is one of limited and defined powers. Our history can show Europe how
+such limitations and definitions can be established and interpreted, and
+how they can be modified and amended when necessary to meet new
+conditions.
+
+"My colleague, Prof. John Bassett Moore, is now preparing and publishing
+a series of annotated reports of the international arbitration
+tribunals, in order that the Governments and jurists of the world may
+have at hand, as they have in the United States Supreme Court, reports,
+a record of decided cases which, when the time comes, may be referred to
+as precedents.
+
+"It will be through graded processes such as this that the great end
+will be accomplished. Beginning with such annotated reports as a basis
+for precedents, each new case tried before this tribunal will add a
+further precedent, and presently a complete international code will be
+in existence. It was in this way that the English common law was built,
+and such has been the admirable history of the work done by our own
+judicial system.
+
+"The study of such problems is at this time infinitely more important
+than the consideration of how large a fine shall be inflicted by the
+victors upon the vanquished."
+
+
+The Chief Result.
+
+"There is the probability of some dislocation of territory and some
+shiftings of sovereignty after the war ends, but these will be of
+comparatively minor importance. The important result of this great war
+will be the stimulation of international organization along some such
+lines as I have suggested.
+
+"Dislocation of territory and the shifting of sovereigns as the result
+of international disagreements are mediaeval practices. After this war
+the world will want to solve its problems in terms of the future, not in
+those of the outgrown past.
+
+"Conventional diplomacy and conventional statesmanship have very
+evidently broken down in Europe. They have made a disastrous failure of
+the work with which they were intrusted. They did not and could not
+prevent the war because they knew and used only the old formulas. They
+had no tools for a job like this.
+
+"A new type of international statesman is certain to arise, who will
+have a grasp of new tendencies, a new outlook upon life. Bismarck used
+to say that it would pay any nation to wear the clean linen of a
+civilized State. The truth of this must be taught to those nations of
+the world which are weakest in morale, and it can only be done, I
+suppose, as similar work is accomplished with individuals. Courts, not
+killings, have accomplished it with individuals.
+
+"One more point ought to be remembered. We sometimes hear it said that
+nationalism, the desire for national expression by each individual
+nation, makes the permanent peace and good order of the world
+impossible.
+
+"To me it seems absurd to believe that this is any truer of nations than
+it is of individuals. It is not each nation's desire for national
+oppression which makes peace impossible; it is the fact that thus far in
+the world's history such desire has been bound up with militarism.
+
+"The nation whose frontier bristles with bayonets and with forts is like
+the individual with a magazine pistol in his pocket. Both make for
+murder. Both in their hearts really mean murder.
+
+"The world will be better when the nations invite the judgment of their
+neighbors and are influenced by it.
+
+"When John Hay said that the Golden Rule and the open door should guide
+our new diplomacy he said something which should be applicable to the
+new diplomacy of the whole world. The Golden Rule and a free chance are
+all that any man ought to want or ought to have, and they are all that
+any nation ought to want or ought to have.
+
+"One of the controlling principles of a democratic State is that its
+military and naval establishments must be completely subservient to the
+civil power. They should form the police, and not be the dominant factor
+of any national life.
+
+"As soon as they go beyond this simple function in any nation, then that
+nation is afflicted with militarism.
+
+"It is difficult to make predictions of the war's effect on us. As I see
+it, our position will depend a good deal upon the outcome of the
+conflict, and what that will be no one at present knows.
+
+"If a new map of Europe follows the war, its permanence will depend upon
+whether or not the changes are such as will permit nationalities to
+organize as nations.
+
+"The world should have learned through the lessons of the past that it
+is impossible permanently and peacefully to submerge large bodies of
+aliens if they are treated as aliens. That is the opposite of the mixing
+process which is so successfully building a nation out of varied
+nationalities in the United States.
+
+"The old Romans understood this. They permitted their outlying vassal
+nations to speak any language they chose and to worship whatever god
+they chose, so long as they recognized the sovereignty of Rome. When a
+conquering nation goes beyond that, and begins to suppress religions,
+languages, and customs, it begins at that very moment to sow the seeds
+of insurrection and revolution.
+
+"My old teacher and colleague, Prof. Burgess, once defined a nation as
+an ethnographic unit inhabiting a geographic unit. That is an
+illuminating definition. If a nation is not an ethnographic unit, it
+tries to become one by oppressing or amalgamating the weaker portions of
+its people. If it is not a geographic unit, it tries to become one by
+reaching out to a mountain chain or to the sea--to something which will
+serve as a real dividing line between it and its next neighbors.
+
+"The accuracy of this definition can hardly be denied, and we all know
+what the violations of this principle have been in Europe. It is
+unnecessary for me to point them out.
+
+"Races rarely have been successfully mixed by conquest. The military
+winner of a war is not always the real conqueror in the long run. The
+Normans conquered Saxon England, but Saxon law and Saxon institutions
+worked up through the new power and have dominated England's later
+history. The Teutonic tribes conquered Rome, but Roman civilization, by
+a sort of capillary attraction, went up into the mass above and
+presently dominated the Teutons.
+
+"The persistency of a civilization may well be superior in tenacity to
+mere military conquest and control.
+
+"The smallness of the number of instances in which conquering nations
+have been able successfully to deal with alien peoples is extraordinary.
+The Romans were unusually successful, and England has been successful
+with all but the Irish, but perhaps no other peoples have been
+successful in high degree in an effort to hold alien populations as
+vassals and to make them really happy and comfortable as such.
+
+"One of the war's chief effects on us will be to change our point of
+view. Europe will be more vivid to us from now on. There are many public
+men who have never thought much about Europe, and who have been far from
+a realization of its actual importance to us. It has been a place to
+which to go for a Summer holiday.
+
+"But, suddenly, they find they cannot sell their cotton there or their
+copper, that they cannot market their stocks and bonds there, that they
+cannot send money to their families who are traveling there, because
+there is a war. To such men the war must have made it apparent that
+interdependence among nations is more than a mere phrase.
+
+"All our trade and all our economic and social policies must recognize
+this. The world has discovered that cash without credit means little.
+One cannot use cash if one cannot use one's credit to draw it whenever
+and wherever needed. Credit is intangible and volatile, and may be
+destroyed over night.
+
+"I saw this in Venice.
+
+"On July 31 I could have drawn every cent that my letter of credit
+called for up to the time the banks closed. At 10 in the morning on the
+1st of August I could not draw the value of a postage stamp.
+
+"Yet the banker in New York who issued my letter of credit had not
+failed. His standing was as good as ever it had been. But the world's
+system of international exchange of credit had suffered a stroke of
+paralysis over night.
+
+"This realization of international interdependence, I hope, will
+elevate and refine our patriotism by teaching men a wider sympathy and a
+deeper understanding of other peoples, nations, and languages. I
+sincerely hope it will educate us up to what I have called 'The
+International Mind.'
+
+"When Joseph Chamberlain began his campaign after returning from South
+Africa his keynote was, 'Learn to think imperially.' I think ours should
+be, 'Learn to think internationally,' to see ourselves not in
+competition with the other peoples of the world, but working with them
+toward a common end, the advance of civilization."
+
+
+A Note of Optimism.
+
+"There are hopeful signs, even in the midst of the gloom that hangs over
+us. Think what it has meant for the great nations of Europe to have come
+to us, as they have done, asking our favorable public opinion. We have
+no army and navy worthy of their fears. They can have been induced by
+nothing save their conviction that we are the possessors of sound
+political ideals and a great moral force.
+
+"In other words, they do not want us to fight for them, but they do want
+us to approve of them. They want us to pass judgment upon the humanity
+and the legality of their acts, because they feel that our judgment
+will be the judgment of history. There is a lesson in this.
+
+"If we had not repealed the Panama Canal Tolls Exemption act last June
+they would not have come to us as they are doing now. Who would have
+cared for our opinion in the matter of a treaty violation if, for mere
+financial interest or from sheer vanity, we ourselves had violated a
+solemn treaty?
+
+"When Congress repealed the Panama Canal Tolls Exemption act it marked
+an epoch in the history of the United States. This did more than the
+Spanish war, than the building of the Panama Canal, or than anything
+else I think of, to make us a true world power.
+
+"As a nation we have kept our word when sorely tempted to break it. We
+made Cuba independent, we have not exploited the Philippines, we have
+stood by our word as to Panama Canal tolls.
+
+"In consequence we are the first moral power in the world today. Others
+may be first with armies, still others first with navies. But we have
+made good our right to be appealed to on questions of national and
+international morality. That Europe is seeking our favor is the tribute
+of the European nations to this fact."
+
+
+
+
+A New World Map
+
+By Wilhelm Ostwald.
+
+     Late Visiting Professor to Harvard and Columbia Universities
+     from the University of Leipsic.
+
+
+_The following article is extracted from a letter written by Prof.
+Ostwald to Edwin D. Mead, Director of the World Peace Foundation._
+
+The war is the result of a deliberate onslaught upon Germany and Austria
+by the powers of the Triple Entente--Russia, France, and England. Its
+object is on the part of Russia an extension of Russian supremacy over
+the Balkans, on the side of France revenge, and on the side of England
+annihilation of the German Navy and German commerce. In England
+especially it has been for several centuries a constant policy to
+destroy upon favoring occasion every navy of every other country which
+threatened to become equal to the English Navy.
+
+Germany has proved its love of peace for forty-four years under the most
+trying circumstances. While all other States have expanded themselves
+by conquest, Russia in Manchuria, England in the Transvaal, France in
+Morocco, Italy in Tripoli, Austria in Bosnia, Japan in Korea, Germany
+alone has contented itself with the borders fixed in 1871. It is purely
+a war of defense which is now forced upon us.
+
+In the face of these attacks Germany has until now (the end of August)
+proved its military superiority, which rests upon the fact that the
+entire German military force is scientifically organized and honestly
+administered.
+
+The violation of Belgian neutrality was an act of military necessity,
+since it is now proved that Belgian neutrality was to be violated by
+France and England. A proof of this is the accumulation of English
+munitions in Maubeuge, aside from many other facts.
+
+According to the course of the war up to the present time, European
+peace seems to me nearer than ever before. We pacificists must only
+understand that unhappily the time was not yet sufficiently developed to
+establish peace by the peaceful way. If Germany, as everything now seems
+to make probable, is victorious in the struggle not only with Russia and
+France but attains the further end of destroying the source from which
+for two or three centuries all European strifes have been nourished and
+intensified, namely, the English policy of world dominion, then will
+Germany, fortified on one side by its military superiority, on the other
+side by the eminently peaceful sentiment of the greatest part of its
+people, and especially of the German Emperor, dictate peace to the rest
+of Europe, I hope especially that the future treaty of peace will in
+the first place provide effectually that a European war such as the
+present can never again break out.
+
+I hope, moreover, that the Russian people, after the conquest of their
+armies, will free themselves from Czarism through an internal movement
+by which the present political Russia will be resolved into its natural
+units, namely, Great Russia, the Caucasus, Little Russia, Poland,
+Siberia, and Finland, to which probably the Baltic provinces would join
+themselves. These, I trust, would unite themselves with Finland and
+Sweden, and perhaps with Norway and Denmark, into a Baltic federation,
+which in close connection with Germany would insure European peace, and
+especially form a bulwark against any disposition to war which might
+remain in Great Britain.
+
+For the other side of the earth I predict a similar development under
+the leadership of the United States. I assume that the English dominion
+will suffer a downfall similar to that which I have predicted for
+Russia, and that under these circumstances Canada would join the United
+States, the expanded republic assuming a certain leadership with
+reference to the South American republics.
+
+The principle of the absolute sovereignty of the individual nations,
+which in the present European tumult has proved itself so inadequate and
+baneful, must be given up and replaced by a system conforming to the
+world's actual conditions and especially to those political and economic
+relations which determine industrial and cultural progress and the
+common welfare.
+
+[Illustration: NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER
+
+_See Page 565_]
+
+[Illustration: ARTHUR VON BRIESEN
+
+_See Page 548_]
+
+
+
+
+The Verdict of the American People
+
+By Newell Dwight Hillis.
+
+     _Dr. Hillis, who occupies the pulpit of Plymouth Church,
+     Brooklyn, made famous by the pastorate of the late Henry Ward
+     Beecher, delivered the following remarkable sermon on the
+     European War on Sunday, Dec. 20, 1914, choosing as his text
+     the words: "From whence come wars? Come they not from your own
+     lusts?"_
+
+
+Nearly five months have now passed by since the German Army invaded
+Belgium and France. These 140 days have been packed with thrilling and
+momentous events. While from their safe vantage ground the American
+people have surveyed the scene, an old régime has literally crumbled
+under our very eyes. Europe is a loom on whose earthen framework
+demiurgic forces like Frederick the Great, Bismarck, and Napoleon once
+wove the texture of European civilization. Now the demon of war has,
+with hot knife, shorn away the texture, and a modern Czar and Kaiser,
+King and President, with Generals and Admirals, are weaving the warp and
+woof of a new world. One hundred years ago the forces that bred wars
+were political forces; today the collision between nations is born of
+economic interests. The twentieth century influences are chiefly the
+force of wealth and the force of public opinion. These are the giant
+steeds, though the reins of the horses may be in the hands of Kings and
+Kaisers. In Napoleon's day antagonism grew out of the natural hatred of
+autocracy for democracy, of German imperialism for French radicalism.
+Today Germany is not even interested in France's republican form of
+Government, nor is France concerned with Germany's imperial autocrat.
+But all Europe is intensely concerned with the question of economic
+supremacy or financial subordination.
+
+Ever since Oliver Cromwell's day England has been the mistress of the
+seas, and Germany is envious and believes that she has a right to
+supplant England in this naval leadership. France has long been the
+banker of Europe, and Germany covets financial leadership. From whence
+come wars? Come they not from men's lusts? Now that long time has
+passed, it is quite certain that neither Napoleon nor Bismarck nor
+William II. understood the future. It is a proverb that yesterday is a
+seed, today the stalk, and tomorrow is the full corn in the ear.
+Napoleon was a practical man, but he could not see the shock in the
+seed. When Napoleon said, "One hundred years from now Europe will be all
+republican or all Cossack"--Napoleon was quite wrong. Forty years ago
+Bismarck said that he had reduced France to the level of a fourth-class
+nation, and that henceforth France did not count; while as for the
+Balkan States, "the whole Eastern question is not worth the bones of a
+Pomeranian grenadier"--Bismarck was quite wrong. The present Kaiser has
+no imagination. A man of any prevision of the future might have foreseen
+that any attack upon England would settle the Irish question; that any
+treaty with Turkey would force Italy, as Turkey's enemy in the late
+Italian-Turkish war, to break with Germany; any man with the least
+instinct for diplomacy might have known that the twentieth century man
+is so incensed by an enemy's trespass upon his property, that Belgium
+would have resisted encroachment, and so cost Germany the best three
+weeks of the entire war. If the history of great wars tells us anything,
+it tells us that the first qualification of the statesman and diplomat
+is an intuitive knowledge of a future that is the certain outcome of the
+present. There has been no foresight on the part of the makers and
+advisers of this war. Years ago, when the Austrian Emperor visited
+Innsbruck, the Burgomaster ordered foresters to go up on the mountain
+sides and cut certain swaths of brush. At the moment the man with his
+axe did not know what he was doing, but when the night fell, and the
+torch was lifted on the boughs, the people in the city below read these
+words written in letters of fire, "Welcome to our Emperor." Today the
+demon of war has been writing with blazing letters certain lessons upon
+the hills and valleys of Europe, and fortunate is that youth who can
+read the writing and interpret aright the lessons of the times.
+
+The people of the republic now realize for the first time what are the
+inevitable fruits of imperialism and militarism. One of the perils of
+America's distance from the scenes of autocracy is that our people have
+come to think that the forms of government are of little importance. We
+hear it said that climate determines government and that one nation
+likes autocracy and another limited monarchy, that we like democracy
+self-government, and that the people are about as happy under one form
+of control as another. This misconception is based upon a failure to
+understand foreign imperialism. Superficially, the fruits of autocracy
+are efficiency, industrial wealth, and military power. But now, after
+nearly five months of constant discussion, our people understand
+thoroughly the other side of imperialism. The 6,000,000 of
+German-Americans living in this country, with their high type of
+character, millions who have left their native land to escape service in
+the army, the burdens of taxation involved in militarism, and the law of
+lčse majesté, should have opened our eyes long ago. During the last five
+years I have lectured in more than one hundred cities on the New Germany
+and the lessons derived from her industrial efficiency, with the
+application of science to the production of wealth, but I did not
+appreciate fully the far-off harvest of militarism. And, lest an
+American overstate the meaning of militarism, let me condense
+Treitschke's view. He holds that the nation should be looked upon as a
+vast military engine; that its ruler should be the commander of the
+army; that his Cabinet should be under Generals; that the whole nation
+should march with the force of an armed regiment; that the real "sin
+against the Holy Ghost was the sin of military impotence; that such an
+army should take all it wants and the territory it needs and explain
+afterward." Manufacturers are essentially inventors of cannons and guns
+and dreadnoughts, incidentally self-supporting men. Bankers are here to
+finance the army and incidentally to make money. Physicians are here to
+heal the wounded soldiers. Gymnasiums are founded to train soldiers.
+Women are here to breed soldiers, and militarism is the path that will
+bring Germany to her place in the sun. The youth is first of all to be a
+soldier and incidentally to be a man. No one has indicted Germany's
+militarism in stronger language than the distinguished German-American,
+Carl Schurz. In words that burn the great statesman expressed his hatred
+of the imperialism and militarism against which he helped to organize a
+revolution that led to his flight to this country. Of late Americans
+have been asking themselves certain questions.
+
+
+The American Ideal vs. the German.
+
+What will be the result if Germany is allowed to seize any smaller State
+whose territory and property she covets? Is all Europe to become an
+armed camp? What is the meaning of this German professor's article in
+The North American Review, written two or three years ago, in which he
+says that once she is victorious the Monroe Doctrine will go and the
+United States will receive the "thrashing she so richly deserves"? Must
+we then go over to the military ideal? If Germany supports 8,000,000
+soldiers out of 66,000,000, must we withdraw from productive industry
+12,000,000 men for at least two or three of the best years of their
+young life? Must we start in on a programme of ten dreadnoughts a year
+instead of building ten colleges and universities for the same sum of
+money? Of late Americans who love their country have been searching
+their own hearts. Merchants hitherto busied with commerce are asking
+themselves whither this country is drifting. Is Germany to compel us to
+become a vast military machine? This military question is a subject of
+discussion on the street cars and in the stores, at the dining room
+table. No articles in paper and magazine are so eagerly read and
+analyzed. The American ideal is not a military machine, but a high
+quality of manhood. To make men free, with the gift of self-expression;
+to make men wise through the public school and the free press; to make
+men self-sufficing and happy in their homes, through freedom of
+industrial contracts; to make men sound in their manhood through
+religious liberty for Jew and Gentile and Catholic and Protestant--these
+are our national ideals. America stands at the other pole of the
+universe from imperialism and militarism. So far from being willing to
+desert the political faith of the fathers, this war has confirmed our
+confidence in self-government. Liberty to grow, freedom to climb as high
+as industry and ability will permit, liberty to analyze and discuss the
+views of President, Congress, Governor--these are our rights. In a
+military autocracy there can be no liberty of the printing press. If a
+man criticises the Kaiser, he goes to jail; in this republic, if Horace
+Greeley criticises Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln does not send the
+great editor to jail, but writes the latter, "My paramount object is to
+save the Union," and vindicates himself at the bar of the nation. An
+American editor or citizen would choke to death in Germany. He could not
+breathe because of the mephitic gases of imperialism and militarism. For
+a long time some of us did not realize what was involved, but now we do
+realize the difference between the fruits of democratic self-government
+and the fruits of military imperialism.
+
+The last five months have brought a new realization to American citizens
+as to the rights and liberties of small States. In the republic the sin
+of trespass is one of the blackest of sins. Here we hold to the
+sanctity of property. A man's home is his castle, a citadel that cannot
+be invaded even by the power of the State. So deep is the American
+hatred of trespass against property rights that imperialism finds it
+impossible to understand this. Here the individual is a king of kings in
+his native right, and takes out an injunction against the city that
+wishes to trespass upon his property. This antagonism manifests itself
+in the laws that safeguard the small shopkeeper against the big firm,
+and the small manufacturer against any company with its billion dollars
+of capital. This antagonism to the sin of trespass has lent a peculiar
+sanctity to treaties between Canada and the United States. We have one
+hundred millions of people, and Canada nine millions. We need many
+things that Canada has, but it is intellectually unthinkable that "we
+should take what we want and explain afterward," or that we should
+violate our treaty guaranteeing neutrality to Canada. Our frontier line
+is three thousand miles long. There is not a fort from Maine to
+Victoria. If we adopted Germany's position we would have to build one
+thousand forts, withdraw two million young men from the farm, factory,
+store and bank, and load the working people with taxes to support them.
+In a free land, and in God's world, there should be a place for the poor
+man and for the small nation. In the olden time there was a king who had
+herds and flocks, and a poor man who had one pet lamb. It came to pass
+that a stranger claimed the right of hospitality at the rich man's
+palace, and the king sent out and took the poor man's one lamb and gave
+it for food to the stranger. And, soon or late, the time will come when
+history will tell the story of Germany's taking little Belgium, and
+conscience, like a prophet, will indict the militarism that seized the
+one lamb that belonged to the poor man. This episode is not closed. The
+German representative who says that Belgium is a part of Germany may be
+right in terms of future government and war, but the incident has just
+begun in the memory of the soldiers who never can forget that they first
+broke their sacred treaty, and then, when the Belgian defended his home
+as his castle, butchered the man, who died with a sacred treaty in his
+hand. Why, all over this land, teachers, fathers, editors, authors, have
+found it necessary to say to the young men and women of the republic,
+"Do not sign your name to an obligation unless you intend to keep it."
+Keep your faith. Remember that your word given should be as good as your
+bond. "Swear to your own hurt, and change not." All this is inevitable,
+as the result of Germany's trespass upon the property and the homes of
+Belgium. In some European lands the State is everything and the
+individual nothing. In this republic the individual is first, and the
+State is here to safeguard his rights and see to it that no one
+trespasses upon his property. The time will come when the nation that
+breaks its treaties and sows to the wind shall of that wind reap the
+whirlwind. It is an awful thing for a nation to make it inevitable that
+hereafter when other people sign a treaty with that country, that our
+representatives shall say: "Before we sign this treaty with you, we wish
+to ask one question. Later, if it is to your interest to break this
+treaty, is this document to be sneered at as a scrap of paper? Or does
+this treaty mean the faith of a nation that will die rather than break
+its word, given before the tribunal of civilized States?"
+
+
+The Death of the Tribal God Idea.
+
+This great war and one or two of the leaders thereof have killed the old
+tribal idea of God. In the twentieth century it seems almost ludicrous
+to find that the conception of the ancient Hebrews is still held by some
+rulers. Be the reasons what they may, of late there has been a strange
+recrudescence of the tribal God idea. This is the twentieth century, not
+the tenth! Think of a man sending his soldiers into Belgium, saying,
+"Make yourselves as terrible as the Huns of Attila, and the Lord our God
+will give you victory." Just as if God were not the God of the whole
+earth, a disinterested God, a God who makes His sun to shine and His
+rain to fall upon all His children, without regard to race or clime or
+color. Why, it is as artless as the way the old Hebrew peasant called on
+God to blast his enemy's field, and drown his children with floods, and
+smite his herds with the plague. The tribal idea of God belongs with the
+ox cart, the medicine man, the cave dweller. This is an era of science.
+Whatever is true is universal, not racial. If the heart beats and the
+blood circulates in a German soldier's veins, the blood flows in the
+veins of the people of England and France. If the earth goes around the
+sun in Berlin, the earth goes around the sun in Petrograd and Edinburgh.
+If there are seven rays in the sunbeam, why, the discussion is closed,
+and it is a universal fact. And if Jesus was right when He said, "God is
+our Father, and all the races are our brothers, and the world has been
+fitted up by God as an Eden garden for His children," then no man or
+ruler should ever adopt the view of the peasant and the cave man, and
+try to make the Eternal God a tribal God. The unconscious humor in the
+statements of one or two men as to their tribal God idea has added to
+the gayety of nations. But when any view is laughed at, it is doomed.
+From the very moment that the doctrine of election, that made God love a
+few aristocrats and pass the non-elect by, became a matter of joke in
+the comic papers, that theory was dead. Not otherwise is it with this
+idea of a tribal God. When Barry Paine begins to say,
+
+    Led by William, as you tell,
+    God has done extremely well,
+
+the tribal idea has been relegated to the theological scrap-heap. The
+peasant's view must go. In this age men must be citizens of all
+countries and of the universe. God is a sun Who shines for the poor
+man's hut as truly as for the rich man's palace. The Judge of all the
+earth is also the Father of all the races, and He will do men good and
+not evil.
+
+In view of the events of the last few months, all Americans now realize
+as never before the futility of war as a means of settling disputes.
+Indeed, it may be doubted whether any war has ever settled any question.
+Defeat did not convince the South that they were wrong in their idea of
+State rights or slavery. If the South has given up both ideas today it
+is because time, events, and social progress have changed their view,
+not because the sword convinced them. Bismarck's victory at Versailles
+and von Moltke's at Sedan did not settle the dispute with France. To
+keep one billion dollars of indemnity Germany must have spent five
+billions on forts and armies in the government of Alsace and Lorraine.
+Germany's apparent victory simply put Germany's trouble with France out
+at compound interest, and left the next generation of Germans to pay
+several billions of dollars of accrued debt through hatred. Plainly it
+is folly not to reconstitute the map of Europe. The frontier lines of
+the geographer should exactly coincide with the racial lines. The German
+race, with their peculiar ideals, ought not to try to govern the French
+race. It is an expensive experiment. It is an impossible experiment. The
+plan is doomed to failure in advance. And when the day of payment comes
+it is quite certain that the questions at issue will not have been
+settled by regiments of soldiers. They must finally be settled by an
+appeal to some court of arbitration that will do justice and love mercy;
+that will insist upon the rights of the smaller States, and make it
+impossible for the great ones of the earth to trespass upon the property
+and the liberties of brave little peoples.
+
+
+Imperialism Confuses Men's Judgments.
+
+Out of the smoke of battle another lesson is written for all who have
+eyes to read. In view of the mistakes made by men who have absolute
+power it is now certain that exemption from criticism is a bad thing for
+any man, and that endless adoration destroys the ruler's power to think
+in straight lines. There never lived a man who was not injured by
+perpetual compliments. Strong men are willing to pay cash for criticism.
+Flattery will conceal the weakness, and they know that pitiless
+criticism will expose the danger and perhaps save them. No man is so
+unfortunate as the man who is put on a throne lifted up beyond the
+reach of plain truth telling. It is doubtful if so many blunders were
+ever made by statesmen and diplomats as were made at the beginning of
+this war. Just think of one Government being wrong in all these
+particulars at the same time! Lincoln said, "You can't fool all of the
+people all of the time." Yes, that may be true in a republic, but you
+certainly can fool all the diplomats and Generals and do it all the
+time--during July and August, in any event. Call the roll of the
+diplomatic blunders, and the list is long. First, England will be
+neutral and Ireland will keep her from going to war; second, Italy will
+be our ally; third, Belgium will be neutral and allow us to trespass
+upon her property and her homes; fourth, France is unprepared and Paris
+will fall within three weeks; fifth, an alliance with Turkey, despite
+her polygamy and butcheries in Armenia and the civilized world's hatred
+for her cruelties, will help us; sixth, Japan will hold Russia in check;
+seventh, the Czar will be attacked by Bulgaria, Italy, and China. It
+seems incredible that any ruler and group of diplomats could be so
+entirely wrong, all the time, on every question, for a whole Summer! Was
+there no man as diplomat who had the wisdom to see that an attack upon
+England would end the disputes in Ireland? And bind together Canada,
+Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India into a new United States of
+Great Britain? Was there no statesman with enough prevision of the
+future, and with courage to tell the people in Wilhelmstrasse that the
+certain result would be the United States of Balkany, to stand
+henceforth as a barrier between Germany and the Bosphorus? Was there no
+one to remind Berlin that Italy had just completed a war with Turkey and
+that any treaty with Turkey meant inevitably the breaking of friendship
+with Italy? Alas! for the man who is elevated to a throne, in whose
+presence men burn incense, pour forth flattery that he may breathe its
+perfume, sing songs of praise that he may slumber!
+
+In concluding our survey of the nations and the stake of each country
+in the war, there is one reflection that must be obvious to all thinking
+men. This little fire of last August has become a world conflagration.
+The nation that first sent out her armies was Germany. There is a
+high-water mark of battle in every war, and after that, the invading
+waves begin their retreat. The high-water mark of Napoleon's was
+Austerlitz and the waves ebbed away at Waterloo. The high-water mark of
+the civil war was Gettysburg, and the tide ebbed out at Appomattox.
+Belgium's defense cost Germany the three most important weeks of the
+war, and her high-water mark was when she was within twenty miles of
+Paris. Occasional eddies and returns of the tide there may be, but
+nothing is more certain than that there are ten nations and six hundred
+millions of men that had rather die than have militarism imposed upon
+themselves and their children. Americans who admire German efficiency,
+the German people, and want to see German science preserved, and feel an
+immeasurable debt to Martin Luther, do not want Germany destroyed. But
+Germany will not listen to England, nor France, nor America. There is
+only one voice that can reach Germany--it is the voice of the
+German-Americans in this country. They are six million strong. They are
+among the most honored and esteemed folk in American life. Their
+achievements are beyond all praise. The Germans have built Milwaukee and
+have done much for St. Louis. The Germans have been great forces in
+Cincinnati and Chicago and New York. What wealth among their bankers!
+What prosperity among German manufacturers! What solidity of manhood in
+these German Lutherans! Was there ever a finer body of farming folk than
+the German landowners of the Middle West? The republic owes the
+German-American a great debt as to liberty through men like Carl Schurz.
+Take Martin Luther and German liberty of thought out of the republic and
+this land would suffer an immeasurable loss. Many of these
+German-Americans own great estates and have investments in the
+Fatherland. Today these six million German-Americans have the centre of
+the world's stage. This war is a conflagration that will probably burn
+itself out. But if the six million German-Americans organize themselves
+and hold great meetings of protest in New York and Brooklyn and Chicago
+and Milwaukee, in St. Louis and Cincinnati; if German-American editors
+and bankers and business men united their voice, they would be heard.
+
+
+German-American Man of the Hour.
+
+And do they not owe something to this republic? Having come to the
+kingdom for such a crisis as this, should they not use their influence
+with the Fatherland? Having escaped conscription and years of military
+service, with heavy taxation and enjoyed the liberty of the press;
+having become convinced that militarism does not promote the prosperity
+and manhood of the people, why should they not as one man ask the
+Fatherland now to present their cause to arbitrators? To no body of
+American citizens has there ever come a more strategic opportunity, or a
+responsibility so heavy. Some of the most thoughtful men in this land
+believe that the destiny of Germany rests now largely with the leaders
+of the 6,000,000 German-Americans in our country. But no matter what the
+outcome, let no man think that God and justice are not fully equal to
+this emergency. The great vine of Liberty was planted by Divine hands in
+the Eden garden. Just now men are feeding the blossoms of the tree of
+life to their war horses and splitting the boughs of that tree into
+shafts for their spears. The storm roars through the branches, but the
+storm will die out. Better days are coming. It may be that the
+convulsion of war will do for Europe what the earthquake did for the
+rude folk of Greece--cracked the solid rock and exposed the silver veins
+that gave the wealth with which rude men built Athens, with its art, its
+literature, its law and its liberty. Take no counsel of crouching fear,
+God is abroad in the world. With Him a thousand years are as one day.
+When a long time has passed let us believe that self-government will be
+found to be the most stable form of government, and that these golden
+words, Liberty, Opportunity, Intelligence, and Integrity, will be the
+watch-words not only of the republic, but of all the nations of the
+earth.
+
+
+
+
+Interview With Dr. Hillis
+
+_From the Brooklyn Eagle._
+
+
+A frank declaration that he was opposed to Germany in the present great
+war was the answer returned today [Dec. 21, 1914] by the Rev. Dr. Newell
+Dwight Hillis to the protests against his sermon at Plymouth Church last
+night, in which he scored militarism and the Kaiser.
+
+Not only did Dr. Hillis come out with the statement that he had said and
+meant all to which exception was taken in his sermon, but, in an
+interview today in his study, in the Arbuckle Institute, he asserted as
+well that he had told but little of what he had come to believe about
+Germany. This position, he said, was that America and all the world must
+hope for German defeat, and must see that Germany was in the wrong.
+
+"I was for Germany five months ago," said Dr. Hillis. "I have been
+lecturing for five years about the lessons we might learn from Germany.
+Five months ago, it may be remembered, I gave an interview, in which I
+praised Germany and in which I took the part of the German people in the
+dreadful war that had come.
+
+"But I have changed my mind. I have seen that I was mistaken. Several
+months ago I gave instructions to my lecture bureau to withdraw my
+lecture, 'The New Germany,' from my list. That was about the middle of
+September, and it was only then that I realized what a German success
+would mean to the world--how there could be nothing else but a world of
+armed camps, how we in this country, too, would have to adopt militarism
+in order to live.
+
+"Just prior to that time, in the first of my Sunday evening sermons in
+this course, I had praised the Kaiser. I believed in the German ideals,
+I believed in German progress, German inventions, German principles. But
+I was wrong. I have now become convinced of what I never imagined
+before--that in the German viewpoint the only sin against the Holy Ghost
+is military impotency, and, to use Treitschke's words again, the only
+virtue is militarism."
+
+The pastor of Plymouth uttered this attack upon Germany with a
+scornfulness which the printed word can hardly indicate. He was as
+strongly against Germany--more strongly against Germany now than he had
+before been in favor of Germany, he said. It was a position, he said, to
+which everybody in the United States was turning, and it was inevitable
+that Germany should find the world against her.
+
+In his frank avowal of his position regarding Germany and the Kaiser,
+Dr. Hillis admitted, too, that his sermon last night had contained more
+than appeared on the surface. When he stated in the sermon that no man
+or ruler should ever adopt the view of the peasant and the cave man, and
+try to make the Eternal God a tribal God, he had the Kaiser in mind,
+said Dr. Hillis. The sermon is published in full in today's sermon pages
+of The Eagle.
+
+In addition, Dr. Hillis said that while he believed that his sermon
+could not be considered in any way a violation of President Wilson's
+appeal for neutrality, yet, indirectly, the passages to which exception
+had been taken could be rightly construed as an attack upon Germany and
+the Kaiser.
+
+"You believe that it is right for a minister to use the pulpit to
+express his own views upon a subject like this?" was asked.
+
+"I do not believe that it is right for a minister to air his peculiar
+political views upon any subject--personal, social, or economic,"
+answered Dr. Hillis, emphatically. "The church is a conservatory where a
+warm, genial atmosphere should be created. My conception of the work of
+a minister is that he is to create an atmosphere in the church on Sunday
+so that the Republican with the tariff, the Democrat who believes in
+free trade, and the Single Taxer can all grow and express their judgment
+during the week.
+
+"The sun and the Summer shine for all kinds of seeds and roots, and the
+minister and the church should create an atmosphere in which all
+temperaments and races and faiths can grow. It is quite true that there
+were some of my German friends and members who rather protested against
+my view last night. But they had the same right and liberty to protest
+that I have. A German physician told me plainly that he thought that
+within six months I would change my view, and with the new light go over
+to the position of his native land, and even thought that I might
+retract all my studies, that are apparently prejudiced in favor of the
+republic and self-government and the liberty of the press. Well, if I do
+change my views and am converted to his viewpoint, I certainly will
+retract my statements. But I think this improbable. The task of
+converting me should be let out as a Government contract--in piecemeal."
+
+Dr. Hillis was reminded here that a number of people were said to have
+left the church last night in the course of his sermon as a sign of
+protest against the expression of his views. Asked if it were true, Dr.
+Hillis answered:
+
+"I did not see many leave," and then declared that it was impossible to
+imagine that war should not be discussed in the churches as it was being
+discussed everywhere else. He continued with the assertion that he
+believed it was his duty as the minister of Plymouth Church to say what
+he had, and then made this assertion with a vehemence that was almost
+startling:
+
+"Whenever the time comes that I have to add God and the devil together
+and divide by two in the name of neutrality, I'll withdraw. I'm not
+going to sacrifice my manhood for what some people call neutrality."
+
+It was on this score that Dr. Hillis came out with his unequivocal
+declaration that he was against Germany and against the Kaiser. He
+asserted that the viewpoint of the German people would have to be
+changed if they were to take the place in the world he had thought their
+due, five months ago, and he stated there could be no doubt but that the
+war was occasioned by Germany's lust for power--political, industrial,
+economic.
+
+"I believe that the real issue of this war is largely industrial,"
+continued Dr. Hillis. "It is an industrial war and not a political war.
+Some days ago I said that the real fight between Germany and the nations
+opposed to her was a fight for the possession of the iron fields
+recently discovered in Northern France. That statement regarding
+Germany's iron deposits and the whole economic situation has been
+challenged.
+
+"Instead of modifying my position, I wish to reaffirm it. This is an age
+of steel. Without hematite iron deposits Germany cannot build her
+steamships, her cannon, her railways, her factories. German engineers
+have been saying for five years that another five years will exhaust her
+present iron supply. On Page 221 of the volume 'Problems of Power,' the
+author says that within a generation 20,000,000 of Germany's people will
+have to leave their native land. The pressure of iron and the call of
+steel led to Germany's development of the Morocco situation, where there
+are valuable iron mines. A short time ago French engineers discovered
+the largest and richest body of iron ore in Europe. Fullerton, in his
+book on the subject, expresses the judgment that one province has enough
+hematite iron ore to last Europe for the next 150 years.
+
+"This diplomat and author said plainly two years ago, in one of his
+review articles, that Germany would go to war to obtain the iron
+deposits in Northern France, and that if she loses the war, she will
+fall behind in the manufacturing race, and that the French bankers and
+French engineers will make France the great manufacturing force and the
+richest people in Europe. The Napoleonic wars were wars between
+political ideas. The collision was between autocracy and bureaucracy and
+French democracy and radicalism. The new antagonism grows out of
+economic conditions. Germany wants to supersede England upon the seas,
+and Germany wants the iron mines of France, and this is the whole
+situation in a nutshell.
+
+"No, I am not sinning against the law of neutrality. I am trying to
+freshen the old American ideals of self-government for the young men and
+women in Plymouth Church. If the whole-hearted support of America's free
+institutions involves indirectly a dissent from imperialism and
+militarism, I am not responsible. I admit there is a necessary
+condemnation of autocracy involved in the mere publication of the
+Declaration of Independence. Ours is a Government of laws and not of
+men, and I have been discussing the principles of self-government and
+not rulers who represent imperialism.
+
+"Neutrality does not mean the wiping out of conviction. There are some
+men who think that neutrality means adding God and the devil together
+and dividing by two. And there are some statesmen who seem to think that
+neutrality means adding together autocracy and democracy, and halving
+the result. I do not share that view. I believe it is the first duty of
+the German-American and the native-born American to uphold the
+fundamental principles of self-government, and of an industrial
+civilization as opposed to a military machine, and if this means protest
+and criticism, then that protest must be accepted."
+
+
+
+
+TIPPERARY.
+
+By JOHN B. KENNEDY.
+
+
+     (At the other end of the long, long road.)
+
+    Who is it stands at the full o' the door?
+      Mary O'Fay, Mother O'Fay.
+    An' what is she watching an' waiting for?
+      Och, none but her soul can say.
+
+    There's a list in the Post Office long an' black,
+      With tidings bad, and woeful sad;
+    The names of the boys who'll ne'er come back,
+      An' one is her darling lad.
+
+    We showed her the list; but she cannot read,
+      So we told her true, yes, we told her true.
+    Her old eyes stared till they'd almost bleed,
+      An' she swore that none of us knew.
+
+    She's waiting now for Father O'Toole,
+      Till he goes her way at the noon of day.
+    She's simperin' white--the poor old fool,
+      For she knows what the priest'll say.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Who is it sprawls upon the sod
+      At the break o' day? It's Mickey O'Fay;
+    His eyes glare up to the walls of God,
+      And half of his head is blown away.
+
+    What is he doing in that strange place,
+      Torn and shred, and murdered dead?
+    He's singin' the psalm of the fighting race
+      As his soul soars wide o'erhead.
+
+    He killed three foemen before he fell
+      (Och, the toll he'd take and the skulls he'd break!)
+    And he shrieked like a soul escaped from Hell
+      As he died for the Sassenach's sake.
+
+    Who shall we blame for the awful thing--
+      For the blood that flows and the heart-wrung throes?
+    Kaiser or Czar; statesman or King?
+      Och, leave it to Him Who Knows!
+
+
+
+
+As America Sees the War
+
+By Harold Begbie.
+
+
+I.
+
+     _In order to determine how American public opinion concerning
+     the war is running, The London Daily Chronicle sent Mr. Begbie
+     to this country. The two articles printed below appeared in
+     The Chronicle_.
+
+Every day of my sojourn in this country deepens the desire in my mind to
+see an increasing unity of understanding between America and England. I
+feel that the audacity of America, its passion for the Right Thing, and
+its impatience with the spirit of muddling through are the finest
+incentives for modern England, England at this dawn of her political
+renascence. I feel, too, as Americans themselves most willingly
+acknowledge, that Great Britain has something to give to America out of
+the ancient treasury of her domestic experience. Finally, I like
+Americans so heartily that I want to be the best of friends with them.
+
+But it was only last night in this old and mighty city of Philadelphia
+that the greatest of reasons for an alliance was brought sharply home to
+my mind. I had thought, loosely enough, that since we speak the same
+language, share many of the same traditions, and equally desire peace
+for the prosperity of our trade, surely some alliance between us was
+natural, and with a little effort might be made inevitable. The deeper,
+more political, and far grander reason for this comradeship between the
+two nations had never definitely shaped itself to my consciousness.
+
+Enlightenment came to me in the course of conversation with two
+thoughtful Philadelphians whose minds are centred on something which
+transcends patriotism and who work with fine courage and remarkable
+ability for the triumph of their idea.
+
+One of these men said to me: "You speak of an alliance between England
+and America; do you mind telling us what you mean by that term
+alliance?"
+
+I explained that I had no thought in my mind of treaties and tariffs;
+that the word "alliance" meant nothing more to me than conscious
+friendship, and that such a disposition between two nations thinking in
+the same language, speaking and writing the same language, must result,
+I thought, in an ever-multiplying volume of trade, to the great
+advantage of both parties.
+
+
+Thinks Little of Blood Ties.
+
+Out of this explanation came the following statement, made by the second
+Philadelphian: "I am as desirous as you are for such an understanding. I
+desire it so greatly that I venture to offer you a warning on the
+subject. It would be a mistake on your part, I am convinced, to advocate
+any such friendship, any such understanding, any such alliance, if you
+prefer that word, on the score of blood ties or a common speech. Believe
+me, the American, to speak generally, thinks very little of such
+matters. When America was far more English in its population than it is
+now scarcely any country was more unpopular with us than your country.
+
+"I can remember when hatred for England was a kind of gospel with
+Americans. The Irish fanned that hatred. Your country had behaved badly
+toward us, war had left its scar on our memories, we rejoiced that we
+had thrown off a yoke which we felt to be definitely tyrannous. What,
+then, has produced the change in America--America, whose population is
+now made up from nearly all the nations of the earth? Have your people
+thought why we are on their side in this present war? Have they asked
+themselves that question? If so, and they have answered it with such a
+phrase as 'blood is thicker than water,' I can assure you they give not
+only a false answer but an answer which betrays amazing ignorance, if
+you will forgive the word, of this country's population. Blood thicker
+than water! Why, look at our names; our blood is world's blood.
+
+"We're a nation of all the nations. The English element is only one
+element. Our ancestors were French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Norwegian,
+Russian, Danish, Irish, Greek, and Italian. The modern American citizen
+is no more English than the Boers of South Africa are English. And yet
+in overwhelming figures the American population is on the side of the
+Allies, and particularly on the side of England. Why?"
+
+
+England Stands for Democracy.
+
+"It is," he continued, "because England of all the nations on the earth
+stands for the democratic ideals which are the very breath of life to
+America. Modern England is for us the greatest of democracies. You lead
+the way to the rest of the world, if not in science and art, at any rate
+here in the great business of humanity's social existence. We see that
+the old England of privilege and obstinate prerogatives and bull-headed
+conservatism is dead. All your best qualities, straight dealing,
+honesty, fearless justice, and faith in the goodness of human nature are
+devoted now to the only ideals which can save progress from rot and
+decay. Your democracy is master. It has no overlords. And, from what we
+can gather since this war broke out, it would seem that your aristocracy
+is coming more and more into line with the democracy, making great
+sacrifices, showing a deeper appreciation of the democracy and shedding
+the worst of its prejudices in the common love of liberty and right.
+
+"We hope that your aristocracy may render as great a service to the
+extravagant plutocracy of this country as your democracy has rendered to
+our democracy. To make life better, that's the work of all intelligent
+people. That's what our democracy is after, and, because your democracy
+is after the same thing, that's why we are on your side in this war.
+Under all the sentiment on the subject this is the bedrock fact. We're
+for England because we're for the ideals of democracy. That we speak the
+same language is only an accident. It's your spirit we desire to share,
+the spirit which desires to make life kinder, sweeter, better, more
+beautiful, and more righteous. America believes in civilization. It
+doesn't want culture in bearskin and top boots. It wants civilization,
+and civilization means a culture that takes in the whole of a man's
+being--his body, his mind, his spirit. Well, we think you're after the
+same ideal; we believe that you're as conscious of humanity as we are,
+and we begin to realize pretty acutely that in a world rather barbarous
+on the whole, come to think of it, we can't afford to lose England."
+
+The other man added: "Germany stands for nearly everything we Americans
+are opposed to, tooth and nail. We just loathe militarism.
+Conscription's a thing we abominate. And feudalism is more dead over
+here than in any country in the world."
+
+"But bear in mind," said the first, "we have few people in America
+better than the Germans. The Germans are almost the most efficient of
+our immigrants. They've taught us a lot. We owe them a mighty big debt.
+Before their coming we were prodigals. We used up our natural resources
+with a ruthless disregard for the future. We leveled our forests for
+timber, and just scratched the top soil of the land for corn. Now we're
+learning to farm scientifically and to conserve our wealth. And this is
+due in no small degree to the Germans. The German, emancipated from
+feudalism and kaiserism, is a pretty good citizen. In fact, among the
+men who have most helped modern America we reckon Germans and Irishmen."
+
+I told them this story: A man in New York was speaking the other day to
+Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador. Count von Bernstorff was
+endeavoring to prove to this important personage that England had forced
+the war upon Germany out of jealousy of her trade competition. "Sir,"
+said the American, "you really must not tell me that, and I advise you
+not to tell such a tale to other Americans. For we know very well that
+we are greater trade rivals of England than you are, and that, in spite
+of that fact, here on this continent of America we have got 3,000 miles
+of British frontier without a fort or a gun." He then said to the
+Ambassador: "No, Sir; your mistake all through has been in making an
+enemy of England when your best interest was to make friends with her.
+If you had made friends with England, you would have got all you
+wanted." To this accusation, I understand, the Ambassador made answer
+that Germany had endeavored to make friends with England, but had been
+repulsed. We have a different record in England. The American quietly
+reminded the Ambassador of the fact that England admits German goods
+free of tariff charges.
+
+
+Germany Represents Autocracy.
+
+The two Philadelphians perfectly agreed with the justice of this
+accusation, and declared again that it was because Germany represented
+all the perils and slavishness of autocracy, and because England
+represented the freedom, the justice, and the passion for social welfare
+which inspire all living democracies, that America was so absolutely on
+the English side.
+
+They spoke of Ireland, and expressed the hope that the Conservative
+Party would do nothing to hinder that great settlement which has done so
+much to increase American respect for England.
+
+"We recognize over here," said one, "that the Liberal Party, in going to
+the rescue of Belgium, sacrificed some of its greatest ideals on the
+altar of national righteousness. War must have been a bitter draught for
+Lloyd George. Your social programme will be checked for many years. But
+if the Conservatives attempt to spoil the Irish settlement, that will be
+worse than anything else. It will mean confusion for you at home and
+loss of reputation abroad."
+
+I spoke of what I had heard on this subject from Irish-Americans, and
+they confirmed everything recorded in my former article. The three great
+things, outside of increasing opportunities for intercourse, which have
+drawn modern America toward England, they told me, are the social
+legislation of the Liberal Party, the triumph of home rule, and
+England's keeping her word to Belgium. By these three things, I was
+assured, the old animosities against England have been destroyed, and a
+spirit of enthusiasm for English ideals has been born among Americans.
+
+I should like to say that, while many American women love England for
+the beauty and repose of her social life, and most eloquently base their
+affection on the assertion that blood is thicker than water, the men of
+America are sometimes inclined, and not unnaturally, to disapprove of
+this pleasing sentimentalism. I now begin to perceive that the men of
+America are not jealous of England's social life, but anxious to put
+their friendship on a more substantial foundation.
+
+Liberalism not only uplifts democracy; it establishes England in the
+affection of all vital democracies. If the Conservatives, so liberal and
+charming in their private lives, combine with the Liberals after this
+hideous war to reconstruct our national life and to consolidate the
+empire, how great will be the harvest reaped by our children!
+
+It is in the high and lofty name of civilization that the American
+people are anxious to make friends with the people of Great Britain. We
+have both got something to live for greater than patriotism and
+imperialism, greater because it includes them both.
+
+
+II.
+
+Irish-American Feeling
+
+Until I came to America I had not the least idea of the depth of hatred
+which has existed among Irish-Americans toward England. Nothing that I
+ever encountered in Ireland itself is comparable with this transatlantic
+fury of unforgiving hate.
+
+An Irishman who had held very high office in America, a well-educated, a
+kindly, and a judicious man, told me that when war with Germany was in
+the air he could not prevent himself from hailing this opportunity for
+declaring his hatred, his undying hatred, of England. His father had
+suffered frightfully in the great famine; every story he ever heard at
+his mother's knee was a story of English tyranny, English brutality,
+English rapacity; England, for him, stood at the rack centre, the
+lustful and bestial slave driver, the cruel and merciless extortioner.
+
+This man's good judgment, however, would not suffer him to approve of
+German militarism, and as events moved forward he gave his support more
+and more to the cause of the Allies.
+
+"But I want you to know," he told me, striking the table with his hand
+and watching me carefully, "that I was dead against John Redmond for
+saying that Ireland must go to the aid of England. Ireland's call was to
+go to the aid of civilization. If Germany had stood for civilization, I
+should have been on Germany's side and dead against England.
+
+"I tell you, at the beginning of this business I longed to see England
+defeated, humiliated, broken to the dust. But civilization is of such
+enormous consequence that I put my natural hatred of England on one
+side. The violation of Belgium made me an anti-German. And with the vast
+majority of Irishmen in America it was the same thing. The menace of
+German militarism forced us into your camp.
+
+"I am perfectly certain that but for the violation of Belgium there
+would have been in this country among Irish-Americans an open movement
+publicly proclaimed in favor of Germany. That is my fixed opinion. And I
+happen to know what I am talking about."
+
+
+No Hatred of England.
+
+I gathered in the course of his conversation that Irish friendliness
+toward England is a final manifestation of a change in the feeling of
+all America toward England. It was not very long ago that President
+Cleveland wanted war with England. Hatred of England was at one time as
+fiercely handed down from generation to generation by Americans as by
+Irish-Americans. We have to thank our English stars that America has
+outgrown this historic hate and that Irish-Americans now show the new
+and happier feeling of their compatriots.
+
+I asked this Irishman, no one better able throughout America to express
+a just opinion on the subject, what difference had been made in the
+feeling toward England by the passing of the Home Rule bill.
+
+"It was the passing of that bill," he replied, "which finished the work
+begun by German militarism. Home rule has softened our feelings toward
+England, particularly among the thousands of Irish-Americans who are
+born over here and whose fathers have become too Americanized to
+remember the sufferings of their ancestors.
+
+"There is still some hatred of England, but not very much. It is a
+sentimental, a poetic hatred, not a political hatred. One finds it among
+a few individuals. What agitation is now going on is secret and
+underground, a sure proof that it is unrepresentative. We ignore it. It
+means nothing. No; the passing of the Home Rule bill has given balance
+to the Irish mind.
+
+"It has helped Irish-Americans to realize that the dreadful sins of
+England are sins of a dead and gone England, and it has helped them to
+see that the present England, so far as its democracy is concerned,
+sincerely desires to make reparation for the past. In fact, the war and
+the Home Rule bill together have produced such a transformation in the
+Irish-American nature as I, for one, never expected and never hoped to
+see."
+
+He then warned me that this great change might suffer a dangerous
+reaction if England allows the religious bigotry of Ulster to split
+Ireland into two camps. To the Irish-American Ireland is a country, a
+home, and a shrine, one and indivisible.
+
+"Such a surrender," said my friend, "would not only be fatal to Ireland
+but fatal to something even greater than Ireland, and that is the cause
+of religion in an age of increasing paganism. For the world can only be
+saved from the ruin of paganism, as we are beginning to see very clearly
+in America, by a union of religious forces.
+
+"I am a Catholic, but I say that any man who says 'Only through my door
+can you enter into heaven' is a bad Christian. There are many doors into
+heaven. What we have all got to do, Catholics and non-Catholics, is to
+insist together that there is a heaven, that there is a life after
+death, that there is a God. The more doors the better. No one has a
+monopoly of heaven.
+
+"And to Ireland is offered the opportunity, greater than politicians
+appear to perceive, of presenting to the world an example of tolerance
+and compromise in the supreme interests of religion which may have
+incalculable results for the whole world. But what will happen if
+England bows before the worst and the stupidest bigotry the modern world
+can show? Not only will you strike a blow at Ireland and a blow at
+Irish-American sympathy, but a blow at the vitals of religion.
+
+"For it is only by sinking religious differences and making a common
+advance against this universal paganism that religion can save the soul
+of civilization. If you do not see the truth of that fact in England I
+think you must be blind. The fullness of civilization hangs upon
+religious union; religious dissension is the enemy."
+
+
+Change in Ulster.
+
+Another Irish-American who was present on this occasion, an accomplished
+man of letters and a traveler, asked me what England felt about Ulster's
+share in the responsibility for the present war.
+
+"I myself have seen two letters from Ulster," he said, "in which the
+phrase occurs, 'Rather the Kaiser than the Pope.' These letters were
+written before the war. Ulster, no doubt, has now changed her tune. But
+it was that spirit, surely, and the reports sent to Berlin by German
+officers who visited Ulster and inquired into the military character of
+Carsonism which persuaded Germany that England would not fight."
+
+Irish-Americans are persuaded that Sir Edward Carson is in very great
+measure responsible for all the ruin and death and bitter suffering of
+the enormous catastrophe. He boasted that he would make civil war, and
+such were his preparations that in any other country in the world civil
+war would have been inevitable.
+
+Germany counted on that civil war. The British Army was said to be
+completely under the influence of Carsonism. The real catastrophe for
+the diplomacy of Berlin was not India's loyalty and the vigorous
+uprising of the young dominions, but the dying down of Ulster mutiny.
+
+These Irish-Americans have hated the ruling classes in England, not only
+for sins of the past but for the unworthy and most cruel opposition
+offered by those ruling classes, in the name of religious intolerance,
+to the ideals of the Irish Nation.
+
+When Unionist politicians sneer at the subscriptions sent by Irish
+servant girls in America to help the cause of Ireland they should
+reflect that not only do they fail to make a good joke, not only do they
+exhibit a horribly bad taste, but they spread hatred of England through
+the thousands and thousands of people. For it is the loyalty of the
+poorest of these Irish-Americans, the sacrifices perpetually made by
+the humblest of them, which should move us to see, as it has certainly
+moved the American people to see, that the cause of Irish liberty is
+noble and undying.
+
+
+Religious Education.
+
+With all my heart I would beg Unionists in England to reflect
+conscientiously upon this very significant state of affairs in America:
+
+A non-Catholic Bible used to be read in the public schools of America
+down to the year 1888. A Catholic agitation against this Bible reading
+was begun in 1885, and in 1888 the custom was finally abolished. From
+that date to this there has been no religious instruction of any kind in
+the public schools of America.
+
+Bigotry and intolerance won that victory. The Catholic Church, in its
+folly, destroyed religious teaching in the schools of the country.
+Catholics themselves are now looking back on that agitation with
+religious repentance and political regret.
+
+The result of this abolition is that Catholics and non-Catholics who
+believe in the importance of religious instruction, and who see the
+pagan effect of purely secular instruction, do not send their children
+to the public schools.
+
+"These schools, for which Christians are heavily taxed, are in the
+possession of the Hebrews. If nothing is done to alter the existing
+state of things Americans themselves assure me that in five-and-twenty
+years America will be a pagan country. But a fight is to be made to
+avert this disaster at the Constitutional Convention to be held next
+month.
+
+"What we have to do," my Irish friend told me, "Catholics and
+non-Catholics alike, is to appeal for schools representing Catholic and
+non-Catholic teaching. Instead of the various churches fighting against
+each other they must fight together, helping one another to get the
+schools they demand. Only in this way can we save civilization."
+
+This is how the Irishman, breathing the free air of America, and in
+America rising to positions of extraordinary power and responsibility,
+views the foundational question of religion; while England allows
+herself to be dragged at the heels of the frothing fanatic who has
+actually dared to raise the unholy battle cry of "Rather the Kaiser than
+the Pope."
+
+Let the Unionist Party hesitate before it seeks to revive this hideous,
+utterly irrational and most unchristianlike spirit at the very heart of
+the British Empire. The sower of hate is the reaper of death.
+
+
+
+
+TO MELOS, POMEGRANATE ISLE.
+
+By GRACE HARRIET MACURDY.
+
+     (Destroyed by Athens, 416 B.C., because of her refusal to
+     break neutrality.--Thucydides V., 84-116; Euripides, "Trojan
+     Women.")
+
+
+    O thou Pomegranate of the Sea,
+      Sweet Melian isle, across the years
+    Thy Belgian sister calls to thee
+      In anguished sweat of blood and tears.
+
+    Her fate like thine--a ruthless band
+      Hath ravaged all her loveliness.
+    How Athens spoiled thy prosperous land
+      Athenian lips with shame confess.
+
+    Thou, too, a land of lovely arts,
+      Of potter's and of sculptor's skill--
+    Thy folk of high undaunted hearts
+      As those that throb in Belgium still.
+
+    Within thy harbor's circling rim
+      The warships long, with banners bright,
+    Sailed bearing Athens' message grim--
+      "God hates the weak. Respect our Might."
+
+    The flame within thy fanes grew cold,
+      Stilled by the foeman's swarming hordes.
+    Thy sons were slain, thy daughters sold
+      To serve the lusts of stranger lords.
+
+    For Attic might thou didst defy
+      Thy folk the foeman slew as sheep,
+    Across the years hear Belgium's cry--
+      "O Sister, of the Wine-Dark Deep,
+
+    "Whose cliffs gleam seaward roseate.
+      Not one of all my martyr roll
+    But keeps his faith inviolate,
+      Man kills our body, not our soul."
+
+
+
+
+What America Can Do
+
+By Lord Channing of Wellingborough.
+
+     Lord Channing, who makes the following suggestion to American
+     statesmen, was born in the United States of the well-known
+     Channings of Boston. His father was the Rev. W.H. Channing,
+     Chaplain of the House of Representatives during the civil war
+     and a close friend of President Lincoln. Lord Channing has
+     been for twenty-five years a member of the British Parliament,
+     and for the last three years a member of the House of Lords,
+     having been created first Baron of Wellingborough in 1912. He
+     is President of the British National Peace Congress.
+
+
+To the Editor of The New York Times:
+
+As a member of the British Legislature for a generation, and a lifelong
+Liberal, and having also the closest ties of blood with America, and a
+proud reverence for her ideals, I would wish, with the utmost respect,
+to offer some comments on one specific aspect of present affairs, as
+they affect America, which does not seem to have been marked off with
+the distinctness its importance calls for.
+
+This is the greatest crisis in the history of the world, and attention
+concentrates itself on the attitude of the greatest neutral State.
+
+It is unthinkable that America can divest herself of responsibility for
+the final outcome. This seems as clearly recognized in America as in
+Europe.
+
+To us in England this war is a life or death struggle between two
+principles--Pan-Germanism on the one side, with its avowed purpose to
+impose its hegemony and its rigid system of ideas and organization on
+the rest of the world, not by consent, but by irresistible military
+force; on the other side the claim of the other nations, large and
+small, to maintain inviolate their freedom and individuality, and to
+think and work out for themselves their own political and economic
+future in their own way.
+
+The one principle would seem the flat contradiction of all that America
+stands for, the other principle would seem to be precisely the essential
+idea of free self-government and democratic evolution, in which are
+rooted the very life and being of America.
+
+For this reason there is instinctive and profound sympathy on the part
+of the great majority of native Americans with the cause of England and
+her allies.
+
+This sympathy is not merely the tie of blood or the unity of ideals.
+Reason has convinced Americans that the supreme principles and highest
+interests of America will be best safeguarded if the Allies win.
+
+They dread instinctively what might happen if Pan-Germanism absorbed the
+smaller nationalities, crushed the great free countries like France and
+England, and dominated the whole world with the "mailed fist," not only
+Europe and the Far East, but South America and the Pacific. Perhaps the
+hint of Count Bernstorff that Canada may be treated like Belgium, and
+the Monroe Doctrine like other "scraps of paper," may also have thrown
+some light for Americans on a "Germanized" future! And a cast-iron
+system of commercial and industrial monopoly dictated by German needs
+cannot attract.
+
+
+America Can't Stand Apart.
+
+That is one side that American statesmen have to consider. There is, of
+course, another.
+
+The United States visibly form the greatest force the world has yet seen
+to bring together, to unite, to assimilate, in the development of their
+vast territories, measureless resources, and complicated industries, all
+that is best from all the other great nations, welding slowly but
+surely, through free institutions, these new elements into instruments
+for the fuller realization of the generous and noble ideals for which
+America stands. Perhaps an eighteenth or even fifteenth part of the
+population is of German origin, a percentage not far from equal to that
+contributed by the United Kingdom and Canada.
+
+There is thus not only the broad question of avoiding war with Germany,
+whose people have so large a share in the life of America, a war doubly
+unwelcome at all times because of the innumerable links of science,
+invention, professional training, of commerce, and of personal
+friendship; but there is also the local question of peace and good-will
+in the daily work of America as between huge sections of her population.
+These visible facts not unnaturally give great weight to the argument
+for neutrality. No wise man on this side of the Atlantic will try to
+ignore them, or take exception to the dignity and correctness with which
+the American Executive has dealt with the grave problem before it.
+
+Neutrality has, of course, its limits and conditions, logical and moral.
+Those limits and conditions, the possibility of their infringement in
+such a way as to make some change of policy imperative, are matters
+solely for the United States.
+
+The point the present writer wishes to press is on a different plane,
+and is precisely this:
+
+America does not and can not stand wholly apart from supreme European
+decisions.
+
+America is as responsible as Europe for the great extensions,
+definitions, the strengthening and modification of international law.
+America stands forth as the apostle of arbitration, to widen the area
+within which disputed points may be determined amicably. America stands
+also as the chief signatory of the great world conventions which have
+settled new rules for the conduct of war, to mitigate its horrors,
+especially for non-combatants.
+
+America has taken a noble part in framing machinery for securing peace
+and justice, and in moving forward the landmarks of civilization as
+against savagery, and of human mercy as against cruel terrorism.
+
+Can America safely or wisely divest herself of the duty thus placed upon
+her, logically and morally, by her participation in this, the noblest
+work of our age?
+
+And is it wise or is it safe to indefinitely postpone the discharge of
+this duty?
+
+By the events of the last three months the whole of this new charter of
+humanity has been challenged and is at stake.
+
+Is it not sound policy as well as an imperative duty to take some step
+here and now to "stop the rot" and to make good here and now as much as
+we can of what we have won and wish to keep?
+
+
+Belgium's Wrongs.
+
+Admittedly a "guiltless and unoffending nation,"[1] whose neutrality and
+independence had been solemnly guaranteed by treaty, to which the powers
+concerned in the war were parties, has had her treaty rights violated by
+one of these powers on the cynical plea that there is no right or wrong
+as against national interest, that necessity obeys no law, and treaties
+are "scraps of paper." This is not matter for inquiry or judicial
+decision at some later date. It has been frankly avowed by the German
+Government from the outset of this war.
+
+[Footnote 1: Theodore Roosevelt.]
+
+Again, this admitted wrong is not the sudden and unavoidable outcome of
+events unforeseen and uncontrollable. It has been deliberately planned
+years ahead, with elaborate preparation of railway and other facilities,
+and with every invention and contrivance, to rush in irresistible
+forces; to subvert and destroy the independent State that Germany was
+herself pledged to defend.
+
+Thirdly, this policy of absolute annihilation of Belgium, of its right
+to live its own life, its right even to preserve those monuments of its
+noble and beautiful history which had become treasured heirlooms of the
+whole world, has been carried out with a ruthless barbarity to the
+people, and especially the non-combatants, for which it is hard to find
+a parallel in the worst incidents of the Thirty Years' War or of the
+devastation of the Palatinate. To bring the actual guilt home to those
+who actually did or ordered these deeds to be done in individual cases
+is one thing. The broad fact that these barbarous deeds were done stands
+manifest and insistent, and demands such instant action as can be taken
+by a great and responsible people.
+
+And, lastly, there is the undisguised adoption of the policy of
+terrorizing non-combatants to submission by such acts as forcing women
+and children to walk before the advancing enemy, the wholesale burning
+of houses, shooting of hostages and other non-combatants, and the
+dropping of bombs from aeroplanes not on forts or troops, but on places
+where women and children can be killed or injured.
+
+And all this tragic sweeping away of such good things as had been won
+with worldwide consent, at the instance of the Czar in initiating The
+Hague policy, has gone on, so far as it could go on, with equal horror,
+throughout Northern France. Rheims and Senlis have suffered the fate of
+Louvain and Termonde and Malines, and Paris has had her quota of women
+and children wantonly slain by bombs, exactly like Antwerp.
+
+
+The Threat to England.
+
+And America knows, as we here in England know, from the open menace of
+the German press, writing of England as the _one supreme enemy_, that it
+is the full intention of Germans, if they can, to carry through England,
+too, even more ruthlessly, the same policy.
+
+We are fighting here, and are confident that we shall fight with
+success, not only to protect our English homes and to guard the historic
+buildings of this land but to make an end of this Prussian terrorism of
+the world; to secure no national aggrandizement, but to secure a
+permanent and solid peace, based on guaranteed liberties, and a rational
+settlement of the question of armaments.
+
+These questions touch us all the more because many of us have been the
+most persistent friends of international peace and have specially
+labored to promote happy and friendly relations with the German people.
+The present writer, who was honored by election as President of this
+year's National Peace Congress, has been associated with the work of men
+like Lord Brassey, Sir John Lubbock, (later Lord Avebury,) as a member
+of the Anglo-German Friendship League, and has repeatedly in Parliament
+argued against any hostile or provocative attitude toward Germany. This
+war is our answer and our reward!
+
+
+America in the Settlement.
+
+So far as can be judged from authoritative words of President Wilson and
+ex-President Roosevelt, America does and will claim a right to share in
+the final settlement of the terms of a permanent and stable peace.
+
+If that claim is sound, if the efforts of America to create better
+machinery for securing peace and for generously and humanely vindicating
+the liberties and happiness of nations and of the individuals who make
+them up do entitle America to a voice, and a potent voice, in the work
+of mending and remaking the world after this terrific catastrophe, then
+I would submit with all respect that it is really idle to wait till all
+the recognized principles of what has been held to be right or wrong as
+between nations, and what has been held to be right or wrong in the
+methods of conducting war have gone overboard, without one word of
+protest; we must save the world first, if we are to have a real chance
+of remaking it on lines which are worth having.
+
+Nothing but good could come from immediate action by the American
+Executive to assert as they, best of all nations, could assert, now and
+at once in terms uncompromising, unanswerable, that the ground taken up
+by international consent in the past generation must be held now and
+hereafter, and accepted as an essential basis of the final settlement.
+
+Such a pronouncement now by America would make a landmark in
+history--would render a measureless service to the whole world in
+emancipation from the persistent degradation of the twin doctrines that
+might makes right, and that necessity knows no law, and would bring to
+America herself imperishable honor and glory in the fearless assertion
+and eternal consecration of her own noblest ideals.
+
+I would submit further that such a national declaration by America
+involves no violation of neutrality, and is in no sense inconsistent
+with the spirit of official utterances already made.
+
+To take the latter first--we have had notable utterances from the
+President and from the ex-President.
+
+President Wilson seems to have given a sympathetic hearing to the
+mission which laid the case of Belgium before him, both as to the
+violation of Belgium's neutrality and as to the cruel treatment of the
+non-combatant population and the wanton destruction of towns and
+villages and of precious historical monuments. He is understood to have
+promised an investigation, and it is gathered from the Indépendance
+Belge this week that this investigation has been, and is being, carried
+out by American Military Attachés in Belgium, and also at the London
+Embassy of the United States.
+
+Again, President Wilson's recent letter to the Kaiser, while confirming
+neutrality in precise terms, went on to intimate that there must be a
+"day of settlement" and that "where injustices have found a place
+results are sure to follow, and all those who have been found at fault
+will have to answer for them." If the "general settlement" does not
+sufficiently determine this, there is the ultimate sanction of "the
+opinion of mankind" which will "in such cases interfere." He would
+apparently reserve judgment until the end of the war, but in no way
+disclaims or surrenders American responsibility.
+
+Mr. Roosevelt is not tied by official responsibility, and can speak with
+less restraint and more freedom. In The Outlook he has substantially
+accepted and indorsed all that is material in the Belgian case.
+
+America should help in securing a peace which will not mean the
+"crushing the liberty and life of just and inoffending peoples or
+consecrate the rule of militarism," but which "will, by international
+agreement, minimize the chances of the recurrence of such worldwide
+disaster," and "will, in the interests of civilization, create
+conditions which will make such action" as the violation of Belgian
+treaty rights "impossible in the future."
+
+Like President Wilson, he seems to think that the time for judicial
+pronouncement on acts presumably guilty and wrongful will come at the
+conclusion of the war. At the same time he surrenders no part of
+America's responsibility, but reaffirms it with all the force of his
+trenchant style.
+
+But elsewhere, and later, he has insisted on the "helplessness"--the
+"humiliating impotence created by the fact that our neutrality can only
+be preserved by failure to help to right what is wrong."
+
+
+Mr. Roosevelt's Remedy.
+
+And he has gone on to adumbrate his practical remedy--"a world league"
+with "an amplified Hague Court," made strong by joint agreement of the
+powers, to secure "peace and righteousness," and to vindicate the just
+decisions of such a court by "a union of forces to enforce the decree."
+He adds that this might help to obtain a "limitation of armaments that
+would be real and effective."
+
+That so happy a plan may be capable of realization would be the hope of
+all wise men.
+
+But where I take exception with Col. Roosevelt is as to America's
+present "impotence"--that nothing effectual can be done by America
+without breaking her own neutrality.
+
+That view I wholly traverse. It might conceivably be felt by America,
+under certain grave eventualities, that neutrality must be broken.
+
+But it is clear that the articles of The Hague Convention of 1907 amply
+provide for the type of action here and now by the United States which
+I have ventured to lay before American statesmen in this paper. And, in
+my opinion, it is conceivable that more good might be achieved by
+America taking that action, while maintaining her neutrality.
+
+It goes without saying, it really needs no demonstration, that nearly
+every international agreement embodied in The Hague Convention has been
+broken, wholly or in part, in the letter and in the spirit, in the
+proceedings of this unhappy year.
+
+The violation of the territory of a neutral State by the transit of
+belligerent troops and other acts of war is forbidden, (Articles 1, 2,
+3, 4, &c.) It is the duty of the neutral State not to tolerate, (Article
+5,) but to resist such acts, and her forcible resistance is not to be
+regarded as an act of war, (Article 10.)
+
+
+Interference with Neutrals.
+
+That, of course, covers the case of Belgium completely and establishes
+absolutely that there is, and need be, no breach of neutrality in
+resistance thus legally sanctioned to illegal interference with neutral
+rights.
+
+It is hardly necessary to recapitulate the articles that have been torn
+up. To refer to the most striking, there is the repeated bombardment of
+undefended towns, pillage incessant throughout Belgium and Northern
+France, (Articles 28 and 47;) the levying of illegal contributions,
+(Articles 49 and 52;) the seizure of cash and securities belonging to
+private persons, banks, and local authorities, (Articles 52 and 56;)
+collective penalties for individual acts for which the community as a
+whole are not responsible, (Article 50.) Articles 50 and 43 should have
+made impossible the punitive destruction of Visé, Aerschot, Dinant, and
+Louvain, and numberless villages; Article 56 should have preserved from
+destruction institutions and buildings dedicated to religion, education,
+charity, hospitals, &c. All these wrongful acts, committed everywhere,
+have been prohibited by these articles.
+
+The gradual introduction of the policy of terrorism has been ably traced
+by perhaps the highest French authority on international law, Prof.
+Edouard Clunet, formerly President of the Institute of International
+Law, in a recent address.
+
+"Bombardment par intimidation" was adopted by the Germans in 1870 and
+used at Strassburg, Paris, Péronne, &c., shells being directed and
+conflagrations spread in the inhabited parts of towns apart from the
+fortifications. Germany herself assented to serious mitigations of this
+practice at the Conference of Brussels in 1874 and at The Hague in 1907.
+
+The worst evolution of the policy of terrorism has been in the throwing
+from aeroplanes of bombs, explosive or incendiary. M. Clunet lays down
+that, by the most recent decision of the institute, bomb throwing from
+aeroplanes must follow the rules of bombardment by artillery. This would
+prohibit such bombs without formal notice. But in Antwerp bombs were
+dropped without notice over the Royal Palace, to the peril of the Queen
+and her young children, and the number of peaceable inhabitants killed
+or injured was thirty-eight, three children being mutilated in their
+beds. In Paris, besides the bombs dropped on Notre Dame, bombs were
+deliberately dropped in the public streets and a number of peaceable
+victims killed or wounded. The dropping of bombs as an act of war on
+fortresses, ammunition depots, Zeppelin sheds, &c., is, of course,
+legal. But the bomb dropping adopted in Belgium and France, and
+threatened in England, if the opportunity arises, is undisguised
+terrorism, and not war.
+
+It is important to note also that at Brussels in 1874 Antwerp addressed
+a petition to the conference praying that any bombardment should be
+limited to fortifications only. The commission of the conference, which
+included three well-known German Generals and two professors, recognized
+the justice of this plea and recommended Generals to conform to it.
+
+But the one point that should appeal most strongly to the patriotism as
+well as the idealism of America is the fact that the instructions of
+1863 for armies in campaign, drawn up by the United States Government
+in the height of the civil war, first codified the laws for the conduct
+of war, and have been the source and starting point of all these later
+international agreements.
+
+And it should be remembered that both Germany and America signed the
+Fourth Convention of The Hague with its annexed regulations as to sieges
+and bombardments (Articles 22 to 28) and the further provision which may
+even yet be applied punitively to the proceedings of the present war.
+"The belligerent who shall have violated the provisions of the said
+regulation shall be held liable for an indemnity."
+
+And if it be thought that America can render no help in such a position
+as the present without violating her neutrality, the answer is that by
+Article 3 of Convention 1 of The Hague, 1907, neutral powers have the
+right to offer their suggestions (bons offices) or their mediation, even
+during the course of hostilities. And further: "The exercise of this
+right must never be considered by one or the other of the parties to
+the conflict as an unfriendly act."
+
+With all submission, I earnestly urge on the leaders of American thought
+to support this attempted interpretation of the supreme duty and the
+noble opportunity the present position places before their country.
+
+One more word. I referred to the possible benefit of neutrality being
+maintained while this protest against wrong and appeal for right is at
+the same time advanced.
+
+Is it not more than probable that there is an immense section of
+moderate though patriotic opinion in the great German people which at
+heart deprecates the extreme doctrines of conquest and world supremacy
+in pursuit of which the great, the wonderful achievements of the German
+race in science, in industry, in the extension of commerce, are being
+rashly risked?
+
+CHANNING OF WELLINGBOROUGH.
+
+40 Eaton Place, London S.W., Oct. 29, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+TO A COUSIN GERMAN.
+
+By Adeline Adams.
+
+
+    My Hans, you say, with self-applausive jest,
+      "When Albert gave his Belgians Caesar's name--
+      'Bravest of all the Gauls'--surely 'twere shame
+    The King, unthorough man, forgot the rest:
+
+    "'Bravest because most far from all the best
+      Provincial culture.'"[2] Friend, if now your aim
+      Be that fine thoroughness your people claim,
+    Read on: "Such culture's wares, it stands confest,
+
+    "Oft weaken minds." And Caesar's word was just.
+      If men, bedeviled under culture's star,
+      Have left Louvain a void where flames still hiss,
+    Speared babes, and stamped the world's own Rose to dust,
+      God grant that Belgium's soul may dwell afar
+    Forever, from a culture such as this!
+
+[Footnote 2: "Propterea quod a cultu atque humanitute provinciae
+longissime absunt."]
+
+
+
+
+What the Economic Effects May Be
+
+By Irving Fisher.
+
+     Professor of Political Economy at Yale University; member of
+     many scientific societies.
+
+
+When the future historian chronicles the facts of the present great
+world struggle and attempts to analyze its causes and effects the
+economic losses, gains, shiftings, and dislocations will form an
+important part of the story. It is, of course, quite impossible at this
+time to know, in any detail, what all the economic results will be. Much
+will depend on how long the war lasts, how many people and how much
+property are destroyed, what financial devices are resorted to in order
+to finance it, and which side is finally victorious.
+
+The most palpable and the most fundamental effects will be a partial
+stoppage of earnings in the nations directly concerned, i.e., a
+reduction in the "real income," which consists of enjoyable goods. All
+the other important results follow from this.
+
+The cost, however reckoned, is sure to be stupendous. Prof. Richet is
+quoted as reckoning it at $50,000,000 a day. This is probably more than
+half the total income of all the inhabitants of the warring countries.
+The highest estimates of the total income of the United Kingdom, France,
+and Germany, estimates of Bowley, Laverge, and Buchel, respectively,
+total up less than $70,000,000 a day. Russia and Austria are poor
+countries per capita, and would scarcely bring the grand total to
+$100,000,000 a day. Moreover, the loss of real income to Europe is, I
+imagine, in reality much greater than Richet's estimate, chiefly because
+he takes little account of the indirect costs, which may well be the
+greatest of all. The cost to the fiscal departments of Government is
+probably only a small part of the total cost which the people will have
+to bear. The killing and disabling of the men engaged will cut off the
+financial support of European families to the tune of hundreds of
+millions of dollars per year. The physical destruction of capital
+through the devastation of crops, the burning and demolishing of
+merchant ships and buildings, the crippling of industry through the
+sudden withdrawal of labor and raw materials, the introduction of new
+trade risks, and the cutting off of transportation, both internal and
+foreign, make up a sum of items which cannot be measured, but which may
+exceed those which can. Last, but not least, is the impairment of that
+subtle but vital basis of business, commercial credit.
+
+In short, the central effect is a vast impairment of Europe's current
+income and of the capital from which her future income will flow. It
+means a veritable impoverishment of vast populations. The great burden
+will bear heaviest, of course, on the poor. It will impinge very
+unequally and will cause a great redistribution of wealth. As always
+happens, some people, mostly lucky speculators, will come out of the
+męlée wealthier than before. This fact will not serve to lessen the
+discontent of the masses, which their impoverishment is sure to create.
+Food prices will be high, the earnings of labor will be low, and after
+the war unemployment will be great, due to the impossibility of quick
+absorption into the industrial system of returned soldiers, as well as
+other maladjustments which the war is sure to bring.
+
+The victor may secure indemnity for part of the loss, but not for all;
+he will, in spite of himself, be a net loser. Taxes will be a crushing
+burden, merely to secure funds with which to pay high interest on vast
+new war debts, to say nothing of funds with which to purchase new
+armaments--if again the nations are forced, by lack of international
+control, to resume the stupendous folly of racing each other in military
+equipments.
+
+
+Bankruptcy and Revolution.
+
+It may well be that among the economic consequences of the war there
+will be some national bankruptcies, and that among the political
+consequences will be revolutions. High prices, high taxes, low wages,
+and unemployment make an ominous combination. We may be sure that
+discontent will be profound and widespread. This discontent is pretty
+sure to lead, especially in the defeated nations where there is no
+compensating "glory," to strong revolutionary movements just as was the
+case in Russia after her defeat by Japan. Whether or to what extent
+these movements, in which "Socialism" in the various meanings of that
+word is sure to play a part, will succeed, depends on the relative
+strength of opposing tendencies which cannot yet be measured. One
+possible if not probable result may be, as I suggested in THE TIMES two
+weeks ago, some international device to secure disarmament and to
+safeguard peace.
+
+Though part of the losses to Europe will be permanent, her chief loss
+will be coterminous with the war. She will, therefore, seek ways and
+means to fill in this immediate hole in her income in order to "get by."
+To do this she must borrow; that is, she must secure her present bread
+and butter from us and other nations and arrange to repay later out of
+the fruits of peace. She can stint herself, but not enough to meet the
+situation. She must borrow. And in one way and another she will satisfy
+this necessity by borrowing in the United States.
+
+Most of the strange and unprecedented phenomena which we have witnessed
+in the last month, in rapid succession, are due to this pressing
+necessity of the belligerent peoples to cash in now and trust to good
+fortune to pay later. As soon as the war became even probable Europe
+tried to cash in on our securities. The pressure for our gold pushed it
+toward Europe faster than it could move. Exchange jumped to the
+gold-shipping point of $4.89 per pound sterling, and did not stop. In
+some cases it reached $7. This was partly due to the desire to get our
+gold and bolster up a credit structure, tottering before the deadly blow
+of war; but it was also partly due to the need of ready money for
+supplies of all kinds. This need applies not only to the Governments,
+but to the individual people. To obtain this ready money they threw back
+on us the securities they had purchased of us in former years. They
+wanted us to take back these titles to future income and give them
+instead titles to present income. Had they secured our gold their next
+step would have been to spend part of it for supplies, and this would
+have caused any foreign dealers to whom they applied to place orders
+with us. The gold then might have turned the exchanges and have been
+brought back to us in return for our wheat and other products.
+
+This double transaction is in essence one--a barter of present income in
+the form of our wheat to Europe for future income in the form of
+investment securities. It was interfered with by the refusal of the
+insurance companies to insure the gold and by the closing of Stock
+Exchanges against the inundating flood of securities. The first
+difficulty, as to transporting gold, has been largely removed by
+arranging for drafts against stocks of it kept on both sides of the
+Atlantic. This will save the need of sending it on risky voyages back
+and forth, and any final net balances can be liquidated after the war.
+The second obstacle, the closure of the Stock Exchanges, is more
+formidable, but cannot completely or permanently prevent the
+transactions which so many people on both sides are anxious to
+consummate. Curb markets and limited cash sales on the Exchanges
+themselves are doing some of this business, and, sooner or later, much
+more will be done, whether the Exchanges are open or not. Europe needs
+our wheat and cannot pay for it except with securities, partly because
+her own industry is paralyzed, partly because ocean transportation is
+difficult.
+
+
+What Dumping Securities Means.
+
+Few people seem to realize that the dumping of securities on our shores
+and the efforts of foreign Governments, such as France and Switzerland,
+to borrow money in our markets are at the bottom very much the same
+thing. They are simply two forms of securing present supplies from
+America in return for future supplies, the dividends and interest on
+securities from Europe.
+
+It does not much matter whether we buy Government bonds or other
+securities. If we buy of French capitalists their holdings in American
+railway securities we simply provide them with the wherewithal to take
+the French Government loans themselves. They virtually become, without
+our knowledge, the go-between through which we lend, as it were, to the
+French Government, in spite of ourselves. It is doubtless well, as a
+matter of policy, to refuse to loan directly to France, but we must not
+for a moment conclude that France or any other nation will have to
+finance the war without our aid. We shall not be consciously helping any
+particular nation, but we shall be actually helping any nation which can
+trade with us. Evidently England will get more of our help than any
+other nation because her shores are more accessible. Germany is more
+isolated. Unless she possesses a larger food stock than commercial
+statistics indicate she will be pressing for our food supplies, which
+may reach her indirectly, we selling to Holland and Holland to Germany;
+also reversely, via Holland or via Austria and Italy, Germany may sell a
+stream of securities the other end of which we receive. Whether directly
+or by devious routes there will inevitably be, so far as I can see, a
+vast exchange of commodities passing to Europe for securities coming
+from Europe. In this interchange will be found the dominant economic
+effect of the war on the United States.
+
+Foreign nations will get their much-needed loans on better terms, even
+if less promptly, by the circuitous process mentioned than if they
+could borrow directly in our markets; for their own citizens will pay
+higher prices than we would, even if, to get the money, they have to
+sell their other investment securities to us at a considerable
+sacrifice. England has sold Treasury bills for seventy-five millions of
+dollars on as low a "basis" as 3-3/4 per cent.
+
+In this virtual trade of this year's crops for titles to future years'
+crops we shall get a high price for the former and pay a low price (in
+present valuation) for the latter. Investment securities are, and will
+be, a drug on the market. In other words, the rate of return to the
+investor will be high; the rate of interest on long-time loans will be
+high and stay high, that on short-time loans may fluctuate greatly. The
+rise in the rate of interest on long-time investments is one of the most
+vital and far-reaching effects of the war. At bottom, interest always
+arises from the exchange of present and future goods. The rate of
+interest, as I have tried to show in my book of that title, is simply
+the crystallization, in a market rate, of the impatience of the human
+race for its bread and butter. War has now produced such impatience in
+populations of hundreds of millions. It is this impatience which dumps
+the securities upon us, sends down their price, and sends up the rate of
+interest. As Byron W. Holt has said, there is no moratorium for hunger.
+The fall of securities in Europe produces the like fall in this and
+other countries.
+
+One of the consequences to America of being forced to play the rôle of
+money lender and one of the consequences of the rise in the rate of
+interest here, or what amounts to the same thing, the fall in the prices
+of bonds, will be an increased difficulty of financing our own
+enterprises. Only the most promising enterprises will be able to sell
+their securities. This means that we shall be neglecting, to some
+extent, our own enterprises, to finance the European war instead.
+
+This general depreciation of investment securities will doubtless lead
+to many bankruptcies, if not to a genuine crisis. It will also give
+tempting opportunities to investors. The likelihood of a genuine panic
+is lessened by the fact that every one recognizes the real cause of the
+disturbance and that insolvency is not suspected. According to the best
+commercial observers, the previous liquidation had been fairly well
+completed. Unless they are mistaken, disaster will not be likely to
+follow.
+
+We repeat that since the necessities of Europe have forced her to buy
+our food in return for her investments, it is evident that during the
+war food prices will be high and security prices, especially bonds, will
+be low. These are the two facts of greatest economic significance to us.
+To the country as a whole they defer some of our pleasures till after
+the war. Uncle Sam will cut down for the present on his eating and
+drinking, his clothes, shelter, and amusements in order to share his
+rations with Europe. Instead of the pleasures foregone he will
+invest--not in new enterprises at home, but in old ones--American and
+possibly European also--purchased of Europe. We can never have our cake
+and eat it too. In this case we shall let Europe eat some of it on
+condition that she in turn shares hers with us after the war. Moreover,
+we shall trade off a relatively small piece of our present cake for a
+relatively large piece of Europe's future cake. In other words, Europe
+will fill up the great breach in her income now impending by inducing us
+to make a small breach in ours. The result will be that the course of
+our real income, that is, economic satisfaction or enjoyable
+consumption, will imitate in some degree that of Europe. This is,
+reduced to its lowest terms, the chief economic result of the war.
+
+But to many the question is, do we gain or lose, as compared with what
+might have been the case if there had been no war? I do not think any
+one can answer that question with certainty. Europe is willing to
+mortgage its future to us on terms very advantageous to us; but when the
+future comes, the purchasing power of money will probably be so much
+lessened as to have absorbed all our advantage. Probably we shall lose
+slightly on the whole. But it is not economically impossible that there
+will be a net gain. In either case the net effect will, I believe, be
+small.
+
+Of more importance will be the various effects on various classes.
+Certain people will be greatly benefited by the rise in food prices and
+the fall in security prices. The farming classes will profit by the
+former; the investing classes by the latter. Those who have the good
+fortune to belong to both classes will grow rich. The farmer who is in a
+position to save money will both make more money to save and be able to
+invest it more advantageously after he has saved it. If he lends to his
+neighbors he will find the market rate of interest high. Even if he buys
+more land the purchase price will be restrained from the great rise we
+might expect from the prosperity of farming by the fact that the "number
+of years purchase," as the phrase is in England, will be small, or, in
+other words, that the interest basis, which enters into every land
+price, will be high.
+
+
+Labor Will Not Suffer Much.
+
+On the other hand the general consumer of farm products will suffer from
+another advance in that part of his cost of living, while the debtor
+classes will suffer from the fall in bonds or rise in interest. Many
+speculators on the Stock Exchange, those who have speculated for a rise,
+are in effect undoubtedly ruined already, and many borrowers at banks on
+collateral security will feel the pinch from the depreciation of their
+property and the hard terms of renewing their loans.
+
+And the laboring man, who forms the majority, what of him? It seems
+improbable that he will be greatly affected, that is, on the average. He
+will have to pay more for his food, and food constitutes more than a
+third of his budget. But some articles he buys will probably fall and he
+may secure higher wages because of the withdrawal of competing laborers.
+Some labor may rise, especially in the industries benefited by the war,
+such as, for instance, farming and other food industries, canning, flour
+mills, sugar, &c., the automobile industry and perhaps ammunition and
+steel. In other industries thrown out of gear for lack of foreign
+markets or for lack of foreign raw material, the wage earner may lose in
+wages and employment. In other words, labor will be dislocated in spots,
+like the other parts of our industrial machinery.
+
+Important dislocations will be felt in the fields of shipping and
+banking. One consequence is that American enterprise has now the golden
+opportunity to capture a good share of each. The outbreak of the war and
+the simultaneous opening of the Panama Canal will tend to divert the
+course of trade from Europe to South America. Probably our merchant
+marine can be developed more successfully for this South American trade
+than it could for the European trade. New York can largely take the
+place of London as the world's exchange centre for Pan-American trade.
+This opportunity is increased by the possibilities in the new Banking
+act for the establishment of branch banks abroad.
+
+With these opportunities and the rise of interest in Europe, the United
+States will change to a great degree from a debtor to a creditor nation.
+
+One of the dislocations of the war in the United States will be the
+cutting off of imports of a large part of our dutiable commodities, and
+therefore the loss of national revenue. There is an urgent need to
+compensate for this loss by some other form of tax.
+
+But it is well not to lose perspective, to remember that dislocations
+are not necessarily losses, that, however loudly they are proclaimed in
+news columns, they are small in extent, when considered in relation to
+our whole trade, that this country of ours is a vast one, and that the
+rank and file of Americans will be but slightly affected by the
+war--especially by contrast with our friends, now fighting each other,
+across the sea.
+
+We are too nearly self-supporting to be prostrated. Our foreign trade is
+and always has been a trifling matter compared with our internal
+commerce. The internal commerce paid for by money and checks annually
+in the United States amounts to nearly five hundred billions of dollars,
+which is more than a hundred times as much as our combined exports and
+imports.
+
+Almost all of what has been said so far had grown out of the prospect
+that the prices of foods and other materials needed in Europe will be
+high, while the prices of securities which Europe does not need and
+cannot afford will be low. Other prices will rise or fall according to
+special circumstances. Like a bomb-shell, the effect of the war will be
+to disperse or scatter prices at all angles of rises and falls. The
+prices of luxuries will be lowered. The prices of chemicals will be
+raised. The same article will fall in price in one country and rise in
+another if the transportation from the former to the latter is
+interfered with. This is true today of cotton.
+
+There has already been a speculative movement to anticipate these
+changes and arbitrarily to mark some prices up and some prices down. But
+as this is guesswork, and will be subject to frequent revision, one of
+the striking phenomena will doubtless be an increase in the variability
+of prices. The general level of prices will tend to rise. The rise will
+probably be greatest in little countries like Belgium, which are in the
+war zone and largely dependent on foreign trade. The rise will be less
+in England and in the United States than on the Continent. In fact, it
+is conceivable that in England the hoarding of money and the shock to
+credit, which is as predominant there as it is here, may actually lower
+the general level of prices during the war, especially if we could
+include in the index number the prices of securities, luxuries, and
+articles of English internal trade. If any nation tries the old
+experiment of paying its bills in irredeemable paper money, that
+desperate expedient will have the same result that it did with us during
+the civil war. Inflation of the currency will expel gold from that
+country and raise its price level higher than elsewhere.
+
+After the war is over prices will probably not retreat, but will move
+upward even faster than before. There may then come the familiar "boom"
+period, which may culminate in a commercial crisis in a few years after
+the close of the war, as was true after the Crimean war, the American
+civil war, and the Franco-Prussian war. The rebound will probably be
+fastest in England. Statistical price curves of many nations usually
+show an upward turn when war begins and another when it ends. The war
+will thus aggravate a rise of prices already in prospect.
+
+It would take considerable space to give, completely, the reasons for
+these prognostications, but I have tried to justify them in a brief
+addendum to a book to be issued this week on "Why Is the Dollar
+Shrinking?"
+
+The sudden lightning bolt of war produced as one of its first economic
+effects a general dislocation of credit machinery in Europe and to some
+extent in this country. We heard at once that letters of credit of
+travelers in Europe were uncashable. Gold was hoarded everywhere. It is
+estimated that about $30,000,000 in gold was hoarded in New York in the
+first week in August. Runs on banks were frequent. Bank reserves were
+depleted.
+
+The moratorium was resorted to to avoid a general cataclysm of
+bankruptcies which might have occurred--not from actual insolvency but
+from mere insufficiency of cash.
+
+To me one of the most striking phenomena was the promptness and
+effectiveness of the co-operative actions by which, so far, any business
+cataclysm has been avoided. The closure of Stock Exchanges perhaps saved
+us from general financial panic. Most striking of all is the manner in
+which the Governments of the world have come to the rescue of business.
+Those of us who were brought up in the old laissez-faire school have to
+rub our eyes. Had the world been guided by laissez-faire ideas, in this
+emergency we should in all probability have witnessed by this time the
+greatest collapse of credit the world has ever seen. Almost all the
+large and effective measures to meet the many emergencies arising were
+taken by Governments. The moratorium must be counted among the
+Governmental acts which, so far at least, have saved the day for
+business credits. In England the Government permitted suspension of the
+Bank act, (not of the Bank, as many Americans seem to imagine.)
+
+
+Improvised Accounting Methods.
+
+The Bank of England has been enabled to rediscount a great mass of
+acceptances by the guarantee of the British Government against loss in
+so doing. These in the end will amount to several hundred millions of
+dollars. Emergency notes were issued by Governmental authority on both
+sides of the Atlantic, and in the arrangements made for special gold
+funds in Canada and in France the Governments of England and France
+played the important parts. Thus have been improvised methods of
+international accounting by which the transportation of gold balances
+may be deferred and largely dispensed with. Our own Government has
+co-operated in the currency exchange and credit situation in many ways.
+It made provision for sending gold to Europe for our stranded
+countrymen. It promptly revised the banking and shipping laws.
+
+Whether further instability will be found to need such bolstering we
+cannot be sure. The present outlook is that business conditions are
+fairly sound and stable. In which direction across the Atlantic the
+title to gold will tend to change cannot as yet be foreseen. It will
+depend largely on how much Europe wants our products and how large a
+sacrifice she is willing to make in selling us her securities. It will
+also depend on possible issues of paper money. Fortunately, we are the
+happy possessors of over $1,500,000,000 in gold, and it is inconceivable
+that any large part of this should flow out--unless we should be so
+insensate as to inflate the currency.
+
+If we keep our heads, we shall at the end of the war be in the proud
+position of being the only great nation whose economic resources have
+not even been strained.
+
+
+
+
+Effects of War on America
+
+By Roland G. Usher.
+
+     Head of Department of History at Washington University; author
+     of "Pan-Germanism," "The Rise of the American People," &c.
+
+     _From The Boston Transcript, Sept. 2, 1914._
+
+
+The events of the last few days of July, 1914, showed the Americans the
+far-reaching effects of a state of war. There are now few who would say,
+as used to be so common, that a European war would make no difference to
+us. The closing of the New York Stock Exchange, the great shipments of
+gold and its consequent scarcity in the United States, the closing of
+the New England cotton mills, the cessation of export to Europe and of
+transatlantic communication with the Continent were instantaneous
+effects of a war 3,000 miles away obvious even to the apathetic and the
+heedless. With these we have not here to do; such are already past
+history. There is, however, a legitimate field for speculation as to the
+probable effects on the United States of the continuation of the state
+of war in Europe for months or years. The permanent results of a war
+naturally cannot be predicted in advance, but in the light of the
+history of the past, certain changes and developments in the United
+States appear so probable if the war continues as to reach almost the
+realm of certainty.
+
+Needless to say, the European war will not involve the United States in
+actual hostilities. It is highly improbable that either our army or our
+navy will see service. We are too distant from the seat of war; too
+entirely devoid of interests the combatants might seriously injure which
+a resort to war could remedy; too completely incapable of aiding or
+abetting one or the other in arms to cause them to assail us. Even were
+we not as a nation of a peaceable disposition, even had we not a
+President blessed with a singularly clear head and able to keep his
+temper, we should still stand little chance of going to war. One
+eventuality alone might affect us--Japan might attempt some measures of
+aggression in the Far East which would interest us as possessors of the
+Philippines, but that is practically foreclosed by her official
+announcement that she will side with England. The effects of the war
+upon the United States will be indirect effects; they will be economic
+in character, though far-reaching and significant for every man, woman,
+and child in the country.
+
+The economic structure of the United States rests today upon the
+assumption of the interdependence of international trade, upon an
+international division of labor, where England makes some things,
+Germany others, and we still more, all of which are exchanged. In a
+sense each country manufactures and produces for the whole world, and in
+turn expects the rest of the world to buy its products and to
+manufacture and produce things for its consumption. While something of
+this sort has always been true in international trade, the process
+reached during the nineteenth century an unprecedented development which
+actually made countries interdependent, or, if you will, actually
+dependent for the necessities of life upon each other's prosperity and
+continued activity. Hand in hand went the expansion of the international
+credit structure, based upon public confidence in the mutual honesty of
+merchants, until finally personal checks have begun to be exchanged
+(between the United States and England at least) at par and without
+investigation or previous indorsement by the banks on which they were
+drawn.
+
+With the outbreak of war a striking and artificial change, a totally
+uneconomic and unnatural factor, came to transform the situation and
+leave the United States for all practical purposes in contact with only
+two of her really large customers. We have no merchant marine and cannot
+therefore avail ourselves of our neutral status to trade with the
+belligerents. We shall be compelled (for a time at least) to ship in
+English bottoms to such ports as English ships can make--which will
+practically be limited to England, France, Portugal, Spain, and the
+Mediterranean ports. The ordinary commercial roads to Russia through the
+Baltic are automatically closed by the location of the German fleet, and
+probably England and France, deprived of other outlets for their own
+trade, will nearly monopolize the trade with Russia through the
+Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
+
+On the other hand, the mobilization of armies and fleets in Europe will
+draw millions of men from the field and factories where they have been
+accustomed to make what we have usually bought. The war will vastly
+diminish and in many cases stop altogether the stream of imports to the
+United States. These millions of men in the field and on the sea will
+not possess most of the economic wants they had in time of peace and
+will become conscious of many which they usually did not feel. The war
+will diminish and in many cases entirely stop the stream of ordinary
+American exports to Europe. Because of the stoppage of the European
+supply of things we have usually bought of them, and the cessation of a
+European demand for things we have usually sold to them, the conditions
+of the home market, both in regard to what we must buy in it, and to
+what we must sell in it, will be vitally changed. When our present
+supplies of European importations are exhausted, we shall be obliged to
+make for each other and buy from each other the things which we happen
+to be no longer able to import or export. A great readjustment of the
+economic fabric in the United States will take place if the war lasts
+longer than a comparatively short time.
+
+How long a time that must be will depend entirely upon the sharpness of
+the break in the economic life of Europe, and the amount of supplies
+they have on hand, which, as they will not now need them at home, they
+will be anxious to sell in the United States. Indeed, it would not be
+surprising if there was for a short time a glut of English and French
+manufactured goods in the United States market.
+
+
+Europe May Depend On Us.
+
+Of late years the commercial relationship between the United States and
+Europe has changed very greatly. For centuries we were a debtor
+community, buying largely from Europe, possessed only of crude staple
+products for export, and scarcely able by a series of expedients and
+exchanges to pay for what we bought. Tobacco for many decades, then
+cotton, were the only commodities of which much was exported direct to
+Europe. Then came, during the European famines of 1846, 1861, and 1862,
+an enormous demand for American grain. Yet only during the last few
+decades have we been able to export largely manufactured products or
+been able to deal with Europe on an equality of terms. We are no longer
+a debtor nation; we are no longer dependent upon Europe; the United
+States is an integral and essential part of the interdependent
+international economic fabric. Indeed, if the war continues ten years,
+Europe may be dependent upon us.
+
+In a sense we are not ready to meet the crisis. During the last ten or
+fifteen years the exports of foodstuffs have fallen off greatly, and the
+supply in this country has actually declined in proportion to
+population. There has been also a most marked increase in the exports of
+manufactured goods and a decided increase in the importation of raw
+materials, including foodstuffs. Now will come an enormous demand from
+Europe for the very things of which we have not produced so much and
+exported little or nothing--bacon, eggs, butter, beef. The demand will
+also be greatly increased for woolen cloth, raw leather, shoes, steel
+in all its forms, railroad equipment of all sorts, automobiles and
+machinery, and, in particular, coal and gasoline. To supply this demand
+old industries will be expanded and new ones created, and a shift of
+capital and labor will inevitably take place to the industries for which
+a demand becomes clear in Europe, as soon as it seems reasonably certain
+that the war will last, beyond the present year.
+
+
+An American Merchant Marine.
+
+Above all, an American merchant marine is likely to be seen again upon
+the seas. There will be German ships in plenty for sale, in all
+probability, unless Germany wins an immediate victory on the sea, and
+the advantage of an unquestioned neutral status, easily obtained by a
+bona-fide purchase, will be so great that American capital will probably
+invest largely in freight steamers and ocean liners. It seems entirely
+unlikely that England, while she remains mistress of the seas, should
+recognize as valid the registration in the United States of vessels
+actually owned by belligerents or regard as anything more than
+masquerading their appearance under the American flag. England has never
+recognized any one's "right" to do anything at sea in time of war which
+did not accrue directly to her own benefit. It is scarcely necessary to
+say that she will not allow trade with Germany or Austria while she can
+prevent it. The only refuge will be the sale of the ship by the foreign
+owner to Americans who will trade with England, her allies, and strictly
+neutral nations. As always in time of war, privateering and smuggling
+will be profitable, and trade with Germany, unless she is immediately
+victorious at sea, will offer to the adventurous plenty of risk and the
+certainty of huge profits. During the Napoleonic wars the flats and bars
+of the German coast along the North Sea offered light vessels a great
+opportunity and the pursuing warships great obstacles. A modern
+motor-driven light craft will now have an enormous advantage over
+destroyers or cruisers. Here, as a century ago, many an American will
+find an opportunity to make a fortune.
+
+The preoccupation of Europe with the war and the opening of the Panama
+Canal will afford the United States an unrivaled opportunity to develop
+trade with Canada, South America, Australia, New Zealand, India, China,
+and the Far East in general. We have never bulked large in the eyes of
+these countries and there has been much speculation as to the reasons
+why the German succeeded so well in South America and why the Englishman
+did so much business in China. Whether from sentiment or from a national
+habit that prefers English goods, the English colonies have bought more
+largely of the mother country than they have of us. But now that the war
+has closed the German factories, called German commercial agents home,
+and sent German ships racing to neutral harbors; now that the Panama
+Canal brings us some thousands of miles nearer to Australia and New
+Zealand than they are to London via Suez; now that England will be busy
+manufacturing for Europe and will have less to sell her colonies, these
+particular parts of the world will probably be compelled to look for
+their manufactured goods to the United States. Indeed, if one were not
+afraid of being accused of gross exaggeration, he might take heart and
+proclaim his conviction that a long and really inclusive European war
+would give the United States a practical monopoly of the South American
+and Pacific trade, provided always that the United States acquire by
+purchase a merchant marine and that the Panama Canal becomes feasible in
+January for large ships.
+
+
+Foreigners Leaving America
+
+One other effect of the war has already begun to reveal itself in the
+emigration from America of thousands of Servians, Austrians, Russians,
+Germans, Frenchmen, going home to take their places in the ranks. While
+many of these men are brave and honorable citizens, the fact that they
+respond to such a call proves them not yet Americans. The war will tend
+to remove a goodly part of the distinctly foreign element in the
+country, the part not yet amalgamated, and therefore the part most alien
+to our institutions and the most difficult to place in our social
+structure. If the war continues, Europe will draw every able-bodied man
+who can be influenced to go. Far more important, immigration will
+probably become negligible not only during the war, but for some time
+after it. Usually the reason for leaving home lies in the crowded
+population of European States and the lack of opportunity for
+advancement, plus the glib tongue of some agent of a contractor or of a
+steamship company. In recent years those who have come have not been
+desirable additions to our population because they came from nations
+alien in blood, language, religion and institutions, and were not
+therefore easily knit into our national structure and absorbed. There
+will be little, if any, further immigration. The men are wanted for the
+army and will not be allowed to leave during the war. After peace is
+restored, they will be imperatively needed in the fields and factories
+and every effort will be made to retain them. In fact, it does not take
+any wild stretch of the imagination for one acquainted with the results
+of the Thirty Years' War and of the Napoleonic wars to conceive that,
+from the view of economic opportunity and rewards, Europe might become a
+more favorable scene for the truly capable and ambitious than America is
+today. The tendency of a war is to absorb the best of a nation and to
+leave the dregs. For the power of organization and the fire of
+initiative Europe will at no distant date be ready to pay well.
+
+
+The Effect of Economic Readjustment.
+
+Unquestionably the economic readjustment which the war will force upon
+the United States will have an immediate and serious effect on
+individuals. Some will profit largely and promptly. All who at present
+possess large stocks of food, leather, oil, woolen cloth will be able to
+dispose of them at enormous profits. From the greater volume of freight
+the railroads will benefit directly. But while the farmers and
+cattle-men, the steel and oil kings are rejoicing in the opportunity,
+all industries which depend chiefly upon exportation or which
+manufacture an amount beyond the normal American demand, will be closing
+the factories or curtailing the output. For a time certain individuals,
+perhaps a relatively large number of individuals, will suffer
+inconvenience, loss, anxiety, and even privation. But the vast demand
+for labor in other industries, and the almost certain extensive demand
+for relatively unskilled labor ought not to make the period of
+transition long or the amount of suffering considerable. After all, the
+vast majority of the people of the United States are connected with
+farming, with the manufacture or production of the very things for which
+there will most likely be a great demand, or with the transportation and
+distribution of both imports and exports to the rest of the community.
+In certain industries, like the manufacture of cotton cloth, which is
+localized in New England to such an extent that whole districts are
+dependent upon it for a livelihood, the distress will be great, for the
+factories closed upon the declaration of war and the workers are a long
+distance from the Western fields, where laborers are only too scarce.
+The cheapening of transportation, the rapidity of communication, the
+superior mobility of the population today over ten years ago, make it
+probable that these people will soon find new places.
+
+Concomitant with the war came a rise of prices. Foodstuffs especially
+advanced sharply and will certainly continue to rise until some material
+increase of the supply is assured beyond a peradventure. The tendency in
+England and above all on the Continent for the cities to buy great
+supplies to guard against possible want will increase this tendency.
+But, without question, should the war last, a rise in the whole level of
+prices of everything, including labor, will take place in the United
+States. It will affect some individuals adversely, but for most will be
+in the long run almost negligible. For those who actually produce or
+handle goods which advance in price the result will be a profit, because
+the price of the commodity they have to sell will almost certainly
+advance sooner and faster than the prices of the commodities they
+themselves are compelled to buy. In time the two will equalize and they
+will be precisely where they were before the war; they will pay out with
+one hand what they take in with the other. In nearly all cases where the
+individual produces or shares in the production of an actual commodity a
+general rise in prices, even to the extent which this war threatens to
+produce, will be to him only a temporary advantage or disadvantage.
+True, wages and salaries in industrial pursuits will not quite keep pace
+with the rise in foodstuffs, and factory workers and clerks will not
+benefit to the same extent nor as soon as the farmers will. People whose
+incomes are derived from stocks in the businesses which prosper will
+probably receive much more than they pay by reason of the increased
+prices of other commodities, and certainly cannot be worse off than
+before.
+
+
+America's Real Sufferers.
+
+The real sufferers in America will be those who hold stock in the
+enterprises which fail or cease to operate, and that far larger class
+who are dependent on a fixed salary. Professors and teachers of all
+sorts and grades; people living on annuities or small incomes derived
+from bonds or real estate; those dependent on the rent derived from
+leases for a term of years of dwelling houses, office buildings and the
+like, these will lose a material amount, exactly in proportion to the
+rise in prices. To that extent, the purchasing power of the stated
+number of dollars they receive will depreciate and that much they will
+lose beyond a peradventure. In time, some relief will be afforded by a
+tardy rise in salaries, by the expiration of leases and the payment of
+bonds, but the actual losses of the intervening years have never been in
+any way refunded in like cases in the past.
+
+For some individuals, then, the European war will spell strict economy;
+for a comparatively few, let us hope, ruin. For the country as a whole,
+considered as a social and economic unit, a long war will introduce an
+era of astounding prosperity. Never before has the country had, and
+certainly it will never again have, almost a monopoly of the world's
+trade thrust into its hands. The United States will have only one real
+competitor, England, and, should the English Navy prove itself less
+capable than is expected, or should England and her colonies be forced
+to order a general mobilization of their armies, the United States might
+conceivably remain the only great mercantile community to which the
+world could look for supplies. No such eventuality need be predicated to
+prove that the continuation of this war or a series of wars will create
+a demand for manufactured goods such as our merchants have never dreamed
+of. And they will command war prices. It means employment with rich
+reward for capital and labor alike--a vastly increased foreign market, a
+much greater domestic market, high prices, and a steadily voracious
+demand for the entire output. The result will be the rapid
+diversification of industry in the United States, the creation of
+industries never before possible because of European competition, the
+invention of machines to meet new needs. The normal economic development
+will be accelerated decades.
+
+After the close of the European war, when manufacturing and production
+are resumed, America will find herself overproducing and face to face
+with another economic readjustment necessary to meet the new situation.
+Then will ensue a commercial crisis with all its attendant suffering and
+trouble such as the United States has probably never seen and which will
+be violent and serious in proportion to the length of the war.
+
+
+
+
+Germany of the Future
+
+AN INTERVIEW WITH M. DE LAPREDELLE.
+
+Exchange Professor from the University of Paris at Columbia University.
+
+By Edward Marshall.
+
+
+In the American press French views of the great war's significance have
+been less common than British views and far less frequent than German
+views. Therefore, this talk with M. de Lapredelle, Exchange Professor
+from the University of Paris at Columbia, will have especial interest.
+
+This very distinguished Frenchman, although but 43 years old, has won
+high eminence in his native land, especially in the domain of
+international law, which is his branch at the University of Paris. Also
+he is Directeur de Recuel des Arbitrages Internacioneaux, he is the
+editor of The International Law Review in Paris, he is a member of the
+Committee on International Law for the French Department of Justice, he
+is a member of the French Committee on Aerial Navigation, he is General
+Secretary of the French Society of International Law, and he occupies
+other important posts and bears other important scholastic honors.
+
+He is a cautious conversationist, as might be expected of one who has so
+deeply delved into the most cautious of all professions, but in the mind
+of the thoughtful reader this should add to the value of his utterances,
+which, as expressed in the following columns, were carefully revised by
+him before going into type.
+
+I asked M. de Lapredelle to estimate the great war's probable effect
+upon education.
+
+"Of course it is too early to guess intelligently," he replied, "for the
+effect of the war will be dependent entirely upon the results of the
+war, and, while we of the Allies have no doubt of our ultimate victory,
+it is the fact that victory has not been won as yet by either side.
+
+"In talking with you my impulse is to assume what I feel in my
+heart--the certainty of German defeat, but I must not do that, although
+all the letters which I get from the front and from Paris express a
+growing confidence in the victory of the Allies.
+
+"But it is too early to attempt intelligent detailed prophecy as to the
+effect of the great struggle upon the world's philosophy, or upon any
+other phase of its intellectual development.
+
+"Almost certainly, however, a reaction against certain Germanic
+influences will be apparent after the war ends, for the world will not
+want ever to risk repetition of the horrors of this struggle, and it
+will be plain that they were the inevitable fruit of Germany's attempt
+at intellectual domination.
+
+"This German assumption was due, largely, to their victory in 1870, but
+it went far beyond the bounds of reason, far beyond the fields in which
+German achievement really had established legitimate supremacy.
+
+"The momentum of victory often has led humanity into excess. It led
+Germany into excessive claims of social superiority and into an
+excessive assumption of intellectual supremacy. Even in the eyes of
+others it gave Germany an unwarranted intellectual prestige.
+
+"Really, the German is not a big thinker; he is an immensely careful
+thinker.
+
+"Above everything, the German is an observer--a very diligent
+observer--and his mental eyes are likely to be so close to the wall
+that he sees only a single brick in it, wholly failing to get a
+comprehensive view of the whole structure.
+
+"Germans are very careful students. They attach a vast importance to
+detail. I think it is not unfair to say that, with the German, the
+smaller, the more minute the detail, the more it interests him. The
+German loves to write a big book on a small subject, and, loving it, he
+does it well.
+
+"But there are more exalted tasks, as, for example, the writing of big
+books upon big subjects, giving the world fresh visions of new and
+far-flung vistas. The German loves to catalogue and catalogues almost
+with genius; he loves to deliver long lectures upon microcosms.
+
+"Cataloguing and the near-sightedness which may arise from intense study
+of the atom, to the exclusion of the collective organism, whether that
+collective organism be the human individual or the social mass, may
+render immense service to the world, but it never will be the only
+service necessary, and, if pursued to the exclusion of all other
+investigations, such study is likely to produce an aggravated narrowness
+of vision. Narrow vision is certain to eventuate in selfishness.
+
+"The Germans became selfish after this fashion. The present struggle is
+the war of selfishness against world advance.
+
+"Innumerable, or at least many, individuals have furnished smaller
+parallels to the course which Germany has taken as a nation. The
+individual with the truly and exclusively scientific mind is likely to
+go too far into abstractions, built from a possible misinterpretation of
+minutiae.
+
+"The ideal national intellectual development will combine both fact and
+theory, will join rationalism to idealism, and will be far more like
+that of certain nations which I shall not name than it will be like that
+of Germany. These nations which I shall not name have both.
+
+"In other words, it seems to be the fixed idea of the German that the
+German civilization is the only civilization; but it is not the thought
+of France or England that their civilizations are the only ones.
+
+"This very lack of what may be defined as national egotism in France and
+England enables these nations to work, as Germany does not, for world
+science and world development--the growth of civilization as a whole.
+
+"Germany's scientific work is for German science, she thinks
+of civilization only as German civilization. The world's other
+great nations--and may I say the world's great Latin nations
+especially?--internationalize their science and their civilization."
+
+
+Why the Philosopher Is Important.
+
+"One must be struck by the fact that Germany's critical philosophy
+formed the basis of her educational system and, therefore, the basis of
+her social system, and that it had in it the basis of the war.
+
+"It cannot be denied, I think, that her education, as well as her
+politics and militarism, directly pointed to this great conflict.
+Indeed, the industrialism, the politics, the philosophy of Germany all
+find their logical expression in present events.
+
+"Hegel was the first, in the beginning of the last century, to insist
+upon the ideas which, already being paramount in him, quickly became
+paramount in his followers, serving as the basis for the development of
+Prussia. To him this represented all and everything; to him divinity on
+earth was incarcerated in the State, and, therefore, the development of
+the State, not justice, was, in his mind, the object of all law.
+
+"Since this beginning that has been the consistent German viewpoint, and
+increasingly so. The glorification of the State has included, of
+necessity, the sacrifice of the individual, and this has been conducted
+ruthlessly in Germany itself.
+
+"Of course the State which considers it right to sacrifice the
+individuals of its own citizenship will be sure to consider it right to
+sacrifice the individuals of other nations' citizenships.
+
+"That explains why international law never has been considered binding
+by the German; it explains why international law was not considered
+binding when Belgium stood in the path of Germany's march toward Paris.
+
+"International law never has bound the German; it never will bind him
+until he changes his national psychology.
+
+"Ihering, one of Germany's greatest theoretical jurists and a scholar in
+the matter of Roman law, declared, 'Right is the child of might.' He did
+not say exactly that right is might, but he defined it as 'the child of
+might.'
+
+"That may be taken as the German keynote, for this man is of such great
+influence in Germany that his utterances must have an enormous effect.
+
+"Treitschke, the historian, in his teaching in Berlin, naturally drew
+some of his inspiration from these two men. For him the State need
+consider no law save that which will promote its own expansion.
+
+"Moral law, he holds, need not and must not stand in the way of the
+prosperity and growth of States, as it frequently must obstruct the
+prosperity and growth of individuals.
+
+"Under this theory the State has two functions--these are, inside the
+country, to make law; outside the country, to make war. Germany denies
+the right of an extraneous law to decide upon the details of right and
+wrong within a country, and that is why Germany defies and even denies
+international law.
+
+"If it happens that a treaty which the State has entered into later
+proves to be obstructive to some expansion which is thought to be a
+necessity of the State's destiny, that treaty may be disregarded with
+the full approval of Germany's national morality, although similar
+conduct on the part of an individual in Germany would be considered
+highly reprehensible.
+
+"The State may bind itself to secure advantage, but, also, it may unbind
+itself to secure advantage, and this without consultation with, or the
+approval of, the other party or parties to the contract.
+
+"This theory becomes confusing to the student reared in other nations
+under different educational influences. It indicates beyond
+contradiction that Germany feels no sense of duty toward other nations,
+but only an obligation to further her own interests.
+
+"Germany has immense patriotism but no humanitarianism. Her only duty is
+to herself. Her national egotism can be characterized by no other word
+than selfishness.
+
+"It is a curious phenomenon that at a time when humanitarianism in its
+broadest sense has become the keynote of all other of the great nations
+it has not become at all the keynote of German civilization."
+
+
+Teutonic Superexcitation.
+
+"It is impossible that such pride, such a sense of arrogant national
+superiority as that which marks Germany, should maintain among a
+democratic people; it is possible only to a very aristocratic country.
+What has happened is its logical outgrowth in the country which it has
+infected.
+
+"In Germany this sense of national pride, of intolerance of others, even
+of contempt for others, has been developed until it amounts to
+superexcitation. It not only affects Germany's relations to other
+peoples, but it affects the relations of Germans to one another.
+
+"Different classes of the German population continually exhibit it in
+their dealings with one another.
+
+"It is continually illustrated in those events which have been the
+wonder of visiting foreigners--episodes of the contemptuous
+ill-treatment of subordinate German soldiers by their superiors. It goes
+beyond that, manifesting itself in the treatment of all civilians by the
+lowest soldier, and, further still, in the attitude even of the lowest
+civilian to all foreigners, even the highest.
+
+"The German individual may not consider himself superior to all
+individuals of other nationalities, but he will be sure to consider his
+nation so far superior to every other that there can be no comparison
+between it and them. His is a peculiar arrogance. It is not at all
+personal; it is purely national; but none the less it is arrogance, and
+all arrogance is dangerous.
+
+"A hierarchy always exists in aristocratic countries; the hierarchical
+idea has been developed further in Germany than elsewhere.
+
+"This has given Germany an unfortunate impulse. If to this impulse we
+add that other born of all her various victories since 1866, especially
+those which were won while Germany was realizing Bismarck's dream of
+triumph 'through fire and blood'--her industrial victories, her
+scientific advance, her social progress--and consider the Germanic
+tendency toward egotism, we do not find ourselves surprised when we
+find, examine, and appraise exactly what we have today in Germany.
+
+"The perversion of national sentiment into national arrogance has been
+the definite, although, perhaps, unrealized and unintended, aim of every
+educational influence which has been at work in Germany since 1870. It
+has amounted to an unparalleled perversion of a nation's sentiment
+toward all the outside world.
+
+"This war marks the crisis of this German pride.
+
+"Germany's course throughout has borne all the earmarks of a national
+ego-mania. The whole German people, as a nation, not always, perhaps, as
+individuals, have fallen victim to the most colossal attack of ego-mania
+which the world ever has known.
+
+"Combine this ego-mania with another delusion--the entirely unjustified
+conclusion that Germany was the object of a worldwide persecution--and
+it is unnecessary to search further for the causes of the war, just as
+it is unnecessary to search further for reasons for the combination of
+practically all other Europe against Germany.
+
+"What would German victory mean to the world, if German victory came,
+save the worldwide dominance of German egotism, imposed at the expense
+of every other people? France would not escape, England would not
+escape, and, I assure you, you, America, would not escape. German
+victory would be far more than a European disaster--it would be a world
+disaster.
+
+"Of all the nations in the world perhaps the United States and France
+have stood most notably for the ideas of international justice. This
+really makes your interest in the outcome of the present war indirectly
+as great as ours.
+
+"I cannot see how the people of the United States can feel otherwise
+than that not only their hearts but their reason demands victory for the
+Allies, not because of any wish for the destruction of Germany, but
+because of the wish for the preservation of the world.
+
+"Indeed, it is inconceivable that victory for the Allies can mean
+destruction for Germany. It can mean only the destruction of German
+militarism, which has brought about the perversion of the German mind.
+
+"No abler mind exists. Its release from the thralldom which has fettered
+it would be a vast world service, would, indeed, be a vast benefit to
+Germany herself. It is curious, but true, that I believe Germany's own
+salvation depends upon her absolute defeat in this great war.
+
+"A few weeks before the war began Prof. Schucking expressed regret that
+Germany--that is, the German Government--should be so antagonistic to
+international spirit. The fact that he made this expression shows that,
+in spite of and beyond military Germany, the intellectual élite, the
+cream of the élite in Germany, has remained faithful to the traditions
+of the great philosopher, Kant.
+
+"The intellectual élite--the cream of the élite--therefore may be
+absolved from all responsibility. Loyalty to the teachings of Kant will
+make it possible for the friends of humanity in all nations to join with
+Germany for human advancement on the basis of universal justice.
+
+"After the victory of the Allies a new Germany will appear; it will be a
+liberal Germany, willing to renounce the narrow Prussian ideals, finding
+again the old German ideal in its disinterested form, a Germany which
+will be able to join hands with other nations, to help them in taking up
+again the works of international civilization, which Prussian Germany
+herself brutally brought to an end, with insolent scorn of right--an act
+for which she is now paying and must pay the penalty."
+
+
+
+
+Germany the Aggressor
+
+By Albert Sauveur.
+
+Professor of Metallurgy at Harvard University.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+German professors and editors and other German sympathizers in the
+present struggle of nations have attempted the difficult task of
+convincing the American public, first, that Germany was not the
+aggressor, and, second, that she is conducting a war of civilization
+directed primarily against Russia, that Europe may not fall under
+Muscovite domination. The German Chancellor has made similar claims,
+while in the German "White Paper," published in full in THE NEW YORK
+TIMES of Aug. 24, it is likewise attempted to fasten the responsibility
+for this war on Germany's opponents.
+
+A close and impartial study of both the English and German "White
+Papers" must suffice to convince the reader that Germany clearly was the
+aggressor and that England made every possible effort first to prevent a
+war between Austria and Servia and later to localize the conflict.
+Germany, on the contrary, by insisting from the start that there should
+be no intervention in the settlement of the dispute between Servia and
+her ally, Austria, made a European war inevitable. The sophistry,
+inaccuracies, and unwarranted conclusions of the German professors and
+editors have not helped their cause. The irrefutable facts remain,
+first, that Austria with the knowledge and approval of Germany presented
+to Servia an ultimatum so worded that she knew that the conditions
+imposed could not be complied with by any nation retaining a spark of
+self-respect; second, that after Servia had accepted Austria's ultimatum
+with the single exception of the most offensive clause, which she
+proposed to submit to arbitration, Austria, with Germany's consent,
+proclaimed herself unsatisfied and immediately declared war on Servia;
+third, that Germany and Austria knew that a war with Servia meant a war
+with Russia, and that a war with Russia meant a general European
+conflagration; fourth, that Germany declared war on Russia, started the
+invasion of France before declaring war, and, by refusing to respect the
+neutrality of Belgium, to which she was solemnly pledged, forced both
+Belgium and England into the war. In the face of so flagrant a violation
+of all sentiments making for peace no sophistry will avail in attempting
+to protect Germany from the odium of being responsible for the greatest
+calamity the civilized world has ever seen.
+
+We are told that Germany is conducting this war in the interest of
+civilization, that her chief purpose is to protect Europe from the
+domination of the Slav. And to ward off this Muscovite danger Germany is
+at present making desperate efforts to crush England and France, the
+standard bearers of democracy in Europe! In her war for civilization she
+is employing the methods of barbarian tribes, methods condemned by
+civilized nations and which have already horrified the world. It is
+hardly conceivable that Russia, which the German Chancellor describes as
+a semi-Asiatic, slightly cultured barbaric nation, could have committed
+in Belgium the atrocities imputed to the Germans had she conquered that
+country in similar circumstances.
+
+It is manifest that Germany's supreme desire is to fasten Teutonic rule
+on Europe, to crush Russia, to be sure, but also to crush France and
+French civilization and to reduce England to the rank of a second-class
+nation. It is obvious that this is a struggle between militarism and its
+evils as represented by the Hohenzollern dynasty and democracy as
+represented by England and France.
+
+ALBERT SAUVEUR.
+
+Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 5, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Militarism and Christianity
+
+By Lyman Abbott.
+
+_A Letter to The New York Sun._
+
+     Editor in Chief of The Outlook; author of numerous works on
+     theology, religion, and democracy.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Sun:_
+
+In answer to your request for a statement of the causes and meaning of
+the European war I write with necessary brevity, both because of the
+limits on my time and the limits on your crowded columns.
+
+What is the cause of the explosion of a powder magazine? The gases
+stored in the powder. The lighted match is the occasion, not the cause
+of the explosion. The cause of the European war is the spirit of envy,
+jealousy, selfishness and suspicion in the so-called Christian nations.
+The assassination by a Servian of the Crown Prince of Austria was only
+the lighted match which set the European combustibles in flame.
+
+In the United States we recognize the truth that the interests of each
+State are identical with the interests of the Union, and that no State
+can permanently prosper by reason of the misfortune of its neighbor. In
+the German Empire since its unification each principality similarly
+recognizes that the interests of the German Empire and the interests of
+the several principalities are essentially identical. But there is no
+such recognition of the common interest binding the warring nations of
+Europe together.
+
+Each nation looks with envy on the prosperity of its neighbor and acts
+upon the assumption that its neighbor is a rival, and that its own
+commerce and wealth can be built up only at the expense of its rival.
+New York is quite willing that the harbor of Boston should be improved.
+Bremen is quite willing that the harbor of Hamburg should be improved.
+The west coast of England does not object to harbor facilities on the
+east coast of England. But Germany envies England's harbor facilities,
+and England and Germany are both resolved to prevent if possible Russia
+from getting harbor facilities on the Mediterranean Sea. Not every
+individual German, Austrian, Frenchman, and Englishman holds this
+opinion, but the policies of these nations are governed by this spirit
+of international rivalry.
+
+A striking illustration of this spirit, perhaps the most striking
+illustration in modern international life, is furnished by the military
+party in Prussia. Gen. Bernhardi, in a volume entitled "Germany and the
+Next War," has given what may be regarded as a semi-official
+interpretation of German militarism. He holds that life is a struggle
+for existence, with a survival of the fittest, and the strongest is the
+fittest; that a military organization constitutes the true strength of a
+nation; that there is no higher power in human life, certainly none in
+international life, than the power of physical force; that only the
+strong nation has a right to exist, and he objects to international
+arbitration because it recognizes the right to life of a small nation.
+In this volume he calls on Germany to establish a "world sovereignty" by
+force of arms, and he indicates what should be the twofold purpose of
+Germany in the next war, namely, to crush France and to establish such
+world sovereignty of Germany.
+
+
+Militarism to Blame.
+
+It was this spirit which led Germany into the present war; this spirit
+which denied that Belgium had any rights which Germany was bound to
+respect; this spirit which inspired the military party in Germany to
+regard its treaty with France and England guaranteeing the neutrality of
+Belgium as only a "scrap of paper," and this spirit which could not and
+apparently still does not comprehend why Belgium should be bound in
+honor to defend her neutrality, or why England, with no very direct and
+immediate interests to protect, should feel herself bound to come to the
+defense of her weaker neighbor.
+
+The delay of the German Army, which is likely to prove disastrous to her
+designs, has demonstrated in her own chosen field that there is a force
+in national honor and national conscience which can put up a very
+efficient resistance to Krupp guns.
+
+It is a great mistake to suppose that all Germany is actuated by this
+spirit of militarism. Frederick William Wile, for over seven years the
+chief German correspondent of The London Daily Mail, in an article in
+The Outlook recently said: "There are 66,000,000 Germans; 65,000,000 of
+them did not want war; the other million are the war party." But he adds
+that now Germany is absolutely united and that the Germans will not
+stack arms "till the last among them capable of shouldering a rifle is
+incapacitated, till the last copper pfennig capable of purchasing
+ammunition of war has vanished from their impoverished grasp."
+
+There is in this nothing extraordinary. Whoever is responsible for
+bringing on the war, the interests, the welfare, and in some sense the
+honor of Germany are apparently involved in it. And yet it may be true,
+and I believe it is true, that the defeat of Germany will be its
+salvation, for it will be the overthrow of the spirit of militarism
+inherited from Frederick the Great, and this has been the bane of the
+German Empire.
+
+In our civil war there was at first only a minority in most of the
+Southern States in favor of secession, but when the national troops
+invaded Virginia the South was as united for State independence as the
+North was for national union, and yet today it will be difficult to find
+anywhere in the South an intelligent man who does not recognize the
+truth that the defeat of secession and the emancipation of the slave
+have been of inestimable benefit to the Southern States.
+
+I make no attempt here to apportion the responsibility for this war
+between the several powers engaged in it. However this responsibility
+must be shared among them I can see but one meaning in the awful
+campaign. The victory of Germany would mean the victory of Prussian
+militarism. The defeat of Germany will mean the defeat of Prussian
+militarism, the rehabilitation of Germany as a great industrial and
+educational power in the world, and probably the practical overthrow of
+military autocracy in all Western Europe.
+
+
+Divine Right of Kings Obsolete.
+
+The campaigns of Napoleon ended for Western Europe the Divine right of
+Kings. The campaigns of the Allies will end for Western Europe the
+Divine right of the armed man. The Russo-Japanese war gave to Russia its
+first representative assembly, the Duma. It is not unreasonable to hope
+that the present European war will result in greatly enlarging the
+powers of the Duma and establishing true constitutional government in
+Germany, a government in which the Ministry will be responsible not to
+the Emperor but to the Reichstag; and the power both of the purse and
+the sword will not be in the hands of an aristocratic oligarchy but in
+the hands of the common people.
+
+It is not strange that men should point to this, perhaps the greatest
+war of history, as an evidence that Christianity is a failure. If
+Christianity professed to be able by a miracle to transform human nature
+at once, such a war would be fatal to its claim. But no such claim can
+be made for Christianity. It is a great human movement, a phase of the
+gradual evolution of man, governed by conscience and reason, out of the
+brute, governed by appetite and passion.
+
+Man as he is seen in the world to day is an unfinished product. He is in
+the making. The best that can be said of a Christian is that he is
+further along toward the goal of humanity than the barbarian.
+Theological doctrines such as the Trinity, the Atonement, and the like
+are not the essential doctrines of Christianity. The essential doctrine
+is that life is a struggle for others as well as for self; that in this
+struggle every one owes a duty to his neighbor, and the stronger he is
+and the greater the need of his neighbor the more imperative is his
+duty; that as the father and the mother care for, educate and govern
+their child until he grows able to care for, educate and govern himself,
+so always the strong men and women owe the duty of protection,
+education, and, in some measure, government to the weaker of the human
+race until they have outgrown the need for it.
+
+In so far as autocracy is the rule of the few for the benefit of the few
+it is paganism. In so far as democracy is the rule of the many for the
+benefit of the many it is Christianity. He who believes this will
+perhaps believe with me that in a true sense this is a religious war,
+the war of conscience, honor, the moral sense against the rule of the
+bayonet and the bullet.
+
+The cynic who thinks this war demonstrates the failure of Christianity
+should not forget such facts as the heroic struggle of Belgium to
+maintain her neutrality, the resolve of England at every cost to
+maintain her pledges to Belgium, the Red Cross following the armies in
+the field and ministering to the sick, the wounded and the suffering,
+regardless of their nationality, the general kind treatment to
+prisoners, accentuated by some very horrible exceptions, and all this
+contrasted with the enslaving, torturing, the crucifying, the flaying
+alive of prisoners captured in war by barbaric nations before the dawn
+of Christianity.
+
+LYMAN ABBOTT.
+
+Cornwall-on-Hudson, Sept. 17, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+VIGIL
+
+By HORTENSE FLEXNER.
+
+
+I have waited with my mothers down the dim, uncertain ages,
+I have waited in the cave and hut and tower,
+  From the first dawn's nameless fear
+  To the death-list posted here
+I have slain my soul in waiting, hour by hour.
+
+Under pelt of beast, trap-taken, or the leaves by chance winds blow,
+Under tunic, peasant hemp, or cloth of gold,
+  By the fire, in low flame burning,
+  I have crouched in silence, yearning,
+And as now, my helpless heart has waited cold.
+
+Ancient is the part I play--like a cloak of heavy mourning,
+I take it, bending, from a million women's hands.
+  They have worn it, they have torn it,
+  Agonizing, they have borne it,
+And its folds are dark with heart-break of all lands.
+
+Oh, the woman figure standing, with the face toward the horizon,
+Oh, the hand above the eyes to ease the strain!
+  Gaunt and barren, stricken, lonely,
+  With the empty memories only,
+We have stood, the dry-eyed sentries of our pain.
+
+Nothing we can do to stop them, nothing we can say to hold them;
+Taking sunlight, laughter, youth, they swing away,
+  And the things they leave grow strange,
+  House and street and voices change,
+But the women and the burdened hours stay.
+
+I have waited with my mothers down the dim, uncertain ages,
+While my children die, I pray the centuries through,
+  And I wonder in my fear
+  At the death-list posted here
+If God has left the women waiting, too!
+
+
+
+
+Nietzsche and German Culture
+
+By Abraham Solomon.
+
+_A Letter to The New York Evening Post._
+
+
+Sir: Those who trace the German militaristic doctrines to Nietzsche's
+influence commit Pastor Mander's sin when he told Mrs. Alving to bar
+from her library a book which he had never read. Nietzsche was an
+inveterate enemy of efficiency, astigmatic with regard to practical
+life, and he never worked out a philosophy in the accepted sense of the
+term. He was a lyric poet who wrote psychology when he failed to sustain
+the poetic mood. In the Engadine and at Sils-Maria, brooding in a rocky
+void wherein he touched the sharp edge of infinity, he sang a Dionysian
+hymn to life against the melancholy products of German learning and
+against those Nihilistic snares which he thought lurked in Christian
+doctrine. There he worked out the mystic idea of "Eternal Recurrence"
+and his song of Zarathustra with the bell strokes of noon.
+
+What he knew of history he used for an analysis of values, and not for
+State polity. He shrank from the irritations of reality, and he had
+little patience with the national mania cultivated after Sedan, warning
+his country that their victory was not one of a superior culture, that
+Germany had no style but a barbaric mixture of many styles; and he
+pointed out the essential difference between culture and erudition.
+
+His unfinished work, "The Will to Power," was an attempt to house his
+lyric passions in an architectural frame. The façade of the structure,
+as posthumously revealed to us, is an indication that he was really
+engaged in building a Tower of Babel. Power, Affirmation, Yea-Saying he
+considered the attributes of life, and he found in them recompense for
+his weakness and his lack of capacity for happiness. He was a master of
+the exquisite nuances of vision, but since he touched real life at the
+circumference, and not at the centre, his philosophical valuations are
+bizarre, and have only a literary value.
+
+It is superficial to make Treitschke and Bernhardi his disciples, as
+some American writers have made Roosevelt his disciple. Treitschke is a
+heavy-footed historian who raised the axiom of self-preservation into a
+philosophy of force. Von Bernhardi's book, though extreme in its
+expression, is based on the fundamental truth that if Germany desired a
+just proportion of oversea territories (a proportion denied her by
+England) she would have to gain it by force of arms. In the development
+of this idea he makes many generalizations calculated to dazzle the
+multitude and to imbue it with the courage to expansion. Treitschke
+would have rested in obscurity but for the war; Bernhardi does not
+pretend to talents as a philosopher.
+
+The real origin of Germany's policy in the last forty years may be
+derived from the eminently practical and direct mind of Bismarck. From
+reading of history he learned that chicane and force had been utilized
+as the roads to power, of which fact he found ample demonstration in the
+histories of England and Russia. He proved himself a true adept by using
+chicane and force to achieve German unity, after the theorists had
+failed.
+
+Those who glibly condemn a lyric philosopher in order to make out a case
+against Germany reveal the weakness of their position. It is strange
+that these lantern-eyed critics haven't cited Heine as an enemy of
+democracy because he adored Napoleon. Was it because Heine lived for
+years in Paris on the adulation of advanced feminines?
+
+ABRAHAM SOLOMON.
+
+New York, Oct. 13, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Belgium's Bitter Need
+
+By Sir Gilbert Parker.
+
+
+_Sir Gilbert Parker, M.P., went to Holland at the request of the
+American Committee for the Relief of Belgium a week ago to inquire into
+the work of the committee and the needs of the Belgians._
+
+_Sir Gilbert visited frontier towns and the camps of the refugees for
+the purpose of making a personal investigation into the conditions. That
+he is deeply impressed by the desperate need of the Belgians may be
+gathered from the following graphic statement and appeal, dated Dec. 5,
+1914, to the American people:_
+
+Since the beginning of the war the hearts of all humane people have been
+tortured by the sufferings of Belgium. For myself the martyrdom of
+Belgium had been a nightmare since the fall of Ličge. Whoever or
+whatever country is to blame for this war, Belgium is innocent. Her
+hands are free from stain. She has kept the faith. She saw it with the
+eyes of duty and honor. Her Government is carried on in another land.
+Her King is in the trenches. Her army is decimated, but the last
+decimals fight on.
+
+Her people wander in foreign lands, the highest and lowest looking for
+work and bread; they cannot look for homes. Those left behind huddle
+near the ruins of their shattered villages or take refuge in towns which
+cannot feed their own citizens.
+
+
+Abyss of Want and Woe.
+
+Many cities and towns have been completely destroyed; others, reduced or
+shattered, struggle in vain to feed their poor and broken populations.
+Stones and ashes mark the places where small communities lived their
+peaceful lives before the invasion. The Belgian people live now in the
+abyss of want and woe.
+
+All this I knew in England, but knew it from the reports of others. I
+did not, could not, know what the destitution, the desolation of Belgium
+was, what were the imperative needs of this people, until I got to
+Holland and to the borders of Belgian territory. Inside that territory I
+could not pass because I was a Britisher, but there I could see German
+soldiers, the Landwehr, keeping guard over what they call their new
+German province. Belgium a German province!
+
+There at Maastricht I saw fugitives crossing the frontier into Holland
+with all their worldly goods on their shoulders or in their hands, or
+with nothing at all, seeking hospitality of a little land which itself
+feels, though it is neutral, the painful stress and cost of the war.
+There, on the frontier, I was standing between Dutch soldiers and German
+soldiers, so near the Germans that I could almost have touched them, so
+near three German officers that their conversation as they saluted me
+reached my ears.
+
+I begin to understand what the sufferings and needs of Belgium are. They
+are such that the horror of it almost paralyzes expression. I met at
+Maastricht Belgians, representatives of municipalities, who said that
+they had food for only a fortnight longer. And what was the food they
+had? No meat, no vegetables, but only one-third of a soldier's rations
+of bread for each person per day. At Ličge, as I write, there is food
+for only three days.
+
+What is it the people of Belgium ask for? They ask for bread and salt,
+no more, and it is not forthcoming. They do not ask for meat; they
+cannot get it. They have no fires for cooking, and they do not beg for
+petrol. Money is of little use to them, because there is no food to be
+bought with money.
+
+Belgium under ordinary circumstances imports five-sixths of the food she
+eats. The ordinary channels of sale and purchase are closed. They
+cannot buy and sell if they would. Representatives of Belgian
+communities told me at Maastricht yesterday that the crops were taken
+from their fields--the wheat and potatoes--and were sent into Germany.
+
+
+No Work, but Taxes Continue.
+
+There is no work. The factories are closed because they have not raw
+material, coal, or petrol, because they have no markets.
+
+And yet war taxes are falling with hideous pressure upon a people whose
+hands are empty, whose workshops are closed, whose fields are idle,
+whose cattle have been taken, or compulsorily purchased without value
+received.
+
+In Belgium itself the misery of the populace is greater than the misery
+of the Belgian fugitives in other countries, such as Holland, where
+there have come since the fall of Ličge one and a half million of
+fugitives. To gauge what that misery in Belgium is, think of what even
+the fugitives suffer. I have seen in a room without fire, the walls
+damp, the floor without covering, not even straw, a family of nine women
+and eight children, one on an improvised bunk seriously ill. Their home
+in Belgium was leveled with the ground, the father killed in battle.
+
+Their food is coffee and bread for breakfast, potatoes for dinner, with
+salt--and in having the salt they were lucky--bread and coffee for
+supper. Insufficiently clothed, there by the North Sea, they watched the
+bleak hours pass, with nothing to do except cling together in a vain
+attempt to keep warm.
+
+Multiply this case by hundreds of thousands and you will have some hint
+of the people's sufferings.
+
+In a lighter on the River Maas at Rotterdam, without windows, without
+doors, with only an open hatchway from which a ladder descends, several
+hundred fugitives spend their nights and the best parts of their days in
+the iron hold, forever covered with moisture, leaky when rain comes,
+with the floor never dry, and pervasive with a perpetual smell like the
+smell of a cave which never gets the light of day. Here men, women, and
+children were huddled together in a promiscuous communion of misery,
+made infinitely more pathetic and heartrending because none complained.
+
+At Rosendaal, at Scheveningen, Eysden, and Flushing, at a dozen other
+places, these ghastly things are repeated in one form or another.
+Holland has sheltered hundreds of thousands, but she could not in a
+moment organize even adequate shelter, much less comforts.
+
+In Bergen-op-Zoom, where I write these words, there have come since the
+fall of Antwerp 300,000 hungry marchers, with no resources except what
+they carry with them. This little town of 15,000 people did its best to
+meet the terrible pressure, and its citizens went without bread
+themselves to feed the refugees. How can a small municipality suddenly
+deal with so vast a catastrophe? Yet slowly some sort of order was
+organized out of chaos, and when the Government was able to establish
+refugee camps through the military the worst conditions were moderated,
+and now, in tents and in vans on a fortunately situated piece of land,
+over 3,000 people live, so far as comforts are concerned, like Kaffirs
+in Karoo or aborigines in a camp in the back blocks of Australia. The
+tents are crammed with people, and life is reduced to its barest
+elements. Straw, boards, and a few blankets and dishes for rations--that
+constitutes the ménage.
+
+Children are born in the hugger mugger of such conditions, but the good
+Holland citizens see that the children are cared for and that the babies
+have milk. Devoted priests teach the children, and the value of military
+organization illuminates the whole panoply of misery. Yet the best of
+the refugee camps would seem to American citizens like the dark and
+dreadful life of an underworld, in which is neither work, purpose, nor
+opportunity. It is a sight repugnant to civilization.
+
+The saddest, most heartrending thing I have ever seen has been the
+patience of every Belgian, whatever his state, I have met. Among the
+thousands of refugees I have seen in Holland, in the long stream that
+crossed the frontier at Maastricht and besieged the doors of the
+Belgian Consul while I was there, no man, no woman railed or declaimed
+against the horror of their situation. The pathos of lonely, staring,
+apathetic endurance is tragic beyond words. So grateful, so simply
+grateful, are they, every one, for whatever is done for them.
+
+
+None of the Refugees Begs.
+
+None begs, none asks for money, and yet on the faces of these frontier
+refugees I saw stark hunger, the weakness come of long weeks of famine.
+One man, one fortunate man from Verviers, told me he could purchase as
+much as 2s. 8d. worth of food for himself, his wife, and child for a
+week.
+
+Think of it, American citizens! Sixty-six cents' worth of food for a
+man, his wife, and child for a whole week, if he were permitted to
+purchase that much! Sixty-six cents! That is what an average American
+citizen pays for his dinner in his own home. He cannot get breakfast, he
+can only get half a breakfast, for that at the Waldorf or the Plaza in
+New York.
+
+This man was only allowed to purchase that much food if he could,
+because if he purchased more he would be taking from some one else, and
+they were living on rations for the week which would represent the food
+of an ordinary man for a day. A rich man can have no more than a poor
+man. It is a democracy of famine.
+
+There is enough food wasted in the average American household in one day
+to keep a Belgian for a fortnight in health and strength. They want in
+Belgium 300,000 tons of food a month. That is their normal requirement.
+The American Relief Committee is asking for 8,000 tons a month,
+one-quarter of the normal requirements, one-half of a soldier's rations
+for each Belgian. The American Committee needs $5,000,000 a month until
+next harvest. It is a huge sum, but it must be forthcoming.
+
+Of all the great powers of the world the United States is the only one
+not at war or in peril of war. Of all the foremost nations of the world
+the United States is the only one that can save Belgium from starvation
+if she will. She was the only nation that Germany would allow a foothold
+for humanity's and for Christ's sake in Belgium. Such an opportunity,
+such responsibility, no nation ever had before in the history of the
+world. Spain and Italy join with her, but the initiative and resources
+and organization are hers.
+
+Around Belgium is a ring of steel. Within that ring of steel are a
+disappearing and for ever disappearing population. Towns like
+Dendermonde, that were of 10,000 people, have now 4,000, and in
+Dendermonde 1,200 houses have fallen under the iron and fire of war.
+Into that vast graveyard and camp of the desolate only the United States
+enters with an adequate and responsible organization upon the mission of
+humanity.
+
+No such opportunity was ever given to a people, no such test ever came
+to a Christian people in all the records of time. Will the American
+Nation rise to the chance given to it to prove that its civilization is
+a real thing and that its acts measure up with its inherent and
+professed Christianity?
+
+I am a profound believer in the great-heartedness of the United States,
+and there is not an American of German origin who ought not gladly and
+freely give to the relief of people who, unless the world feeds them,
+must be the remnant of a nation; and the world in this case is the
+United States. She can give most.
+
+The price of one good meal a week for a family in an American home will
+keep a Belgian alive for a fortnight.
+
+Probably the United States has 18,000,000 homes. How many of them will
+deny themselves a meal for martyred Belgium? The mass of the American
+people do not need to deny themselves anything to give to Belgium. The
+whole standard of living on the American Continent, in the United States
+and Canada, is so much higher than the European standard that if they
+lowered the scale by one-tenth just for one six months the Belgium
+problem would be solved.
+
+I say to the American people that they cannot conceive what this strain
+upon the populations of Europe is at this moment, and, in the cruel
+grip of Winter, hundreds of thousands will agonize till death or relief
+comes. In Australia in drought times vast flocks of sheep go traveling
+with shepherds looking for food and water, and no flock ever comes back
+as it went forth. Not in flocks guided by shepherds, but lonely,
+hopeless units, the Belgian people take flight, looking for food and
+shelter, or remain paralyzed by the tragedy fallen upon them in their
+own land.
+
+Their sufferings are majestic in simple heroism and uncomplaining
+endurance. So majestic in proportion ought the relief to be. The Belgian
+people are wards of the world. In the circumstances the Belgian people
+are special wards of the one great country that is secure in its peace
+and that by its natural instincts of human sympathy and love of freedom
+is best suited to do the work that should be done for Belgium. If every
+millionaire would give a thousand, if every man with $100 a month would
+give $10, the American Committee for the Relief of Belgium, with its
+splendid organization, its unrivaled efficiency, through which flows a
+tide of human sympathy, would be able to report at the end of the war
+that a small nation in misfortune had been saved from famine and despair
+by a great people far away, who had responded to the call, "Come over
+and help us!"
+
+GILBERT PARKER.
+
+
+
+
+A CORRECTION.
+
+
+Under the head of "Russia's 'Little Brother,'" on Page 364 of this
+magazine history, in its issue of Dec. 26, 1914, appeared a statement
+taken from The New York Sun of Oct. 12, 1914, and attributed to George
+Bakhmeteff, Russian Ambassador at Washington. Our attention has been
+called to the following editorial paragraph printed by The Sun on Oct.
+14, embodying the Russian Ambassador's denial of its authenticity:
+
+     The Sun on Monday printed in good faith what it believed to be
+     an authorized statement of the views and sentiments of Mr.
+     George Bakhmeteff, Russian Ambassador to the United States.
+     Ambassador Bakhmeteff telegraphs to us from Washington as
+     follows:
+
+     "I most emphatically deny having spoken one single word to the
+     reporter who published an interview with me in your paper. I
+     have not even seen one, and must insist on your publishing
+     this very categorical and direct statement."
+
+     Of course, we publish the Ambassador's denial not less in
+     justice to our readers and to ourselves than to him, at the
+     same time expressing our extreme regret that The Sun should
+     have been led to believe that it was presenting the Russian
+     case as viewed by Mr. Bakhmeteff with his full acquiescence.
+
+We add our cordial regret to that of The Sun that this repudiated
+statement should have gained further circulation.--Editor.
+
+
+
+
+[English Cartoon]
+
+Certainly Not!
+
+
+[Illustration: _--From The Sketch, London._
+
+TURKEY, THE OFFICE BOY (to his master): Please, Sir, can I have a day
+off?]
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEW YORK TIMES CURRENT HISTORY
+OF THE EUROPEAN WAR, VOL. 1, JANUARY 9, 1915***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 16702-8.txt or 16702-8.zip *******
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915, by Various</title>
+<style type="text/css">
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The New York Times Current History of the
+European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915, by Various</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915</p>
+<p>       What Americans Say to Europe</p>
+<p>Author: Various</p>
+<p>Release Date: September 16, 2005  [eBook #16702]</p>
+<p>Language: en</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEW YORK TIMES CURRENT HISTORY OF THE EUROPEAN WAR, VOL. 1, JANUARY 9, 1915***</p>
+<br><br><h3>E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Linda Cantoni,<br>
+            and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</h3><br><br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>
+    <img border="0" src="images/logo.png" alt="New York Times logo" width="409" height="72"></h1>
+<h2>
+    The New York Times
+</h2>
+<h2>
+    Current History of the European War
+</h2>
+<center>
+    <h3>JANUARY 9, 1915. </h3>
+</center>
+<h2>
+    <i>What Americans Say to Europe</i>
+</h2>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0001"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/eliot.jpg" width="143" height="225"
+alt="Charles W. Eliot">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-align: center">CHARLES W. ELIOT</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i>(Photo (c) by Paul Thompson.)</i>
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <a href="#2H_4_0013">
+    <i>See Page 473</i> </a>
+</p>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0002"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/beck.jpg" width="141" height="225"
+alt="James M. Beck">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-align: center">JAMES M. BECK</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <a href="#2H_4_0001">
+    <i>See Page 413</i> </a>
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<h1><b>Contents</b></h1>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0001">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">In the Supreme Court of Civilization </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0002">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Critics Dispute Mr. Beck </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0003">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Russia to Blame </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0004">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">In Defense of Austria </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0005">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Defense of the Dual Alliance&mdash;A Reply </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0006">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">What Gladstone Said About Belgium </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0007">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Fight to the Bitter End </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0008">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Woman and War </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0009">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">The Way to Peace </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0010">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Prof. Mather on Mr. Schiff </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0011">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">The Eliot-Schiff Letters </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0012">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">LA CATHEDRALE. </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0013">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Probable Causes and Outcome of the War </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0014">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Appreciation from Lord Bryce </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0015">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">A Reply by Dr. Francke </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0016">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">DR. ELIOT'S SECOND LETTER </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0017">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">DR. ELIOT'S THIRD LETTER. </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0018">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Dr. Dernburg's Reply to the Third Letter </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0019">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Dr. Jordan's Reply to Dr. Dernburg </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0020">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Dr. Irene Sargent's Reply to Dr. Dernburg </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0021">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">DR. ELIOT'S FOURTH LETTER. </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0022">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">DR. ELIOT'S FIFTH LETTER. </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0023">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">THE LORD OF HOSTS. </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0024">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">A War of Dishonor </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0025">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Might or Right </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0026">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">JEANNE D'ARC&mdash;1914. </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0027">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">The Kaiser and Belgium </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0028">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Reply to Prof. Burgess </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0029">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">PROF. BURGESS'S SECOND ARTICLE. </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0030">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Reply to Prof. Burgess </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0031">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">America's Peril in Judging Germany </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0032">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">An Answer by Prof. Ladd </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0033">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Possible Profits From War </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0034">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">"To Americans Leaving Germany" </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0035">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">German Declarations </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0036">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">A Second Appeal </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0037">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">The Eucken and Haeckel Charges </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0038">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Concerning German Culture </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0039">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Culture vs. Kultur </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0040">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">The Trespass in Belgium </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0041">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Apportioning the Blame </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0042">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">PARTING. </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0043">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">French Hate and English Jealousy </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0044">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Dr. Sanderson Replies </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0045">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">In Defense of Austria </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0046">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Russian Atrocities </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0047">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">"The United States of Europe" </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0048">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">A New World Map </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0049">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">The Verdict of the American People </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0050">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Interview With Dr. Hillis </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0051">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">TIPPERARY. </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0052">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">As America Sees the War </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0053">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">TO MELOS, POMEGRANATE ISLE. </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0054">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">What America Can Do </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0055">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">TO A COUSIN GERMAN. </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0056">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">What the Economic Effects May Be </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0057">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Effects of War on America </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0058">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Germany of the Future </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0059">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Germany the Aggressor </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0060">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Militarism and Christianity </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0061">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">VIGIL </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0062">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Nietzsche and German Culture </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0063">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">Belgium's Bitter Need </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0064">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">A CORRECTION. </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0065">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">[English Cartoon] </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_FOOT">
+<span style="font-size: 100%">FOOTNOTES </span>
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc">&nbsp;</p>
+<hr>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1><b>List of Illustrations</b></h1>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0001">
+Charles W. Eliot
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0002">
+James M. Beck
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0004">
+Andrew Carnegie
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0005">
+Jacob H. Schiff
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0006">
+Viscount James Bryce
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0007">
+Dr. Bernhard Dernburg
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0008">
+David Starr Jordan
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0009">
+John Grier Hibben
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0010">
+John W. Burgess
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0011">
+William M. Sloane
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0012">
+Franklin H. Giddings
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0013">
+Rudolf Eucken
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0015">
+Brander Matthews
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0016">
+Newell Dwight Hillis
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0017">
+Nicholas Murray Butler
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0018">
+Arthur von Briesen
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#image-0019">
+English Cartoon
+</a></p>
+<br><hr>
+
+
+<a name="2H_4_0001"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    In the Supreme Court of Civilization
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Argued by James M. Beck.
+</h3>
+<br>
+<blockquote>
+<p>
+    THE NEW YORK TIMES <i>submitted the evidence contained in the official
+    "White Paper" of Great Britain, the "Orange Paper" of Russia, and the
+    "Gray Paper" of Belgium to James M. Beck, late Assistant Attorney
+    General of the United States and a leader of the New York bar, who has
+    argued many of the most important cases before the Supreme Court. On
+    this evidence Mr. Beck has argued in the following article the case of
+    Dual Alliance vs. Triple Entente. It has been widely circulated in
+    France and Great Britain.</i>
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    Let us suppose that in this year of dis-Grace, Nineteen Hundred and
+    Fourteen, there had existed, as let us pray will one day exist, a
+    Supreme Court of Civilization, before which the sovereign nations could
+    litigate their differences without resort to the iniquitous and less
+    effective appeal to the arbitrament of arms.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let us further suppose that each of the contending nations had a
+    sufficient leaven of Christianity to have its grievances adjudged not by
+    the ethics of the cannon or the rifle, but by the eternal criterion of
+    justice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What would be the judgment of that august tribunal?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Any discussion of the ethical merits of this great controversy must
+    start with the assumption that there is an international morality.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This fundamental axiom, upon which the entire basis of civilization
+    necessarily rests, is challenged by a small class of intellectual
+    perverts.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some hold that moral considerations must be subordinated either to
+    military necessity or so-called manifest destiny. This is the Bernhardi
+    doctrine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Others teach that war is a beneficent fatality and that all nations
+    engaged in it are therefore equally justified. On this theory all of the
+    now contending nations are but victims of an irresistible current of
+    events, and the highest duty of the State is to prepare itself for the
+    systematic extermination, when necessary or expedient, of its neighbors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Notwithstanding the clever platitudes under which both these doctrines
+    are veiled, all morally sane minds are agreed that this war is a great
+    crime against civilization, and the only open question is, which of the
+    two contending groups of powers is morally responsible for that crime?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Was Austria justified in declaring war against Servia?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Was Germany justified in declaring war against Russia and France?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Was England justified in declaring war against Germany?
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the last of these questions is the most easily disposed of, it may be
+    considered first.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    England's Justification.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    England's justification rests upon the solemn Treaty of 1839, whereby
+    Prussia, France, England, Austria, and Russia "became the guarantors" of
+    the "perpetual neutrality" of Belgium, as reaffirmed by Count Bismarck,
+    then Chancellor of the North German Confederation, on July 22, 1870, and
+    as even more recently reaffirmed in the striking fact disclosed in the
+    Belgian "Gray Book."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the Spring of 1913 a debate was in progress in the Budget Committee
+    of the Reichstag with reference to the Military Budget. In the course of
+    the debate the German Secretary of State said:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "The neutrality of Belgium is determined by international
+     conventions, <i>and Germany is resolved to respect these
+     conventions</i>."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    To confirm this solemn assurance, the Minister of War added in the same
+    debate:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "Belgium does not play any part in the justification of the
+     German scheme of military reorganization. The scheme is
+     justified by the position of matters in the East. <i>Germany
+     will not lose sight of the fact that Belgian neutrality is
+     guaranteed by international treaties.</i>"
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    A year later, on July 31, 1914, Herr von Below, the German Minister at
+    Brussels, assured the Belgian Department of State that he knew of a
+    declaration which the German Chancellor had made in 1911, to the effect
+    "that Germany had no intention of violating our neutrality," and "that
+    he was certain that the sentiments to which expression was given at that
+    time <i>had not changed</i>." (See Belgian "Gray Book," Nos. 11 and 12.)
+</p>
+<p>
+    Apart from these treaty stipulations, which are only declaration of
+    Belgium's rights as sovereign nations, The Hague Conference, in which
+    forty-four nations (including Germany) participated, reaffirmed as an
+    axiom of international law the inherent right of a nation to the
+    sanctity of its territory.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It seems unnecessary to discuss the wanton disregard of these solemn
+    obligations and protestations, when the present Chancellor of the German
+    Empire, in his speech to the Reichstag and to the world on Aug. 4, 1914,
+    frankly admitted that the action of the German military machine in
+    invading Belgium was a wrong. He said:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "We are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no
+     law. Our troops have occupied Luxemburg and perhaps are
+     already on Belgian soil. <i>Gentlemen, that is contrary to the
+     dictates of international law.</i> It is true that the French
+     Government has declared at Brussels that France is willing to
+     respect the neutrality of Belgium, so long as her opponent
+     respects it. We knew, however, that France stood ready for
+     invasion. France could wait, but we could not wait. A French
+     movement upon our flank upon the lower Rhine might have been
+     disastrous. So we were compelled to override the just protest
+     of the Luxemburg and Belgian Governments. <i>The wrong&mdash;I speak
+     openly&mdash;that we are committing</i> we will endeavor to make good
+     as soon as our military goal has been reached. Anybody who is
+     threatened as we are threatened, and is fighting for his
+     highest possessions, can only have one thought&mdash;how he is to
+     hack his way through."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    This defense is not even a plea of confession and avoidance. It is a
+    plea of "Guilty" at the bar of the world. It has one merit, that it
+    does not add to the crime the aggravation of hypocrisy. It virtually
+    rests the case of Germany upon the gospel of Treitschke and Bernhardi,
+    that each nation is justified in exerting its physical power to the
+    utmost in defense of its selfish interests and without any regard to
+    considerations of conventional morality. Might as between nations is the
+    sole criterion of right. There is no novelty in this gospel. Its only
+    surprising feature is its revival in the twentieth century. It was
+    taught far more effectively by Machiavelli in his treatise, "The
+    Prince," wherein he glorified the policy of Cesare Borgia in trampling
+    the weaker States of Italy under foot by ruthless terrorism, unbridled
+    ferocity, and the basest deception. Indeed, the wanton destruction of
+    Belgium is simply Borgiaism amplified ten-thousandfold by the mechanical
+    resources of modern war.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    This Answer Cannot Satisfy.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Unless our boasted civilization is the thinnest veneering of barbarism;
+    unless the law of the world is in fact only the ethics of the rifle and
+    the conscience of the cannon; unless mankind after uncounted centuries
+    has made no real advance in political morality beyond that of the cave
+    dweller, then this answer of Germany cannot satisfy the "decent respect
+    to the opinions of mankind." Germany's contention that a treaty of peace
+    is "a scrap of paper," to be disregarded at will when required by the
+    selfish interests of one contracting party, is the negation of all that
+    civilization stands for.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Belgium has been crucified in the face of the world. Its innocence of
+    any offense, until it was attacked, is too clear for argument. Its
+    voluntary immolation to preserve its solemn guarantee of neutrality will
+    "plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against the deep damnation of its
+    taking off." On that issue the Supreme Court could have no ground for
+    doubt or hesitation. Its judgment would be speedy and inexorable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The remaining two issues, above referred to, are not so simple.
+    Primarily and perhaps exclusively, the ethical question turns upon the
+    issues raised by the communications which passed between the various
+    Chancelleries of Europe in the last week of July, for it is the amazing
+    feature of this greatest of all wars that it was precipitated by
+    diplomats and rulers, and, assuming that all these statesmen sincerely
+    desired a peaceful solution of the questions raised by the Austrian
+    ultimatum, (which is by no means clear,) it was the result of
+    ineffective diplomacy and clumsy diplomacy at that.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I quite appreciate the distinction between the immediate causes of a war
+    and the anterior and more fundamental causes; nevertheless, with the
+    world in a state of Summer peace on July 23, 1914, an issue, gravely
+    affecting the integrity of nations and the balance of power in Europe,
+    is suddenly precipitated by the Austrian ultimatum, and thereafter and
+    for the space of about a week a series of diplomatic communications
+    passed between the Chancelleries of Europe, designed on their face to
+    prevent a war and yet so ineffective that the war is precipitated and
+    the fearful Rubicon crossed before the world knew, except imperfectly,
+    the nature of the differences between the Governments involved. The
+    ethical aspects of this great conflict must largely depend upon the
+    record that has been made up by the official communications which can,
+    therefore, be treated as documentary evidence in a litigated case.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A substantial part of that record is already before the court of public
+    opinion in the British and German "White Papers," the Russian "Orange
+    Paper," and the Belgian "Gray Paper," and the purpose of this article is
+    to discuss what judgment an impartial and dispassionate court would
+    render upon the issues thus raised and the evidence thus submitted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Primarily such a court would be deeply impressed not only by what the
+    record as thus made up discloses, <i>but also by the significant omissions
+    of documents known to be in existence</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The official defense of England and Russia does not apparently show any
+    failure on the part of either to submit all of the documents in their
+    possession, <i>but the German "White Paper" on its face discloses the
+    suppression of documents of vital importance, while Austria has as yet
+    failed to submit any of the documentary evidence in its possession</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We know from the German "White Paper"&mdash;even if we did not conclude as a
+    matter of irresistible inference&mdash;that many important communications
+    passed in this crisis between Germany and Austria, and it is probable
+    that some communications must also have passed between those two
+    countries and Italy. Italy, despite its embarrassing position, owes to
+    the world the duty of a full disclosure. What such disclosure would
+    probably show is indicated by her deliberate conclusion that her allies
+    had commenced an <i>aggressive</i> war, which released her from any
+    obligation under the Triple Alliance.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The fact that communications passed between Berlin and Vienna, the text of
+    which has never been disclosed, is not a matter of conjecture. Germany
+    admits and asserts as part of her defense that she faithfully exercised her
+    mediatory influence with Austria, but not only is such mediatory influence
+    not disclosed by any practical results of such mediation, <b>but the text of these vital communications is still kept in
+    the secret archives of Berlin and Vienna</b>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thus in the official apology for Germany it is stated that, in spite of
+    the refusal of Austria to accept the proposition of Sir Edward Grey to
+    treat the Servian reply "as a basis for further conversations,"
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     &quot;we [Germany] continued our mediatory efforts to the <i>utmost</i>
+and advised Vienna to make any possible compromise consistent with the dignity
+of the Monarchy.&quot;</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     [German &quot;White Paper.&quot;]</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    This would be more convincing if the German Foreign Office in giving
+    other diplomatic documents had only added the <i>text</i> of the advice which
+    it thus gave Vienna.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The same significant omission will be found when the same official
+    defense states that on July 29 the German Government advised Austria "to
+    begin the conversations with Mr. Sazonof." But here again <i>the text</i> is
+    not found among the documents which the German Foreign Office has given
+    to the world. The communications, which passed between that office and
+    its Ambassadors in St. Petersburg, Paris, and London, are given <i>in
+    extenso</i>, but among the twenty-seven communications appended to the
+    German official defense <b>it is most significant that not a single
+    communication is given of the many which passed from Berlin to Vienna
+    and only two that passed from Vienna to Berlin</b>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This cannot be an accident. Germany has seen fit to throw the veil of
+    secrecy over the text of its communications to Vienna, although
+    professing to give the purport of a few of them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Until Germany is willing to put the most important documents in its
+    possession in evidence, it must not be surprised that the world,
+    remembering Bismarck's garbling of the Ems dispatch, which precipitated
+    the Franco-Prussian war, will be incredulous as to the sincerity of
+    Germany's mediatory efforts.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Austria's Case Against Servia.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    To discuss the justice of Austria's grievances against Servia would take
+    us outside the documentary record and into the realm of disputed facts
+    and would expand this discussion far beyond reasonable length.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let us therefore suppose <i>arguendo</i> that our imaginary court would
+    commence its consideration with the assumption that Austria had a just
+    grievance against Servia, and that the murder of the Archduke on June
+    28, 1914, while in fact committed by Austrian citizens of Servian
+    sympathies on Austrian soil, had its inspiration and encouragement in
+    the political activities either of the Servian Government or of
+    political organizations of that country.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The question for decision would then be not whether Austria had a just
+    grievance against Servia, but whether having regard to the obligations
+    which Austria, as well as every other country, owes to civilization, she
+    proceeded in the right manner to redress her grievance.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On June 28, 1914, the Austrian Crown Prince was murdered at Serajevo.
+    For nearly a month there was no action by Austria, and no public
+    statement whatever of its intentions. The world profoundly sympathized
+    with Austria in its new trouble, and especially with its aged monarch,
+    who, like King Lear, was "as full of grief as years and wretched in
+    both."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Servian Government had formerly disclaimed any complicity with the
+    assassination and had pledged itself to punish any Servian citizen
+    implicated therein.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From time to time, from June 28 to July 23, there came semi-inspired
+    intimations from Vienna that that country intended to act with great
+    self-restraint and in the most pacific manner. In his speech to the
+    French Chamber of Deputies, Viviani says that Europe had in the interval
+    preceding July 23 express assurances from Austria that its course would
+    be moderate and conciliatory. Never was it even hinted that Germany and
+    Austria were about to apply in a time of profound peace a match to the
+    powder magazine of Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This is strikingly shown by the first letter in the English "White
+    Paper" from Sir Edward Grey to Sir H. Rumbold, dated July 20, 1914. It
+    is one of the most significant documents in the entire correspondence.
+    At the time this letter was written it is altogether probable that
+    Austria's arrogant and most unreasonable ultimatum had already been
+    framed and approved in Vienna, and possibly in Berlin, and yet Sir
+    Edward Grey, the Foreign Minister of a great and friendly country, had
+    so little knowledge of Austria's policy that he
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "asked the German Ambassador today (July 20) if he had any
+     news of what was going on in Vienna with regard to Servia."
+     The German Ambassador replied "that he had not, but Austria
+     was certainly going to take some step."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    Sir Edward Grey adds that he told the German Ambassador that he had
+    learned that Count Berchtold, the Austrian Foreign Minister,
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "in speaking to the Italian Ambassador in Vienna, had
+     deprecated the suggestion that the situation was grave, but
+     had said that it should be cleared up."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    The German Minister then replied that it would be desirable "if Russia
+    could act as a mediator with regard to Servia," so that the first
+    suggestion of Russia playing the part of the peacemaker came from the
+    German Ambassador in London. Sir Edward Grey then adds that he told the
+    German Ambassador that he
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "assumed that the Austrian Government would not do anything
+     until they had first disclosed to the public their case
+     against Servia, founded presumably upon what they had
+     discovered at the trial,"
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    and the German Ambassador assented to this assumption.
+</p>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 1.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Either the German Ambassador was then deceiving Sir Edward Grey, on the
+    theory that the true function of an Ambassador is "to lie for his
+    country," or the thunderbolt was being launched with such secrecy that
+    even the German Ambassador in England did not know what was then in
+    progress.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The British Ambassador at Vienna reports to Sir Edward Grey:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "The delivery at Belgrade on the 23d July of the note to
+     Servia was preceded by a period of <i>absolute silence</i> at the
+     Ballplatz."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    He proceeds to say that with the exception of the German Ambassador at
+    Vienna&mdash;note the significance of the exception&mdash;not a single member of
+    the Diplomatic Corps knew anything of the Austrian ultimatum and that
+    the French Ambassador when he visited the Austrian Foreign Office on
+    July 23 was not only kept in ignorance that the ultimatum had actually
+    been issued, but was given the impression that its tone was moderate.
+    Even the Italian Ambassador was not taken into Count Berchtold's
+    confidence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    [Dispatch from Sir M. de Bunsen to Sir Edward Grey, dated Sept. 1,
+    1914.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    No better proof of this sense of security need be adduced than that the
+    French President and her Foreign Minister were thousands of miles from
+    Paris, and the Russian Minister had, after the funeral of the Austrian
+    Archduke, left Vienna for his annual holiday.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The interesting and important question here suggests itself whether
+    Germany had knowledge of and approved in advance the Austrian ultimatum.
+    If it did, it was guilty of duplicity, for the German Ambassador at St.
+    Petersburg gave to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs an express
+    assurance that
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "the German Government <i>had no knowledge of the text of the
+     Austrian note before it was handed in and has not exercised
+     any influence on its contents. It is a mistake to attribute to
+     Germany a threatening attitude</i>."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [Russian "Orange Paper," No. 18.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    This statement is inherently improbable. Austria was the weaker of the
+    two allies and it was Germany's sabre that it was rattling in the face
+    of Europe. Obviously Austria could not have proceeded to extreme
+    measures, which it was recognized from the first would antagonize
+    Russia, unless it had the support of Germany, and there is a
+    probability, amounting to a moral certainty, that it would not have
+    committed itself and Germany to the possibility of a European war
+    without first consulting Germany.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Moreover, we have the testimony of Sir M. de Bunsen, the English
+    Ambassador in Vienna, who advised Sir Edward Grey that he had "private
+    information that the German Ambassador (at Vienna) knew the text of the
+    Austrian ultimatum to Servia before it was dispatched and telegraphed it
+    to the German Emperor," and that the German Ambassador himself "indorses
+    every line of it." [English "White Paper," No. 95.] As he does not
+    disclose the source of his "private information," this testimony would
+    not by itself be convincing, but when we examine Germany's official
+    defense in the German "White Paper," <i>we find that the German Foreign
+    Office admits that it was consulted by Austria previous to the ultimatum
+    and not only approved of Austria's course but literally gave her a
+    carte blanche to proceed</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This point seems so important in determining the sincerity of Germany's
+    attitude and pacific protestations that we quote <i>in extenso</i>. After
+    referring to the previous friction between Austria and Servia, the
+    German "White Paper" says:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In view of these circumstances, Austria had to admit that it would not
+    be consistent either with the dignity or self-preservation of the
+    monarchy to look on longer at the operations on the other side of the
+    border without taking action. <i>The Austro-Hungarian Government advised
+    us of this view of the situation and asked our opinion in the matter. We
+    were able to assure our ally most heartily of our agreement with her
+    view of the situation and to assure her that any action that she might
+    consider it necessary to take in order to put an end to the movement in
+    Servia directed against the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
+    would receive our approval.</i> We were fully aware in this connection that
+    warlike moves on the part of Austria-Hungary against Servia would bring
+    Russia into the question and might draw us into a war in accordance with
+    our duties as an ally."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir M. de Bunsen's credible testimony is further confirmed by the fact
+    that the British Ambassador at Berlin, in his letter of July 22 to Sir
+    Edward Grey, states that <i>on the preceding night</i> (July 21) he had met
+    the German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and an allusion was
+    made to a possible action by Austria.
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "His Excellency was evidently of opinion that this step on
+     Austria's part would have been made ere this. He insisted that
+     the question at issue was one for settlement between Servia
+     and Austria alone, and that there should be no interference
+     from outside in the discussions between those two countries."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    He adds that while he had regarded it as inadvisable that his country
+    should approach Austria-Hungary in the matter, he had
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "on several occasions in conversation with the Servian
+     Minister emphasized the extreme importance that
+     Austro-Servian relations should be put on a proper footing."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 2.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here we have the first statement of Germany's position in the matter, a
+    position which subsequent events showed to be entirely untenable, but to
+    which Germany tenaciously adhered to the very end, and which did much to
+    precipitate the war. Forgetful of the solidarity of European
+    civilization and the fact that by policy and diplomatic intercourse
+    continuing through many centuries a United European State exists, even
+    though its organization be as yet inchoate, he took the ground that
+    Austria should be permitted to proceed to aggressive measures against
+    Servia without interference from any other power, even though, as was
+    inevitable, the humiliation of Servia would destroy the status of the
+    Balkan States and even threaten the European balance of power.
+</p>
+<p>
+    No space need be taken in convincing any reasonable man that this
+    Austrian ultimatum to Servia was brutal in its tone and unreasonable in
+    its demands. It would be difficult to find in history a more offensive
+    document, and its iniquity was enhanced by the short shriving time which
+    it gave either Servia or Europe. Servia had forty-eight hours to answer
+    whether it would compromise its sovereignty, and virtually admit its
+    complicity in a crime which it had steadily disavowed. As the full text
+    of the ultimatum first reached the Foreign Chancelleries nearly
+    twenty-four hours after its service upon Servia, the other European
+    nations had barely a day to consider what could be done to preserve the
+    peace of Europe before that peace was fatally compromised.
+</p>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 5; Russian "Orange Paper," No. 3.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Further confirmation that the German Foreign Office did have advance
+    knowledge of at least the substance of the ultimatum is shown by the
+    fact that on the same day the ultimatum was issued the Chancellor of the
+    German Empire instructed the German Ambassadors in Paris, London, and
+    St. Petersburg to advise the English, French, and Russian Governments
+    that
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "the acts as well as <i>the demands</i> of the Austro-Hungarian
+     Government cannot but be looked upon as justified."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [German "White Paper," Annex 1B.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    How could Germany thus indorse the "demands" if it did not know the
+    substance of the ultimatum?
+</p>
+<p>
+    The hour when these instructions were sent is not given, so that it does
+    not follow that these significant instructions were necessarily prior to
+    the service of the ultimatum at Belgrade at 6 P.M. Nevertheless, as the
+    ultimatum did not reach the other capitals of Europe until the following
+    day, as the diplomatic correspondence clearly shows, it seems improbable
+    that the German Foreign Office would have issued this very carefully
+    prepared and formal warning to the other powers on July the 23d unless
+    it had not only knowledge of Austria's intention to serve the ultimatum
+    but also at least of the substance thereof.
+</p>
+<p>
+    While it may be that Germany, while indorsing in blank the policy of
+    Austria, purposely refrained from examining the text of the
+    communication, so that it could thereafter claim that it was not
+    responsible for Austria's action&mdash;a policy which would not lessen the
+    discreditable character of the whole business&mdash;yet the more reasonable
+    assumption is that the simultaneous issuance of Austria's ultimatum at
+    Belgrade and Germany's warning to the powers were the result of a
+    concerted action and had a common purpose. No court or jury, reasoning
+    along the ordinary inferences of human life, would question this
+    conclusion for a moment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The communication for the German Foreign Office last referred to
+    anticipates that Servia "will refuse to comply with these demands"&mdash;why,
+    if they were justified?&mdash;and Germany suggests to France, England, and
+    Russia that if, as a result of such non-compliance, Austria has
+    "recourse to military measures," that "the choice of means must be left
+    to it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The German Ambassadors in the three capitals were instructed
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "to lay particular stress on the view that the above question
+     is one the settlement of which devolves solely upon
+     Austria-Hungary and Servia, and one which the powers should
+     earnestly strive to confine to the two countries concerned,"
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    and he added that Germany strongly desired
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "that the dispute be localized, since any intervention of
+     another power, on account of the various alliance obligations,
+     would bring consequences impossible to measure."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    This is one of the most significant documents in the whole
+    correspondence. If Germany were as ignorant as her Ambassador at London
+    affected to be of the Austrian policy and ultimatum, and if Germany was
+    not then instigating and supporting Austria in its perilous course, why
+    should the German Chancellor have served this threatening notice upon
+    England, France, and Russia, that Austria must be left free to make war
+    upon Servia, and that any attempt to intervene in behalf of the weaker
+    nation would "bring consequences impossible to measure"?
+</p>
+<p>
+    [German "White Paper," Annex 1B.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    A few days later the Imperial Chancellor sent to the Confederated
+    Governments of Germany a <i>confidential communication</i> in which he
+    recognized the possibility that Russia might feel it a duty "to take the
+    part of Servia in her dispute with Austria-Hungary." Why, again, if
+    Austria's case was so clearly justified? The Imperial Chancellor added
+    that
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "if Russia feels constrained to take sides with Servia in this
+     conflict, she certainly has a right to do it,"
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    but added that if Russia did this it would in effect challenge the
+    integrity of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and that Russia would
+    therefore alone&mdash;
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "bear the responsibility if a European war arises from the
+     Austro-Servian question, <i>which all the rest of the great
+     European powers wish to localize</i>."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    In this significant confidential communication the German Chancellor
+    declares the strong interest which Germany had in the punishment of
+    Servia by Austria. He says "<i>our closest interests therefore summon us
+    to the side of Austria-Hungary</i>," and he adds that
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "if contrary to hope, the trouble should spread, owing to the
+     intervention of Russia, then, true to our duty as an ally, we
+     should have to support the neighboring monarchy with the
+     entire might of the German Empire."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [German "White Paper," Annex 2.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    In reaching its conclusion our imaginary court would pay little
+    attention to mere professions of a desire for peace. A nation, like an
+    individual, can covertly stab the peace of another while saying, "Art
+    thou in health, my brother?" and even the peace of civilization can be
+    betrayed by a Judas kiss. Professions of peace belong to the cant of
+    diplomacy and have always characterized the most bellicose of nations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    No war in modern times has been begun without the aggressor pretending
+    that his nation wished nothing but peace and invoking Divine aid for its
+    murderous policy. To paraphrase the words of Lady Teazle on a noted
+    occasion when Sir Joseph Surface talked much of "honor," it might be as
+    well in such instances to leave the name of God out of the question.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let us, then, analyze the record as already made up; and for the sake of
+    clearness the events which preceded the war will be considered
+    chronologically.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Immediately upon the receipt of the ultimatum in St. Petersburg on July
+    24, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, in a formal communication
+    to Austria-Hungary, suggested that the abrupt time limit "leaves to the
+    powers a delay entirely insufficient to undertake any useful steps
+    whatever for the straightening out of the complications that have
+    arisen," and added:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "To prevent the incalculable consequences, equally disastrous
+     for all the powers, which can follow the method of action of
+     the Austro-Hungarian Government, it seems indispensable to us
+     that, above all, the delay given to Servia to reply should be
+     extended."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    Sazonof further suggested that time should be given for the powers to
+    examine the results of the inquiry that the Austro-Hungarian Government
+    had made in the matter of the Serajevo assassination, and stated that if
+    the powers were convinced
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "of the well-groundedness of certain of the Austrian demands
+     they would find themselves in a position to send to the
+     Servian Government consequential advice."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    He justly observes that
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "a refusal to extend the terms of the ultimatum ... would be
+     in contradiction with the very bases of international
+     relations."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [Russian "Orange Paper," No. 4.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Could any court question the justice of this contention? The peace of
+    the world was at stake. Time only was asked to see what could be done to
+    preserve that peace and satisfy Austria's grievances to the uttermost
+    farthing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Concurrently with Sazonof's plea for a little time to preserve the peace
+    of the world, Sir Edward Grey had seen the German Ambassador on July 24
+    and had suggested to him that the only method of preventing the
+    catastrophe was
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "that the four powers, Germany, France, Italy, and ourselves,
+     (England,) should work together simultaneously at Vienna and
+     St. Petersburg."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 11.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Germany had only to intimate to Austria that "a decent respect to the
+    opinions of mankind," as well as common courtesy to great and friendly
+    nations, required that sufficient time be given not only to Servia, but
+    to the other nations, to concert for the common good, especially as the
+    period was one of Summer dullness and many of the leading rulers and
+    statesmen were absent from their respective capitals.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Under these circumstances was it not natural that Russia should announce
+    on July 24
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "that any action taken by Austria to humiliate Servia would
+     not leave Russia indifferent,"
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    and that on the same day the Russian Chargé d'Affaires at Vienna
+    suggested to the Austrian Foreign Office
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "that the Austrian note was drawn up in a form rendering it
+     impossible of acceptance as it stood, and that it was both
+     unusual and peremptory in its terms"?
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    To which the only reply of the Austrian Foreign Minister was that their
+    representative in Servia
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "was under instructions to leave Belgrade unless Austrian
+     demands were accepted in their integrity by 4 P.M. tomorrow."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 7.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Austria's only concession then or subsequently to the cause of peace was
+    the assurance that Austria would not <i>after its conquest</i> of Servia
+    demand any territory.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The action of Germany on this day, July 24, is most significant. Its
+    Ambassador in England communicated a note to Sir Edward Grey in which it
+    justified Austro-Hungarian grievances and ultimatum by saying that
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "under these circumstances the course of procedure and demands
+     of the Austro-Hungarian Government can only be regarded as
+     equitable and moderate."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    The note added:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "The Imperial Government [Germany] want to emphasize their
+     opinion that in the present case there is only question of a
+     matter to be settled exclusively between Austria-Hungary and
+     Servia, and that the great powers ought seriously to endeavor
+     to reserve it to those two immediately concerned."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 9.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    On July 25, probably to the great surprise of both Germany and Austria,
+    which had definitely calculated upon Servians non-compliance with the
+    ultimatum, the latter country, under the conciliatory advice of Russia
+    and England, made a reply in which, at some sacrifice of its
+    self-respect as a sovereign State, it substantially accepted all but one
+    of the demands of Austria, and as to that it did not, in terms, refuse
+    it, but expressed its willingness to refer it either to arbitration or
+    to a conference of the powers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 39.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    No court would question for a moment the conclusion that the reply was a
+    substantial acquiescence in the extreme Austrian demands, nor indeed did
+    either Germany or Austria seriously contend that it was not. They
+    contented themselves with impeaching the sincerity of the assurances,
+    calling the concessions "shams," and of this it is enough to say that if
+    Germany and Austria had accepted Servians reply as sufficient, and
+    Servia had subsequently failed to fulfill its promises thus made in the
+    utmost good faith, there would have been little sympathy for Servia, and
+    no general war. Indeed, both Russia and England pledged their influence
+    to compel Servia, if necessary, to meet fully any reasonable demand of
+    Austria. The outstanding question, which Servia agreed to arbitrate or
+    leave to the powers, was the participation of Austrian officials in the
+    Servian courts. This did not present a difficult problem. Austria's
+    professed desire for an impartial investigation could have been easily
+    attained by having the neutral powers appoint a commission of jurists to
+    make such investigation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On July 24 Sir Edward Grey also had asked the German Ambassador to use
+    his good influences at Vienna to secure an extension of time. To this
+    most reasonable request the answer and action of the German Government
+    was disingenuous in the extreme. They agreed to "pass on" the
+    suggestion, but the German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs added
+    that as the Austrian Prime Minister was away from Vienna there would be
+    delay and difficulty in getting the time limit extended, and
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "he admitted quite freely that the Austro-Hungarian Government
+     <i>wished to give the Servians a lesson and that they meant to
+     take military action. He also admitted that the Servian
+     Government could not swallow certain of the Austro-Hungarian
+     demands</i>."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    He added that Germany did not want a general war and "he would do all in
+    his power to prevent such a calamity."
+</p>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," Nos. 11 and 18.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Immediately on the issuance of the ultimatum the Austrian Foreign
+    Minister, Count Berchtold, had most inopportunely taken himself to
+    Ischl, where he remained until after the expiration of the time limit.
+    Access to him proved difficult, and the Russian Chargé at Vienna, having
+    lodged a pacific protest with the Acting Foreign Minister in order to
+    take no chances, telegraphed it to Berchtold at Ischl. Nevertheless,
+    Berchtold's apparently designed absence from the capital was Germany's
+    excuse for its failure to get the time limit extended.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <b>If Germany made any communication to Austria in the interests of peace
+    the text has yet to be disclosed to the world.</b> A word from Berlin to
+    Vienna would have given the additional time which, with sincerely
+    pacific intentions, might have resulted in the preservation of peace.
+    Germany, so far as the record discloses, never spoke that word.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Contrast this attitude with that of Russia, whose Foreign Minister on
+    the morning of July 25 offered
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "to stand aside and leave the question in the hands of
+     England, France, Germany, and Italy."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 17.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Russia was the member of the Triple Entente most interested in the
+    fate of Servia, what proposal could have been more conciliatory or
+    magnanimous?
+</p>
+<p>
+    On July 25 Sir Edward Grey proposed that the four powers (including
+    Germany) should unite
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "in asking the Austrian and Russian Governments not to cross
+     the frontier and to give time for the four powers, acting at
+     Vienna and St. Petersburg, to try and arrange matters. If
+     Germany will adopt this view I feel strongly that France and
+     ourselves should act upon it. Italy would no doubt gladly
+     co-operate."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," Nos. 24 and 25.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    To this reasonable request the Imperial German Chancellor replied:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "First and last, we take the ground that this question must be
+     localized <i>by the abstention of all the powers from
+     intervention in it</i>,"
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    but added that Germany would, if an Austro-Russian dispute arose,
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "co-operate with the other great powers in mediation between
+     Russia and Austria."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [German "White Paper," Annex 13.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    This distinction is very hard to grasp. It attempts to measure the
+    difference between tweedledum and tweedledee. Russia's difference with
+    Austria was over the attempt of the latter to crush Servia. Germany
+    would not interfere in the latter, but would as an abstract proposition
+    mediate between Russia and Austria. For all practical purposes the two
+    things were indistinguishable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How she "co-operated" we shall presently see.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All that Germany <i>did</i> on July 25, so far as the record discloses, was
+    to "pass on" England's and Russia's requests for more time, but
+    subsequent events indicate that it was "passed on" without any
+    indorsement, for is it credible that Austria would have ignored its
+    ally's request for more time if it had ever been made?
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Austrian Foreign Minister, having launched the ultimatum, absented
+    himself from the capital, but the Russian Minister at Vienna, as already
+    stated, succeeded in submitting this most reasonable request verbally to
+    the Acting Foreign Minister, who simply said that he would submit it to
+    Count Berchtold, <i>but that he could predict with assurance a categorical
+    refusal</i>. Later on that day (July 25) Russia was definitely advised that
+    no time extension would be granted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    [Russian "Orange Paper," Nos. 11 and 12.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Was ever the peace of the world shattered upon so slight a pretext? A little
+    time, a few days, even a few hours, might have sufficed to preserve the
+    world from present horrors, but no time could be granted. <b>A colossal snap judgment was to be taken by these pettifogging
+    diplomats. A timely word from the German Chancellor would have saved the
+    flower of the youth of Germany and Austria from perishing.</b> It would be
+    difficult to find in recorded history a greater discourtesy to a
+    friendly power, for Austria was not at war with Russia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Defeated in their effort to get an extension of time, England, France,
+    and Russia made further attempts to preserve peace by temporarily
+    arresting military proceedings until efforts toward conciliation could
+    be made. Sir Edward Grey proposed to Germany, France, Russia, and Italy
+    that they should unite in asking Austria and Servia not to cross the
+    frontier "until we had had time to try and arrange matters between
+    them," but the German Ambassador read Sir Edward Grey a telegram that he
+    had received from the German Foreign Office that "once she [Austria] had
+    launched that note [the ultimatum] Austria could not draw back."
+</p>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 25.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    As we have seen, Germany never, so far as the record discloses, sought
+    in any way to influence Austria to make this or any concession. Its
+    attitude was shown by the declaration of its Ambassador at Paris to the
+    French Minister of Foreign Affairs, which, while disclaiming that
+    Germany had countenanced the Austrian ultimatum, yet added that Germany
+    approved its point of view,
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "and that certainly the arrow, once sent, Germany could not
+     allow herself to be guided except by her duty to her ally."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    This seemed to be the fatal fallacy of Germany, that its duties to
+    civilization were so slight that it should support its ally, Austria,
+    whether the latter were right or wrong. Such was its policy, and it
+    carried it out with fatal consistency. To support its ally in actual war
+    may be defensible, but to support it in times of peace in an iniquitous
+    demand and a policy of gross discourtesy offends every sense of
+    international morality.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the following day Russia proposed to Austria that they should enter
+    into an exchange of private views, with the object of an alteration in
+    common of some clauses of the Austrian note of July 23. <i>To this Austria
+    never even replied.</i> The Russian Minister communicated this suggestion
+    to the German Minister of Foreign Affairs and expressed the hope that he
+    would "find it possible to advise Vienna to meet our proposal," but this
+    did not accord with German policy, for on that day the German Ambassador
+    in Paris called upon the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in
+    reply to a similar suggestion that Germany should suggest to Vienna to
+    meet Servia in the same conciliatory spirit which Servia had shown, the
+    Ambassador answered that that "was not possible in view of the
+    resolution taken not to interfere in the Austro-Servian conflict."
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the same day England asked France, Italy, and Germany to meet in
+    London for an immediate conference to preserve the peace of Europe, and
+    to this fruitful suggestion, which might have saved the peace of Europe,
+    the German Chancellor replied with the pitiful quibble that "it is
+    impossible to bring our ally before a European court in its difference
+    with Servia," although it affected to accept "in principle" the policy
+    of mediation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Germany's acceptance "in principle" of a policy which she in practice
+    thwarted suggests the law-abiding tendencies of that Maine statesman who
+    was "for the Maine prohibition liquor law, but against its enforcement."
+</p>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 46.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Germany's refusal to have Servia's case submitted to the powers even for
+    their consideration is the more striking when it is recalled that the
+    German Ambassador at London quoted to Sir Edward Grey the German
+    Secretary of State as saying
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "that there were some things in the Austrian note that Servia
+     could hardly be expected to accept,"
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    thus recognizing that Austria's ultimatum was, at least in part, unjust.
+    Sir Edward Grey then called the German Ambassador's attention to the
+    fact that if Austria refused the conciliatory reply of Servia and
+    marched into that country
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "it meant that she was determined to crush Servia at all
+     costs, being reckless of the consequences that might be
+     involved."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    He added that the Servian reply
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "should at least be treated as a basis for discussion and
+     pause,"
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    and asked that the German Government should urge this at Vienna, but the
+    German Secretary of State on July 27 replied that such a conference "was
+    not practicable," and that it "would practically amount to a court of
+    arbitration," and could not, in his opinion, be called together "except
+    at the request of Austria and Russia."
+</p>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," Nos. 43 and 46.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    That this was a mere evasion is perfectly plain. Germany already knew
+    that Austria would not ask for such a conference, for Austria had
+    already refused Russia's request for an extension of time and had
+    actually commenced its military operations. Germany's attitude is best
+    indicated by the letter of the Russian Minister in Germany to the
+    Russian Foreign Office in which he states that on July 27 he called at
+    the German Foreign Office and asked it
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "to urge upon Vienna in a more pressing fashion to take up
+     this line of conciliation. Jagow replied that he could not
+     advise Austria to yield."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [Russian "Orange Paper," No. 38.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Why not? Russia had advised Servia to yield, and Servia had conceded
+    nearly every claim. Why could not the German Foreign Office advise
+    Vienna to meet conciliation by conciliation, if its desire for peace
+    were sincere? All that Russia and England desired was that a little time
+    and consideration should be given, without prejudice to the rights or
+    claims of Austria, before the peace of the world was hopelessly
+    shattered.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Before this interview took place the French Ambassador had called at the
+    German Foreign Office on a similar errand and urged the English
+    suggestion that action should at once be taken by England, Germany,
+    Russia, and France at St. Petersburg and Vienna, to the effect that
+    Austria and Servia
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "should abstain from any act which might aggravate the
+     situation at the present hour."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    By this was meant that there should be, pending further parleys, no
+    invasion of Servia by Austria and none of Austria by Russia. <i>To this
+    the German Foreign Minister opposed a categorical refusal.</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the same day the Russian Ambassador at Vienna had "a long and earnest
+    conversation" with the Austrian Under Secretary of State for Foreign
+    Affairs. He expressed the earnest hope that
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "something would be done before Servia was actually invaded.
+     Baron Machio replied that this would now be difficult, as a
+     skirmish had already taken place on the Danube, in which the
+     Servians had been aggressors."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    The Russian Ambassador then said that his country would do all it could
+    to keep the Servians quiet,
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "and even to fall back before an Austrian advance in order to
+     gain time."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    He urged that the Austrian Ambassador at St. Petersburg should be
+    furnished with full powers to continue discussions with the Russian
+    Minister for Foreign Affairs,
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "who was very willing to advise Servia to yield all that could
+     be fairly asked of her as an independent power."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    The only reply to this reasonable suggestion was that it would be
+    submitted to the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 56.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the same day the German Ambassador at Paris called upon the French
+    Foreign Office and strongly insisted on the "<i>exclusion of all
+    possibility of mediation or of conference</i>," and yet contemporaneously
+    the Imperial German Chancellor was advising London that he had
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "started the efforts toward mediation in Vienna, immediately
+     in the way desired by Sir Edward Grey, and had further
+     communicated to the Austrian Foreign Minister the wish of the
+     Russian Foreign Minister for a direct talk in Vienna."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    What hypocrisy! In the formal German defense, the official apologist for
+    that country, after stating his conviction
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "that an act of mediation could not take into consideration
+     the Austro-Servian conflict, which was purely an
+     Austro-Hungarian affair,"
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    claimed that Germany had transmitted Sir Edward Grey's further
+    suggestion to Vienna, in which Austria-Hungary was urged
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "either to agree to accept the Servian answer as sufficient or
+     to look upon it as a basis for further conversations";
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    but the Austro-Hungarian Government&mdash;playing the rôle of the wicked
+    partner of the combination&mdash;"in full appreciation of our mediatory
+    activity," (so says the German "White Paper" with sardonic humor,)
+    replied to this proposition that, coming as it did after the opening of
+    hostilities, "<i>it was too late</i>."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Does any reasonable man question for a moment that, if Germany had done
+    something more than merely "transmit" these wise and pacific
+    suggestions, Austria would have complied with the suggestions of its
+    powerful ally or that Austria would have suspended its military
+    operations if Germany had given any intimation of such a wish?
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the following day, July 28, the door was further closed on any
+    possibility of compromise when the Austrian Minister for Foreign Affairs
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "said, quietly but firmly, <i>that no discussion could be
+     accepted on the basis of the Servian note</i>; that war would be
+     declared today, and that the well-known pacific character of
+     the Emperor, as well as, he might add, his own, might be
+     accepted as a guarantee that the war was both just and
+     inevitable; that this was a matter that must be settled
+     directly between the two parties immediately concerned."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    To this arrogant and unreasonable contention that Europe must accept the
+    guarantee of the Austrian Foreign Minister as to the righteousness of
+    Austria's quarrel the British Ambassador suggested "the larger aspect of
+    the question," namely, the peace of Europe, and to this "larger aspect,"
+    which should have given any reasonable official some ground for pause,
+    the Austrian Foreign Minister replied that he
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "had it also in mind, but thought that Russia ought not to
+     oppose operations like those impending, which did not aim at
+     territorial aggrandizement, and which could no longer be
+     postponed."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 62.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    The private conversations between Russia and Austria having thus failed,
+    Russia returned to the proposition of a European conference to preserve
+    its peace. Its Ambassador in Vienna on July 28 had a conference with
+    Berchtold and pointed to the dangers to the peace of Europe and the
+    desirability of good relations between Austria-Hungary and Russia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To this Count Berchtold replied that he understood perfectly well the
+    seriousness of the situation and the advantages of a frank explanation
+    with the Cabinet at St. Petersburg.
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "He told me that, on the other hand, the Austro-Hungarian
+     Government, which had only reluctantly decided upon the
+     energetic measures which it had taken against Servia, <i>could
+     now neither withdraw nor enter upon any discussion of the
+     terms of the Austro-Hungarian note."</i>
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [Russian "Orange Paper," No. 45.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the same day, July 28, the German Imperial Chancellor sent for the
+    English Ambassador and excused his failure to accept the proposal of
+    conference of the neutral powers, on the ground that he did not think it
+    would be effective,
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "because such a conference would in his opinion have the
+     appearance of an 'Areopagus' consisting of two powers of each
+     group sitting in judgment upon the two remaining powers."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    After engaging in this pitiful and insincere quibble, and when reminded
+    of Servia's conciliatory reply, amounting to a virtual surrender,
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "his Excellency said that he did not wish to discuss the
+     Servian note, but that Austria's standpoint, and in this he
+     agreed, was that her quarrel with Servia was a purely Austrian
+     concern, <i>with which Russia had nothing to do</i>."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 71.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this point the rules of the countries intervened in the dispute. The
+    Kaiser, having returned from Norway, telegraphed the Czar, under date of
+    July 28, that he was
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "exerting all my influence to endeavor to make Austria-Hungary
+     come to an open and satisfying understanding with Russia,"
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    and invoked the Czar's aid.
+</p>
+<p>
+    [German "White Paper," Annex 20.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    If the Kaiser were sincere, and he may have been, <i>his attitude was not
+    that of his Foreign Office</i>. Upon the face of the record we have only
+    his own assurance that he was doing everything to preserve peace, but
+    the steps that he took or the communications he made to influence
+    Austria <i>are not found in the formal defense which the German Government
+    has given to the world</i>. The Kaiser can only convince the world of his
+    innocence of the crime of his Potsdam camarilla by giving the world <i>the
+    text</i> of any advice he gave the Austrian officials. He has produced his
+    telegrams to the Czar. <i>Where are those he presumably sent to Francis
+    Joseph or Count Berchtold? Where are the instructions he gave his own
+    Ambassadors or Foreign Minister?</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is significant that on the same day Sazonof telegraphed to Count
+    Benckendorff:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "My conversations with the German Ambassador confirm my
+     impression that Germany is rather favorable to the
+     uncompromising attitude adopted by Austria,"
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    and he adds, and history will vindicate him in the conclusion, that
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "the Berlin Cabinet, which might have been able to arrest the
+     whole development of this crisis, seems to exercise no action
+     on its ally."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [Russian "Orange Paper," No. 43.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    On July 29 Sir Edward Goschen telegraphed Sir Edward Grey that he had
+    that night seen the German Chancellor, who had "just returned from
+    Potsdam," where he had presumably seen the Kaiser. The German Chancellor
+    then showed clearly how the wind was blowing in making the suggestion to
+    Sir Edward Goschen that if England would remain neutral, Germany would
+    agree to guarantee that she would not take any French territory. When
+    asked about the French colonies, no assurance was given.
+</p>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 85.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    Later in the day the German Chancellor again saw the English Ambassador,
+    and expressed regret
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "that events had marched too rapidly, and that it was
+     therefore too late to act upon your [Sir Edward Grey's]
+     suggestion that the Servian reply might form the basis of
+     discussion."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 75.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the same day the Ambassador for Germany at St. Petersburg called upon
+    Sazonof and expressed himself in favor of further explanations between
+    Vienna and St. Petersburg, to which Sazonof assented. [Russian "Orange
+    Paper," No. 49.] On the same day Sir Edward Grey asked the German
+    Government
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "<i>to suggest any form of procedure</i> under which the idea of
+     mediation between Austria and Russia, already accepted by the
+     German Government in principle, <i>could be applied</i>."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    To which the German Foreign Office replied that it could not act for
+    fear that if they made to their ally any suggestion that looked like
+    pressure it might "<i>cause them [Austria] to precipitate matter and
+    present a fait accompli</i>." [See letter of Sir Edward Goschen to Sir
+    Edward Grey, July 29&mdash;English "White Paper," No. 70.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    This was the last and worst of the quibbles put forth to gain time while
+    Austria was making progress toward Belgrade. It assumes that Austria
+    might not only fail to respect the wish in a matter of common concern of
+    its more powerful ally, but that it might act in disregard of Germany's
+    wish. This strains human credulity to the breaking point. Did the German
+    Secretary of State keep a straight face when he uttered this sardonic
+    pleasantry? It may be the duty of a diplomat to lie on occasion, but is
+    it ever necessary to utter such a stupid falsehood? The German Secretary
+    of State sardonically added in the same conversation that he was not
+    sure that the effort for peace had not hastened the declaration of war,
+    as though the declaration of war against Servia had not been planned and
+    expected from the first.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As a final effort to meet quibbles, the British Ambassador at Berlin
+    then suggested that after Austria had satisfied her military prestige,
+    the moment might then be favorable for four disinterested powers to
+    discuss the situation and come forward with suggestions for preventing
+    graver complications.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To this proposal the German Secretary of State seemingly acquiesced,
+    but, as usual, <i>nothing whatever was done</i>. [English "White Paper," No.
+    76.] It is true that on July 29 Sir Edward Grey was assured by the
+    German Ambassador that the German Foreign Office was
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "endeavoring to make Vienna explain in a satisfactory form at
+     St. Petersburg the scope and extension of Austrian proceedings
+     in Servia,"
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    but again the communications which the German Foreign Office sent to
+    Vienna on this point <i>have never yet been disclosed to the world</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 84.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    In this same conference Sir Edward Grey
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "urged that the <i>German Government should suggest any method</i>
+     by which the influence of the four powers could be used
+     together to prevent war between Austria and Russia. France
+     agreed, Italy agreed. The whole idea of mediation or mediating
+     influence was ready to be put into operation <i>by any method
+     that Germany could suggest</i> if mine were not acceptable. In
+     fact, mediation was ready to come into operation by any method
+     that Germany thought possible, if only Germany would 'press
+     the button' in the interests of peace."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 84.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    The difficulty was, however, that Germany never "pressed the button,"
+    although obviously it would have been easy for her to do so, as the
+    stronger and more influential member of the Double Alliance.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the same day the Austrian Government left a memorandum with Sir
+    Edward Grey to the effect that Count Mensdorff said that the war with
+    Servia must proceed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the night of July 29 the British Ambassador at Berlin was informed
+    that the German Foreign Office "<i>had not had time to send an answer
+    yet</i>" to the proposal that Germany suggest the form of mediation, but
+    that the question had been referred to the Austro-Hungarian Government
+    with a request as to "what would satisfy them."
+</p>
+<p>
+    [English "White Paper," No. 107.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the following day the German Ambassador informed Sir Edward Grey that
+    the German Government would endeavor to influence Austria, after taking
+    Belgrade and Servian territory in the region of the frontier, to promise
+    not to advance further, while the powers endeavored to arrange that
+    Servia should give satisfaction sufficient to pacify Austria, but if
+    Germany ever exercised any such pressure upon Vienna, <i>no evidence of it
+    has ever been given to the world</i>. Certainly it was not very effective,
+    and for the reasons mentioned it is impossible to conclude that the
+    advice of Germany, if in good faith, would not have been followed by its
+    weaker ally.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From all that appears in the record, Austria made no reply to this most
+    conciliatory suggestion of England, but, in the meantime, the
+    irrepressible Kaiser made the crisis more acute by cabling to the Czar
+    that the mobilization of Russia to meet the mobilization of Austria was
+    affecting his position of mediator, to which the Czar made a
+    conciliatory reply, stating that Russia's mobilization was only for a
+    defense against Austria.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Czar, to put at rest any anxiety of the Kaiser as to Russia's
+    intentions with respect to Germany, added:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "I thank you cordially for your mediation which permits the
+     hope that everything may yet end peaceably. It is technically
+     impossible to discontinue our military preparations which have
+     been made necessary by the Austrian mobilization. It is far
+     from us to want war. <i>As long as the negotiations between
+     Austria and Servia continue, my troops will undertake no
+     provocative action. I give you my solemn word thereon.</i> I
+     confide with all my faith in the grace of God, and I hope for
+     the success of your mediation in Vienna for the welfare of our
+     countries and the peace of Europe."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    What more could Russia do? If Austria continued to mobilize, why not
+    Russia?
+</p>
+<p>
+    On this day, July 30, the German Ambassador had two interviews at St.
+    Petersburg with Sazonof, and it was then that Sazonof drew up the
+    following formula as a basis for peace:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "If Austria, recognizing that her conflict with Servia has
+     assumed character of question of European interest, declares
+     herself ready to eliminate from her ultimatum the points which
+     violate principle of sovereignty of Servia, <i>Russia engages to
+     stop all military preparations</i>."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [Russian "Orange Paper," No. 60.]
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this stage King George telegraphed Prince Henry of Prussia that
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "the English Government was doing its utmost, suggesting to
+     Russia and France to suspend further military preparations, if
+     Austria will consent to be satisfied with the occupation of
+     Belgrade and neighboring Servian territory as a hostage for
+     satisfactory settlement of her demands, other countries
+     meanwhile suspending their war preparation."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    The King adds a hope that the Kaiser
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "will use his great influence to induce Austria to accept
+     this proposal, thus proving that Germany and England are
+     working together to prevent what would be an international
+     catastrophe."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    [Second German "White Paper."]
+</p>
+<p>
+    This last proposition, however, was never accepted or declined, for the
+    impetuous Kaiser gave his twelve-hour ultimatum to Russia to demobilize,
+    and this was an arrogant demand which no self-respecting power, much
+    less so great a one as Russia, could possibly accept.
+</p>
+<p>
+    While this demand was in progress Sir Edward Grey was making his last
+    attempt to preserve peace by asking Germany to sound Vienna, as he would
+    sound St. Petersburg, whether it would be possible for the four
+    disinterested powers to offer to Austria that they would
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "undertake to see that she obtained full satisfaction of her
+     demands on Servia, provided they did not embarrass Servian
+     sovereignty and the integrity of Servian territory."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    Sir Edward Grey went so far as to tell the German Ambassador that if
+    this was not satisfactory, and if Germany would make any reasonable
+    proposals to preserve peace and Russia and France rejected it, that
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "his Majesty's Government would have nothing to do with the
+     consequences,"
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    which obviously meant either neutrality or actual intervention in behalf
+    of Germany and Austria.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the same day the British Ambassador at Berlin besought the German
+    Foreign Office to
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "put pressure on the authorities at Vienna to do something in
+     the general interest to reassure Russia and to show themselves
+     disposed to continue discussions on a friendly basis."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    And Sir Edward Goschen reports that the German Foreign Minister replied
+    that last night he had
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "begged Austria to reply to your last proposal, and that he
+     had received a reply to the effect that the Austrian Minister
+     for Foreign Affairs would take the wishes of the Emperor this
+     morning in the matter."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    <i>Again the text of the letter in which Germany "begged" Austria to be
+    conciliatory is not found in the record.</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    The excuse of Germany that the mobilization of Russia compelled it to
+    mobilize does not justify the war. Mobilization does not necessarily
+    mean aggression, but simply preparation. If Russia had the right to
+    mobilize because Austria mobilized, Germany equally had the right to
+    mobilize when Russia mobilized, but it does not follow that either of
+    the three nations could justify a war to compel the other parties to
+    demobilize. Mobilization is only a preparation against eventualities. It
+    is the right of the sovereign State and by no code of ethics a <i>casus
+    belli</i>. The demand of Germany that Russia could not arm to defend
+    itself, when Austria was preparing for a possible attack on Russia, has
+    few, if any, parallels in history for bullying effrontery. It treated
+    Russia as an inferior, almost a vassal, State.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It must be observed that, while Germany insisted that Russia should
+    demobilize, the Kaiser offered no reciprocal promise. On his theory
+    Germany and Austria were to be left free to complete their preparations,
+    but Russia was to tie her own hands and leave herself "naked to her
+    enemies." This is shown by the last telegrams which passed between the
+    Czar and Kaiser. The Czar telegraphed:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "I have received your telegram. I comprehend that you are
+     forced to mobilize, but I should like to have from you the
+     same guaranty which I have given you, viz., that these
+     measures do not mean war, and that we shall continue to
+     negotiate for the welfare of our two countries and the
+     universal peace which is so dear to our hearts. With the aid
+     of God it must be possible to our long-tried friendship to
+     prevent the shedding of blood. I expect with full confidence
+     your urgent reply."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    To this the Kaiser replied:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     "I thank you for your telegram. I have shown yesterday to your
+     Government the way through which alone war may yet be averted.
+     Although I asked for a reply by today noon, no telegram from
+     my Ambassador has reached me with the reply of your
+     Government. I therefore have been forced to mobilize my army.
+     An immediate, clear, and unmistakable reply of your Government
+     is the sole way to avoid endless misery. Until I receive this
+     reply I am unable, to my great grief, to enter upon the
+     subject of your telegram. I must ask most earnestly that you,
+     without delay, order your troops to commit, under no
+     circumstances, the slightest violation of our frontiers."
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    This impetuous step of Germany to compel its great neighbor to desist
+    from military preparations to defend itself came most inopportunely, for
+    on Aug. 1 the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador <i>for the first time</i> declared
+    to the Russian Government its willingness to discuss the terms of the
+    Austrian ultimatum to Servia, and it was then suggested that the form of
+    the ultimatum and the questions arising thereon should be discussed in
+    London. (Dispatch from British Ambassador at Vienna to Sir Edward Grey,
+    dated Sept. 1, 1914.) Sir Edward Grey at once advised the English
+    Ambassador in Berlin of the fact, and urged that it was still possible
+    to maintain peace
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     &quot;if only a little respite in time can be gained
+before any great power begins war,&quot;</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     [English &quot;White Paper,&quot; No. 131.]
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    but the Kaiser, having issued the arrogant ultimatum to Russia to
+    demobilize in twelve hours, had gone too far for retreat, and, spurred
+    on by the arrogant Potsdam military party, he "let slip the dogs of
+    war." After the fatal Rubicon had been crossed and the die was cast the
+    Czar telegraphed King George:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In this solemn hour I wish to assure you once more I have done all in
+    my power to avert war."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such will be the verdict of history.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The Judgment.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    These are <i>the facts</i> as shown by the record, and upon them, in my
+    judgment, an impartial court would not hesitate to pass the following
+    judgment:
+</p>
+<p>
+    1&mdash;<i>That Germany and Austria in a time of profound peace secretly
+    concerted together to impose their will upon Europe and upon Servia in a
+    matter affecting the balance of power in Europe. Whether in so doing
+    they intended to precipitate a European war to determine the mastery of
+    Europe is not satisfactorily established, although their whole course of
+    conduct suggests this as a possibility. They made war almost inevitable
+    by (a) issuing an ultimatum that was grossly unreasonable and
+    disproportionate to any grievance that Austria had and (b) in giving to
+    Servia, and Europe, insufficient time to consider the rights and
+    obligations of all interested nations.</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    2&mdash;<i>That Germany had at all times the power to compel Austria to
+    preserve a reasonable and conciliatory course, but at no time
+    effectively exerted that influence. On the contrary, she certainly
+    abetted, and possibly instigated, Austria in its unreasonable course.</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    3&mdash;<i>That England, France, Italy, and Russia at all times sincerely
+    worked for peace, and for this purpose not only overlooked the original
+    misconduct of Austria but made every reasonable concession in the hope
+    of preserving peace.</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    4&mdash;<i>That Austria, having mobilized its army, Russia was reasonably
+    justified in mobilizing its forces. Such act of mobilization was the
+    right of any sovereign State, and as long as the Russian armies did not
+    cross the border or take any aggressive action no other nation had any
+    just right to complain, each having the same right to make similar
+    preparations.</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    5&mdash;<i>That Germany, in abruptly declaring war against Russia for failure
+    to demobilize when the other powers had offered to make any reasonable
+    concession and peace parleys were still in progress, precipitated the
+    war.</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    6&mdash;<i>That Belgium as a sovereign State has as an inherent right the power
+    to determine when and under what conditions an alien can cross her
+    frontiers. This right exists independently of treaties, but is, in the
+    case of Belgium, reinforced by the Treaty of 1839 and The Hague
+    Convention, whereby the leading European nations (including Germany)
+    guarantee its "perpetual neutrality." The invasion of Belgium by Germany
+    was in violation of these rights, and England only respected its own
+    solemn covenant when, in defense of that neutrality, it declared war
+    against Germany.</i>
+</p>
+<h3>
+    In Conclusion.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The writer of this article has reached these conclusions with
+    reluctance, as he has a feeling of deep affection for the German people
+    and equal admiration for their ideals and matchless progress. Even more
+    he admires the magnificent courage with which the German Nation, beset
+    on every hand by powerful antagonists, is now defending its prestige as
+    a nation. The whole-hearted devotion of this great nation to its flag is
+    worthy of the best traditions of the Teutonic race. Nevertheless, this
+    cannot alter the ethical truth, which stands apart from any
+    considerations of nationality; nor can it affect the conclusion that the
+    German Nation has been plunged into this abyss by its scheming statesmen
+    and its self-centred and highly neurotic Kaiser, who in the twentieth
+    century sincerely believes that he is the proxy of Almighty God on
+    earth, and therefore infallible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In visiting its condemnation, the Supreme Court of Civilization should
+    therefore distinguish between the military caste, headed by the Kaiser
+    and the Crown Prince, which precipitated this great calamity, and the
+    German people.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The very secrecy of the plot against the peace of the world and the
+    failure to disclose to the German people the diplomatic communications
+    hereinbefore quoted, strongly suggest that this detestable war is not
+    merely a crime against civilization, <i>but also against the deceived and
+    misled German people</i>. They have a vision and are essentially
+    progressive and peace-loving in their national characteristics, while
+    the ideals of their military caste are those of the Dark Ages.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One day the German people will know the full truth and then there will
+    be a dreadful reckoning for those who have plunged a noble and
+    peace-loving nation into this fathomless chasm of misfortune.
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+  <blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <blockquote>
+        <blockquote>
+          <blockquote>
+            <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">    "Though the mills of God grind slowly,<br>
+      &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+      Yet they grind exceeding small,<br>
+    Though with patience He stands waiting,<br>
+      &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+      With exactness grinds He all."
+      </p>
+            </blockquote>
+          </blockquote>
+        </blockquote>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+  </blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+<br><hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    Critics Dispute Mr. Beck
+</h2>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is regrettable that President Wilson's admirable policy of strict
+    neutrality is not more sincerely and carefully observed by the press and
+    public of this country.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We are a cosmopolitan nation. Citizens of the five great warring
+    countries and their descendants, to a very great extent, constitute our
+    population. Partiality of any kind tends to destroy the elemental ties
+    which bind us together, to disrupt our Union, and to make us a house
+    divided against itself. James M. Beck's article in last Sunday's TIMES
+    is of the kind which, serving no good purpose, helps to loosen, if not
+    sever, our most vital domestic ties. While not for an instant doubting
+    Mr. Beck's sincerity, we must take issue with his inadvertently
+    ill-timed expression of opinion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The article in question is based on the following statement: "Any
+    discussion of the ethical merits of this great controversy must start
+    with the assumption that there is such a thing as international
+    morality." How does Mr. Beck define "international morality"? How can he
+    assume that to exist which each of the contending nations by their
+    diverse actions prove to be non-extant? How can he claim that there is
+    an "international morality" of accepted form when each nation claims
+    that its interpretation must be accepted by the others?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Beck's allegation that the question "Was England justified in
+    declaring war against Germany?" is more easily disposed of than the
+    questions "Was Austria justified in declaring war against Servia?" and
+    "Was Germany justified in declaring war against Russia and France?"
+    proves two things&mdash;first, that his interest lies primarily in the
+    vindication of England; second, that he disregards the fundamental
+    causes and recognizes only the precipitating causes of the war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The precipitating cause of the war between England and Germany is
+    verbosely if inadequately covered by his article. We must admit that a
+    treaty was broken by Germany, yet we contend that this broken agreement
+    was a pretext for a war fomented and impelled by basic economic causes.
+    At the outset, let us distinguish between a contract and a treaty. A
+    contract is an agreement between individuals contemplating enforcement
+    by a court of law; punishment by money damages in the great majority of
+    cases, by a specific performance in a very few. A treaty is an agreement
+    between nations contemplating enforcement by a court of international
+    public opinion; punishment by money indemnity in the great majority of
+    cases, by specific performance (i.e., force of arms) in a very few.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Germany's Existence Threatened.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Germany contends that her breach of treaty obligation is punishable by
+    the payment of money indemnity to the aggrieved party. This she has
+    offered to do in the case of Belgium, as she has already done in the
+    case of Luxemburg. Germany's existence was so seriously threatened that
+    her action seems justifiable, and there remains a sole moral obligation
+    to compensate any neutral country injured by her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mere fact that Belgium had made an unfortunate alliance with England
+    is deplorable in that Belgium has suffered terribly; but this suffering
+    is not attributable to Germany. When Japan violated Chinese neutrality,
+    China protested. Though she was entitled to a money indemnity, there is
+    no valid reason under the sun why the United States as a guarantor of
+    the integrity of China should declare war against Japan. England's
+    justification, in so far as there can be any justification for adding to
+    the toll of death, is the same as that of Germany, the preservation of
+    national sovereignty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Further: "It seems unnecessary to discuss the wanton disregard of these
+    solemn obligations." There can be nothing wanton in a struggle for
+    existence, and that this European war is such a struggle is the only
+    possible explanation of its magnitude, ferocity, and vast possible
+    consequences. Then, too, though deplorable, treaty obligations are not
+    solemn, as Italy has proved to the complete satisfaction of so many.
+    Italy's contention that this is an aggressive war on the part of Germany
+    and Austria is as untenable as the German contention that it is an
+    aggressive war on the part of England. For this war was not an
+    aggressive war on the part of any nation, but an unavoidable war caused
+    by the simultaneous bursting of the long-gathering economic storm
+    clouds.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Again: "The ethical aspects of this great conflict must largely depend
+    upon the record that has been made up by the official communications."
+    This is similar to a contention that the ethical rights in a case in
+    court must depend upon the astuteness of counsel in summing up to the
+    jury. "A court would be deeply impressed ... by the significant
+    omissions of documents known to be in existence." A court of law, as our
+    former Assistant Attorney General of the United States surely knows,
+    compels no one to give testimony that tends to incriminate, and,
+    furthermore, does not construe failure to testify on the grounds that it
+    will tend to incriminate against the defendant. In the law the defendant
+    is entitled to every reasonable doubt. It is also conceivable that a
+    reasonable time for the defense to present its case would be granted
+    before passing judgment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Passing on: "To discuss the justice of Austria's grievances against
+    Servia would take us ... into the realm of disputed facts." This seems a
+    delectable bit of humor. We respectfully submit that Mr. Beck's other
+    assertions might also be considered as "in the realm of disputed facts."
+    Mr. Beck admits that Austria had a just grievance against Servia, though
+    he questions her method of redress. Though we conceive that in the
+    unfortunate European tangle Austria relied on German support in the
+    event of international conflict, we submit that reliance on Russian
+    support was a bigger factor in encouraging little Servia to defy her big
+    neighbor than the remoter help that Germany would furnish Austria in the
+    event of the conflict spreading.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Austria, in the exercise of her right to engage in a punitive expedition
+    against Servia, guaranteed that she would do nothing to generalize the
+    conflict by her assurances to Russia and to the world that there would
+    be no annexation of Servian territory or annihilation of the Servian
+    Kingdom. Whether these assurances were genuine or not is impossible of
+    determination. We have no right to constitute ourselves arbiters of
+    their sincerity.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    No European Solidarity.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Mr. Beck speaks of "the solidarity of European civilization and the fact
+    that by policy and diplomatic intercourse ... a United European State
+    exists, even though its organization be as yet inchoate." This
+    solidarity is conspicuous only by its utter non-existence. Whatever may
+    have been achieved by policy and diplomatic intercourse has been marred
+    and rendered useless by the lines of demarkation of the spheres of
+    influence of the great powers of Europe and by the racial and
+    temperamental incongruities of Europe's population.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We read: "Servia had forty-eight hours to answer; ... the other European
+    nations had barely a day to consider what could be done to preserve the
+    peace of Europe. Why should an Austro-Servian war compromise the peace
+    of Europe?" Was it not because of the tangled web of international
+    diplomacy, the Triple Entente as well as the Triple Alliance?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Referring to a German warning in regard to Austria's demands on Servia,
+    "the German Foreign Office anticipates that Servia 'will refuse to
+    comply with these demands'&mdash;why, if they were justified?" We grieve at
+    the shattered ideal of Mr. Beck, who, in the face of the international
+    calamity which has befallen the world, still can believe that all
+    justifiable demands are complied with.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Again, quoting German "White Paper," Annex 1B, Germany desired "that
+    the dispute be localized, since any intervention of another power, on
+    account of the various alliance obligations, would bring consequences
+    impossible to measure." The explanation of this statement is not&mdash;an
+    aggressor threatens his adversary, but, rather, a prudent man begs
+    opposing factions to keep cool.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Great space is devoted in the article in question to Germany's
+    unwillingness to place the Austro-Servian controversy in the hands of
+    France, England, Germany, and Italy. As Germany disavows all interest in
+    the controversy, if she speaks truly, it was not within her power to
+    dictate to her ally in a matter which she could in nowise control except
+    by force of arms. Furthermore, had she had the power, how could she be
+    expected to exert pressure on her ally to leave a vital controversy to a
+    court of four, two of whom were bound by alliances with Russia,
+    Austria's real antagonist, and a third, (Italy,) as subsequent events
+    have shown, Austria's natural, geographical, and hereditary enemy? At
+    best, had each power held to its treaty obligations, there would have
+    been a deadlock.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Further: "The Russian Minister ... called at the German Foreign Office
+    and asked it 'to urge upon Vienna ... to take up this line of
+    conciliation. Jagow replied that he could not advise Austria to yield.'"
+    Elsewhere in the article a statement is made that the Austro-Servian and
+    Austro-Russian questions "for all practical purposes ... were
+    indistinguishable." This inconsistency of having Servia in the light of
+    a principal and then again in the light of an agent is the greatest
+    stumbling block to a clear analysis of the precipitating cause of the
+    war. The logical explanation of Servia's position is that of Russia's
+    agent. Hence Germany could not be expected to exert the same pressure on
+    an allied principal that Russia could exert on her agent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is true that Germany engaged in many blundering diplomatic quibbles
+    in the final stages of preparation for the war; but it is also true that
+    England quibbled, though with greater diplomatic finesse; for instance,
+    "Sir Edward Grey went so far as to tell the German Ambassador that ...
+    if Germany would make any reasonable proposals to preserve peace, and
+    Russia and France rejected it, that 'his Majesty's Government would have
+    nothing to do with the consequences.'" Here it is apparent to every one
+    that the word "reasonable" begs the questions.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Slav and Teuton.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The German people were encouraged to relish the idea of a war against
+    Russia once that war became likely, for sooner or later it seemed
+    inevitable that Slav and Teuton would clash, and Germany felt confident
+    that at the present time she outmatched her enemy. The Russians, too,
+    were encouraged to desire the Slav provinces of Austria, which racially
+    are a part of the Russian domain. The English people were made to relish
+    this opportunity to strike their great commercial competitor, especially
+    when they could do so with little likelihood of unfavorable criticisms.
+    Finally, the impressionable French people were stirred to thoughts of
+    revenge and recovery of their lost provinces.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sympathy with any country in this most disgraceful yet most inevitable
+    of wars brands the sympathizer as a party to the material and lustful
+    purposes of at least one of the combatants. There is no ethical
+    justification of this war from any standpoint. There is no justification
+    of this war from any standpoint. There is only an explanation of the war
+    from an economic standpoint. All these specious arguments on the
+    precipitating causes of the war can be but for the display of brilliant
+    forensic oratory and matchless diction. Let us thrust aside in these
+    dark moments of peril and horror all subterfuge.
+</p>
+<p>
+    England, overburdened with taxation, was on the verge of civil war.
+    Russia, whose masses were overridden roughshod by a bureaucracy
+    weighting down the peasants with onerous national burdens, expected
+    sooner or later the cataclysmic upheaval with which the Nihilistic
+    societies have long been threatening its tyrannical Government. France,
+    seriously financially embarrassed because of crop impoverishment and
+    bad foreign investments in Brazil, Russia, and the Balkans, was subject
+    to continued internal political upheavals, with ever-changing Ministries
+    and a growing Socialist Party.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Austria, "the ramshackle empire," was in danger of disintegrating from a
+    variety of causes, not the least of which was the infusibility of its
+    racially different elements. Germany, in a blind race for commercial
+    supremacy, suffered from industrial overproduction, thus creating an
+    unhealthy financial condition which fortified the Socialist Party to an
+    extent which threatened her imperialistic form of government itself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So these monarchies whose days were numbered, because of dissatisfaction
+    at the waste and extravagance of a world gone mad with national excesses
+    committed in the name of civilization, in reality the price of our
+    modernization, in a final desperate effort to rally their waning
+    fortunes stampeded their awakening masses into a ruinous interracial war
+    in order to stave off the torch and the guillotine.
+</p>
+<p align="right" style="text-align: right">GEORGE E. BERNHEIMER.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    New York, Oct. 30, 1914.
+</p>
+<br><hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+
+<h2>
+    Russia to Blame
+</h2>
+
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Allow me to submit the following in answer to the article of James M.
+    Beck, entitled "Case of the Double Alliance vs. the Triple Entente,"
+    published in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Oct. 25, 1914:
+</p>
+<p>
+    The case of "Russian Mobilization vs. German Mediation." Q.&mdash;Upon whom
+    was the duty to yield?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Beck has spent considerable time and effort to prove, at least by
+    inference, that Germany must have been informed beforehand of the
+    Austrian ultimatum to Servia. Personally, I am convinced that the
+    ultimatum in question was sent with the full knowledge and consent of
+    Germany; and, whether this is true or not, I maintain that it was
+    Austria's duty to inform her ally before taking a step which was likely
+    to endanger the peace of Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The concession of this point takes me immediately to the ultimatum
+    itself and to the question, "Was the tenor of the ultimatum justified?"
+    Mr. Beck, in his judgment, says: "The ultimatum is grossly unreasonable
+    and disappropriate to any grievance that Austria had." Perhaps Mr. Beck
+    is right, but I have good reasons to think that the tenor of the
+    ultimatum was fully justified, in view of Servia's former conduct.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Austria was dealing here with a Government the real spirits of which had
+    come into power by the commission of one of the most dastardly crimes of
+    modern times. A crime which, at the time of its commission, sent a shock
+    of horror through the entire civilized world, to wit, "the outrageous
+    murder of the former King and Queen of Servia," outrageous because it
+    was perpetrated by the so-called aristocracy of Servia. The
+    long-continued agitation carried on by Servia against Austria, at the
+    instigation of Russia, which finally culminated in another no less
+    outrageous assassination, that of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his
+    consort, to my idea fully justified Austria in making demands which
+    under ordinary circumstances might have been termed "unreasonable."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The question whether Austria was justified in going to war against
+    Servia is a debatable one, but I respectfully refer to the fact that our
+    own country, the United States, was only very recently on the verge of
+    precipitating war with a "much weaker" nation than ours, on account of
+    the latter's refusal to salute the American flag. Neither did we stop on
+    that occasion with the ultimatum, but we followed it up with dispatching
+    a fleet of warships, the landing of troops, and the seizure of Vera
+    Cruz.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From the time Austria's ultimatum was sent all the great powers seemed
+    to have professed a great eagerness for the preservation of peace. Mr.
+    Beck asserts that Germany was not sincere in its desire for peace and
+    could have avoided the war if it had seriously tried to exert its
+    influence over Austria. This finding is based on the inference drawn
+    from the fact that Germany failed to achieve any results.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To determine whether Mr. Beck is justified in finding as he does, it is
+    necessary, first of all, to examine the exact status of the powers at
+    the time the ultimatum was sent. We find that Austria had a just
+    grievance against Servia, for which it was seeking redress. An issue was
+    therefore raised between Austria and Servia. Germany, although Austria's
+    ally, immediately defined its attitude by declaring emphatically that
+    "the question at issue was one for settlement between Servia and Austria
+    alone."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Why Did Russia Mobilize?
+</h3>
+<p>
+    I beg to ask Mr. Beck to answer the following question: By what
+    right&mdash;moral, legal, or equitable&mdash;did Russia make Servia's cause its
+    own? Did Russia have any alliance with Servia? I further ask: What
+    privity existed between Austria, Servia, and Russia?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Suppose Mr. Beck can justify the action of Russia, although a "rank
+    outsider," in taking Servia's part, how can he possibly justify the
+    positively unreasonable and, under the circumstances, most dangerous
+    step of "actual mobilization" on the part of Russia?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Beck has tried to justify the mobilization by quoting the Russian
+    excuse "that Russia's mobilization was only for a defense against
+    Austria." On close examination what does this amount to? It resolves
+    itself into a situation somewhat like this: A sends an ultimatum to B
+    seeking redress for a wrong committed by B upon A, whereupon C mobilizes
+    "for defense against A." I leave it to the average American of ordinary
+    intelligence to find a reason for C's mobilization "for defense against
+    A." Mr. Beck might as well try to justify a mobilization on the part of
+    Japan if the United States was preparing to invade Mexico for the
+    purpose of redressing an insult to the American flag. Does Mr. Beck
+    realize the seriousness of actual mobilization by Russia at that
+    critical moment? Not one of the other powers dared to take this one step
+    which among nations is regarded as tantamount to a declaration of war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And what did the Kaiser do at this moment? He did the only thing he
+    could do, and, I dare say, the only thing our American Nation could have
+    done under the same circumstances. He wired the Czar and stated: "I am
+    willing to bring my influences to bear upon Austria, provided you agree
+    to cease mobilization." Was this demand unreasonable? What else could
+    Germany have done, I ask, with the Russian bear standing on the border
+    with the sword already drawn? This moment was the crucial and decisive
+    one in the prologue to this awful world drama.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The only question therefore and the all-important one to be submitted to
+    the Court of Civilization, is, Whose duty was it to yield? Was it
+    Russia's, with the sword already drawn against a country which had not
+    attacked it, not even threatened it, or was it Germany's, with the sword
+    in the sheath?
+</p>
+<p>
+    In his "conclusion," Mr. Beck speaks of Germany as "beset on every hand
+    by powerful antagonists." Does he really mean to deprive the German
+    Emperor of the right to demand as a condition precedent to mediation on
+    his part the discontinuance of mobilization by Russia?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Beck in his "judgment" under Paragraph 4 says "that Austria, having
+    mobilized its army, Russia was reasonably justified in mobilizing its
+    forces." The use of the qualifying word "reasonably" seems to indicate
+    that even Mr. Beck is not quite certain that Russia was in fact
+    justified in mobilizing its forces.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Is it reasonable, just, and fair of Mr. Beck to expect Germany, "beset
+    on every hand by powerful antagonists," to permit Russia to continue
+    mobilizing its 18,000,000 soldiers and have Germany believe that Russia
+    was sincere in its "peaceful intentions" in the face of actual
+    mobilization? At this moment the German Kaiser made a very reasonable
+    demand upon Russia to cease mobilization, and I ask every fair-minded
+    American, whether lawyer or layman, "whose duty it was to yield" at this
+    moment. The answer to this question will settle the much-disputed point
+    as to the actual cause of the war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In conclusion, I beg to ask Mr. Beck: Why expect so much of Germany and
+    nothing of Russia, when Germany had not merely professed her peaceful
+    intentions, but actually maintained peace for over forty years, during
+    which period not a foot of territory had been acquired by her through
+    conquest? This is a fact.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Coming into a court of law supported by such a reputation, does Mr. Beck
+    really believe that the decision of the court would have been in favor
+    of Russia? Does Mr. Beck really believe that the decision would have
+    been against Germany, whose war lord was begging the Czar almost on his
+    knees to avoid the awful calamity by the discontinuance of mobilization?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Picture the United States about to invade Mexico to redress an insult to
+    the American flag. Picture England as the ally of the United States, and
+    Japan supporting Mexico, without any alliance existing between the two
+    latter countries. To make this example conform to the actual facts under
+    discussion, we must, of course, assume that both Japan and England are
+    situated in the North American Continent, and across the border from the
+    United States and England. Japan, with an army of 18,000,000 soldiers,
+    (assumed for the purpose of argument,) mobilizes her army, professedly
+    for defense against the United States. Could any fair-minded American
+    possibly expect England to intercede with her ally, the United States,
+    without first demanding the demobilization of Japan? Whose duty was it
+    to yield?
+</p>
+<p>
+    The actual fact is that Germany even then did not declare war against
+    Russia until Russian soldiers had actually crossed not the Austrian but
+    the German border.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I may add that in writing the above I am prompted only by the very
+    natural desire, viz., to impress upon the jury composed of the American
+    people the one fact which should be given the most careful consideration
+    in order to enable it to arrive at a just verdict in the case submitted,
+    and this fact is "the mobilization of Russia."
+</p>
+<p align="right" style="text-align: right">FRANK SEGGEBRUCH. </p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    New York, Oct. 29, 1914.
+</p>
+
+<br><hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    In Defense of Austria
+</h2>
+
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Referring to your editorial, "The Evidence Examined," in your Sunday
+    edition, I wish to protest emphatically against your assertion that a
+    "Court of Civilization" must inevitably come to the conclusion that
+    Germany precipitated the war. There are still millions of civilized
+    people who see these things quite differently.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Beck makes out a case from the viewpoint of the accusing party&mdash;of
+    course, nobody will doubt the legal abilities of Mr. Beck&mdash;but before
+    the Supreme Court of Civilization there is also a law: audiatur et
+    altera pars. Mr. Beck, as he presents the case to the court, has not
+    mentioned very important points which, for the decision of the Supreme
+    Court, would be most vital ones.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At first the breach of Belgian neutrality, admitted and regretted by the
+    German Government, has nothing to do with the question&mdash;who precipitated
+    the war? It constituted only an action of the war itself. On the other
+    hand, you call in your editorial the Austrian ultimatum a savage one
+    and take it for granted that this ultimatum started the stone rolling
+    and brought finally the general clash in Europe about. This presumption,
+    when presented to the court, will have to be thoroughly proved, because
+    there are many people, fair and just, as you consider yourself, who are
+    convinced of the ample justification of this ultimatum.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is hardly describable how many criminal acts have been committed by
+    Servians against the very existence of the Dual Monarchy for the last
+    six years, under the eyes of the Servian Government and approved by it,
+    by intriguing against Austria's right to cultivate her own territory,
+    Bosnia, spreading secret societies all over the empire, &amp;c.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The awful crime, the assassination of the heir to the throne, was only
+    the finish of a long chain of like acts. These facts, which immediately
+    lead up to the ultimatum, ought to be considered in the first place by
+    judging Austria's justification for sending this ultimatum to Servia. A
+    just Judge in the Court of Civilization will, I am convinced, carefully
+    study the ante-history and in all probability arrive at the conclusion
+    that the ultimatum was amply justified and Servia fully deserved the
+    severest punishment possible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Beck presents to the court the Russian interference with this
+    intended punishment and forgets to tell the Judge that Russia had not
+    the least right to this interference. No foreign power had.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Therefore, Austria was entirely within her right to decline any
+    negotiations with Russia about this punishment before its completion.
+    Nevertheless, the German Government brought these negotiations about,
+    and, while these negotiations proceeded satisfactorily, Russia
+    mobilized, mobilized all along her western frontier against Austria and
+    Germany, notwithstanding the fact that she had promised not to do so and
+    officials in Petrograd had pledged their words to the contrary.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Russia knew there could be no such thing as a war with Austria alone, as
+    well as Germany knew that a war with Russia meant a war with France. If
+    the laws of morality rule in the Court of Civilization, they should
+    above all be applied to the conduct of Servia and Russia. Austria was in
+    a state of self-defense, when she decided not to bear any longer
+    Servia's treacherous and murderous attacks against her existence; this
+    is entirely within the boundaries of the laws of morality. Russia,
+    however, without the slightest right, moral or legal, attacked Austria
+    from the back by interfering with Austria's own affairs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Therefore I wish to point out that a careful student of the papers, by
+    considering the ante-history of the war, which, as you will admit, is
+    very essential, may come to a quite different conclusion and Mr. Beck as
+    State's attorney will have a hard stand against the counsel of the
+    defendant.
+</p>
+<p align="right" style="text-align: right">EDWARD PICK. </p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    New York, Oct. 27, 1914.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    &nbsp;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <img border="0" src="images/deco1.jpg" alt="decoration" width="300" height="139"></p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    Defense of the Dual Alliance&mdash;A Reply
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Dr. Edmund von Mach.
+</h3>
+<blockquote>
+<p>     Instructor of Fine Arts, Harvard, 1899-1903; Instructor in
+     History of Art, Wellesley College, 1899-1902; Lecturer in
+     History of Art, Bradford Academy, Cambridge, Mass. Author of
+     many books on Greek and Roman sculpture and the history of
+     painting. Served in the German Army, 1889-91.
+</p>
+</blockquote><br>
+<p>
+    Hon. James M. Beck has eloquently argued the case of the Allies against
+    Germany and Austria-Hungary, and submitted his findings with confident
+    assurance of their acceptance by the Supreme Court of Civilization.
+    Carried away by his zeal he has at times used terms not warranted by the
+    evidence, such as "the irrepressible Kaiser," "stupid falsehood,"
+    "duplicity," and the like, but since the court can be trusted to
+    disregard such expressions no further attention will be paid to them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To a certain extent this article is not a reply but a continuation of
+    Mr. Beck's argument, for, wherever our personal sympathies may lie, we
+    are all equally interested in discovering the truth. In the final
+    settlement of peace American public opinion may, nay, will, have a
+    prominent voice. If it is exerted on the strength of a true
+    understanding of European events, it will contribute to the
+    establishment of a lasting peace.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to the evidence submitted Mr. Beck seems to err in believing that
+    Governments are accustomed to publish in their various white, gray, or
+    orange papers "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
+    This is nowhere done, for there are many bits of information which come
+    to a Government through its diplomatic connections which it would be
+    indelicate, discourteous, or unwise to give to the public. The official
+    documents on American foreign relations and all white, gray, or orange
+    papers are "edited." They are understood to be so by Congress,
+    Parliament, the Reichstag, the Duma, &amp;c., and no charge of dishonesty
+    can be maintained against the respective Governments on that score.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If the Chancellor says that Germany was using her good offices in
+    Vienna, this is as valuable a bit of evidence as the reprint of a
+    dispatch in the "White Paper," unless we wish to impugn his veracity,
+    and in that case the copy of a dispatch would be valueless, for he might
+    have forged it. The entire argument, therefore, against Germany and
+    Austria, based on what Mr. Beck calls the "suppression of vitally
+    important documents," is void, unless you will apply it equally to Great
+    Britain and the other countries.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In Sir Edward Grey's "White Paper" Mr. Beck has missed no important
+    documents because he looked at England's well-prepared case through
+    sympathetic eyes, and it did not occur to him to ask, "Where are all the
+    documents bearing on Italian neutrality?" Does he believe that England
+    was so little interested in the question whether she would have to fight
+    two or three foes, and whether her way to Egypt and India would be safe
+    or threatened? There are many dispatches to and from Rome included in
+    the "White Paper," but not a mention of Italy's position.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The first paper contains a letter to the British Ambassador in Berlin
+    concerning the Austro-Servian relations. Is it not probable that Sir
+    Edward Grey's attention was called to this question by his Ambassador in
+    Vienna? Where is his letter? Or, if Sir Edward thought of it himself,
+    why did he not mention his conversation also to Sir M. de Bunsen in
+    Vienna? Where is this note? Are we to assume that Sir M. de Bunsen made
+    his first report on July 23, although Sir Edward Goschen in Berlin had
+    an interesting report to make a day earlier?
+</p>
+<p>
+    We can thus go through the whole British "White Paper" and discover the
+    omission of many interesting documents.
+</p>
+<p>
+    No. 38 is a letter from Sir Rennell Rodd in Rome, dated on July 23 and
+    received on July 27. He had no doubt sent also a telegram. What did it
+    contain, and why was it not published under the date of its arrival
+    instead of the letter which had been delayed in transit?
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Where Is No. 28?
+</h3>
+<p>
+    In No. 29 Sir Edward Grey refers in a telegram to Sir R. Rodd to what "I
+    had said to the German Ambassador." Such a reference could have a
+    meaning for Sir R. Rodd only if he had been informed of this
+    conversation. There is no dispatch printed in the "White Paper"
+    containing this information. Possibly it was so entwined with other
+    instructions, which Sir Edward Grey did not care to have known, that it
+    could not be published. Was it perhaps sent to the printer first as No.
+    28, and removed at the last moment when it was too late to change the
+    subsequent numbers? Or, if this assumption is wrong, what was printed
+    originally as No. 28? Where is No. 28? There are other omissions, and
+    one especially noteworthy one between Nos. 80 and 106 which will be
+    discussed later.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Viewed in this light, the English "White Paper" loses much of the value
+    of a complete record, which it has had in the eyes of many. There is
+    absolutely no reason to doubt the accuracy of those dispatches which
+    have been printed, but it becomes incumbent upon the searcher after the
+    truth to inquire whether the existence of unprinted (in the case of the
+    German "White Paper" Mr. Beck uses the term "suppressed") papers may not
+    at times alter the interpretation which should be given to those that
+    are printed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Since we have no published records anywhere concerning the advice given
+    to Italy by the Allies, and the gradual steps leading up to Italy's
+    decision to remain neutral; nor any hint as to the day when her decision
+    was communicated to England and the other powers, it would be futile to
+    speculate on this subject. Since, however, the Queen of Italy and the
+    wife of the Commander in Chief of the Russian forces are sisters, and
+    since it was in the interest of the Allies to keep Italy neutral, it is
+    not unreasonable to assume that an exchange of opinion took place
+    between Italy and the Allies concerning the conditions under which Italy
+    would remain neutral.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If the actual opening of hostilities could be so managed that Germany
+    could be called the aggressor, then Italy probably declared that she
+    would not enter the war. This is a very important phase of the case, and
+    the omission from Sir Edward Grey's "White Paper" of all dispatches
+    dealing with Italian neutrality is much to be regretted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Since we are dealing with the Italian dispatches here, it may be
+    advisable to consider at once all the communications which are published
+    as having passed between Sir Edward Grey and the British Ambassador, Sir
+    Rennell Rodd, in Rome. They are numbered 19, (perhaps 28,) 29, 35, 36,
+    38, 49, 57, 63, 64, 80, 81, 86, 92, 100, and 106, of which the important
+    numbers are 38, 57, 64, 80, and 86.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On July 23 Sir Edward Grey was informed that "the gravity of the
+    situation lay in the conviction of the Austro-Hungarian Government that
+    it was absolutely necessary for their prestige, after the many
+    disillusions which the turn of events in the Balkans has occasioned, to
+    score a definite success." (No. 38.)
+</p>
+<p>
+    Austria, in other words, believed that to let the murder of her
+    heir-apparent pass unpunished would have meant a deathblow to her
+    prestige, and consequently, as any one familiar with her conditions will
+    agree, to her existence. Russia, on the other hand, on July 25 said (see
+    No. 17, report from Sir G. Buchanan) that she could not "allow (note the
+    word) Austria to crush Servia and become the predominant power in the
+    Balkans, and if she feels secure of the support of France, she will face
+    all the risks of war."
+</p>
+<p>
+    These two dispatches to Sir Edward Grey tell the whole story in a
+    nutshell. Austria believed, rightly or wrongly, that it was a question
+    of life or death for her, while Russia claimed the right of preventing
+    Austria from becoming the predominate power in the Balkans, and actually
+    threatened war. Russia did not claim to be concerned with the justice of
+    Austria's demands on Servia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    No such definite word of Russia's intention was sent to Germany, for on
+    July 26 Sir M. de Bunsen reported Germany's confident belief that
+    "Russia will keep quiet during the chastisement of Servia." (No. 32.)
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the next day Sir Rennell Rodd reports from Rome (No. 57) that the
+    Minister of Foreign Affairs believes that "if Servia will even now
+    accept it (the Austrian note) Austria will be satisfied" and refrain
+    from a punitive war. He, moreover, believes&mdash;and this is very
+    important&mdash;that Servia may be induced to accept the note in its entirety
+    on the advice of the four powers invited to the conference, and this
+    would enable her to say that she had yielded to Europe and not to
+    Austria-Hungary alone. Since Italy was to be one of the four powers, the
+    Minister's belief was doubtless based on accurate information. There is
+    then as late as July 27 no claim made by Servia that Austria's demands
+    are unreasonable. She only hates to yield to Austria alone. Austria, in
+    the meanwhile, (No. 57,) repeats her assurance that she demands no
+    territorial sacrifices from Servia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the next day, July 28, Sir Rennell Rodd reports (No. 64) that "Servia
+    might still accept the whole Austrian note, if some explanation were
+    given regarding mode in which Austrian agents would require to
+    intervene." Austria, on her part, had explained that "the co-operation
+    of the Austrian agents in Servia was to be only in investigation, not in
+    judicial or administrative measures. Servia was said to have willfully
+    misinterpreted this." (No. 64.)
+</p>
+<p>
+    From these reports it appears that the differences between Austria and
+    Servia were on the way to a solution. Austria claimed that her demands
+    were just, and Servia did not deny this. Austria further claimed that
+    her prestige, her very existence, demanded the prompt compliance with
+    her requests by Servia. She explained in a satisfactory way the one
+    point on which Servia had taken exceptions, and Servia was on the point
+    of complying, and would have complied, if the powers had been willing to
+    let her do so. Such a conclusion of the incident would have strengthened
+    Austria's prestige and assured the punishment of the murderers of
+    Serajevo.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Russia's Remark About Austria.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The reason why Servia was not allowed to submit was Russia's remark,
+    quoted above, that she would not "allow" Austria to become the
+    predominant power in the Balkans. It was, therefore, Russia's task to
+    prevent Servia from accepting Austria's note. Since war was her
+    alternative, baldly stated to England from the first, she had to do
+    three things&mdash;first, to secure as many allies as possible; secondly, to
+    weaken her enemies, preferably by detaching from them Italy, and,
+    thirdly, to get as much of a start in her mobilization as possible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The treaties between Russia, France, and Great Britain, unlike those
+    between Germany, Austria, and Italy, have never been published. Whatever
+    their wording may be, Russia was at first apparently not absolutely sure
+    of the support of France, (No. 17,) and France, it would seem, was
+    unwilling to tempt fate without the help of England. That England should
+    be willing to join such a combination for such a cause seemed so
+    preposterous to Germany that she did not believe it. Without England no
+    France, without France no war, for alone Russia could not measure
+    herself against Austria. Austria would not have attacked her of her own
+    free will, but if Russia had attacked Austria, the whole world knew from
+    the published treaties that Germany was bound to come to the assistance
+    of her ally. It would have been two against one, and the two could have
+    waited until Russia had finished her cumbersome mobilization. For even
+    if she had her whole army of many million men on the frontier, Austria
+    and Germany together were strong enough to stem her advance.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Russia's only chance, therefore, when Servia was on the point of
+    yielding, and Austria had almost re-established her prestige, was to
+    secure the help of France, but this meant also the promise of England.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The demands made on England by Russia, some of which are quoted in the
+    "White Paper," are too well known to deserve repetition. This was the
+    chief thing that counted, to get England's promise. The next was to
+    detach Italy from her allies, (but of this there are no documents
+    available,) and the third to gain time for her mobilization. All the
+    other suggestions and counter-suggestions which fill the English "White
+    Paper" are insignificant, as soon as the fundamental positions of
+    Austria and Russia are understood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Germany has claimed that England promised her support to Russia and
+    France on July 30, or in the night of July 29, and, to prove it, has
+    published the letter from the Belgian Minister in St. Petersburg to his
+    Minister of Foreign Affairs, printed in translation in THE NEW YORK
+    TIMES on Oct. 7. This letter, which has not been officially denied by
+    the Allies, states that the promise of England's support gave the
+    Russian war party the upper hand and resulted in the order of complete
+    mobilization.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    English "White Paper's" Testimony.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Strangely enough, and doubtless by an oversight, the English "White
+    Paper" contains two dispatches (Nos. 80 and 106) which seem to confirm
+    the accuracy of M. de l'Escaille's statement, viz., that England
+    promised the Russian-French combination her support.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On July 29 Sir Rennell Rodd wrote to Sir Edward Grey (No. 80) that the
+    Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs had told him "there seemed to be a
+    difficulty in making Germany believe that Russia was in earnest. As
+    Germany, however, was really anxious for good relations with ourselves,
+    if she believed that Great Britain would act with Russia and France, he
+    thought it would have a great effect."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In a later dispatch of the same day (No. 86) he deprecates Russia's
+    partial mobilization, which he fears has spoiled the chances of
+    Germany's exerting any pressure on Austria.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But on the next day, July 30, these remarkable words occur: "He [the
+    Italian Minister] had reason to believe that Germany was now disposed to
+    give more conciliatory advice to Austria, as she seemed convinced that
+    we should act with France and Russia, and was most anxious to avoid
+    issue with us." (No. 106.)
+</p>
+<p>
+    Readers of the "White Paper" will look in vain for an explanation of
+    such a change of heart on Germany's part. What does "now" mean in the
+    last letter? And why does Germany seem "convinced" that England will act
+    with Russia&mdash;if not that she has heard of the promise mentioned by M. de
+    l'Escaille, as given early on July 30 or late the 29th? The dates agree,
+    and unless Sir Edward Grey publishes further papers to explain the
+    change that had taken place between July 29 and July 30 one seems forced
+    to accept this explanation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What is Germany's attitude? Does she rush into war? Not at all, for she
+    is "most anxious to avoid issue" with England. (No. 106.) Germany knew
+    that Russia had begun to mobilize. Every day, every hour counted; for
+    against the masses of Russia she had only her greater speed to match.
+    She knew that England had gone over to Russia, although she was probably
+    hoping that the alliance between the Saxon and the Slav was not yet
+    irrefragable. Still, the prospects were dark. But in spite of this the
+    efforts were renewed to see what could be done in Vienna.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The famous exchange of telegrams between royalty began in the evening of
+    July 29; and here it is wise to halt for a moment. On July 30 the Czar
+    telegraphed to the Emperor in reply to the Emperor's expression of
+    regret that Russia should be mobilizing, as follows: "The military
+    measures in force now were decreed five days ago." That is, according to
+    the Czar, the Russian mobilization had begun on July 25. On July 27,
+    however, the Russian Minister of War, M. Suchomlinow, had declared to
+    the German Military Attaché "on his word of honor" that no mobilization
+    order had been issued. July 25, however, it will be remembered, was the
+    day on which Sir G. Buchanan had reported from St. Petersburg that
+    Russia will "face all risks of war" if she can feel sure of the support
+    of France.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On July 31 Russia mobilized her entire army, which led to Germany's
+    ultimatum that Russia demobilize within twelve hours. No reply was
+    received to the request, and orders for the mobilization of the German
+    Army were issued at 5:15 P.M., Aug. 1, after the German Ambassador in
+    St. Petersburg had been instructed to declare that, owing to the
+    continued mobilization of the Russian Army, a state of war existed
+    between the two countries.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Kaiser Tried to Keep Peace.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    In order to understand this step one should read the book "La France
+    Victorieuse dans la Guerre de Demain," ("France Victorious in the Next
+    War,") by Col. Arthur Boucher, published in 1911. Col. Boucher has
+    stated the case baldly and so simply that every one can understand it.
+    In substance his argument is this: "Alone France has no chance, but
+    together with Russia she will win against Germany. Suppose the three
+    countries are beginning mobilization on the same day. Germany finishes
+    first, France second, and Russia last. Germany must leave some of her
+    troops on her eastern frontier, the rest she throws against France. All
+    France has to do is to hold them for a few days. [Col. Boucher mentions
+    the exact number of days. This book is not at hand, and the writer
+    prefers not to quote from memory.] Then Russia comes into play, more
+    German troops will be needed in the East, the French proceed to an
+    attack on their weakened enemy, and La France sera victorieuse."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Everything hinges on just a couple of days or so. A couple of days! And
+    how much of a start had Russia? She had begun on July 25; on July 27
+    definite news of the Russian mobilization was reported in Berlin,
+    although the Minister of War denied it "on his honor." On July 30
+    England was understood to have promised her support to Russia, and the
+    Czar acknowledged that Russia had been mobilizing for the past five
+    days. Five days! And Col. Boucher, expressing the opinion of military
+    experts, had counted on victory on a much smaller margin!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Do the Judges of the Supreme Court of Civilization realize the almost
+    super-human efforts in the interest of peace made by the German Emperor?
+    Russia has a start of five days, and on July 31 a start of six days. Can
+    we not hear all the military leaders imploring the Emperor not to
+    hesitate any longer? But in the interest of peace the Emperor delays. He
+    has kept the peace for Germany through the almost thirty years of his
+    reign. He prays to his God, in Whom he has placed his trust through all
+    his upright life, with a fervor which has often brought him ridicule.
+    Also, he still believes in England, and hopes through her efforts to be
+    able to keep the peace. He waits another day. A start of seven days for
+    Russia! The odds against Germany have grown tremendously. At last he
+    orders mobilization. For a longer delay he would not have been able to
+    answer to his country. As it is, there are many people who blame him
+    severely for having waited so long.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But William II. was right, for when the world will begin to realize the
+    agonies through which he must have passed during these days of waiting,
+    and the sacrifices he made in his effort to preserve peace, it will
+    judge Germany rightly, and call the Emperor the great prince of peace
+    that he is.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But, it has been said, why did he not avoid war, either by forcing
+    Austria to yield to Russia, or, if she refused, by withdrawing from her?
+    In common with the whole of Germany, he probably felt that Austria's
+    position was right. Servia herself, as has been seen above, did not
+    claim that she was unjustly treated, whatever outsiders thought of
+    Austria's demands; and Austria was fully justified by past events in
+    believing that it was with her a question of life and death. Should
+    Germany sacrifice her faithful friend under such circumstances, and for
+    what? For the arrogance of Russia, who would not "allow" her to
+    re-establish her prestige in a righteous cause? The word "righteous" is
+    used advisedly, because in the early stages of the controversy nobody,
+    not even Russia nor Servia herself, denied the justice of Austria's
+    demands. The writer is informed that even the liberal English press
+    found no fault with the course taken by Austria, although it commented
+    adversely on the language used in the note.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What would have been the result of peace bought by Germany at such a
+    cost? It would have alienated her only faithful friend without laying
+    the foundations for a lasting friendship with her opponents. This at
+    least was Germany's honest belief. She may have been wrong. History more
+    probably will call her right. To desert Austria might have postponed the
+    war, but when it would have come Germany would have stood alone, and,
+    worse, she would have lost her self-respect.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This claim may sound strange in the ears of those who have just
+    witnessed and will never forget the suffering of that beautiful little
+    country, Belgium. They hold that, since Germany invaded Belgium, it is
+    Germany who broke a treaty and who is to blame.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Beck considers this to be so self-evident that he deems it
+    unnecessary to advance any proof. He quotes the Chancellor's speech,
+    and, moving for a quick verdict, declares his motion of guilty carried.
+    The matter, however, is not quite so simple for the man who is seeking
+    for the whole truth. Let us look at the facts.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Belgium was a neutral country, just as any country has the right to
+    declare itself neutral, with this difference: that in 1839 she had
+    promised to five powers&mdash;Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria, and
+    Prussia&mdash;that she would remain perpetually neutral. These five powers in
+    their turn had promised to guarantee her neutrality. She was, however, a
+    sovereign State, and as such had the undoubted right to cease being
+    neutral whenever she chose by abrogating the Treaty of 1839. If the
+    other high contracting parties did not agree with her, it was their
+    right to try to coerce Belgium to keep to her pledges, although this
+    would undoubtedly have been an infringement of her sovereignty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Treaty of 1839 contains the word "perpetual," but so does the treaty
+    between France and Germany, in which Alsace and Lorraine are ceded by
+    France to be perpetually an integral part of the German Empire. Does
+    this mean that France, if the Allies should win, could not retake these
+    provinces? Nobody probably will believe this.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Treaty of 1839 was a treaty just like the Treaty of 1871, with this
+    difference, that the latter treaty was concluded between two powers, and
+    the earlier one between five powers on one side and Belgium and Holland
+    on the other. This gave certain rights to all the signatory powers, any
+    one of whom had the right to feel itself sufficiently aggrieved to go to
+    war if any other power disregarded the treaty.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Rights of Neutrals.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    There was once another neutral State, the city and district of Cracow,
+    also established by a treaty to which Great Britain was a signatory.
+    Three of the signers considered the conditions developing in Cracow to
+    be so threatening that they abolished Cracow as an independent State.
+    Great Britain sent a polite note of protest, and dropped the matter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Since that time, however, two Hague Conferences have been held and
+    certain rules agreed upon concerning the rights and duties of neutrals.
+    The Belgian status of inviolability rests on these rules, called
+    conventions, rather than on the Treaty of 1839. During the
+    Franco-Prussian War of 1870 Mr. Gladstone very clearly stated that he
+    did not consider the Treaty of 1839 enforceable. Great Britain,
+    therefore, made two new treaties, one with France and one with Prussia
+    (quoted and discussed in Boston Evening Transcript, Oct. 14, 1914) in
+    which she promised to defend Belgian neutrality, by the side of either
+    France or Prussia, against that one of them who should infringe the
+    neutrality.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These treaties were to terminate one year after peace had been
+    concluded between the contestants. A treaty, like the one of 1839,
+    however, which was considered unenforceable in 1870, can hardly be
+    claimed to have gained new rights in 1914. In calm moments nobody will
+    claim that a greater sanctity attaches to it than to the treaty in which
+    Alsace and Lorraine are ceded forever to Germany.
+</p>
+<p>
+    No, it is The Hague Conventions to which we must look. The first
+    convention (1899) contained no rules forbidding belligerents from
+    entering neutral territory. In the second conference it was thought
+    desirable to formulate such rules, because it was felt that in war
+    belligerents are at liberty to do what is not expressly forbidden. At
+    the request of France, therefore, a new set of rules was suggested, to
+    which Great Britain and Belgium offered valuable amendments. The rules
+    were finally accepted, and are today parts of international law. They
+    read; "Article I. The territory of neutral powers is inviolable. Article
+    II. Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or convoys of either
+    munitions of war or supplies across the territory of a neutral power."
+</p>
+<p>
+    These articles, together with the whole convention called "Rights and
+    duties of neutral powers and persons in case of war on land," have been
+    ratified and therefore accepted as law by the United States of America,
+    Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia and other minor
+    powers. Great Britain experienced a change of heart, and, although her
+    own delegates had moved these articles, she refused to ratify them, when
+    she ratified most of the other conventions on Nov. 27, 1909. (A table
+    showing the ratifications of conventions has been published by The World
+    Peace Foundation, Boston.)
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The Case of Belgium.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Since Great Britain did not accept these articles as law, she was not
+    bound by them, for the principle of The Hague Conferences is that a
+    nation is bound only by those laws which it accepts. The remarkable
+    fact, therefore, appears that the only one of the big nations which had
+    refused to accept these articles, and which, therefore, might have moved
+    her troops across a neutral country and have claimed that she could do
+    so with a clear conscience because she broke no law which was binding on
+    her, was Great Britain. And the world now sees the spectacle of Great
+    Britain claiming to have gone to war because another power did what she
+    herself could have done, according to her own interpretation, with
+    impunity. Japan has broken the international law by infringing the
+    neutrality of China, but Great Britain can claim that she did not break
+    a law by doing exactly what Japan did.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is not asserted here that the citizens of Great Britain are not
+    absolutely sincere in their belief of the causes which have allied them
+    with the Russians and the Japanese, and the Indians and the Zouaves, and
+    the negroes and the French and the Belgians against Germany. Their
+    Government, however, should have known that the presumption of
+    insincerity exists when one charges against others a crime which one
+    would have felt at liberty to commit one's self. Yet, more, the British
+    Government knew better than anybody else that Germany had not even
+    committed this crime; for, according to all laws of justice, no person
+    or nation can claim the inviolability of a neutral when he has committed
+    "hostile acts against a belligerent, or acts in favor of a belligerent."
+    (Article XVII. of The Hague Conference of 1907.)
+</p>
+<p>
+    The question, therefore, arises, "Did Belgium commit acts in favor of
+    one of Germany's opponents, if not actually hostile acts against
+    Germany?" In order to understand Germany's charge that Belgium had
+    committed such acts, attention must be directed to one of the most
+    unfortunate stipulations of the Treaty of 1839, which compelled Belgium
+    to maintain several fortresses. This meant that a small neutral people,
+    sandwiched in between two great powers, had to keep itself informed on
+    military affairs. Instead of being able to foster a peaceful state of
+    mind, which is the surest guarantee of neutrality, the Belgians were
+    forced to think military thoughts.
+</p>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0004"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/carnegie.jpg" width="143" height="225"
+alt="Andrew Carnegie">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END--><br>
+<p style="text-align: center">ANDREW CARNEGIE</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i>(Photo (c) by Underwood &amp; Underwood.)</i>
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i><a href="#2H_4_0007">See Page 415</a></i></p>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0005"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/schiff.jpg" width="143" height="225"
+alt="Jacob H. Schiff">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END--><br>
+<p style="text-align: center">JACOB H. SCHIFF</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i>(Photo by American Press Assn.)</i>
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i><a href="#2H_4_0009">See Page 459</a></i></p>
+<br>
+<p>
+    In the eighties and early nineties they suspected France of designs on
+    their integrity. Since then a change in the popular feeling has taken
+    place and in recent years the instruction of the Belgian artillery, for
+    instance, was intrusted to French officers in active service. These
+    officers were constantly at home and very properly concerned with
+    solving military problems such as a future war with Germany might
+    present. What was more natural than that these same officers, when they
+    were detached for a few months or years to Ličge or Namur or Huy, taught
+    their Belgian charges to prepare against a German attack, and to look
+    upon the French as their friends and the Germans as their enemies? If
+    conditions had been different, and German officers had been in charge of
+    Belgian fortresses, the Belgian guns in practice would always have been
+    trained on imaginary French invaders.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    French Officers in Belgian Forts.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    If this is understood it will be seen that in the case of war the actual
+    neutrality of the Belgian garrisons would naturally be determined by the
+    position taken by that nation whose officers had been in charge of the
+    Belgian fortresses. And this might be entirely independent of the
+    professed wishes of the Belgian people or their Government. If French
+    officers in active service remained in the several fortresses, or even
+    only in one after the beginning of hostilities, and if the French
+    campaign plans contemplated an attack through Belgium, then Belgium had
+    committed an "act in favor of France" by not forcing the French officers
+    to leave, and had forfeited the rights and privileges granted by The
+    Hague Convention of 1907 to a neutral State.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Did French officers remain in Ličge or in any other Belgian fortress
+    after hostilities had begun, and did France plan to go through Belgium?
+    Germany has officially made both claims. The first can easily be
+    substantiated by the Supreme Court of Civilization by an investigation
+    of the prisoners of war taken in Belgium. Until an impartial
+    investigation becomes possible no further proof than the claim made by
+    the German Government can be produced.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The second charge is contained in No. 157 of the English "White Paper"
+    in these words of instruction from the German Foreign Secretary to the
+    German Ambassador in London: "Please impress upon Sir Edward Grey that
+    German Army could not be exposed to French attack across Belgium, which
+    was planned according to absolutely unimpeachable information."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sir Edward Grey has attacked Germany for invading Belgium, but has
+    nowhere denied that Germany had the unimpeachable evidence she said she
+    had, and which of course nullified any previous assurance from France.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is not known whether Sir Edward Grey was shown this evidence or not,
+    but if the preservation of Belgian neutrality was Great Britain's chief
+    concern, why did she not offer to negotiate treaties with Germany and
+    France as she had done in 1870? It will be remembered that then she
+    bound herself to join with either of the contestants in defending
+    Belgian neutrality against the attacks of the other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the case stands today, on the evidence of Sir Edward Grey's own
+    "White Paper" and speeches, Great Britain is making war on Germany
+    because:
+</p>
+<p>
+    1. She broke the Treaty of 1839, although her own Gladstone had declared
+    this treaty to be without force, and although the status of neutral
+    States had been removed by The Hague Convention from the uncertainty of
+    treaties to the security of international law.
+</p>
+<p>
+    2. Great Britain makes war against Germany because Germany has broken
+    Articles I. and II. of Chapter 1 of The Hague Convention referring to
+    neutrals, although Great Britain herself has refused to recognize these
+    articles as binding upon her own conduct.
+</p>
+<p>
+    3. She makes war on Germany although she has never denied the
+    correctness of Germany's assertion that she had unimpeachable proof of
+    France's intentions of going through Belgium, which, together with the
+    sojourn of French officers in Belgium, constitutes the offense which,
+    according to The Hague Convention, deprives a so-called neutral State of
+    the privileges granted in Articles I. and II.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is impossible to say here exactly what these proofs are which Germany
+    possesses, and which for military reasons she has not yet been able to
+    divulge. She has published some of them, namely, the proof of the
+    continued presence of French officers on Belgian soil, and has given the
+    names and numbers of the several army corps which France had planned to
+    push through Belgium.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The case then stands as follows:
+</p>
+<p>
+    1. Was the inviolability of Belgium guaranteed by Articles I. and II. of
+    The Hague Convention? Yes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    2. Had Germany ratified these articles? Yes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    3. Had Great Britain ratified these articles? No.
+</p>
+<p>
+    4. Would Belgium have forfeited the right of having her country held
+    inviolable if she had committed "acts in favor of France," even if these
+    acts were not actually hostile acts? Yes, according to Article XVII. of
+    The Hague Convention.
+</p>
+<p>
+    5. Did Belgium commit "acts in favor of France," and was Germany,
+    therefore, justified in disregarding the inviolability of her territory?
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The Main Question.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    This is the important question, and the answer must be left to the
+    Supreme Court of Civilization. The weight of the evidence would seem to
+    point to a justification of Germany. Yet no friend of Germany can find
+    fault with those who would wish to defer a verdict until such a time
+    when Germany can present her complete proof to the world, and this may
+    be when the war is over.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Throughout this argument the famous passage of the Chancellor's speech
+    in the Reichstag has been disregarded. It reads:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     Our troops have occupied Luxemburg and perhaps are already on
+     Belgian soil. Gentlemen, that is contrary to the dictates of
+     international law. It is true that the French Government has
+     declared at Brussels that France is willing to respect the
+     neutrality of Belgium so long as her opponents respect it. We
+     knew, however, that France stood ready for invasion. The
+     wrong&mdash;I speak openly&mdash;that we are committing we will endeavor
+     to make good.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    This has been understood to mean that the Chancellor acknowledged that
+    Germany was breaking the Treaty of 1839 without warrant, and that
+    Germany, therefore, deserved the contempt of the world. May it not bear
+    another interpretation? Thus:
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Chancellor, like Gladstone in 1870, did not consider the 1839 Treaty
+    enforceable, but saw the guarantee for Belgium in The Hague Convention.
+    He did not wish to offend Belgium by announcing to the world that she
+    had lost her rights as a neutral because of her acts favorable to
+    France, for when he spoke he was still of the opinion that she would
+    accept the German offer which guaranteed to her both her independence
+    and integrity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And just as Servia would have accepted Austria's note if Russia had
+    permitted her, so Belgium would not have resisted the German demand if
+    it had not been for England.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This can be proved by the British "White Paper," Nos. 153 and 155. In
+    the former the King of the Belgians appeals "to the diplomatic
+    intervention of your Majesty's Government to safeguard the integrity of
+    Belgium," being apparently of the impression that Germany wished to
+    annex parts, if not the whole, of his country. The London reply advises
+    the Belgians "to resist by any means in their power, and that his
+    Majesty's Government will support them in offering such resistance, and
+    that his Majesty's Government in this event are prepared to join Russia
+    and France, if desired, in offering to the Belgian Government at once
+    common action for the purpose of resisting use of force by Germany
+    against them, and a guarantee to maintain their independence and
+    integrity in future years."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Has Mr. Beck really not noticed in this promise the omission of the word
+    neutrality? By the Treaty of 1839 Belgium enjoyed not only independence
+    and integrity, but also perpetual neutrality. Does Great Britain offer
+    to fight Germany for the enforcement of the Treaty of 1839? No! Because
+    hereafter the word neutrality is dropped from her guarantee, and since
+    she alone of all the great powers has not ratified the articles of The
+    Hague Convention concerning neutrals she alone will be able to disregard
+    the inviolability of Belgian soil, even though Belgium kept strictly
+    neutral in a future war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And what, finally, does she guarantee her? Independence and integrity!
+    That is exactly the same that Germany had promised her. For this Belgium
+    had to be dragged through the horrors of war, and the good name of
+    Germany as that of an honest nation had to be dragged through the mire,
+    and hatred and murder had to be started, that Belgium might get on the
+    battlefield, from the insufficient support of Russia and France and
+    England, what Germany had freely offered her&mdash;independence and
+    integrity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Casual readers would not miss the word neutrality from Sir Edward Grey's
+    guarantee, because they do not differentiate between the words
+    integrity, independence, and neutrality. Great Britain and her ally
+    Japan, marching through China into Kiao-Chau, may be said to have
+    violated China's neutrality, but not her independence, nor, so long as
+    they refrain from annexing any Chinese territory, her integrity.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Fixing the Blame.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Nobody familiar with the careful work of Sir Edward Grey can for one
+    moment believe that Sir Edward inadvertently dropped the word, just as
+    little as J. Ramsay Macdonald and other British leaders believe that he
+    inadvertently dropped one of the two remaining words, integrity and
+    independence, when he told Parliament of Germany's guarantee, and why
+    Great Britain should not accept it, but go to war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the blame for the horrors committed in Belgium are assessed these
+    facts must be remembered:
+</p>
+<p>
+    1. Belgium was by treaty bound to maintain fortresses.
+</p>
+<p>
+    2. France tempted her to commit "acts friendly" to herself, by which
+    Belgium forfeited her rights to the protection of The Hague articles
+    governing the rights and duties of neutrals.
+</p>
+<p>
+    3. England urged her to take up arms, when she had only asked to have
+    her integrity guaranteed by diplomatic intervention. (Nos. 153, 155.)
+</p>
+<p>
+    4. Germany promised her independence and integrity and peace, while
+    England, quietly dropping her guarantee of neutrality "in future years,"
+    promised her independence and integrity and war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    5. And Sir Edward Grey was able to sway Parliament, according to one of
+    the leaders of Parliament himself, only because he misrepresented
+    Germany's guarantee, and, having dropped, in his note to Belgium, the
+    word "neutrality," dropped yet another of the two remaining words,
+    integrity and independence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This is the case as it appears on the evidence contained in the various
+    "White Papers." Austria was attending properly to her own affairs;
+    Servia was willing to yield; Russia, however, was determined to
+    humiliate Austria or to go to war. Germany proved a loyal friend to her
+    ally, Austria; she trusted in the British professions of friendship to
+    the last, and sacrificed seven valuable days in the interest of peace.
+    France was willing to do "what might be required by her interests,"
+    while Great Britain yielded to Russia and France, promising them their
+    support without which France, and therefore Russia, would not have
+    decided on war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to Belgium, Germany told Sir Edward Grey that she had unimpeachable
+    evidence that France was planning to go through Belgium, and she
+    published her evidence concerning the French officers who remained in
+    Belgium. Although Belgium had thus lost any rights attaching to her
+    state of neutrality, Germany promised to respect her integrity and
+    independence, and to pay for any damage done. She preferred, however, to
+    listen to Great Britain, who promised exactly the same except pay for
+    any damage done.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Unlike Mr. Beck, who in the same article pleads his case as the counsel
+    for the Allies and casts his verdict as the Supreme Court of
+    Civilization, the present writer prefers to leave the judgment to his
+    readers as a whole, and further still, to the whole American
+    people&mdash;yea, to all the peoples of the world. Nor is he in a hurry, for
+    he is willing to wait and have the Judges weigh the evidence and call
+    for more, if they consider insufficient what has already been submitted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Snap judgments are ever unsatisfactory. They have often to be reversed.
+    The present case, however, is too important to warrant a hasty decision.
+    The final judgment, if it is based on truth, will very strongly
+    influence the nature of the peace, which will either establish good-will
+    and stable conditions in the world, or lead to another and even more
+    complete breakdown of civilization.
+</p>
+<br><hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    What Gladstone Said About Belgium
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By George Louis Beer.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em; text-align: center">     Historian; winner of the first Loubat Prize, 1913, for his
+     book on the origins of the British Colonial system.
+</p>
+<br>
+<p>
+    In the course of his solemn speech of Aug. 8, 1914, in the House of
+    Commons Sir Edward Grey quoted some remarks made by Gladstone in 1870 on
+    the extent of the obligation incurred by the signatory powers to the
+    Quintuple Treaty of 1839 guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium. Shorn
+    from their context as they were, these sentences are by no means
+    illuminating, and it cannot be said that their citation in this form by
+    Sir Edward Grey was a very felicitous one. During the paper polemics of
+    the past months these detached words of Gladstone have been freely used
+    by Germany's defenders and apologists to maintain that Great Britain of
+    1870 would not have deemed the events of 1914 a casus belli, and that
+    its entrance into the present war on account of the violation of
+    Belgium's neutrality was merely a pretext. During the course of this
+    controversy Gladstone's attitude has in various ways been grossly
+    misrepresented, Dr. von Mach of Harvard even stating in the columns of
+    THE NEW YORK TIMES that Gladstone had declared the Treaty of 1839 "to be
+    without force." But, apart from such patent distortions, Gladstone's
+    real position is apparently not clearly defined in the mind of the
+    general public, which is merely seeking for the unadulterated truth,
+    regardless of its effect upon the case of any one of the belligerents.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Shortly after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 the
+    Prussian Ambassador in London informed Gladstone, then Prime Minister,
+    that some time prior to the existing war France had asked Prussia to
+    consent to the former country's absorption of Belgium, and that there
+    was in the possession of the Prussian Government the draft of a treaty
+    to this effect in the handwriting of M. Benedetti, then French
+    Ambassador at Berlin. This communication was obviously made, as Lord
+    Morley tells us, with the object of prompting Gladstone to be the agent
+    in making the evil news public and thus of prejudicing France in the
+    judgment of Europe. Gladstone thought this "no part of his duty," and
+    very shortly thereafter, at the direct instance of Bismarck, this draft
+    treaty of 1866-7 was communicated by Baron Krause of the Prussian
+    Embassy in London to Delane, the editor of The Times. On July 25, 1870,
+    it was published in the columns of that paper and aroused considerable
+    anxiety in England.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It immediately became imperative upon the British Government to take
+    some action. As Gladstone wrote to Bright, the publication of this
+    treaty
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     has thrown upon us the necessity of doing something fresh to
+     secure Belgium, or else of saying that under no circumstances
+     would we take any step to secure her from absorption. This
+     publication has wholly altered the feeling of the House of
+     Commons, and no Government could at this moment venture to
+     give utterance to such an intention about Belgium. But neither
+     do we think it would be right, even if it were safe, to
+     announce that we would in any case stand by with folded arms
+     and see actions done which would amount to a total extinction
+     of the public right in Europe.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h3>
+    The Special Identical Treaties.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    A simple declaration of Great Britain's intention to defend the
+    neutrality of Belgium by arms in case it were infringed seemed to
+    Gladstone not to meet the special requirements of the case as revealed
+    by the proposed Treaty of 1866-7 between Prussia and France. His main
+    object was to prevent the actual execution of such an agreement, by
+    means of which the two belligerent powers would settle their quarrels
+    and satisfy their ambitions at the expense of helpless Belgium. Hence,
+    on July 30, the British Government opened negotiations with France and
+    Prussia and within a fortnight had concluded separate but identical
+    treaties with each of these powers. According to these treaties, in case
+    the neutrality of Belgium were violated by either France or Germany,
+    Great Britain agreed to co-operate with the other in its defense. The
+    preamble of these treaties states that the contracting powers
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     being desirous at the present time of recording in a solemn
+     act their fixed determination to maintain the independence and
+     neutrality of Belgium,
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    as provided in the Treaty of 1839, have concluded this separate treaty,
+    which,
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     without impairing or invalidating the conditions of the said
+     Quintuple Treaty, shall be subsidiary and accessory to it.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    Article III. further provided that these Treaties of 1870 were to expire
+    twelve months after the conclusion of the existing war, and that
+    thereafter the independence and neutrality of Belgium would "continue to
+    rest, as heretofore," on the Treaty of 1839.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These documents tell a plain tale, which is amply confirmed by the
+    proceedings in Parliament in connection with this matter. On Aug. 5,
+    1870, while the negotiations leading to the above-mentioned treaties
+    were still pending, questions were raised in the House of Commons about
+    the recently published abortive Treaty of 1866-7 between Prussia and
+    France. In reply Gladstone stated that
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     the Treaty of 1839 is that under which the relations of the
+     contracting powers with Belgium are at present regulated;
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    and that, while he could not explain the intentions of the Government
+    "in a matter of this very grave character in answer to a question," he
+    hoped to be able to communicate some further information in an authentic
+    manner. Three days later, as these treaties with France and Prussia had
+    been virtually concluded, Gladstone was able to satisfy the anxiety of
+    the House and outlined their terms. He explicitly stated that, after
+    their expiration,
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     the respective parties, being parties to the Treaty of 1839,
+     shall fall back upon the obligations they took upon themselves
+     under that treaty.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    After Gladstone had finished speaking the leader of the opposition,
+    Disraeli, took the floor and pointed out that, as a general proposition,
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     when there is a treaty guarantee so explicit as that expressed
+     in the Treaty of 1839, I think the wisdom of founding on that
+     another treaty which involves us in engagements may be open to
+     doubt.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    But he accepted Gladstone's statement
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     as the declaration of the Cabinet, that they are resolved to
+     maintain the neutrality and independence of Belgium, I accept
+     it as a wise and spirited policy, and a policy, in my opinion,
+     not the less wise because it is spirited.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    Gladstone then replied, saying that the reason the Government had not
+    made a general declaration of its intentions regarding Belgium was that
+    much danger might arise from such a declaration and that inadvertently
+    they might have given utterance to words
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     that might be held to import obligations almost unlimited and
+     almost irrespectively of circumstances.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    We had made up our minds, he continued, that we had a duty to perform,
+    and we thought a specific declaration of what we thought the obligations
+    of this country better than any general declaration. Referring to the
+    two treaties in process of ratification, he concluded:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     We thought that by contracting a joint engagement we might
+     remove the difficulty and prevent Belgium from being
+     sacrificed.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    The policy of the Government continued, however, to be criticised,
+    mainly on the ground that the Treaty of 1839 amply covered the case. On
+    Aug. 10 Gladstone defended his policy in the House of Commons in a
+    speech pitched on a high moral plane, in which he dilated upon Belgium's
+    historic past and splendid present and on Great Britain's duty to this
+    little nation irrespective of all questions of its own self-interest.
+    With genuine fervor, he exclaimed:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     If, in order to satisfy a greedy appetite for aggrandisement,
+     coming whence it may, Belgium were absorbed, the day that
+     witnessed that absorption would hear the knell of public right
+     and public law in Europe.... We have an interest in the
+     independence of Belgium which is wider than that which we may
+     have in the literal operation of the guarantee. It is found in
+     answer to the question whether under the circumstance of the
+     case this country, endowed as it is with influence and power,
+     would quietly stand by and witness the perpetration of the
+     direst crime that ever stained the pages of history, and thus
+     become participators in the sin.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h3>
+    What Gladstone Had in Mind.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    What Gladstone had in mind was the scheme of 1866-7, by which France was
+    to absorb Belgium, with Prussia's consent and aid. He distinctly stated
+    that the Treaties of 1870 were devised to meet the new state of affairs
+    disclosed by the publication of this incomplete treaty. It was in order
+    to prevent the revival of such a conspiracy that Gladstone made separate
+    and identical treaties in 1870 with France and Prussia. They were a
+    practical device to secure an effectual enforcement of the Treaty of
+    1839 under unforeseen and difficult circumstances. The agreement of 1870
+    was, as Gladstone said, a cumulative treaty added to that of 1839, and
+    the latter treaty
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     loses nothing of its force, even during the existence of this
+     present treaty.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    During the course of this speech defending the Government's action
+    against those critics who claimed that the Treaty of 1839 adequately met
+    the situation, Gladstone made some general remarks about the extent of
+    the obligation incurred by the signatories to the Treaty of 1839:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     It is not necessary, nor would time permit me, to enter into
+     the complicated question of the nature of the obligations of
+     that treaty, but I am not able to subscribe to the doctrine of
+     those who have held in this House what plainly amounts to an
+     assertion that the simple fact of the existence of a guarantee
+     is binding on every party to it, irrespectively altogether of
+     the particular position in which it may find itself at the
+     time when the occasion for acting on the guarantee arises.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    It is, of course, impossible to state precisely what were those
+    unuttered thoughts that passed through Gladstone's mind as he spoke
+    these characteristically cautious words, but what in general they were
+    can be satisfactorily gleaned from a letter that he had written six days
+    before this to John Bright:
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     That we should simply declare <i>we</i> will defend the neutrality
+     of Belgium by arms in case it should be attacked. Now, the
+     sole or single-handed defense of Belgium would be an
+     enterprise which we incline to think quixotic; if these two
+     great military powers [France and Prussia] combined against
+     it&mdash;that combination is the only serious danger; and this it
+     is which by our proposed engagements we should, I hope, render
+     improbable to the very last degree. I add for myself this
+     confession of faith: If the Belgian people desire, on their
+     own account, to join France or any other country, I for one
+     will be no party to taking up arms to prevent it. But that the
+     Belgians, whether they would or not, should go "plump" down
+     the maw of another country to satisfy dynastic greed is
+     another matter. The accomplishment of such a crime as this
+     implies would come near to an extinction of public right in
+     Europe, and I do not think we could look on while the
+     sacrifice of freedom and independence was in course of
+     consummation.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    Fight to the Bitter End
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW CARNEGIE.
+</h3>
+<blockquote>
+<p>     Retired ironmaster and philanthropist; builder of the Peace
+     Temple at The Hague; founder of the Carnegie Institution at
+     Washington; founder and patron of a chain of libraries in the
+     United States and Great Britain, and benefactor of many
+     societies and institutions.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h3>
+    By Edward Marshall.
+</h3>
+<br>
+<p>
+    Here is the report of a truly remarkable statement by Mr. Carnegie. He
+    is the world's most notable peace advocate, and in this interview he
+    voices the reflections suggested to him by the great European war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    They are unusual, and make this interview especially worthy of a place
+    upon the pages of the Christmas issue of THE TIMES, although it
+    principally deals with war, and Christmas is the festival of peace.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Has war ever settled anything which might not have been settled better
+    by arbitration?" I asked Mr. Carnegie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No; never," he replied. "No truer inference was ever made than may be
+    found in Milton's query, penned three centuries ago and never answered:
+    'What can war but wars breed?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "War can breed only war. Of course, peace inevitably must follow war,
+    but, truly, no peace ever was born of war. We all revere the memory of
+    him who voiced the warning: 'In time of peace prepare for war'; but, as
+    a matter of fact, we all know that when one nation prepares for war
+    others inevitably must follow its dangerous lead.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hence, and hence only, the huge armaments which have oppressed the
+    world, making its most peaceful years a spectacle of sadness&mdash;a
+    spectacle of men preparing and prepared to fight with one another.
+    Sooner or later men prepared to fight will fight; huge armaments and
+    armies mean huge battles; huge battles mean huge tragedies.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This never has been otherwise, and never can be. Peace can come only
+    when mankind abandons warful preparation. And so I seem to have replied
+    to your inquiry with an answer with a tail to it; and the tail is more
+    important than the answer, for the answer merely says that war never
+    settled anything which might not have been settled better by
+    arbitration, while the tail proclaims the folly of a world prepared for
+    war."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    How to Prevent War.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "Armament must mean the use of armament, and that is war. If we are to
+    prevent war we must prevent preparation for war, just as if we are to
+    prevent burglary we must prevent preparation for burglary by prohibiting
+    the carrying of the instruments of burglary. The only cure for war" [Mr.
+    Carnegie in speaking italicized the word "cure"] "is war which defeats
+    some one; but two men who are unarmed are certain not to shoot at one
+    another. Here, as in medicine, prevention is much better than cure.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Plainly it must be through such prevention, not through such a cure as
+    victory sometimes is supposed to represent, that warfare can be stopped.
+    Warfare means some one's defeat, of course, and that implies his
+    temporary incapacity for further war, but it goes without saying that
+    all conquered nations must be embittered by their defeat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Few nations ever have fought wars in which the majority of at least
+    their fighting men did not believe the side they fought for to be in the
+    right. Defeat by force of arms, therefore, always has meant the general
+    conviction throughout conquered nations that injustice has been done."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Nations Like Individuals.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "In such circumstances nations must be like individuals under similar
+    conditions. The individual believing himself to have been in the right,
+    yet finding himself beaten in his efforts to maintain it, will not
+    accept the situation philosophically; he will be angry and rebellious;
+    he will nurse what he believes to be his wrong.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To nurse a wrong, whether it be real or fancied, is to help it grow in
+    the imagination, and that must mean at least the wish to find some
+    future means of righting it, either by strategy or increased strength.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There are two things which humanity does not forget&mdash;one is an injury,
+    and, no matter how strongly some may argue against the truth of this
+    contention, the other is a kindness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In the long run both will be repaid. And nations, like individuals,
+    prefer the coin which pays the latter debt. Military force never has
+    accomplished kindness. Kindness means industrial armies decked with the
+    garlands of peace; military armies, armed and epauletted, must mean
+    minds obsessed with the spirit of revenge or conquest, hands clenched to
+    strike, hearts eager to invade.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Every military implement is designed to cut or crush, to wound and
+    kill. Nations at peace help one another with humanity's normal
+    tenderness of heart at times of pestilence, of famine, of disaster.
+    Nations at war exert their every ounce of strength to force upon their
+    adversaries hunger, destruction, and death. Starvation of the enemy
+    becomes a detail of what is considered good military strategy in war
+    time, just as world-embracing charity has become a characteristic of
+    all civilization during times of peace. Must we not admit flotillas
+    carrying grain to famine-stricken peoples to be more admirable than
+    fleets which carry death to lands in which prosperity might reign if
+    undisturbed by war?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But do you not admit that wars sometimes have helped the forces of
+    civilization in their conquest against barbarism?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "War has not been the chief force of civilization against barbarism,"
+    Mr. Carnegie replied with emphasis. Then he continued more thoughtfully:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is one way of saying it. Another is, no effort of the forces of
+    civilization against barbarism is war in the true sense of the word.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Such an armed effort is a part of the force pushing barbarism backward,
+    and therefore, in the last analysis, tends toward kindness and peace;
+    while, in the sense in which we use the word, war means the
+    retrogression of civilization into barbarism. It is usually born of
+    greed&mdash;greed for territory or for power.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Such war as that of which we all are thinking in these days is war
+    between civilized men. One civilized man cannot improve another
+    civilized man by killing him, although it is not inconceivable that a
+    civilized man may do humanity a service by destroying human savages, for
+    with the savages he must destroy their savagery.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But a war in civilized Europe destroys no savagery; it breeds it, so
+    that it and its spawn may defile future generations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There has been much balderdash in talk about unselfish motives as the
+    origin of warfare. It is safe to say that 99 per cent of all the
+    slaughter wrought by civilization under the cloak of a desire to better
+    bad conditions really has been evil. It is impossible to conceive of
+    general betterment through general slaughter. There have been few
+    altruistic wars."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But how about our Spanish war?" I asked. "Surely it was not greed which
+    sent our men and ships to Cuba."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," said Mr. Carnegie, "that was not war, but world-police work.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Our skirmish with Spain was a most unusual international episode. We
+    harmed none of the people of the land wherein we fought, but taught them
+    what we could of wise self-government and gave them independence. To
+    battle for the liberation of the slave is worthy work, and this of ours
+    was such a battle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Our Spanish war was not the outgrowth of our rivalry with any one or
+    any one's with us; it was the manifestation of our high sense of
+    responsibility as strong and healthy human beings for the welfare of the
+    weak and oppressed."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    That Was Police Work.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "It did not make toward militarism on this continent, but the reverse;
+    in a few months it established permanent peace where peace had been a
+    stranger. It was police work on the highest plane, substituting order
+    for disorder."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But did it not emphasize the need for the maintenance, even here, of a
+    competent and efficient naval and military force?" I asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Carnegie shook his head emphatically.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is the old, old argument cropping up again," said he, "the
+    argument that a provocative is a preventive. For us to maintain a great
+    army for the purpose of preventing war thereby would be as sensible as
+    for each of us to be afraid to walk about except with a lightning rod
+    down his back, since men have been struck by lightning. No nation wants
+    to fight us. We have friends throughout the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Millions now resident in military nations are hoping that some day they
+    may be able to become citizens of our beloved republic, principally
+    because it now is not, nor is it every likely to be, military. Humanity
+    loves peace. Here peace abides, and, if we follow reason, will remain
+    unbroken.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Note the advantages of our own position. Imagine what the task would be
+    of landing seventy thousand hostile soldiers on our shores! First they
+    would need to cross three thousand miles of the Atlantic or five
+    thousand miles of the Pacific.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And what if they should come? My plan of operation would be to bid them
+    welcome as our visitors, considering them as men, not soldiers; to take
+    them to our great interior, say, as far west as Chicago, and there to
+    say to them:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Here we shall leave you. Make yourselves at home, if that thought
+    pleases you; fight us if it does not. If you think you can conquer us,
+    try it.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They would make themselves at home and, learning the advantages of
+    staying with us, would become applicants for our citizenship, rather
+    than our opponents in warfare.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And if they tried to fight us, what would happen to them? Our nation is
+    unique in an important respect. Its individuals are the best armed in
+    the world. Not only, for example, are its farmers armed, but they can
+    shoot, which is far more than can be said of those of Britain or of any
+    other nation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The Governments of Europe cannot afford to give their citizenry arms,
+    and, as for the European citizenry, it not only cannot afford to
+    purchase arms, but cannot afford even to pay the license fees which
+    Government demands of those possessing arms with the right to use them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But ours? Most Americans can afford to and do own guns with which to
+    shoot, and, furthermore, most Americans, when they shoot, can hit the
+    things at which they shoot.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Combine this powerful protective influence with the fact that thousands
+    of any army coming to invade us would not want to fight when once they
+    got here, but would want to settle here and enjoy peace, and we find
+    that we thus are protected as no nation in the world ever has been
+    protected or can be.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Imagine the effect upon the European fighting man's psychology if he
+    found that an army transport had conveyed him to a land where one man's
+    privilege is every man's right! Learning this, it is not a joke to say,
+    but is a statement of the probable fact, that the invading soldiery
+    would not want to fire its first volleys, but would want to file its
+    first papers. They would not ask for cartridges, but for citizenship.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "America is protected by a force incomparable, which I may call its
+    peaceful militia, and the man who, above all other men, I most should
+    wish to see appointed to its command would be Gen. Leonard Wood were it
+    not for the fact that there would be some danger that in such an
+    eventuation his professional training would carry him beyond the rule of
+    reason.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is likely to be the most serious trouble with the trained soldier.
+    The doctor wants to dose, the parson to preach, and the soldier to
+    fight. Professional habit may make any of us dangerous.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But if it came to fighting I do not consider it within the bounds of
+    possibility that we could lose. I once asked Gen. Sherman how the troops
+    which he commanded during the civil war compared for efficiency with
+    European troops. His answer was:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'The world never has seen the army that I would be afraid to trust my
+    boys with, man for man.'"
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Would Surprise the Enemy.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "That thought of welcoming an invading army appeals strongly to me. The
+    hostile General would be amazed by the ease with which he got his forces
+    in, but he would be more startled by the difficulty he would find if he
+    tried to get them out. If they once learned the advantages of our
+    liberties they would find it hard not to get away, but to go away. I
+    restrain my temper with difficulty when I contemplate the foolishness of
+    the people who discuss with gravity the possibility of a successful
+    invasion of these United States by a foreign foe. The thought always
+    arises when I hear these cries from our army and naval officers for a
+    greater armament: 'Are these men cowards?' I don't believe it. It is
+    their profession which makes them alarmists.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not only are the physical difficulties which would hamper an invasion
+    practically insuperable, but the reception enemies would get, if any of
+    them landed, would be wholly without parallel in the world's history.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If our liberties really were threatened, every man, and very nearly
+    every woman, in our vast population would rise to their defense as never
+    any people yet has risen to any national defense. Americans, young and
+    old, en masse, would sweep to the protection of what they know, and what
+    the world knows, would be the cause of right and human liberty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I, myself, should wish to be invited to advance and meet invading
+    forces if they came. I would approach them without any weapons on my
+    person. I would not shoot at them. I would make a speech to them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Gentlemen,' I would say, 'here's the chance of your life to win life's
+    chief prize. Now you are peasant soldiers. You have the opportunity to
+    become citizen kings. We are all kings here. Here the least of you can
+    take a rank much higher than that of any General in your army. He can
+    become a sovereign in a republic.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think they would hurrah for me, not harm me, after they had heard my
+    speech.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Striving for peace, we shall become so powerful that if war comes we
+    shall be invincible. Peace, not war, makes riches; the rich nation is
+    the powerful nation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Perhaps I was as much a peace man in my youth as I am now, but when I
+    was asked, during the civil war, to organize a corps of telegraph
+    operators and railroad conductors and engineers and take them to
+    Washington, I considered it the greatest of all privileges to obey the
+    order.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I was the last man to get on the last train leaving Burkes Station,
+    after Bull Run, and, now, if the country ever should be invaded, I would
+    be, I hope, one of the first to rush to meet the enemy&mdash;but I think my
+    haste would be to convert, not to kill, him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The man who has done well in business, however, learns to abhor all
+    waste, and I must admit that it does pain me to see hundreds of millions
+    of our dollars spent on battleships which will but rust away, and
+    thousands of our able men vegetating on them or in an army.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The men who urge this vast waste of our money and men mean well, no
+    doubt, but they do not know the nation of which they have the good
+    fortune to be citizens&mdash;they do not realize how very potent a force we
+    have become in the wide world, nor the fact that one of the great
+    reasons why we have become a force lies in the circumstance that our
+    national development has not been hampered by the vast expense of
+    militarism."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Carnegie paused.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some weeks ago, in an interview granted me for publication in THE NEW
+    YORK TIMES, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia
+    University, predicted that the present war would find its final outcome
+    in the establishment of the United States of Europe. I asked Mr.
+    Carnegie to express his view upon this subject.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nothing else could occur which would be of such immense advantage to
+    Europe," he replied.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "United we stand, and divided they fall. If the territory now occupied
+    by the homogeneous and co-operative federation known as the United
+    States of America were occupied instead by a large number of small,
+    independent competitive nations, that is, if each section of our
+    territory which now is a State were an independent country, America
+    would be constantly in turmoil.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Europe has been set back a century because she substituted the present
+    war of nations for the promotion of a federation plan. The latter would
+    have meant peace and prosperity, the former means ruin.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If in Europe this year such a federation as Dr. Butler regards as a
+    future probability had been a present actuality, 1914 would have left a
+    record very different from that which it is making.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "For instance, it would have been as difficult for the State of Germany
+    to fight the State of Russia, or the State of France, or that of
+    England, or all of them, and to trample neutral Belgium, as it now
+    would be, here, for the State of Pennsylvania to declare war on the
+    States of New York and Connecticut and to wreck New Jersey as she sent
+    her troops to the invasion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Originally we had thirteen States, and thirteen only, but there was
+    other territory here, and the attractive force of the successful union
+    of the thirteen States brought the other territory in as it was
+    organized.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thus we started right. Europe had begun before men had become so wise,
+    and, having begun wrong, has found herself, through the centuries,
+    unable to correct old errors."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    A Federation of Europe.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "Certainly I hope that out of the great crime of this vast war some good
+    will come. The greatest good which could come would be a general
+    European federation. I do not believe that this will come at once; but
+    the world will be infinitely the better if it comes at length&mdash;if the
+    natural law of mutual attraction for mutual advantage draws these
+    nations now at war into a union which shall make such wars impossible in
+    future, as wars between our States, here, are impossible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But before this can come peace must come, and before peace can come one
+    or the other of the nations now at war must at least ask for an
+    armistice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If I were in the place of that great General, Lord Kitchener, and
+    should receive the news that such a request had been made by the
+    commander of the opposing forces, I should say: 'No armistice!
+    Surrender!'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, then, if the surrender should be made, I should say, in effect:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Gentlemen, we have made up our minds that these terrible explosions
+    must mark the end of war between our civilized nations. Our sacrifices
+    in this war have been too great to permit us to be satisfied with less
+    than this.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'If we now cannot feel assured of such a federation of nations as will
+    result in the settlement of all future disputes by peaceful arbitration
+    at The Hague, then we shall keep on fighting till the day comes when we
+    can achieve that end.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Upon the other side of the Atlantic,' I should continue if I were Lord
+    Kitchener and should be confronted by such a situation, 'we see in the
+    United States of America an example which must satisfy us that world
+    peace now can be maintained.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'There,' I should go on, 'thirteen States were banded into union in
+    1776. Their total population was less than the present population of
+    their largest city and their area has spread until it links two oceans
+    and offers homes in forty-eight States to one hundred millions, and the
+    population still increases rapidly. An experiment of world significance
+    was tried, and is a success, for the aggregated nation has grown and now
+    is growing in power more rapidly than any other nation on the surface of
+    the earth.'"
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Would Mean World Peace.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "'It is plain to me and should be plain to all of us,' I should
+    continue, if I were Lord Kitchener, so placed, 'that we in Europe have
+    but to follow this example which America has set for us in order to
+    achieve an ultimate result as notably desirable. When we have
+    accomplished it world peace will be enthroned and all the peoples of the
+    earth will be able safely to go about the pleasant and progressive
+    business of their lives without apprehension of their neighbors.
+    Humanity, thus freed of its most dreadful burden, will be able to leap
+    forward toward the realization of its ultimate possibilities of
+    progress.'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And do you really think there is the immediate possibility of an
+    effective European league for permanent peace and general disarmament?"
+    I asked Mr. Carnegie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Naturally my mind has dwelt much on this problem," he replied. "The
+    culmination of the European situation in the present war is very
+    dreadful, but no good ever came out of crying over spilled milk.
+    However, it seems safe to conclude that a majority of the people of the
+    civilized world will presently decide that a step forward must be taken.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Everywhere in Europe, when the present conflict ends, this fact will be
+    emphasized by shell-wrecked, fire-blackened buildings; by the vacant
+    chairs of sons and fathers who have fallen victims; by innumerable
+    graves and by a general impoverishment, the inevitable result of war's
+    great waste, which will touch and punish every man, every woman, every
+    child.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In the face of such an emphasis no denial of the facts will be among
+    the possibilities, and I scarcely think that any even will be attempted.
+    If the federation Dr. Butler has predicted does not come about at once,
+    it will be admitted almost universally that future disputes occurring
+    between the Governments of Europe shall be settled, not by force of
+    fighting men, but by arbitration at The Hague.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And now a serious question obtrudes itself. Must there not be a
+    carefully considered and cautiously worked out understanding, which may
+    be considered the preliminary of peace? Later on the foremost men of
+    every nation can meet in conference to consider with an earnestness
+    hitherto unknown the great problems which will be involved in the
+    permanent abolition of war and establishment of peace; but for this the
+    way must be prepared.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Here, again, I think The Hague Tribunal is the proper body to assemble
+    for the purpose of devising means for the accomplishment of the great
+    end, which must be such legislation as will accomplish, at the end of
+    this war, the ending of all war among the nations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "An important duty of the conference would be some arrangement for a
+    union of the forces of the nations now at war, charged with and
+    qualified to perform the duty of maintaining peace pending the
+    completion of the final comprehensive plan."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    For One Purpose Only.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "It is possible and even probable that as a part of the accomplishment
+    of this it may be found to be desirable and even necessary to organize
+    and provide for the maintenance of a joint naval and military body of
+    strength sufficient to enforce world peace during the period necessary
+    for the preparation of a plan to be submitted to all powers. But if this
+    force is to be established, it must be done with the clear understanding
+    that it is designed for one thing only, the maintenance of peace, and
+    must not be used at any time for any other service.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In the selection of the commanding officer to be intrusted with this
+    task, it will be conceded that the victors in this war, or those who
+    have a notable advantage at the time of the beginning of the armistice,
+    shall have the right of his appointment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No protest ever will arise from the mass of the people of Europe
+    against the abolishment of militarism. Even the people of Germany, as a
+    whole, have not found militarism attractive. It has been the influence
+    of the military aristocracy of Germany, the most powerful caste in the
+    world, which not only has encouraged the national tendency, but has
+    forced the Emperor, as I believe, to action against his will and
+    judgment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But a change was notable in Germany before the war began, and will be
+    far more notable after it has ended. The socialistic movement waxes
+    strong throughout the nation, and the proceedings of the Reichstag show
+    us that the nation is marching steadily, though perhaps slowly, toward a
+    real democracy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I believe the first election to follow peace will result in a demand by
+    the Reichstag that it, alone, shall be given power to declare war. It
+    will be argued, and it is evident that it then will be amply provable,
+    that it is the people who suffer most through war, and that, therefore,
+    their representatives should utterly control it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That itself would be a most important step toward peace, and I feel
+    certain that it is among the probabilities.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As things stand in Germany, although the Reichstag has its powerful
+    influence in regard to war expenditure and might accomplish important
+    results by refusing to vote amounts demanded, the fact remains that
+    until it has been given the power of making or withholding declaration
+    of war the most important results cannot be accomplished."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In Fried's volume," I suggested to Mr. Carnegie, "you are credited with
+    saying that Emperor William, himself and by himself, might establish
+    peace. Granting that that might have been the fact before this war
+    began, is it your opinion that he, or any other one man, could now
+    control the situation to that extent?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Assuming that the Germans should come out victorious," Mr. Carnegie
+    replied, "the Emperor would become a stronger power than ever toward the
+    maintenance of peace among the nations. At one time I believed him to be
+    the anointed of God for this purpose, and did not fail to tell him so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Even if his forces should be defeated in this present carnage, I am
+    sure he would be welcomed by the conference I have suggested as the
+    proposer of the great world peace, thus fulfilling the glorious destiny
+    for which at one time I considered that he had been chosen from on
+    high."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I asked Mr. Carnegie what part he thought this country, the United
+    States, should play in the great movement which he has in mind and
+    thoroughly believes is even now upon its way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The United States," he answered, "although, happily, not a party to the
+    world crime which is now in progress, seems entitled to preference as
+    the one to call the nations of the world to the consideration of the
+    greatest of all blessings&mdash;universal, lasting peace."
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    Woman and War
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    "SHOT. TELL HIS MOTHER."
+</h3>
+<h3>
+    By W.E.P. French, Captain, U.S. Army.
+</h3>
+<br>
+<blockquote>
+  <blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">What have I done to you, Brothers,&mdash;War-Lord and Land-Lord and Priest,&mdash;<br>
+That my son should rot on the blood-smeared earth where the raven and buzzard feast?<br>
+He was my baby, my man-child, that soldier with shell-torn breast,<br>
+Who was slain for your power and profit&mdash;aye, murdered at your behest.<br>
+I bore him, my boy and my manling, while the long months ebbed away;<br>
+He was part of me, part of my body, which nourished him day by day.<br>
+He was mine when the birth-pang tore me, mine when he lay on my heart,<br>
+When the sweet mouth mumbled my bosom and the milk-teeth made it smart,<br>
+Babyhood, boyhood, and manhood, and a glad mother proud of her son&mdash;<br>
+See the carrion birds, too gorged to fly! Ah! Brothers, what have you done?
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">You prate of duty and honor, of a patriot's glorious death,<br>
+Of love of country, heroic deeds&mdash;nay, for shame's sake, spare your breath!<br>
+Pray, what have you done for your country? Whose was the blood that was shed<br>
+In the hellish warfare that served your ends? My boy was shot in your stead.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">And for what were our children butchered, men makers of cruel law?<br>
+By the Christ, I am glad no woman made the Christless code of war!<br>
+Shirks and schemers, why don't you answer? Is the foul truth hard to tell?<br>
+Then a mother will tell it for you, of a deed that shames fiends in hell:&mdash;<br>
+Our boys were killed that some faction or scoundrel might win mad race<br>
+For goals of stained gold, shamed honors, and the sly self-seeker's place;<br>
+That money's hold on our country might be tightened and made more sure;<br>
+That the rich could inherit earth's fullness and their loot be quite secure;<br>
+That the world-mart be wider opened to the product mulct from toil;<br>
+That the labor and land of our neighbors should become your war-won spoil;<br>
+That the eyes of an outraged people might be turned from your graft and greed<br>
+In the misruled, plundered home-land by lure of war's ghastly deed;<br>
+And that priests of the warring nations could pray to the selfsame God<br>
+For His blessing on battle and murder and corpse-strewn, blood-soaked sod.<br>
+Oh, fools! if God were a woman, think you She would let kin slay<br>
+For gold-lust and craft of gamesters, or cripple that trade might pay?
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">This quarrel was not the fighters':&mdash;the cheated, red pawns in your game:&mdash;<br>
+You stay-at-homes garnered the plunder, but the pawns,&mdash;wounds, death, and "Fame"!<br>
+You paid them a beggarly pittance, your substitute prey-of-the-sword,<br>
+But, ye canny beasts of prey, they paid, in life and limb, for your hoard.<br>
+And, behold! you have other victims: a widow sobs by my side,<br>
+Who clasps to her breast a girl-child. Men, she was my slain son's bride!
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    I can smell the stench of the shambles, where the mangled bodies lie;<br>
+    I can hear the moans of the wounded; I can see the brave lads die;<br>
+    And across the heaped, red trenches and the tortured, bleeding rows<br>
+    I cry out a mother's pity to all mothers of dear, dead "foes."<br>
+    In love and a common sorrow, I weep with them o'er our dead,<br>
+    And invoke my sister woman for a curse on each scheming head.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    Nay, why should we mothers curse you? Lo! flesh of our flesh are ye;<br>
+    But, by soul of Mary who bore the Christ-man murdered at Calvary,<br>
+    Into our own shall the mothers come, and the glad day speed apace<br>
+    When the law of peace shall be the law of the women that bear the race;<br>
+    When a man shall stand by his mother, for the worldwide common good,<br>
+    And not bring her tears and heart-break nor make mock of her motherhood.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+  </blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+<br><hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    The Way to Peace
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    AN INTERVIEW WITH JACOB H. SCHIFF.
+</h3>
+<blockquote>
+<p>     One of the leading American financiers and noted
+     philanthropist; founder of Jewish Theological Seminary and of
+     Semitic Museum at Harvard University; a native of Germany and
+     member of the firm of Kuhn, Loeb &amp; Co., bankers.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h3>
+    By Edward Marshall.
+</h3>
+<br>
+<p>
+    American as I am in every fibre, and in accord as I feel with every
+    interest of the country of my adoption, I cannot find myself in
+    agreement with what appears to be, to a considerable extent, American
+    opinion as to the origin and responsibility for the deplorable conflict
+    in which almost all of Europe has become involved.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For many reasons my personal sympathies are with Germany. I cannot feel
+    convinced that she has been the real aggressor; I believe that war was
+    forced upon her, almost as if by prearrangement among the nations with
+    whom she now contends; I cannot but believe that they had become jealous
+    and envious of her rapid and unprecedented peaceful development and had
+    concluded that the moment had arrived when all was favorable for a union
+    against her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Although I left Germany half a century ago, I would think as little of
+    arraying myself against her, the country of my birth, in this the moment
+    of her struggle for existence, as of arraying myself against my parents.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But while I steadfastly believe this war to have been forced upon
+    Germany against her will, I also believe that circumstances which were
+    stronger than the Governments of England and France, her present
+    enemies, were necessary to overcome an equally definite reluctance upon
+    their part.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In other words, I cannot wholly blame the English Government, or the
+    French Government, any more than I can wholly blame the German
+    Government.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let us see how the great tragedy came about. It is safe to pass rapidly
+    over the Servian-Bosnian-Herzegovinian-Austro-Hungarian complication
+    which served as the immediate precipitant of hostilities. It has been
+    detailed repeatedly in THE TIMES and other American publications.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It had reached a point at which the Austro-Hungarian Government felt
+    compelled to take extreme measures by means of which to safeguard the
+    integrity of the empire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The firm but fatal ultimatum to Servia followed, the reply to which,
+    suffice it to say, was unsatisfactory to Austria, who could not accept
+    the suggestion of an investigation into the circumstances attending the
+    assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand through a commission or court on
+    which she was not represented.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Like Maine Case.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The situation really was analogous to that which existed between the
+    United States and Spain when the Maine was blown up in Havana Harbor. In
+    order to fix the responsibility for this dastardly affair we then
+    similarly demanded an investigation by Spain, to be carried out with the
+    assistance of representatives of this Government. Spain, too, then
+    offered to conduct an investigation, but she peremptorily declined to
+    allow us to take part in it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This attitude on her part quickly brought about our declaration of war
+    against her. It is important that Americans should realize the
+    similarity in the two situations and the likeness of the Austrian action
+    of 1914 to that which our own Government took in 1898.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As soon as Austria had rejected as unsatisfactory Servia's reply to her
+    ultimatum she prepared to undertake a punitive armed expedition against
+    Servia, and Russia at once declared that she would rank herself as
+    Servia's protector.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Indeed, without any further parley, and to give effect to this threat,
+    Russia immediately mobilized her army. Since then it has been averred
+    that this mobilization had been in progress for several weeks previous
+    to Servia's rejection of the Austrian ultimatum.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This made it obligatory upon Germany to go to Austria's aid, under the
+    provisions of their treaty of alliance, although she was well aware that
+    such an action would bring France into the conflict under the terms of
+    her alliance with Russia. Indeed, an unsatisfactory reply had been
+    received from France as to the latter's intentions, but Germany
+    endeavored to secure at least an assurance of England's neutrality. This
+    proved to be impossible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How the German Government could indulge for a moment in the hope that in
+    a war with Russia and France on the one side and Germany and Austria on
+    the other, England could be induced to remain neutral passes
+    comprehension, but that it did believe this seems a certainty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The English Government, no doubt, correctly felt that without the aid of
+    its immense resources, and particularly without the operations of its
+    great navy against Germany and Austria, the latter nations would find it
+    not so very difficult a task to dispose of both Russia and France.
+</p>
+<p>
+    English statesmen very promptly must have become alive to the
+    probability that a Germany which had subdued Russia and France, and thus
+    had made itself master of the Continent, would be unlikely long to
+    tolerate a continuance of England's world leadership.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So, even if the neutrality of Belgium had not been violated, other
+    reasons would have been found by England for joining France and Russia
+    in the war against Germany, for England would not risk, without any
+    effort to protect them, the loss of her continued domination of the
+    high seas and her undisputed possession of her vast colonial empire.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Germany Fighting for Life.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    I am not defending the violation of Belgian neutrality. This,
+    undeniably, was a most unjustifiable action, in spite of German claims
+    that she was forced into it by the necessities of the situation. But I
+    am explaining that, even had it not occurred, still England would have
+    gone to war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    That was the situation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Germany is now fighting for her very existence, and I, who am not
+    without knowledge of German conditions, am convinced that never has
+    there been a war more wholly that of a whole people than is this present
+    conflict, as far as Germany is concerned.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Any one who has been in even superficial touch with German public
+    opinion and individual feeling in any part of the empire, since the war
+    began, must know that there is hardly a man, woman, or child throughout
+    the empire who would hesitate if called upon to sacrifice possessions or
+    life in order to insure victory to the Fatherland. Seventy million
+    people who are animated by unanimous sentiment of this sort cannot be
+    crushed, probably not subdued.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And England is confronted by the certainty that her world leadership is
+    the stake for which she is fighting; that her defeat would mean the end
+    of the vast dominance which she has exercised throughout the world,
+    since the time of the Armada, through the power of her great navy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Is it not apparent, therefore, that these nations, if left to
+    themselves, inevitably must continue the war until one side or the
+    other, or both, shall become exhausted&mdash;an eventuation which may be
+    postponed not for mere months but for years?
+</p>
+<p>
+    In our own civil war Grant for almost two years stood within a hundred
+    or a hundred and fifty miles of Richmond, the heart of the Confederacy,
+    and was not able to sufficiently subdue Lee's forces to enable him to
+    get possession of the city until the complete exhaustion of the
+    Confederacy's resources in men and money had been accomplished.
+</p>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0006"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/bryce.jpg" width="143" height="225"
+alt="Viscount James Bryce">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-align: center">VISCOUNT JAMES BRYCE</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i>(Photo from George G. Bain.)</i>
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i><a href="#2H_4_0014">See Page 477</a></i></p>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0007"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/dernburg.jpg" width="143" height="225"
+alt="Dr. Bernhard Dernburg">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-align: center">DR. BERNHARD DERNBURG</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i>(Photo by Campbell Studios.)</i>
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i><a href="#2H_4_0018">See Page 487</a></i></p>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0008"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/jordan.jpg" width="171" height="225"
+alt="David Starr Jordan">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-align: center">DAVID STARR JORDAN</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i><a href="#2H_4_0019">See Page 502</a></i></p>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0009"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/hibben.jpg" width="142" height="225"
+alt="John Grier Hibben">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-align: center">JOHN GRIER HIBBEN</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i>(Photo by McManus.)</i>
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i><a href="#2H_4_0025">See Page 503</a></i></p>
+<br>
+<p>
+    While that situation may not offer a true parallel in all respects to
+    that in which we find the belligerent forces in the present European
+    war, it nevertheless may be taken as a precedent proving that frontal
+    encounters of powerful opponents generally do not yield final results
+    until actual exhaustion compels one side or the other to abandon hope.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such an exhaustion hardly can be expected within measurable time on the
+    part of either one or the other of the combatants in the existing
+    European conflict, and this means the probable continuation for a long
+    period of the merciless slaughter which has marked the last few months.
+    We hold up our hands in horror at the stories of human sacrifices in the
+    early ages when, after all, these were, perhaps, less brutal and less
+    appalling than the wholesale slaughter of the flower of these warring
+    peoples of which we now read almost daily.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As I see the situation there really are only three contestants in the
+    war&mdash;England, Russia, and Germany. France, Belgium, and Austria are
+    important auxiliaries, but they are playing to a certain extent
+    secondary rôles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    England's real object is the utter defeat of Germany&mdash;nothing more nor
+    less than that&mdash;and if this is accomplished England will have control of
+    Europe. It must be remembered that the English Government and English
+    people frequently have asserted that they would not be satisfied with
+    mere defeat of Germany's armed forces, but that her power must be
+    permanently paralyzed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If England should accomplish this, with Germany, its army and its navy,
+    thus wholly out of the way, no one would be left for England to fear in
+    future upon the high seas.
+</p>
+<p>
+    That might be the chief significance of England's complete victory, and
+    its complete significance would be that every nation in the world would
+    have to do the British bidding, for should any one refuse she could
+    completely destroy its commerce and shut off its overseas supplies.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the cases of most nations overseas supplies include material vital
+    to the continuance of life and happiness; to every nation, in these days
+    of a developed and habitual foreign trade, overseas supplies are
+    actually essential, even when they do not necessarily include meats and
+    wheat and other foodstuffs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The effect upon the United States of such an English victory would be
+    most disastrous.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The alliance between England and Japan is likely to be permanent. That
+    is something which Americans cannot afford to forget for a moment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    England needs Japan in the Far East, especially as an ally in case of
+    need, which at some time is certain to arrive, against Russia; and Japan
+    for many reasons needs the strength of English backing, without which
+    her financial and political situation soon would become most dangerous,
+    if not collapse.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such a permanent alliance would have this consequence upon us, that
+    without even the probability of difficulties with either England or
+    Japan&mdash;and, personally, I do not believe that such a probability need be
+    feared&mdash;we nevertheless year after year would be compelled to
+    increasingly prepare for what may be defined as the disagreeable
+    possibility of the eventuation of a disagreeable possibility.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Certainly we should be under the necessity of notably and, therefore,
+    very expensively, increasing our naval armament; we should be under the
+    necessity of large expenditures for coast defense.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Corollary military cost would be enormous and burdensome. The
+    preparation which would be imposed on us as a necessity by such a
+    permanent alliance would be sufficiently extensive and expensive to
+    burden our people heavily and handicap our national progress.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It might involve, perhaps, even a greater hardship in our case than
+    militarism has involved in Germany. It is improbable that the average
+    American realizes the part which absence of such burdens has played in
+    our national development so far; it would be difficult for the average
+    American who has not studied the whole subject carefully to estimate
+    accurately the part which the imposition of such a burden would be sure
+    to play in our future.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We have been measurably a free people. If we were under the necessity of
+    supporting vast military and naval establishments we should be that no
+    longer, no matter how completely we adhered to our democratic political
+    system and ideals. It is not Kings, but what they do, which burdens
+    countries, and the most burdensome, act of any King is to load his
+    country up with non-productive, threatening, and expensive war
+    machinery.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The Real Peril.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    I fear that the American people as a whole have visualized only
+    slightly, if at all, the real peril involved in this contingency; but I
+    cannot feel otherwise than sure that soon they must awake to the great
+    danger that militarism and navalism may be imposed upon them through no
+    fault of their own.
+</p>
+<p>
+    American impulses trend away from armament toward peaceful development
+    along industrial lines, but even now political leaders in Washington
+    begin to see what may be coming. The propositions which already have
+    been made for considerable increases in our naval and military forces
+    may be regarded as only the forerunners of what is to be expected later.
+</p>
+<p>
+    My sympathies and interests, in other words my patriotic sentiments, are
+    definitely American. I must repeat that I am of German origin, and that
+    as regards the present struggle I am pro-German, yet it would be
+    impossible for me to say that I am anti-English, although I am
+    anti-Russian for reasons that are obvious.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I already have expressed the belief that the complete humiliation of
+    England would be disastrous to us. Now, it seems to me that if Germany
+    should be completely successful, if she should be able to wear out the
+    Allies, break down France, hold Russia in check, and cripple or even
+    invade England, (which many German leaders actually believe can be done,
+    incredible as it may seem to us,) Germany would acquire a position such
+    as never has been held by any nation since the beginning of history. Not
+    even the power of the Roman Empire would approach it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The advance which has marked the development of every means of
+    communication, transportation, manufacturing, &amp;c., since Rome's day
+    would give Germany, in the case of such an eventuation, a power which
+    would have been inconceivable to the most ambitious Roman Emperor. It
+    would make her a menace not only to her immediate neighbors, but to the
+    entire globe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Could she be trusted with such power? Notwithstanding my personal
+    sympathies, which I have taken pains to clearly outline, I must admit
+    that I cannot think so. The German character is not only self-reliant,
+    which is admirable, but it readily becomes domineering, particularly
+    when in the ascendency.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the rôle of a world conqueror Germany would become a world
+    dictator&mdash;would indulge in a domination which would be almost unbearable
+    to every other nation. Particularly would this be the case in respect to
+    her relations with the United States, a nation with which she always has
+    had and always must have intimate trade and commercial relations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Should Germany make England impotent and France powerless we should
+    become more or less dependent upon German good-will, and it is highly
+    probable, indeed I regard it as a certainty, that before long, in such
+    an event, the Monroe Doctrine would cease to exercise any important
+    influence on world events. It would become a thing of the past&mdash;a "scrap
+    of paper."
+</p>
+<p>
+    You see that while I am not neutral to the extreme, while I fervently
+    hope and pray that Germany may not be wrecked and that she may emerge
+    from the war with full ability to maintain her own, I cannot believe
+    that it would be good for her or good for the world in general if she
+    found herself absolutely and incontrovertibly victorious at the end of
+    the great struggle. In other words, I wish Germany to be victorious, but
+    I do not wish her to be too victorious.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This brings us definitely to the question as to what can be done to stop
+    this war. Its continuance is infinitely costly of men and treasure; its
+    prosecution to the bitter end would mean complete disaster for one
+    contestant and only less complete destruction for the other, and it
+    would give to the victor, no matter what his sufferings and losses might
+    have been, a power dangerous to the entire world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How shall it end? We do not want its end to mean a new European map.
+    Anything of the sort would include the seed of another European war, to
+    be fought out later and at even greater probable cost, with all the
+    world-disturbance implied in such an eventuation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What the United States should desire and does desire is an understanding
+    between these nations, of just what they are fighting for, which I
+    almost believe they no longer know themselves, and a conference between
+    them now, a pause to think, which at least may help toward stimulating
+    each side to make concessions, before the ultimate of damage has been
+    done.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such a conference might be called even without any interval in warfare
+    and induced without definite outside intervention from ourselves or any
+    one else. I believe it not to be beyond the bounds of possibility that
+    if this course could be brought about importantly enough, a way out of
+    this brutal struggle and carnage might be discovered even now, and I
+    know I am not alone in this belief.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The situation is unprecedented. No congress such as in former times more
+    than once has settled wars and brought about peace by the give-and-take
+    process could be of avail in the existing circumstances. Something far
+    higher than such a conference is needed. This peace must not be
+    temporary. It must mark not the ending of this war alone but the ending
+    of all war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some means must be devised and generally agreed to which, after the
+    re-establishment of peace, will do away with jealousies among European
+    nations, so that the continual increase of armament on land and sea no
+    longer will be necessary, and humanity will be freed from its tremendous
+    burden.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is not at present possible to point out any concrete means by which
+    these things may be accomplished, but it is not impossible that, when
+    reason shall be returned to the Governments now at war, they themselves
+    may suggest to one another plans and ways and means how this may be
+    effectuated.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Toward this end America may help tremendously, and herein lies, it seems
+    to me, the greatest opportunity ever offered by events to the American
+    press.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let the newspapers of America stop futile philosophizing upon the merits
+    and demerits of each case, let them measurably cease their comment upon
+    what each side has accomplished or failed to accomplish during the
+    tragic four months which have traced their bloody mark on history.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let them begin to stimulate public opinion in favor of a rational
+    adjustment of the points at issue&mdash;such an adjustment as will leave each
+    contestant unhumiliated and intact, such an adjustment as will avoid, as
+    far as may be possible, the complete defeat of any one, such an
+    adjustment as will do what can be done toward righting wrongs already
+    wrought, and such an adjustment as will let the world return as soon as
+    may be to the paths of peace, productiveness, prosperity, and happiness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In suggesting that America should regard this effort as an obligation I
+    am assuming for this country no rights which are not properly hers. We,
+    a nation of a hundred million people, laboring constantly for peace and
+    human progress, have a right to make our voice heard, and if we raise it
+    properly it will find listeners among those who can help toward the
+    accomplishment of what we seek. But if we would make it heard we must be
+    earnest, be honest, and be ceaseless in the reiteration of our demand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Have we not the right to insist that the interests of neutral nations,
+    of whom, with our South American cousins, (for the better intercourse
+    with whom we have just spent several hundred millions upon the
+    construction of the Panama Canal,) we form so large a percentage, shall
+    before long be given some consideration by the nations whose great
+    quarrel is harming us incalculably?
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Americans Should Speak Out.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The interruption of our economic development already has become marked
+    and the war's baneful influence upon moral conditions in our midst shows
+    itself through constantly increasing unemployment and, as a logical
+    consequence of that, the rapid filling of our eleemosynary and penal
+    institutions. May we not reasonably demand that this shall speedily be
+    brought to an end?
+</p>
+<p>
+    It probably is true that under the rules of the game the President of
+    the United States cannot offer his good offices again to the
+    belligerents without first being invited by one or the other side to do
+    this, but the people of the United States have a voice even more
+    powerful than his; if that of the people of South America should be
+    joined with it, and if the combined sound should be made unquestionably
+    apparent to the warring nations, it could not pass unheeded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Public opinion in the United States should firmly seek to impress upon
+    the warring nations the conviction that nothing can secure a lasting
+    peace except assurance of conditions under which not mighty armies and
+    tremendous navies are held to be the factors through which trade
+    expansion and the conquest of the markets of the world are to be
+    obtained, but that this can be accomplished better and more lastingly
+    through rigid adherence to the qualities and methods which generally
+    make for success in commercial or any other peaceful
+    competition&mdash;fairness, thorough efficiency, and hard work.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The concentrated power of the American press and people would be
+    tremendous. I am sure that, in this instance, it is possible to
+    concentrate it for righteousness and the future good of all humanity.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    Prof. Mather on Mr. Schiff
+</h2>
+<blockquote>
+<p>     Professor of Art at Princeton University; editorial writer for
+     The New York Evening Post and Assistant Editor of The Nation,
+     1901-06.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    It seems to me that the Belgian previous question ought to be moved with
+    all candid pro-Germans. Mr. Schiff is plainly candid, so I have framed
+    an open letter to elicit his opinion:
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    [<i>An Open Letter to Jacob H. Schiff.</i>]
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, New York.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    My Dear Sir:</p>
+<p>
+    The universal esteem which you enjoy in the country of your adoption lends
+    great weight to any utterance of yours on public matters. Your interview on
+    the war in THE TIMES of Nov. 22 will everywhere have influence for its
+    gravity and fineness of feeling. It is with compunction that I call your
+    attention to the fact that your statement is ambiguous on precisely those
+    issues of the conflict which your fellow-citizens have nearest at heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Your general position may be described as a desire for prompt peace and
+    restoration of the former balance of power. More specifically you wish
+    "Germany to be victorious, but not too victorious." If this be merely an
+    instinctive expression of the residual German in you, an expression made
+    with no practical implications of any sort, no American will do
+    otherwise than respect such a sentiment. But if you deliberately desire
+    a moderate victory for Germany, with all that such moderate victory
+    practically implies, it behooves your fellow-citizens to judge your
+    views in the light of what these really call for.
+</p>
+<p>
+    An ever so slightly victorious Germany would presumably retain Belgium,
+    in whole or in part. Does such a conquest have your moral assent?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Or suppose the rather improbable event of a Germany driven out of
+    Belgium, but otherwise slightly victorious. In such case not a pfennig
+    of indemnity would come to Belgium. Do you believe that no indemnity is
+    morally due Belgium?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Knowing your reputation as a man and philanthropist, I can hardly
+    believe that your desire for a "not too victorious" Germany includes its
+    logical implication of a subjugated or uncompensated Belgium. But if
+    this be so, candor expects an avowal. Until you have made yourself clear
+    on the issue that most concerns your fellow-citizens they will remain in
+    doubt as to your whole moral attitude on the war. Does your pacificism
+    contemplate a German Belgium? I feel sure you will admit that no fairer
+    question could be set to any one who comments on the sequels of the war.
+    I am, most respectfully yours,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jr.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Princeton University, Oct. 23, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    The Eliot-Schiff Letters
+</h2>
+<blockquote>
+<p>     <i>On Nov. 22</i> THE NEW YORK TIMES <i>printed this interview with
+     Jacob H. Schiff on the European war reproduced above. Two days
+     later Dr. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard, who
+     is an old friend of Mr. Schiff, wrote him a letter of comment
+     on THE TIMES interview. This letter resulted in considerable
+     correspondence between the two. At the time this
+     correspondence was penned there was not the least thought in
+     the mind of either of the writers of giving the letters to the
+     public. It was simply an interchange of ideas between men who
+     had long known each other. When they were convinced, however,
+     that publication might serve a useful purpose in shaping
+     public opinion, both Mr. Schiff and Dr. Eliot cordially
+     assented to their being printed.</i>
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    Dr. Eliot to Mr. Schiff.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    CAMBRIDGE, Mass.,<br>
+    Nov. 24, 1914.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    Dear Mr. Schiff:</p>
+<p>
+    It was a great relief to me to read just now your interview in THE NEW YORK
+    TIMES of Nov. 22, for I have been afraid that your judgment and mine,
+    concerning the desirable outcome of this horrible war, were very different.
+    I now find that at many points they coincide.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One of my strongest hopes is that one result of the war may be the
+    acceptance by the leading nations of the world of the precept or
+    law&mdash;there shall be no world empire for any single nation. If I
+    understand you correctly, you hold the same opinion. You wish neither
+    Germany nor England to possess world empire. You also look forward, as I
+    do, to some contract or agreement among the leading nations which shall
+    prevent competitive armaments. I entirely agree with you that it is in
+    the highest degree undesirable that this war should be prolonged to the
+    exhaustion of either side.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When, however, I come to your discussion of the means by which a good
+    result toward European order and peace may be brought out of the present
+    convulsion I do not find clear guidance to present action on your part
+    or mine, or on the part of our Government and people. Was it your
+    thought that a congress of the peoples of North and South America should
+    now be convened to bring to bear American opinion on the actual
+    combatants while the war is going on? Or is it your thought that the
+    American nations wait until there is a lull or pause in the indecisive
+    fighting?
+</p>
+<p>
+    So far as I can judge from the very imperfect information which reaches us
+    from Germany, the confidence of the German Emperor and people in their
+    &quot;invincible&quot; army is not much abated, although it clearly ought to be. It is
+    obvious that American opinion has some weight in Germany; but has it not
+    enough weight to induce Germany to abandon her intense desire for Belgium
+    and Holland and extensive colonial possessions? To my thinking, without the
+    abandonment of that desire and ambition on the part of Germany, there can be
+    no lasting peace in Europe and no reduction of armaments.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Sincerely yours,
+</p>
+<p align="right" style="text-align: right">CHARLES W. ELIOT. </p>
+<p style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0em">
+    Jacob H. Schiff, Esq.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Mr. Schiff to Dr. Eliot.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    NEW YORK,<br>
+    Nov. 25, 1914.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    My Dear Dr. Eliot:
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am just in receipt of your thoughtful letter of yesterday, which it
+    has given me genuine pleasure to receive. While it is true that I have
+    not found myself in accord with many of the views to which you have
+    given public expression concerning the responsibility for this
+    deplorable conflict and the unfortunate conditions it has created, I
+    never doubted that as to its desirable outcome we would find ourselves
+    in accord, and I am very glad to have this confirmed by you, though as
+    to this our views could not have diverged.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to the means by which a desirable result toward European order and
+    peace may be brought about out of the chaos which has become created, it
+    is, I confess, difficult to give guidance at present. What needs first,
+    in my opinion, to be done is to bring forth a healthy and insistent
+    public opinion here for an early peace without either side becoming
+    first exhausted, and it was my purpose in the interview I have given to
+    set the American people thinking concerning this. I have no idea that I
+    shall have immediate success; but if men like you and others follow in
+    the same line, I am sure American public opinion can before long be made
+    to express itself emphatically and insistently in favor of an early
+    peace. Without this it is not unlikely that this horrible slaughter and
+    destruction may continue for a very, very long time.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Yours most faithfully,
+</p>
+<p align="right" style="text-align: right">JACOB H. SCHIFF. </p>
+<p style="text-align: left">
+    President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot, Cambridge, Mass.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Dr. Eliot to Mr. Schiff.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    CAMBRIDGE, Mass.,<br>
+    Nov. 28, 1914.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    Dear Mr. Schiff:
+</p>
+<p>
+    I think, just as you do, that the thing which most needs to be done is
+    to induce Germany to modify its present opinion that the nation must
+    fight for its very life to its last mark and the last drop of its blood.
+    Now, every private letter that I have received from Germany, and every
+    printed circular, pamphlet, or book on the war which has come to me from
+    German sources insists on the view that, for Germany, it is a question
+    between world empire or utter downfall. There is no sense or reason in
+    this view, but the German philosophers, historians, and statesmen are
+    all maintaining it at this moment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    England, France, and Russia have no such expectations or desires as regards
+    the fate of Germany. What they propose to do is to put a stop to Germany's
+    plan of attaining world empire by militarism. Have you any means of getting
+    into the minds of some of the present rulers of Germany the idea that no
+    such alternative as life or death is presented to Germany in this war, and
+    that the people need only abandon their world-empire ambitions while
+    securing safety in the heart of Europe and a chance to develop all that is
+    good in German civilization?</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Sincerely yours,
+</p>
+<p align="right" style="text-align: right">CHARLES W. ELIOT. </p>
+<p style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0em">
+    Jacob H. Schiff, Esq.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Mr. Schiff to Dr. Eliot.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em; text-align: right">
+    The Greenbrier,<br>
+    WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W. Va.,<br>
+    Dec. 1, 1914.</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    Dear Dr. Eliot:
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have received today your letter of the 28th ult., and I hasten to
+    reply to it, for I know of nought that is of more importance than the
+    discussion between earnest men of what might be done to bring to
+    cessation this horrible and senseless war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I believe you are mistaken&mdash;though in this I am stating nothing,
+    absolutely, but my personal opinion&mdash;that Germany would not listen to
+    the suggestion for a restoration of peace until it has either come into
+    a position to dictate the terms or until it is utterly crushed. Indeed,
+    I rather feel, and I have indications that such is the case, that
+    England is unwilling to stop short of crushing Germany, and it is now
+    using all the influence it can bring to bear in this country to prevent
+    public opinion being aroused in favor of the stoppage of hostilities and
+    re-establishment of peace.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The same mail which brought your letter this morning brought me also a
+    letter from a leading semi-military man, whom I know by name, but not
+    personally. It is so fine and timely that I venture to inclose a copy
+    for your perusal. Why would not you, and perhaps Dr. Andrew D. White,
+    who&mdash;is it not a coincidence&mdash;has likewise written me today on the
+    subject of my recent TIMES interview, be the very men to carry out the
+    suggestion made by my correspondent?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Perhaps no other two men in the entire country are so greatly looked up to
+    by its people for guidance as you&mdash;in the first instance&mdash;and Dr. White. You
+    could surely bestow no greater gift upon the entire civilized world than if
+    now, in the evening of a life which has been of such great value to mankind,
+    you would call around you a number of leading, earnest Americans with the
+    view of discussing and framing plans through which American public opinion
+    could be crystallized and aroused to the point where it will insistently
+    demand that these warring nations come together and, with the experience
+    they have made to their great cost, make at least an attempt to find a way
+    out. I cannot but believe that the Governments of England, France, and
+    Germany&mdash;if not Russia&mdash;will have to listen, if the American people speak with
+    no uncertain voice. Do it, and you will deserve and receive the blessing of
+    this and of coming generations!</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Yours most faithfully,
+</p>
+<p align="right" style="text-align: right">JACOB H. SCHIFF. </p>
+<h3>
+    Dr. Eliot to Mr. Schiff.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    CAMBRIDGE, Mass.,<br>
+    Dec. 8, 1914.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    Dear Mr. Schiff:
+</p>
+<p>
+    I thank you for your letter of Dec. 1 and its interesting inclosure.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Although every thoughtful person must earnestly desire that the waste
+    and destruction of this greatest of wars should be stopped as soon as
+    possible, there is an overpowering feeling that the war should go on
+    until all the combatants, including Germany, have been brought to see
+    that the Governmental régime and the state of the public mind in Germany
+    which have made this war possible are not consistent with the security
+    and well-being of Europe in the future.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Personally, I feel strongly that the war ought to go on so long as
+    Germany persists in its policies of world empire, dynastic rule,
+    autocratic bureaucracy, and the use of force in international dealings.
+    If the war stops before Germany sees that those policies cannot prevail
+    in twentieth-century Europe, the horrible wrongs and evils which we are
+    now witnessing will recur; and all the nations will have to continue the
+    destructive process of competitive armaments. If peace should be made
+    now, before the Allies have arrived at attacking Germany on her own
+    soil, there would result only a truce of moderate length, and then a
+    renewal of the present horrors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I cannot but think that Europe now has a chance to make a choice between
+    the German ideal of the State and the Anglo-American ideal. These two
+    ideals are very different; and the present conflict shows that they
+    cannot coexist longer in modern Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In regard to the suggestion which your correspondent made to you that a
+    conference of private persons should now be called in the hope of
+    arriving at an agreed-upon appeal to the combatants to desist from
+    fighting and consider terms of settlement, I cannot but feel (1) that
+    such a conference would have no assured status; (2) that the combatants
+    would not listen; and (3) that the effort would, therefore, be untimely
+    now, though perhaps useful later.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One idea might possibly bring about peace, if it fructified in the mind
+    of the German Emperor&mdash;the idea, namely, that the chance of Germany's
+    obtaining dominating power in either Europe or the world having already
+    gone, the wise thing for him to do is to save United Germany within her
+    natural boundaries for secure development as a highly civilized strong
+    nation in the heart of Europe. Surplus population can always emigrate
+    happily in the future as in the past.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The security of Germany would rest, however, on an international
+    agreement to be maintained by an international force; whereas, the
+    example which Germany has just given of the reckless violation of
+    international agreements is extremely discouraging in regard to the
+    possibility of securing the peace of Europe in the future.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Although this war has already made quite impossible the domination of
+    Germany in Europe or in the world, the leaders of Germany do not yet see
+    or apprehend that impossibility. Hence, many earnest peace-seekers have
+    to confess that they do not see any means whatever available for
+    promoting peace in Europe now, or even procuring a short truce.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I wish I could believe with you that the Governments of England, France,
+    Germany, and Russia would listen to the voice of the American people.
+    They all seem to desire the good opinion and moral support of America;
+    but I see no signs that they would take American advice or imitate
+    American example. President Wilson seems to think that this country will
+    be accepted as a kind of umpire in this formidable contest; but surely
+    we have no right to any such position. Our example in avoiding
+    aggression on other nations, and in declining to enter the contest for
+    world power, ought to have some effect in abating European ambitions in
+    that direction; but our exhortations to peace and good-will will, I
+    fear, have little influence. There is still a real contest on between
+    democracy and oligarchical methods.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You see, my dear Mr. Schiff, that I regard this war as the result of
+    long-continuing causes which have been gathering force for more than
+    fifty years. In Germany all the forces of education, finance, commercial
+    development, a pagan philosophy, and Government have been preparing this
+    war since 1860. To stop it now, before these forces have been
+    overwhelmingly defeated, and before the whole German people is convinced
+    that they are defeated, would be to leave humanity exposed to the
+    certain recurrence of the fearful convulsions we are now witnessing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If anybody can show me any signs that the leaders of Germany are convinced
+    that there is to be no world empire for Germany or any other nation, and no
+    despotic Government in Europe, I shall be ready to take part in any
+    effectual advocacy of peace.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Sincerely yours.
+</p>
+<p align="right" style="text-align: right">CHARLES W. ELIOT. </p>
+<p style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0em">
+    Jacob H. Schiff, Esq.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Mr. Schiff to Dr. Eliot.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    NEW YORK,<br>
+    Dec. 5, 1914.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot,<br>
+    Cambridge, Mass.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    Dear Dr. Eliot:
+</p>
+<p>
+    Your letter of Dec. 3 reached me this morning, and has given me much
+    food for thought.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I wish I could follow you in the position you have taken, for I like
+    nothing better than to sit at the feet of a master like you and be
+    instructed. But, much as I have tried, even before our recent
+    correspondence was begun, to get at your viewpoint as from time to time
+    published, I have not been able to convince myself that you occupy a
+    correct position. Please accept this as expressed in all modesty, for I
+    know were you not thoroughly convinced of the justice of the position
+    you have taken from the start you would not be so determined in holding
+    to it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am perfectly frank to say that I am amazed and chagrined when you say
+    that you feel strongly that the war ought to go on until the Allies
+    have arrived at attacking Germany on her own soil, which, if this is at
+    all likely to come, may take many months yet, and will mean sacrifice of
+    human life on both sides more appalling than anything we have seen yet
+    since the war began. So you are willing that, with all the human life
+    that has already perished, practically the entire flower of the warring
+    nations shall become exterminated before even an effort be made to see
+    whether these nations cannot be brought to reason, cannot be made to
+    stop and to consider whether, with the experience of the past four
+    months before them, it would not be better to even now make an effort to
+    find a way in which the causes that have led to this deplorable conflict
+    can be once and forever eradicated?
+</p>
+<p>
+    That it will be possible to find at this time any method or basis
+    through the adoption of which the world would become entirely immune
+    against war I do not believe, even by the establishment of the
+    international police force such as you and others appear to have in
+    mind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The perpetual cessation of all war between the civilized nations of the
+    world can, as I see it, only be brought about in two ways, both Utopian
+    and likely impracticable, for many years to come. War could be made only
+    to cease entirely if all the nations of Europe could be organized into a
+    United States of Europe and if free trade were established throughout
+    the world. In the first instance, the extreme nationalism, which has
+    become so rampant during the past fifty years and which has been more or
+    less at the bottom of every war, would then cease to exist and prevail,
+    and in the second event, namely, if free trade became established
+    throughout the world the necessity for territorial expansion and
+    aggression would no longer be needed, for, with the entire world open on
+    equal terms to the commerce and industry of every nation, territorial
+    possession would not be much of a consideration to any peoples.
+</p>
+<p>
+    You continually lay stress upon the danger of the domination of Germany
+    in Europe and in the world. I believe I have already made myself quite
+    clear in my recent NEW YORK TIMES interview, which has called forth this
+    correspondence between us, that neither would I wish to have Germany
+    come into a position where it might dominate Europe, and more or less
+    the world, nor do I believe that the German Nation, except perhaps a
+    handful of extremists, has any such desires.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I believe I have also made myself quite clear in the interview to which
+    I have referred that my feelings are not anti-English, for I shall never
+    forget that liberal government and all forms of liberalism have had
+    their origin, ever since the Magna Charta, in that great nation whom we
+    so often love to call our cousins. But, with all of this, can you ignore
+    the fact that England even today, without the further power and prestige
+    victory in the present conflict would give her, practically dominates
+    the high seas, that she treats the ocean as her own and enforces her
+    dictates upon the waters even to our very shores? That this is true the
+    past four months have amply proved. I am not one of those who fear that
+    the United States, as far as can now be foreseen, will get into any
+    armed conflict with Great Britain or with Japan, her permanent ally, but
+    I can well understand that many in our country are of a different
+    opinion, and it takes no prophet to foresee that, with England coming
+    out of this war victorious and her and Japan's power on the high seas
+    increased, the demand from a large section of our people for the
+    acquisition and possession of the United States of an increased powerful
+    navy and for the erection of vast coast defenses, both on the Atlantic
+    and Pacific shores, will become so insistent that it cannot be
+    withstood. What this will mean to the American people in lavish
+    expenditures and in increased taxation I need not here further go into.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes, my dear and revered friend, I can see nought but darkness if a way
+    cannot be soon found out of the present deplorable situation as it
+    exists in Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But even if the Allies are victorious it will mean, as I am convinced,
+    the beginning of the descent of England as the world's leader and the
+    hastened ascendency of Russia, who, not today or tomorrow, but in times
+    to come, is sure to crowd out England from the world's leadership. A
+    Russia that will have become democratic in its government, be it as a
+    republic or under a truly constitutional monarchy; a Russia in which
+    education will be as free as it is in our own country; a Russia in which
+    the people can move about and make homes in the vast territory she
+    possesses wherever they can find most happiness and prosperity; a Russia
+    with its vast natural resources of every kind fully developed, is bound
+    to be the greatest and most powerful nation on the earth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But I am going too far into the future and I must return to the sad and
+    deplorable present. I only wanted to show how England's alliance with
+    this present-day Russia and its despotic, autocratic, and inhuman
+    Government may, if the Allies shall be victorious, prove possibly in the
+    nearer future, but certainly in the long run, England's Nemesis.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Before closing I want to correct the impression you appear to have
+    received that I have meant to suggest a conference of private persons
+    for the purpose of agreeing upon an appeal by them to the nations of
+    Europe to desist from fighting and consider terms of settlement. I know
+    this would be entirely impracticable and useless, but what I meant to
+    convey to you was my conviction that if you and men like you, of whom I
+    confess there are but too few, were to make the endeavor to rouse public
+    opinion in the United States to a point where it should insistently
+    demand that this terrific carnage of blood and destruction cease, it
+    would not be long before these warring Governments would take notice of
+    such sentiments on the part of the American people; and what should be
+    done at once is the stoppage of the furnishing of munitions of war to
+    any of the belligerents, as is unfortunately done to so great an extent
+    at present from this country.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We freely and abundantly give to the Red Cross and the many other relief
+    societies, but we do this, even if indirectly, out of the very profits we
+    derive from the war material we sell to the belligerents, and with which the
+    wounds the Red Cross and other relief societies endeavor to assuage are
+    inflicted.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Yours most faithfully,
+</p>
+<p align="right" style="text-align: right">JACOB H. SCHIFF. </p>
+<h3>
+    Dr. Eliot to Mr. Schiff.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em; text-align: right">
+    CAMBRIDGE, Mass.,<br>
+    Dec. 8, 1914.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    Dear Mr. Schiff:
+</p>
+<p>
+    Your letter of Dec. 5 tells me what the difference is between you and me
+    in respect to the outcome of the war&mdash;I am much more hopeful or sanguine
+    of the world's getting good out of it than you are. Since you do not
+    hope to get any good to speak of out of it, you want to stop it as soon
+    as possible. You look forward to future war from time to time between
+    the nations of Europe and to the maintenance of competitive armaments.
+    You think that the lust of dominion must continue to be felt and
+    gratified, now by one nation and now by another; that Great Britain can
+    gratify it now, but that she will be overpowered by Russia by and by.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am unwilling to accept these conditions for Europe, or for the world,
+    without urging the freer nations to make extraordinary efforts to reach
+    a better solution of the European international problem which, unsolved,
+    has led down to this horrible pit of general war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have just finished another letter to THE NEW YORK TIMES, which will
+    probably be in print by the time you get back to New York, so I will not
+    trouble you with any exposition of the grounds of my hopefulness. It is
+    because I am hopeful that I want to see this war fought out until
+    Germany is persuaded that she cannot dominate Europe, or, indeed, make
+    her will prevail anywhere by force of arms. When that change of mind has
+    been effected I hope that Germany will become a member of a federation
+    firm enough and powerful enough to prevent any single nation from
+    aiming at world empire, or even pouncing on a smaller neighbor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is another point on which I seem to differ from you: I do not believe
+    that any single nation has now, or can ever hereafter have, the leadership
+    of the world, whereas you look forward to the existence of such leadership
+    or domination in the hands of a single great power. Are there not many signs
+    already, both in the East and in the West, that the time has past for world
+    empire?</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Very sincerely and cordially yours,
+</p>
+<p align="right" style="text-align: right">CHARLES W. ELIOT. </p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    Jacob H. Schiff, Esq.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Mr. Schiff to Dr. Eliot.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em; text-align: right">
+    NEW YORK,<br>
+    Dec. 14, 1914.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    Dear Dr. Eliot:
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have delayed replying to your valued letter of the 8th inst. until
+    after the appearance of your further letter to THE NEW YORK TIMES, to
+    which you had made reference, and, like everything emanating from you,
+    the contents of your last TIMES letter have evoked my deepest interest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Had our recent correspondence not already become more extended than you
+    likely had intended it to become when you first wrote me on the subject
+    of my TIMES interview of some weeks ago, I should go into your latest
+    arguments at greater length. As it is, I shall only reiterate that I
+    find myself unable to follow you in your belief and hope, that world
+    empire and world leadership, as this now exists, is likely to cease as a
+    consequence of the present war, much as we all may desire this.
+</p>
+<p>
+    England has taken up arms to retain her world dominion and leadership;
+    and to gain it, Germany is fighting. How can you, then, expect that
+    England, if victorious, would be willing to surrender her control of the
+    oceans and the dominion over the trade of the world she possesses in
+    consequence, and where is there, then, room for the hope you express
+    that world leadership may become a thing of the past with the
+    termination of the present conflict?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I repeat, with all my attachment for my native land and its people, I
+    have no inimical feeling toward England, have warm sentiments for
+    France, and the greatest compassion for brave, stricken Belgium.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thus, "with malice toward none," and with the highest respect for your
+    expressed views, I am still of the opinion that there can be no greater
+    service rendered to mankind than to make the effort, either through the
+    force of public opinion of the two Americas, or otherwise, to bring
+    these warring Governments together at an early moment, even if this can
+    only be done without stopping their conflict, so that they may make the
+    endeavor, whether&mdash;with their costly experience of the last five months,
+    with the probability that they now know better what need be done to make
+    the extreme armaments on land and sea as unnecessary as they are
+    undesirable in the future&mdash;a basis cannot be found upon which
+    disarmament can be effectively and permanently brought about.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This, at some time, they will have come to, in any event, and must there
+    first more human lives be sacrificed into the hundreds and hundreds of
+    thousands, and still greater havoc be wrought, before passions can be
+    made to cease and reason be made to return?
+</p>
+<p>
+    If, as you seem to think, the war need go on until one country is beaten
+    into a condition where it must accept the terms the victor chooses to
+    impose, because it can no longer help itself to do else, the peace thus
+    obtained will only be the harbinger of another war in the near or
+    distant future, bloodier probably than the present sanguinary conflict,
+    and through no compact which might be entered into will it be possible
+    to actually prevent this.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Twenty centuries ago Christianity came into the world with its lofty message
+    of &quot;peace on earth and good-will to men,&quot; and now, after two thousand years,
+    and at the near approach of the season when Christianity celebrates the
+    birth of its founder, it is insisted that the merciless slaughter of man by
+    man we have been witnessing these last months must be permitted to be
+    continued into the infinite.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Most faithfully yours,
+</p>
+<p align="right" style="text-align: right">JACOB H. SCHIFF. </p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot, Cambridge, Mass.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    LA CATHEDRALE.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    From Figaro.
+</h3>
+<h3>
+    By EDMOND ROSTAND.
+</h3>
+<br>
+<blockquote>
+  <blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <blockquote>
+        <blockquote>
+          <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">    Ils n'ont fait que la rendre un peu plus immortelle.<br>
+    L'Oeuvre ne périt pas, que mutile un gredin.<br>
+    Demande ŕ Phidias et demande ŕ Rodin<br>
+    Si, devant ses morceaux, on ne dit plus: "C'est Elle!"<br>
+<br>
+    La Forteresse meurt quand on la démantčle.<br>
+    Mais le Temple, brisé, vit plus noble; et soudain<br>
+    Les yeux, se souvenant du toit avec dédain,<br>
+    Préfčrent voir le ciel dans la pierre en dentelle.<br>
+<br>
+    Rendons grace&mdash;attendu qu'il nous manquait encor<br>
+    D'avoir ce qu'ont les Grecs sur la colline d'or;<br>
+    Le Symbole du Beau consacré par l'insulte!&mdash;<br>
+<br>
+    Rendons grace aux pointeurs du stupide canon,<br>
+    Puisque de leur adresse allemande il résulte<br>
+    Une Honte pour eux, pour nous un Parthénon!
+</p>
+          </blockquote>
+        </blockquote>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+  </blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+<hr>
+
+    <h2>THE CATHEDRAL.</h2>
+
+<h3>
+    A Free Translation of Rostand's Sonnet.
+</h3>
+<h3>
+    By FRANCES C. FAY.
+</h3>
+<br>
+    <blockquote>
+      <blockquote>
+        <blockquote>
+          <blockquote>
+            <blockquote>
+              <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">    "Deathless" is graven deeper on thy brow;<br>
+    Ghouls have no power to end thy endless sway.<br>
+    The Greek of old, the Frenchman of today,<br>
+    Before thy riven shrine are bending now.<br>
+<br>
+    A wounded fortress straightway lieth prone,<br>
+    Not so the Temple dies; its roof may fall,<br>
+    The sky its covering vault, an azure pall,<br>
+    Doth droop to crown its wealth of lacework stone.<br>
+<br>
+    Praise to you, Vandal guns of dull intent!<br>
+    We lacked till now our Beauty's monument<br>
+    Twice hallowed o'er by insult's brutal hand,<br>
+<br>
+    As Pallas owns on Athens' golden hill,<br>
+    We have it now, thanks to your far-flung brand!<br>
+    Your shame&mdash;our gain, misguided German skill!</p>
+              </blockquote>
+            </blockquote>
+          </blockquote>
+        </blockquote>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0013"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    Probable Causes and Outcome of the War
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Charles W. Eliot.
+</h3>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>     President Emeritus of Harvard University; Officer Legion
+     d'Honneur (France); Imperial Order of the Rising Sun, first
+     class (Japan); Royal Prussian Order of the Crown, first class;
+     Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy; Member of the General
+     Education Board, and an original investigator for the cause of
+     international peace.</p>
+
+    </blockquote>
+
+<p style="text-align: center">     <i>Following Is Reproduced a Series of Five Letters to</i> THE NEW
+     YORK TIMES <i>from Dr. Eliot, Together with the Comments Thereon
+     by Eminent Critics.</i></p>
+
+<br>
+    <h3>DR. ELIOT'S FIRST LETTER. </h3>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    The American people without distinction of party are highly content with
+    the action of their National Administration on all the grave problems
+    presented to the Government by the sudden outbreak of long-prepared war
+    in Europe&mdash;a war which already involves five great States and two small
+    ones. They heartily approve of the action of the Administration on
+    mediation, neutrality, aid to Americans in Europe, discouragement of
+    speculation in foods, and, with the exception of extreme protectionists,
+    admission to American registery of foreign-built ships; although the
+    legislation on the last subject, which has already passed Congress, is
+    manifestly inadequate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Our people cannot see that the war will necessarily be short, and they
+    cannot imagine how it can last long. They realize that history gives no
+    example of such a general interruption of trade and all other
+    international intercourse as has already taken place, or of such a
+    stoppage of the production and distribution of the necessaries of life
+    as this war threatens. They shudder at the floods of human woe which are
+    about to overwhelm Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hence, thinking Americans cannot help reflecting on the causes of this
+    monstrous outbreak of primitive savagery&mdash;part of them come down from
+    the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and part developed in the
+    nineteenth&mdash;and wondering what good for mankind, if any, can possibly
+    come out of the present cataclysm.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The whole people of the United States, without regard to racial origin,
+    are of one mind in hoping that mankind may gain out of this prodigious
+    physical combat, which uses for purposes of destruction and death all
+    the new forces of nineteenth-century applied science, some new liberties
+    and new securities in the pursuit of happiness; but at this moment they
+    can cherish only a remote hope of such an issue. The military force
+    which Austria-Hungary and Germany are now using on a prodigious scale,
+    and with long-studied skill, can only be met by similar military force,
+    and this resisting force is summoned more slowly than that of
+    Austria-Hungary and Germany, although the ultimate battalions will be
+    heavier. In this portentous physical contest the American people have no
+    part; their geographical position, their historical development, and
+    their political ideals combine to make them for the present mere
+    spectators, although their interests&mdash;commercial, industrial, and
+    political&mdash;are deeply involved. For the moment, the best thing our
+    Government can do is to utilize all existing neutrality rights, and, if
+    possible, to strengthen or develop those rights, for out of this war
+    ought to come more neutral States in Europe and greater security for
+    neutralized territory.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The Need for Discussion.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The chances of getting some gains for mankind out of this gigantic
+    struggle will be somewhat increased if the American people, and all
+    other neutral peoples, arrive through public discussion at some clear
+    understanding of the causes and the possible and desirable issues of the
+    war, and the sooner this public discussion begins, and the more
+    thoroughly it is pursued, the sounder will probably be the tendencies of
+    public sentiment outside of the contending nations and the conclusions
+    which the peace negotiations will ultimately reach.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When one begins, however, to reflect on the probable causes of the
+    sudden lapse of the most civilized parts of Europe into worse than
+    primitive savagery, he comes at once on two old and widespread evils in
+    Europe from which America has been exempt for at least 150 years. The
+    first is secret diplomacy with power to make issues and determine
+    events, and the second is autocratic national Executives who can swing
+    the whole physical force of the nation to this side or that without
+    consulting the people or their representatives.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The actual catastrophe proves that secret negotiations like those
+    habitually conducted on behalf of the "concert of Europe," and alliances
+    between selected nations, the terms of which are secret, or at any rate
+    not publicly stated, cannot avert in the long run outrageous war, but
+    can only produce postponements of war, or short truces. Free
+    institutions, like those of the United States, take the public into
+    confidence, because all important movements of the Government must rest
+    on popular desires, needs, and volitions. Autocratic institutions have
+    no such necessity for publicity. This Government secrecy as to motives,
+    plans, and purposes must often be maintained by disregarding truth, fair
+    dealing, and honorable obligations, in order that, when the appeal to
+    force comes, one Government may secure the advantage of taking the other
+    by surprise. Duplicity during peace and the breaking of treaties during
+    war come to be regarded as obvious military necessities.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The second great evil under which certain large nations of
+    Europe&mdash;notably Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary&mdash;have long suffered
+    and still suffer is the permanent national Executive, independent of
+    popular control through representative bodies, holding strong views
+    about rights of birth and religious sanctions of its authority, and
+    really controlling the national forces through some small council and a
+    strong bureaucracy. So long as Executives of this sort endure, so long
+    will civilization be liable to such explosions as have taken place this
+    August, though not always on so vast a scale.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Americans now see these things more clearly than European lovers of
+    liberty, because Americans are detached from the actual conflicts by the
+    Atlantic, and because Americans have had no real contact with the feudal
+    or the imperial system for nearly 300 years. Pilgrim and Puritan,
+    Covenanter and Quaker, Lutheran and Catholic alike left the feudal
+    system and autocratic government behind them when they crossed the
+    Atlantic. Americans, therefore, cannot help hoping that two results of
+    the present war will be: (1) The abolition of secret diplomacy and
+    secret understandings, and the substitution therefor of treaties
+    publicly discussed and sanctioned, and (2) the creation of national
+    Executives&mdash;Emperors, Sultans, Kings, or Presidents&mdash;which cannot use
+    the national forces in fight until a thoroughly informed national
+    assembly, acting with deliberation, has agreed to that use.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Opposite Tendencies.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The American student of history since the middle of the seventeenth
+    century sees clearly two strong though apparently opposite tendencies in
+    Europe: First, the tendency to the creation and maintenance of small
+    States such as those which the Peace of Westphalia (1648) recognized and
+    for two centuries secured in a fairly independent existence, and,
+    secondly, a tendency from the middle of the nineteenth century toward
+    larger national units, created by combining several kindred States
+    under one executive. This second tendency was illustrated strongly in
+    the case of both Germany and Italy, although the Prussian domination in
+    Germany has no parallel in Italy. Somewhat earlier in the nineteenth
+    century the doctrine of the neutralization of the territories of small
+    States was established as firmly as solemn treaties could do it. The
+    larger national units had a more or less federative quality, the
+    components yielding some of their functions to a central power, but
+    retaining numerous independent functions. This tendency to limited
+    unification is one which Americans easily understand and appreciate. We
+    believe in the federative principle, and must therefore hope that out of
+    the present European horror will come a new development of that
+    principle, and new security for small States which are capable of
+    guaranteeing to their citizens "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
+    happiness"&mdash;a security which no citizen of any European country seems
+    today to possess.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some of the underlying causes of the horrible catastrophe the American
+    people are now watching from afar are commercial and economic. Imperial
+    Germany's desire for colonies in other continents&mdash;such as Great Britain
+    and France secured earlier as a result of keen commercial ambitions&mdash;is
+    intense. Prussia's seizure of Schleswig in 1864-5 had the commercial
+    motive; and it is with visions of ports on the North Sea that Germany
+    justifies her present occupation of Belgium. The Russians have for
+    generations desired to extend their national territory southward to the
+    Aegean and the Bosphorus, and eastward to good harbors on the Pacific.
+    Later they pushed into Mongolia and Manchuria, but were resisted
+    successfully by Japan. Austria-Hungary has long been seeking ports on
+    the Adriatic, and lately seized without warrant Herzegovina and Bosnia
+    to promote her approach toward the Aegean, and is now trying to seize
+    Servia with the same ends in view. With similar motives Italy lately
+    descended on Tripoli, without any excuse except this intense desire for
+    colonies&mdash;profitable or unprofitable. On the other hand, the American
+    people, looking to the future as well as to the past, object to
+    acquisitions of new territory by force of arms; and since the twentieth
+    century opened they have twice illustrated in their own practice&mdash;first
+    in Cuba, and then in Mexico&mdash;this democratic objection. They believe
+    that extensions of national territory should be brought about only with
+    the indubitable consent of the majority of the people most nearly
+    concerned. They also believe that commerce should always be a means of
+    promoting good-will, and not ill-will, among men, and that all
+    legitimate and useful extensions of the commerce of a manufacturing and
+    commercial nation may be procured through the policy of the "open
+    door"&mdash;which means nothing more than that all nations should be allowed
+    to compete on equal terms for the trade of any foreign people, whether
+    backward or advanced in civilization. No American Administration has
+    accepted a "concession" of land in China. They also believe that
+    peaceable extensions of territory and trade will afford adequate relief
+    from the economic pressure on a population too large for the territory
+    it occupies, and that there is no need of forcible seizure of territory
+    to secure relief. It is inevitable, therefore, that the American people
+    should hope that one outcome of the present war should be&mdash;no
+    enlargement of a national territory by force or without the free consent
+    of the population to be annexed, and no colonization except by peaceable
+    commercial and industrial methods.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Aggressive Force a Failure.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    One of the most interesting and far-reaching effects of the present
+    outbreak of savagery is likely to be the conviction it carries to the
+    minds of thinking people that the whole process of competitive
+    armaments, the enlistment of the entire male population in national
+    armies, and the incessant planning of campaigns against neighbors, is
+    not a trustworthy method for preserving peace. It now appears that the
+    military preparations of the last fifty years in Europe have resulted
+    in the most terrific war of all time, and that a fierce ultimate
+    outbreak is the only probable result of the system. For the future of
+    civilization this is a lesson of high value. It teaches that if modern
+    civilization is to be preserved, national Executives&mdash;whether imperial
+    or republican&mdash;must not have at their disposal immense armaments and
+    drilled armies held ready in the leash; that armaments must be limited,
+    an international Supreme Court established, national armies changed to
+    the Swiss form, and an international force adequate to deal with any
+    nation that may suddenly become lawless agreed upon by treaty and held
+    always in readiness. The occasional use of force will continue to be
+    necessary even in the civilized world; but it must be made not an
+    aggressive but a protective force and used as such&mdash;just as protective
+    force has to be used sometimes in families, schools, cities, and
+    Commonwealths.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At present Americans do not close their eyes to the plain fact that the
+    brute force which Germany and Austria-Hungary are now using can only be
+    overcome by brute force of the same sort in larger measure. It is only
+    when negotiations for peace begin that the great lesson of the futility
+    of huge preparations for fighting to preserve peace can be given effect.
+    Is it too much to expect that the whole civilized world will take to
+    heart the lessons of this terrible catastrophe and co-operate to prevent
+    the recurrence of such losses and woes? Should Germany and
+    Austria-Hungary succeed in their present undertakings, the whole
+    civilized world would be obliged to bear continuously, and to an
+    ever-increasing amount, the burdens of great armaments, and would live
+    in constant fear of sudden invasion, now here, now there&mdash;a terrible
+    fear, against which neither treaties nor professions of peaceable
+    intentions would offer the least security.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It must be admitted, however, that the whole military organization,
+    which has long been compulsory on the nations of Continental Europe, is
+    inconsistent in the highest degree with American ideals of individual
+    liberty and social progress. Democracies can fight with ardor, and
+    sometimes with success, when the whole people is moved by a common
+    sentiment or passion; but the structure and discipline of a modern army
+    like that of Germany, Austria-Hungary, or Russia, has a despotic or
+    autocratic quality which is inconsistent with the fundamental principles
+    of democratic society. To make war in countries like France, Great
+    Britain, and the United States requires the widespread, simultaneous
+    stirring of the passions of the people on behalf of their own ideals.
+    This stirring requires publicity before and after the declaration of war
+    and public discussion; and the delays which discussion causes are
+    securities for peace. Out of the present struggle should come a check on
+    militarism&mdash;a strong revulsion against the use of force as means of
+    settling international disputes.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    America Cannot Be Indifferent.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    It must also be admitted that it is impossible for the American people
+    to sympathize with the tone of the imperial and royal addresses which,
+    in summoning the people to war, use such phrases as "My monarchy," "My
+    loyal people," "My loyal subjects"; for there is implied in such phrases
+    a dynastic or personal ownership of peoples which shocks the average
+    American. Americans inevitably think that the right way for a ruler to
+    begin an exhortation to the people he rules is President Wilson's way:
+    "My fellow-countrymen."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It follows from the very existence of these American instincts and hopes
+    that, although the people of the United States mean to maintain
+    faithfully a legal neutrality, they are not, and can not be, neutral or
+    indifferent as to the ultimate outcome of this titanic struggle. It
+    already seems to them that England, France, and Russia are fighting for
+    freedom and civilization. It does not follow that thinking Americans
+    will forget the immense services which Germany has rendered to
+    civilization during the last hundred years, or desire that her power to
+    serve letters, science, art, and education should be in the least
+    abridged in the outcome of this war upon which she has entered so
+    rashly and selfishly and in so barbarous a spirit. Most educated
+    Americans hope and believe that by defeating the German barbarousness
+    the Allies will only promote the noble German civilization.
+</p>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0010"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/burgess.jpg" width="141" height="225"
+alt="John W. Burgess">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-align: center">JOHN W. BURGESS</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i>(Photo by Alman &amp; Co.)</i>
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i><a href="#2H_4_0027">See Page 507</a></i></p>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0011"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/sloane.jpg" width="141" height="225"
+alt="William M. Sloane">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-align: center">WILLIAM M. SLOANE</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i>(Photo by Pach.)</i>
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i><a href="#2H_4_0031">See Page 515</a></i></p>
+<br>
+<p>
+    The presence of Russia in the combination against Germany and
+    Austria-Hungary seems to the average American an abnormal phenomenon;
+    because Russia is itself a military monarchy with marked territorial
+    ambitions; and its civilization is at a more elementary stage than that
+    of France or England; but he resists present apprehension on this score
+    by recalling that Russia submitted to the "Concert of Europe" when her
+    victorious armies were within seventeen miles of Constantinople, that
+    she emancipated her serfs, proposed The Hague Conferences, initiated the
+    "Duma," and has lately offered&mdash;perhaps as war measures only&mdash;autonomy
+    to her Poles and equal rights of citizenship to her Jews. He also
+    cannot help believing that a nation which has produced such a literature
+    as Russia has produced during the last fifty years must hold within its
+    multitudinous population a large minority which is seething with high
+    aspirations and a fine idealism.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the clarification of the public mind on the issue involved, it is
+    important that the limits of American neutrality should be discussed and
+    understood. The action of the Government must be neutral in the best
+    sense; but American sympathies and hopes cannot possibly be neutral, for
+    the whole history and present state of American liberty forbids. For the
+    present, thinking Americans can only try to appreciate the scope and
+    real issues of this formidable convulsion, and so be ready to seize
+    every opportunity that may present itself to further the cause of human
+    freedom, and of peace at last.
+</p>
+<p align="right" style="text-align: right">CHARLES W. ELIOT. </p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Asticou, Me., Sept. 1, 1914.
+</p>
+<br><hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0014"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    Appreciation from Lord Bryce
+</h2>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>     Late Ambassador at Washington from Great Britain; Chief
+     Secretary for Ireland, 1905-6; author of "The American
+     Commonwealth," and of studies in history and biography.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<p>
+    It has been a great pleasure to see from your published letter, which
+    has just reached us, that you so clearly understand the motive and
+    feelings with which Great Britain has entered on the present war.
+    Neither commercial rivalry nor any fancied jealousy of Germany's
+    greatness has led us into it, and to the German people our people bear
+    no ill-will whatever. Along with many others I have worked steadily
+    during long years for the maintenance of friendship with Germany,
+    admiring the splendid gifts of the German race, and recognizing their
+    enormous services to science, philosophy, and literature. We had hoped,
+    as some thoughtful statesmen in Germany had also hoped, that by a
+    cordial feeling between Germany and Britain the peace of Europe might be
+    secured and something done to bring about permanently better relations
+    between Germany and her two great neighbors with whom we found ourselves
+    on friendly terms; and we had confidently looked to the United States to
+    join with us in this task. But the action of the German Government in
+    violating the neutrality of Belgium when France had assured us that she
+    would respect it, the invasion of a small State whose neutrality and
+    independence she and England had joined in guaranteeing, evoked in this
+    country an almost unanimous sentiment that the faith of treaties and the
+    safety of small States must be protected. There has been no war for more
+    than a century&mdash;perhaps two centuries&mdash;into which the nation has entered
+    with so general a belief that its action is justified. We rejoice to be
+    assured that this is the general feeling of the people of the United
+    States, whose opinion we naturally value more than we do that of any
+    other people.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Most persons in this country, including all those who work for peace,
+    agree with you in deploring the vast armaments which European States
+    have been piling up, and will hope with you that after this war they may
+    be reduced&mdash;and safely reduced&mdash;to slender dimensions. Their existence
+    is a constant menace to peace. They foster that spirit of militarism
+    which has brought these horrors on the world; for they create in the
+    great countries of the Continent a large and powerful military and naval
+    caste which lives for war, talks and writes incessantly of war, and
+    glorifies war as a thing good in itself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is (as you say) to the peoples that we must henceforth look to
+    safeguard international concord. They bear the miseries of war, they
+    ought to have the power to arrest the action of those who are hurrying
+    them into it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To get rid of secret diplomacy is more difficult in Europe than in
+    America, whose relations with foreign States are fewer and simpler, but
+    what you say upon that subject also will find a sympathetic echo here
+    among the friends of freedom and of peace. I am always sincerely yours,
+</p>
+    <p align="right" style="text-align: right">JAMES BRYCE. </p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Forest Row, Sussex, Sept. 17, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0015"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    A Reply by Dr. Francke
+</h2>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>     Professor of the History of German Culture at Harvard
+     University and Curator of the Germanic Museum; author of works
+     on German literature.
+</p>
+</blockquote>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    In his letter of Sept. 1 President Eliot expresses the opinion that in
+    the present war "England, France, and Russia are fighting for freedom
+    and civilization." And he adds:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     It does not follow that thinking Americans will forget the
+     immense services which Germany has rendered to civilization
+     during the last hundred years, or desire that her power to
+     serve letters, science, art, and education should be in the
+     least abridged in the outcome of this war, upon which she has
+     entered so rashly and selfishly and in so barbarous a spirit.
+     Most educated Americans hope and believe that by defeating the
+     German barbarousness the Allies will only promote the noble
+     German civilization.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    In other words, German military and political power is to be crushed in
+    order to set free the German genius for science, literature, and art. It
+    is interesting to contrast with such views as these the following words
+    of Goethe, uttered in 1813:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     I have often felt a bitter grief at the thought of the German
+     people, which is so noble individually and so wretched as a
+     whole. A comparison of the German people with other nations
+     gives us painful feelings, which I try to overcome by all
+     possible means; and in science and art I have found the wings
+     which lift me above them. But the comfort which they afford
+     is, after all, only a miserable comfort, and does not make up
+     for the proud consciousness of belonging to a nation strong,
+     respected, and feared. However, I am comforted by the thought
+     of Germany's future. Yes, the German people has a future. The
+     destiny of the Germans is not yet fulfilled. The time, the
+     right time, no human eye can foresee, nor can human power
+     hasten it on. To us individuals, meanwhile, is it given, to
+     every one according to his talents, his inclinations, and his
+     position, to increase, to strengthen, and to spread national
+     culture. In order that in this respect, at least, Germany may
+     be ahead of other nations and that the national spirit,
+     instead of being stifled and discouraged, may be kept alive
+     and hopeful and ready to rise in all its might when the day of
+     glory dawns.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    If I am not mistaken, these words of Germany's greatest poet express
+    accurately what the German people during the last hundred years has been
+    striving for&mdash;national culture and national pre-eminence in every field
+    of human activity. To advocate the reduction of Germany to a land of
+    isolated scientists, poets, artists, and educators is tantamount to a
+    call for the destruction of the German Nation.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    KUNO FRANCKE.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Harvard University, Sept. 5, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0016"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    DR. ELIOT'S SECOND LETTER
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    The Stout and Warlike Breed
+</h3>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is nothing new in the obsession of the principal European nations
+    that, in order to be great and successful in the world as it is, they
+    must possess military power available for instant aggression on weak
+    nations, as well as for effective defense against strong ones.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Sir Francis Bacon wrote his essay on "The True Greatness of
+    Kingdoms and Estates" he remarked that forts, arsenals, goodly races of
+    horses, armaments, and the like would all be useless "except the breed
+    and disposition of the people be stout and warlike." He denied that
+    money is the sinews of war, giving preference to the sinews of men's
+    arms, and quoted Solon's remark to Croesus, "Sir, if any other come that
+    hath better iron than you, he will be master of all this gold"&mdash;a truly
+    Bismarckian proposition. Indeed, Sir Francis Bacon says explicitly "that
+    the principal point of greatness in any State is to have a race of
+    military men."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Goethe, reflecting on the wretchedness of the German people as a whole,
+    found no comfort in the German genius for science, literature, and art,
+    or only a miserable comfort which "does not make up for the proud
+    consciousness of belonging to a nation strong, respected, and feared."
+    Because Germany in his time was weak in the military sense, he could
+    write: "I have often felt a bitter grief at the thought of the German
+    people, which is so noble individually, and so wretched as a whole"; and
+    he longed for the day when the national spirit, kept alive and hopeful,
+    should be "ready to rise in all its might when the day of glory dawns."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The day of glory" was to be the day of military power. Carlyle said of
+    Germany and France in November, 1870, "that noble, patient, deep, pious,
+    and solid Germany should be at length welded into a nation, and become
+    Queen of the Continent, instead of vaporing, vainglorious,
+    gesticulating, quarrelsome, restless, and oversensitive France, seems to
+    me that hopefulest public fact that has occurred in my time." How did
+    Germany attain to this position of "Queen of the Continent"? By creating
+    and maintaining, with utmost intelligence and skill, the strongest army
+    in Europe&mdash;an army which within six years had been used successfully
+    against Denmark, Austria, and France. Germany became "Queen" by virtue
+    of her military power.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the same paper Carlyle said of the French Revolution, of which he was
+    himself the great portrayer: "I often call that a celestial infernal
+    phenomenon, the most memorable in our world for a thousand years; on the
+    whole, a transcendent revolt against the devil and his works, (since
+    shams are all and sundry of the devil, and poisonous and unendurable to
+    man.)" Now, the French Revolution was an extraordinary outbreak of
+    passionate feeling and physical violence on the part of the French
+    Nation, both at home and abroad; and it led on to the Napoleonic wars,
+    which were tremendous physical struggles for mastery in Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In a recent public statement two leading philosophical writers of modern
+    Germany, Profs. Eucken and Haeckel, denounce the "brutal national
+    egoism" of England, which they say "recognizes no rights on the part of
+    others, and, unconcerned about morality or unmorality, pursues only its
+    own advantage"; and they attribute to England the purpose to hinder at
+    any cost the further growth of German greatness. But what are the
+    elements of that German greatness which England is determined to arrest
+    by joining France and Russia in war against Germany and Austria-Hungary?
+    The three elements of recent German greatness are the extension of her
+    territory; contiguous territories in Europe and in other continents
+    colonial possessions; the enlargement of German commerce and wealth, and
+    to these ends the firm establishment of her military supremacy in
+    Europe. These are the ideas on the true greatness of nations which have
+    prevailed in the ruling oligarchy of Germany for at least sixty years,
+    and now seem to have been accepted, or acquiesced in, by the whole
+    German people. In this view, the foundation of national greatness is
+    fighting power.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This conception of national greatness has prevailed at many different
+    epochs&mdash;Macedonian, Roman, Saracen, Spanish, English, and French&mdash;and,
+    indeed, has appeared from time to time in almost all the nations and
+    tribes of the earth; but the civilized world is now looking for better
+    foundations of national greatness than force and fighting.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The partial successes of democracy in Europe have much increased the
+    evils of war. Sir Francis Bacon looked for a fighting class; under the
+    feudal system when a Baron went to war he took with him his vassals, or
+    that portion of them that could be spared from the fields at home.
+    Universal conscription is a modern invention, the horrors of which, as
+    now exhibited in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and France, much exceed those
+    of earlier martial methods. There has never been such an interruption of
+    agricultural and industrial production, or such a rending of family ties
+    in consequence of war as is now taking place in the greater part of
+    Europe. Moreover, mankind has never before had the use of such
+    destructive implements as the machine gun, the torpedo, and the dynamite
+    bomb. The progress of science has much increased the potential
+    destructiveness of warfare.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thinking people in all the civilized countries are asking themselves
+    what the fundamental trouble with civilization is, and where to look for
+    means of escape from the present intolerable conditions. Christianity in
+    nineteen centuries has afforded no relief. The so-called mitigations of
+    war are comparatively trivial. The recent Balkan wars were as ferocious
+    as those of Alexander. The German aviators drop aimless bombs at night
+    into cities occupied chiefly by non-combatants. The North Sea is strewn
+    with floating mines which may destroy fishing, freight, or passenger
+    vessels of any nation, neutral or belligerent, which have business on
+    that sea. The ruthless destruction of the Louvain Library by German
+    soldiers reminds people who have read history that the destroyers of the
+    Alexandria Library have ever since been called fanatics and barbarians.
+    The German Army tries to compel unfortified Belgian cities and towns to
+    pay huge ransoms to save themselves from destruction&mdash;a method which the
+    Barbary States, indeed, were accustomed to use against their Christian
+    neighbors, but which has long been held to be a method appropriate only
+    for brigands and pirates&mdash;Greek, Sicilian, Syrian, or Chinese.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    What Is Wrong with Civilization?
+</h3>
+<p>
+    How can it be that the Government of a civilized State commits, or
+    permits in its agents, such barbarities? The fundamental reason seems to
+    be that most of the European nations still believe that national
+    greatness depends on the possession and brutal use of force, and is to
+    be maintained and magnified only by military and naval power.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In North America there are two large communities&mdash;heretofore inspired
+    chiefly by ideals of English origin&mdash;which have never maintained
+    conscripted armies, and have never fortified against each other their
+    long frontier&mdash;Canada and the United States. Both may fairly be called
+    great peoples even now; and both give ample promise for the future.
+    Neither of these peoples lacks the "stout and warlike" quality of which
+    Sir Francis Bacon spoke; both have often exhibited it. The United States
+    suffered for four years from a civil war, characterized by determined
+    fighting, in indecisive battles, in which the losses, in proportion to
+    the number of men engaged, were often much heavier than any thus far
+    reported from the present battlefields in Belgium and France. There
+    being then no lack of martial spirit in these two peoples, it is an
+    instructive phenomenon that power to conquer is not their ideal of
+    national greatness. Much the same thing may be said of some other
+    self-governing constituents of the British Empire, such as Australia,
+    New Zealand, and South Africa. They, too, have a better ideal of
+    national greatness than that of military supremacy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What are the real ambitions and hopes of the people of the United States
+    and the people of Canada in regard to their own future? Their
+    expectations of greatness certainly are not based on any conception of
+    invincible military force, or desire for the physical means of enforcing
+    their own will on their neighbors. They both believe in the free
+    commonwealth, administered justly, and with the purpose of securing for
+    each individual all the freedom he can exercise without injury to his
+    neighbors and the collective well-being. They desire for themselves,
+    each for itself, a strong Government, equipped to perform its functions
+    with dignity, certainty, and efficiency; but they wish to have that
+    Government under the control of the deliberate public opinion of free
+    citizens, and not under the control of any Prćtorian Guard, Oligarchic
+    Council, or General Staff, and they insist that the civil authority
+    should always control such military and police forces as it may be
+    necessary to maintain for protective purposes.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    True National Greatness.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    They believe that the chief object of government should be the promotion
+    of the public welfare by legislative and administrative means; that the
+    processes of government should be open and visible, and their results be
+    incessantly published for approval or disapproval. They believe that a
+    nation becomes great through industrial productiveness and the resulting
+    internal and external commerce, through the gradual increase of comfort
+    and general well-being in the population, and through the advancement of
+    science, letters, and art. They believe that education, free intercourse
+    with other nations, and religious enthusiasm and toleration are means of
+    national greatness, and that in the development and use of these means
+    force has no place. They attribute national greatness in others, as well
+    as in themselves, not to the possession of military force, but to the
+    advance of the people in freedom, industry, righteousness, and
+    good-will.
+</p>
+<p>
+    They believe that the ideals of fighting power and domination should be
+    replaced by the ideals of peaceful competition in production and trade,
+    of generous rivalry in education, scientific discovery, and the fine
+    arts, of co-operation for mutual benefit among nations different in
+    size, natural abilities, and material resources, and of federation among
+    nations associated geographically or historically, or united in the
+    pursuit of some common ends and in the cherishing of like hopes and
+    aspirations. They think that the peace of the world can be best promoted
+    by solemn public compacts between peoples&mdash;not Princes or
+    Cabinets&mdash;compacts made to be kept, strengthened by mutual services and
+    good offices, and watched over by a permanent International Judicial
+    Tribunal authorized to call on the affiliated nations for whatever force
+    may be necessary to induce obedience to its decrees.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Will not the civilized world learn from this horrible European war&mdash;the
+    legitimate result of the policies of Bismarck and his associates and
+    disciples&mdash;that these democratic ideals constitute the rational
+    substitute for the imperialistic ideal of fighting force as the
+    foundation of national greatness? The new ideals will still need the
+    protection and support, both within and without each nation, of a
+    restrained public force, acting under law, national and international,
+    just as a sane mind needs as its agent a sound and strong body. Health
+    and vigor will continue to be the safeguards of morality, justice, and
+    mercy.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Asticou, Me., Sept. 14, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0017"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+
+<h2>
+    DR. ELIOT'S THIRD LETTER.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Why Is America Anti-German?
+</h3>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    The numerous pamphlets which German writers are now distributing in the
+    United States, and the many letters about the European war which
+    Americans are now receiving from German and German-American friends, are
+    convincing thoughtful people in this country that American public
+    opinion has some weight with the German Government and people, or, at
+    least, some interest for them; but that the reasons which determine
+    American sympathy with the Allies, rather than with Germany and
+    Austria-Hungary, are not understood in Germany, and are not always
+    appreciated by persons of German birth who have lived long in the United
+    States.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It would be a serious mistake to suppose that Americans feel any
+    hostility or jealousy toward Germany, or fail to recognize the immense
+    obligations under which she has placed all the rest of the world,
+    although they now feel that the German Nation has been going wrong in
+    theoretical and practical politics for more than a hundred years, and is
+    today reaping the consequences of her own wrong-thinking and
+    wrong-doing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There are many important matters concerning which American sympathy is
+    strongly with Germany: (1) The unification of Germany, which Bismarck
+    and his co-workers accomplished, naturally commended itself to
+    Americans, whose own country is a firm federation of many more or less
+    different States, containing more or less different peoples; while most
+    Americans did not approve Bismarck's methods and means, they cordially
+    approved his accomplishment of German unification; (2) Americans have
+    felt unqualified admiration for the commercial and financial growth of
+    Germany during the past forty years, believing it to be primarily the
+    fruit of well-directed industry and enterprise; (3) all educated
+    Americans feel strong gratitude to the German Nation for its
+    extraordinary achievements in letters, science, and education within the
+    last hundred years. Jealousy of Germany in these matters is absolutely
+    foreign to American thought, and that any external power or influence
+    should undertake to restrict or impair German progress in these respects
+    would seem to all Americans intolerable, and, indeed incredible; (4) all
+    Americans who have had any experience in Governmental or educational
+    administration recognize the fact, that German administration&mdash;both in
+    peace and in war&mdash;is the most efficient in the world, and for that
+    efficiency they feel nothing but respect and admiration, unless the
+    efficiency requires an inexpedient suppression or restriction of
+    individual liberty; (5) Americans sympathize with a unanimous popular
+    sentiment in favor of a war which the people believe to be essential to
+    the greatness, and even the safety, of their country&mdash;a sentiment which
+    prompts to family and property sacrifices very distressing at the
+    moment, and irremediable in the future; and they believe that the German
+    people today are inspired by just such an overwhelming sentiment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How is it, then, that, with all these strong American feelings tending
+    to make them sympathize with the German people in good times or bad, in
+    peace or in war, the whole weight of American opinion is on the side of
+    the Allies in the present war? The reasons are to be found, of course,
+    in the political and social history of the American people, and in its
+    Governmental philosophy and practice today. These reasons have come out
+    of the past, and are intrenched in all the present ideals and practices
+    of the American Commonwealth. They inevitably lead Americans to object
+    strongly and irrevocably to certain German national practices of great
+    moment, practices which are outgrowths of Prussian theories, and
+    experiences that have come to prevail in Germany during the past hundred
+    years. In the hope that American public opinion about the European war
+    may be a little better understood abroad it seems worth while to
+    enumerate those German practices which do not conform to American
+    standards in the conduct of public affairs:
+</p>
+<p>
+    (a) Americans object to the committal of a nation to grave measures of
+    foreign policy by a permanent Executive&mdash;Czar, Kaiser, or King&mdash;advised
+    in secret by professional diplomatists who consider themselves the
+    personal representatives of their respective sovereigns. The American
+    people have no permanent Executive, and the profession of diplomacy
+    hardly exists among them. In the conduct of their national affairs they
+    utterly distrust secrecy, and are accustomed to demand and secure the
+    utmost publicity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    (b) They object to placing in any ruler's hands the power to order
+    mobilization or declare war in advance of deliberate consultation with a
+    representative assembly, and of co-operative action thereby. The fact
+    that German mobilization was ordered three days in advance of the
+    meeting of the Reichstag confounds all American ideas and practices
+    about the rights of the people and the proper limits of Executive
+    authority.
+</p>
+<p>
+    (c) The secrecy of European diplomatic intercourse and of international
+    understandings and terms of alliance in Europe is in the view of
+    ordinary Americans not only inexpedient, but dangerous and
+    unjustifiable. Under the Constitution of the United States no treaty
+    negotiated by the President and his Cabinet is valid until it has been
+    publicly discussed and ratified by the Senate. During this discussion
+    the people can make their voice heard through the press, the telegraph,
+    and the telephone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    (d) The reliance on military force as the foundation of true national
+    greatness seems to thinking Americans erroneous, and in the long run
+    degrading to a Christian nation. They conceive that the United States
+    may fairly be called a great nation; but that its greatness is due to
+    intellectual and moral forces acting through adequate material forces
+    and expressed in education, public health and order, agriculture,
+    manufacturing, and commerce, and the resulting general well-being of the
+    people. It has never in all its history organized what could be called a
+    standing or a conscripted army; and, until twenty years ago, its navy
+    was very small, considering the length of its sea coasts. There is
+    nothing in the history of the American people to make them believe that
+    the true greatness of nations depends on military power.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Object to Extension by Force.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    (e) They object to the extension of national territory by force,
+    contrary to the wishes of the population concerned. This objection is
+    the inevitable result of democratic institutions; and the American
+    people have been faithful to this democratic opinion under circumstances
+    of considerable difficulty&mdash;as, for example, in withdrawing from Cuba,
+    the rich island which had been occupied by American troops during the
+    short war with Spain, (1898,) and in the refusing to intervene by force
+    in Mexico for the protection of American investors, when that contiguous
+    country was distracted by factional fighting. This objection applies to
+    long-past acts of the German Government an well as to its proceedings in
+    the present war&mdash;as, for example, to the taking of Schleswig-Holstein
+    and Alsace-Lorraine, as well as to the projected occupation of Belgium.
+</p>
+<p>
+    (f) Americans object strenuously to the violation of treaties between
+    nations on the allegation of military necessity or for any other reason
+    whatever. They believe that the progress of civilization will depend in
+    future on the general acceptance of the sanctity of contracts or solemn
+    agreements between nations and on the development by common consent of
+    international law. The neutralization treaties, the arbitration
+    treaties, The Hague Conferences, and some of the serious attempts at
+    mediation, although none of them go far enough, and many of them have
+    been rudely violated on occasion, illustrate a strong tendency in the
+    civilized parts of the world to prevent international wars by means of
+    agreements deliberately made in time of peace. The United States has
+    proposed and made more of these agreements than any other power, has
+    adhered to them, and profited by them. Under one such agreement, made
+    nearly a hundred years ago, Canada and the United States have avoided
+    forts and armaments against each other, although they have had serious
+    differences of opinion and clashes of interests, and the frontier is
+    3,000 miles long and for the most part without natural barriers.
+    Cherishing the hope that the peace of Europe and the rights of its
+    peoples may be secured through solemn compacts, (which should include
+    the establishment of a permanent international judicial tribunal,
+    supported by an international force,) Americans see, in the treatment by
+    the German Government of the Belgian neutralization treaty as nothing
+    but a piece of paper which might be torn up on the ground of military
+    necessity, evidence of the adoption by Germany of a retrograde policy of
+    the most alarming sort. That single act on the part of Germany&mdash;the
+    violation of the neutral territory of Belgium&mdash;would have determined
+    American opinion in favor of the Allies, if it had stood alone by
+    itself&mdash;the reason being that American hopes for the peace and order of
+    the world are based on the sanctity of treaties.
+</p>
+<p>
+    (g) American public opinion, however, has been greatly shocked in other
+    ways by the German conduct of the war. The American common people see no
+    justification for the dropping of bombs, to which no specific aim can be
+    given, into cities and towns chiefly inhabited by non-combatants, the
+    burning or blowing up of large portions of unfortified towns and cities,
+    the destruction of precious monuments and treasuries of art, the
+    strewing of floating mines through the North Sea, the exacting of
+    ransoms from cities and towns under threat of destroying them, and the
+    holding of unarmed citizens as hostages for the peaceable behavior of a
+    large population under threat of summary execution of the hostages in
+    case of any disorder. All these seem to Americans unnecessary,
+    inexpedient, and unjustifiable methods of warfare, sure to breed hatred
+    and contempt toward the nation that uses them, and therefore to make it
+    difficult for future generations to maintain peace and order in Europe.
+    They cannot help imagining the losses civilization would suffer if the
+    Russians should ever carry into Western Europe the kind of war which the
+    Germans are now waging in Belgium and France. They have supposed that
+    war was to be waged in this century only against public, armed forces
+    and their supplies and shelters.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These opinions and prepossessions on the part of the American people
+    have obviously grown out of the ideals which the early English colonists
+    carried with them to the American wilderness in the seventeenth century,
+    out of the long fighting and public discussion which preceded the
+    adoption of the Constitution of the United States in the eighteenth
+    century, and out of the peculiar experiences of the free Commonwealths
+    which make up the United States, as they have spread across the almost
+    uninhabited continent during the past 125 years.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The experience and the situation of modern Germany have been utterly
+    different. Germany was divided for centuries into discordant parts, had
+    ambitious and martial neighbors, and often felt the weight of their
+    attacks. Out of war came accessions of territory for Prussia, and at
+    last German unity. The reliance of intelligent and patriotic Germany on
+    military force as the basis of national greatness is a natural result of
+    its experiences. Americans, however, believe that this reliance is
+    unsound both theoretically and practically. The wars in Europe since
+    1870-71, the many threatenings of war, and the present catastrophe seem
+    to Americans to demonstrate that no amount of military preparedness on
+    the part of the nations of Europe can possibly keep the peace of the
+    Continent, or indeed prevent frequent explosions of destructive warfare.
+    They think, too, that preparation for war on the part of Germany better
+    than any of her neighbors can make will not keep her at peace or protect
+    her from invasion, even if this better preparation include advantages of
+    detail which have been successfully kept secret. All the nations which
+    surround Germany are capable of developing a strong fighting spirit; and
+    all the countries of Europe, except England and Russia, possess the
+    means of quickly assembling and getting into action great bodies of men.
+    In other words, all the European States are capable of developing a
+    passionate patriotism, and all possess the railroads, roads,
+    conveyances, telegraphs, and telephones which make rapid mobilization
+    possible. No perfection of military forces, and no amount of previous
+    study of feasible campaigns against neighbors, can give peaceful
+    security to Germany in the present condition of the great European
+    States. In the actual development of weapons and munitions, and of the
+    art of quick intrenching, the attacking force in battle on land is at a
+    great disadvantage in comparison with the force on the defensive. That
+    means indecisive battles and ultimately an indecisive war, unless each
+    party is resolved to push the war to the utter exhaustion and
+    humiliation of the other&mdash;a long process which involves incalculable
+    losses and wastes and endless miseries. Americans have always before
+    them the memory of their four years' civil war, which, although
+    resolutely prosecuted on both sides, could not be brought to a close
+    until the resources of the Southern States in men and material were
+    exhausted. In that dreadful process the whole capital of the Southern
+    States was wiped out.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    But One Possible Issue.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Now that the sudden attack on Paris has failed, and adequate time has
+    been secured to summon the slower-moving forces of Russia and England,
+    and these two resolute and persistent peoples have decided to use all
+    their spiritual and material forces in co-operation with France against
+    Germany, thoughtful Americans can see but one possible issue of the
+    struggle, whether it be long or short, namely, the defeat of Germany and
+    Austria-Hungary in their present undertakings, and the abandonment by
+    both peoples of the doctrine that their salvation depends on militarism
+    and the maintenance of autocratic Executives intrusted with the power
+    and the means to make sudden war. They believe that no human being
+    should ever be trusted with such power. The alternative is, of course,
+    genuine constitutional government, with the military power subject to
+    the civil power.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The American people grieve over the fruitless sacrifices of life,
+    property, and the natural human joys which the German people are making
+    to a wrong and impossible ideal of national power and welfare. The
+    sacrifices which Germany is imposing on the Allies are fearfully heavy,
+    but there is reason to hope that these will not be fruitless, for out of
+    them may come great gains for liberty and peace in Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All experienced readers on this side of the Atlantic are well aware that
+    nine-tenths of all the reports they get about the war come from English
+    and French sources, and this knowledge makes them careful not to form
+    judgments about details until the events and deeds tell their own story.
+    They cannot even tell to which side victory inclines in a long,
+    far-extended battle until recognizable changes in the positions of the
+    combatants show what the successes or failures must have been. The
+    English and French win some advantage so far as the formation of public
+    opinion in this country is concerned, because those two Governments send
+    hither official reports on current events more frequently than the
+    German Government does, and with more corroborative details. The amount
+    of secrecy with which the campaign is surrounded on both sides is,
+    however, a new and unwelcome experience for both the English and the
+    American public.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    German Ignorance of Events.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The pamphlets by German publicists and men of letters which are now
+    coming to this country, and the various similar publications written
+    here, seem to indicate that the German public is still kept by its
+    Government in ignorance about the real antecedents of the war and about
+    many of the incidents and aspects of the portentous combat. These
+    documents seem to Americans to contain a large amount of misinformation
+    about the attack of Austria-Hungary on Servia, the diplomatic
+    negotiations and the correspondence between the sovereigns which
+    immediately preceded the war, and the state of mind of the Belgian and
+    English peoples. American believers in the good sense and good feeling
+    of the common people naturally imagine, when an awful calamity befalls a
+    nation, that the people cannot have been warned of its approach, else
+    they would have avoided it. In this case they fear that the Emperor, the
+    Chancellery, and the General Staff have themselves been misinformed in
+    important respects, have made serious miscalculations which they are
+    proposing to conceal as long as possible, and are not taking the common
+    people into their confidence. American sympathies are with the German
+    people in their sufferings and losses, but not with their rulers, or
+    with the military class, or with the professors and men of letters who
+    have been teaching for more than a generation that might makes right.
+    That short phrase contains the fundamental fallacy which for fifty years
+    has been poisoning the springs of German thought and German policy on
+    public affairs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dread of the Muscovite does not seem to Americans a reasonable
+    explanation of the present actions of Germany and Austria-Hungary,
+    except so far as irrational panic can be said to be an explanation.
+    Against possible, though not probable, Russian aggression, a firm
+    defensive alliance of all Western Europe would be a much better
+    protection than the single might of Germany. It were easy to imagine
+    also two new "buffer" States&mdash;a reconstructed Poland and a Balkan
+    Confederation. As to French "revenge," it is the inevitable and
+    praiseworthy consequence of Germany's treatment of France in 1870-71.
+    The great success of Germany in expanding her commerce during the last
+    thirty years makes it hard for Americans to understand the hot
+    indignation of the Germans against the British because of whatever
+    ineffective opposition Great Britain may have offered to that expansion.
+    No amount of commercial selfishness on the part of insular England can
+    justify Germany in attempting to seize supreme power in Europe and
+    thence, perhaps, in the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Finally, Americans hope and expect that there will be no such fatal
+    issue of the present struggle as the destruction or ruin of the German
+    Nation. On the contrary, they believe that Germany will be freer,
+    happier, and greater than ever when once she has got rid of the
+    monstrous Bismarck policies and the Emperor's archaic conception of his
+    function, and has enjoyed twenty years of real peace. Your obedient
+    servant,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Asticou, Me., Sept. 28, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+    <p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="2H_4_0018"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    Dr. Dernburg's Reply to the Third Letter
+</h2>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>     Late German Secretary of State for the Colonies; lived for
+     several years in the United States as member of the banking
+     firm of Ladenburg, Thalmann &amp; Co., New York.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Prof. Eliot is conferring a great favor on the exponents of the German
+    side in the present struggle in explaining to them what he thinks of the
+    so-called anti-German feeling in the United States. I am sure his views
+    will be read also in Germany with a great deal of attention, although he
+    will certainly not remain unchallenged in nearly all essential points.
+    The compliment that Prof. Eliot pays to the German people as a whole
+    must be specially appreciated, the more so as it comes from a scientist
+    whose great authority is equally recognized on both sides of the
+    Atlantic.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The anti-German feeling, according to Prof. Eliot, takes its source from
+    the American objection to the committal of a nation to grave mistakes by
+    a permanent Executive. But then, with the exception of France, all the
+    warring nations have permanent Executives, professional diplomatists;
+    all their affairs are conducted in secret, and all their rulers have the
+    power, including the President of France, to embroil their nations in
+    war. The German Emperor is in this respect certainly more restricted
+    than the other heads of State, and I have not read that the declaration
+    of war has been expressly sanctioned by the English Parliament, and
+    certainly the mobilization of the English fleet that took place in July,
+    and the mobilization of the Russian Army that took place at the same
+    time, have not even been brought to the knowledge of the respective
+    Parliaments. When, therefore, the same conditions prevail in all the
+    warring States, how can they be made the reason for such an anti-German
+    feeling?
+</p>
+<p>
+    The same objection holds good with the American antipathy against the
+    power of rulers to order mobilization or declare war in advance without
+    consultation of Parliament, to which I have only to say that the English
+    fleet was mobilized without consulting the English Parliament, while in
+    Germany the Bundesrat, the representatives of the Federal States, as
+    well as of the Federal Diets, has been duly consulted. I may add that
+    also the party leaders of the Reichstag, which could not be convoked
+    earlier than two days after the declaration of the war, have been
+    continuously informed and consulted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Against the next paragraph, where Prof. Eliot complains of the secrecy
+    of European diplomacy and of international treaties and understandings,
+    the same objection must be made. The state described here as particular
+    to Germany prevails in all European countries, and neither the treaty of
+    the Russian-French alliance, nor the arrangements of the Triple Entente
+    have ever been submitted to the French or British Parliaments. As
+    regards the American attitude toward armaments, I purposely refrain from
+    adducing the American example into my argument, much as I could show
+    that with a very large part of the American Nation the idea of defending
+    the American coast against any invader and the maintenance of a strong
+    Pan-American policy, if need be by arms, is just as fixed a tenet as the
+    German idea that the Fatherland should be held safe from invasion or
+    destruction by the will and the strength of its people. England has
+    always held the same, if not through her army so through her navy, and
+    so did the rest of Europe; and there is no argument to be gotten from
+    that for an anti-German feeling.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    No Seizure of Schleswig-Holstein.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Americans object to the extension of territory by force. Germany has
+    never done that, even if one goes back as far as Prof. Eliot wishes to
+    go. Mr. Eliot is absolutely mistaken as to the history of the
+    incorporation of Schleswig-Holstein into Prussia. Schleswig-Holstein was
+    a Dual-Dukedom that never belonged to Denmark, but having as its Duke
+    the King of Denmark as long as he belonged to the elder line of the
+    House of Oldenburg. This elder line was extinct when King Christian
+    VIII. died without male issue. His successor wanted to incorporate the
+    two German Dukedoms into Denmark. Then the people stood up and expressed
+    the desire to remain with the German Federation, to which it had always
+    belonged, and there it is now, of its own free will. The natural
+    dividing line between Denmark and Germany, however, is the River Eider.
+    There are about 30,000 Danes south of the Eider, who have been absorbed
+    against their will, a thing that can never be avoided, and that has
+    sometimes given Prussia a little trouble.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Alsace-Lorraine Originally German.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    As to Alsace-Lorraine, the facts are known to be that it had belonged to
+    Germany until it had been taken, against the will of the people, by
+    France under Louis XIV., and it was returned to Germany as a matter of
+    right, more than three-quarters of the population being of German
+    descent and speaking the German language.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But let me ask in return, Mr. Eliot, when did ever in her political
+    career England consult the will of the people when she took a country?
+    Can he say that, when England tore the treaty of Majuba Hill, like a
+    "scrap of paper," and made war on the Boers? Did she consult the people
+    of Cyprus in 1878? Does he know of any plébiscite in India? Has she
+    consulted the Persians, or has France consulted the people of Morocco,
+    or of Indo-China, Italy the people of Tripoli? Since Germany has not
+    acted here in any other way forty years ago than all the other nations,
+    why does Dr. Eliot consider the American people justified in taking
+    anti-German views for reasons of such an old date, while he forgives the
+    nations of the party he favors for much more recent infringement of his
+    rule?
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Americans object to the violation of treaties." So do the Germans. We
+    have always kept our treaties, and mean to do so in the future. The fact
+    with Belgium is that her neutrality was very one-sided; that, as can be
+    proved, as early as the 25th of June, Ličge was full of French soldiers,
+    that Belgian fortifications were all directed against Germany, and that
+    for years past it was the Belgian press that outdid the French press in
+    attacks against Germany. But I can give Mr. Eliot here some authority
+    that he has so far not challenged. When Sir Edward Grey presented the
+    English case in the House of Commons on the 3d of August he declared
+    that the British attitude was laid down by the British Government in
+    1870, and he verbally cited Mr. Gladstone's speech, in which he said he
+    could not subscribe to the assertion that the simple fact of the
+    existence of a guarantee was binding on every party, irrespective
+    altogether of the particular position in which it may find itself at the
+    time when the occasion for acting on the guarantee arises. He called
+    that assertion a "stringent and impracticable" view of the guarantee and
+    the whole treaty a "complicated question." So Mr. Gladstone, and with
+    him Sir Edward Grey, has held the Belgian neutrality treaty not binding
+    on every party, when it was against the interest which the particular
+    situation dictated, when the war broke out. It was the interest of Great
+    Britain to maintain the treaty, and that is why she acted. It was
+    against German interest to maintain the treaty, and that is why she
+    broke it. That is the British and not the German theory, and I could
+    very well rest my case here. My theory is with the German Chancellor,
+    that I greatly regret the necessity of violating the Belgian neutrality,
+    after Belgium had chosen to repel the German overtures for a free
+    passage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is quite certain that the breach of the Belgian neutrality by Germany
+    was used in Great Britain as a powerful instrument to influence the
+    public sentiment. Every war must be borne by national unity, and it is
+    the duty of the nation's leaders to secure such unity by all practicable
+    means. But has it been forgotten that the attitude of Sir Edward Grey
+    caused such excellent men as Lord Morley, John Burns, and Sir John
+    Trevelyan to leave the Cabinet, where they were looked upon as the best
+    and most liberal members of the ruling combination? Bernard Shaw says of
+    Great Britain that she has never been at a loss for an effective moral
+    attitude. Such an attitude is a powerful weapon in diplomatical and
+    actual warfare, and it must be resorted to, if the necessity arises. But
+    that cannot blind us to the fact that the British Government allowed the
+    political interest to be the paramount consideration in this Belgian
+    neutrality matter. The German interest for not acting on the guarantee
+    was just as strong as the English to act for it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The proof is found in the English "White Paper." I cite the famous
+    reprint of THE TIMES, (Dispatch No. 148 of Aug. 2 to Paris.) Here Sir
+    Edward Grey says: "We were considering ... whether we should declare
+    violation of Belgian neutrality to be a casus belli."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    "Treaties Must Not Be Overrated."
+</h3>
+<p>
+    I am an ardent believer in all international arrangements to prevent
+    difficulties and wars between nations, and I rejoice with the American
+    people in the signal success this policy is now having in this country.
+    But international treaties must not be overrated. There are questions
+    which cannot be settled by them. It is too difficult to explain just the
+    nature of such situations as arose in Europe, so I may be permitted for
+    once to ask this question: Does Prof. Eliot believe that the majority of
+    the American people think that the unwritten Monroe Doctrine could be
+    made the subject of arbitration, whether it had a right to exist or to
+    be enforced? I must emphatically say, No, it could not. It can be as
+    little arbitrated upon as a matter of religion or of personal morals.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Eliot thinks a happy result of the war would be that American
+    institutions should prevail in Germany thereafter. Why should Germany
+    only become a representative republic? Does he not demand the same
+    regarding Russia, England, Italy, Austria, and Japan? And if not, why
+    not?
+</p>
+<p>
+    From all this I fail to see the point in the reasons given by Prof.
+    Eliot why fair-minded Americans should side with the Allies because the
+    objections made against German procedure, down to the breach of the
+    Belgian neutrality, must be made against all other European States.
+    British history is just teeming with examples of broken treaties and
+    torn "scraps of paper." The chasing of German diplomatic representatives
+    out of neutral Egypt is a case in point.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I must insist that whatever anti-German feeling there is is not fully
+    explained by Prof. Eliot, and his article cannot be made a code by which
+    German behavior could be regulated in the future. Prof. Eliot is a
+    scholar; business interests do not come very near him. So he is
+    especially concerned with the ethical aspect of the matter. He believes
+    the Germans think that "might is right." This is very unjust. Our
+    history proves that we have never acted on this principle. We have never
+    got or attempted to get a world empire such as England has won, all of
+    which, with a very few exceptions, by might, by war, and by conquest.
+    The German writers who have expounded this doctrine have only shown how
+    the large world empires of England and France were welded together, what
+    means have been adopted for that purpose, and against what sort of
+    political doctrines we must beware.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Our Sympathy for the Under Dog.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    As Dr. Eliot makes his remarks for the benefit of his German confrčres,
+    may I be permitted to say to them what I consider the reason for the
+    American attitude? There is, in the first place, the ethical side.
+    Americans have a very strong sense of generosity, and are, as a rule,
+    very good sports. They think Belgium a small nation, brutally attacked
+    by a much bigger fellow; they feel that the little man stands up bravely
+    and gamely, and fights for all he is worth. Such a situation will always
+    command American sympathy and antagonism against the stronger. Then
+    there is the business side. Americans feel that this war is endangering
+    their political and commercial interests, so they are naturally angry
+    against the people who, they believe, have brought the war about.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Germany has not had an opportunity to make herself heard as amply as
+    her adversaries, they think that it was Germany which set the world
+    afire, and that is what they resent, and in which they were justified,
+    if it were true. But the question of the hour is not the question of the
+    past, but of the present and of the future, and the people on this side
+    who will give Germany fair play because it is just in them will examine
+    the situation in the light of their interests. Then they will find that
+    Belgium had been in league with the Allies long before the conflagration
+    broke out, only to be left to its own resources when the critical hour
+    arose. They will further find that it is not Germany but England and her
+    allies that are throttling commerce, maiming cables, stopping mails,
+    and breaking neutrality and other treaties to further their aims; that,
+    finally, today England has established a world rule on the sea to which
+    even America must submit. They will then soon come to the conclusion
+    that, no matter what happened in the past, the peace of the world can
+    only be assured by a good understanding between Germany and the United
+    States as a sort of counterbalance against the unmeasured aggrandizement
+    of English sea power. Then the feeling toward Germany will be
+    considerably better, and I may add that even now it is not so very bad
+    after all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I make these remarks with due respect to Prof. Eliot and his views, and
+    with great reluctance for being compelled to enter the field against a
+    personality whose undoubted superiority I wish to be the first to
+    acknowledge.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    BERNHARD DERNBURG.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    New York, Oct. 4, 1914.</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0019"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    Dr. Jordan's Reply to Dr. Dernburg
+</h2>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em; text-align: center">     Daniel Jordan is Assistant Professor of Roman Languages and
+     Literature at Columbia University.
+</p>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    President Eliot is as fair a judge of the present European situation as
+    can be found anywhere, and is well qualified to explain the almost
+    unanimous attitude of thoughtful Americans in regard to Germany. Dr.
+    Dernburg, on the other hand, has been officially sent from Germany to
+    expound the German official version; both his point of view and his
+    treatment of facts are essentially un-American.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He says: "Americans object to the extension of territory by force.
+    Germany has never done that." Apparently he believes that the Poles
+    asked Prussia to become her subjects. The facts are that they have
+    fought and begged for autonomy for nearly 150 years, and that at the
+    present time high German officials are members of the Anti-Polish
+    League.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dr. Dernburg, when he comes to Schleswig-Holstein, states that 30,000
+    Danes south of the Eider River (this is in Holstein) have been absorbed
+    against their will, "a thing that can never be avoided, and that has
+    sometimes given Prussia a little trouble." But what about the Danes
+    north of the Eider River? Schleswig and Holstein are really two
+    provinces. Holstein is German, but the northern part of Schleswig, north
+    of Fiensburg, is inhabited by Danes who are longing to join Denmark and
+    who number about 200,000. Article 5 of the Treaty of Prague, signed on
+    Aug. 23, 1866, after Sadowa, between Prussia and Austria, states that
+    the inhabitants of Northern Schleswig shall be given a chance to join
+    Denmark, "if they should so express the desire by a free vote." Prussia
+    has not respected this solemn promise any more than former promises
+    concerning Schleswig. The frequently renewed protests of the annexed
+    Danes have remained unanswered. The best proof that Prussia's title to
+    Danish Schleswig was not considered as very substantial is that in
+    October, 1878, Prussia finally obtained from Austria the annulment of
+    Article 5 of the Treaty of Prague, which dealt with the taking of a
+    plébiscite in Danish Schleswig.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To decide the fate of a province without consulting the inhabitants
+    seems perfectly natural to German Kultur, but to Americans it is not;
+    the days of slavery have gone, and wherever slavery still exists it is
+    time to make a change.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to Alsace-Lorraine, says Dr. Dernburg, "the facts are known that it
+    had belonged to Germany until it was taken by Louis XIV., against the
+    will of the people, and that it was returned to Germany as a matter of
+    right." Such an argument is mediaeval, and it might just as well be
+    argued that Germany should now belong to France, because Germany was
+    once conquered, civilized, and organized by inhabitants of France, led
+    by their Frankish King. And it is not sure that in 1648 Alsace was not
+    glad to become French, because Louis XIV., by the Treaty of Westphalia,
+    then granted perfect religious freedom to the Alsatians, who unlike
+    their neighbors, lived ever since without fear of religious
+    persecutions. Lorraine itself was not annexed by Louis XIV., nor by
+    force, as it was peacefully united to France at the death of Stanislas,
+    father of the Queen of France, Marie-Lesinzka. As for the inhabitants of
+    Metz, they were considered long ago as French. Metz was annexed to
+    France in 1552, with the full consent of the then allies of the French
+    King, Henri II., the German Princes, who recognized by the Treaty of
+    Cateau-Cambresis, (1559,) that Metz, Toul, and Verdun were French
+    cities, and could not be considered as a part of the German
+    Confederation. So there were at one time German Princes who accepted
+    the dogma of the consent of the governed!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Attacking the record of England in order to defend the record of
+    Germany, as Dr. Dernburg does, is no justification for the necessary
+    German aggression of today. Even granting that the English record is
+    poor, which is a matter open to discussion, two wrongs would not make
+    things right.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dr. Dernburg also compares the policy of aggrandizement of Germany in
+    Schleswig, Alsace, &amp;c., with that of other countries in Morocco,
+    Tripoli, &amp;c. Even school children know that two things which are
+    entirely unlike must not be compared. Northern Africa had too long been
+    a den of pirates and brigands, and Latin Europe has rendered an immense
+    service to the world in establishing order there. Algeria has been
+    conquered in the same way as Morocco is now being conquered, and her
+    natives enjoy more genuine liberty than they ever did before; they are
+    even willing to fight as volunteers for the country they consider now as
+    their own. Neither Danish Schleswig nor Alsace-Lorraine, which were as
+    civilized as any other European country when they were last annexed, can
+    be compared to Morocco any more than to the Philippines. So this
+    comparison made by Dr. Dernburg also falls to pieces.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The case of the German point of view is not entirely without hope. In
+    THE TIMES of Oct. 5 Dr. Dernburg approves the annexation of Holstein
+    because the Germans of Holstein wanted to belong to Germany. This is a
+    sound conclusion, and Dr. Dernburg will doubtless acknowledge
+    later&mdash;better late than never&mdash;that the Alsatians and the Danish of
+    Schleswig should have had their say, just like the Germans of Holstein.
+    It cannot be possible that to him the wish of the inhabitants of a
+    province is the voice of God when it suits Germany and the voice of the
+    devil when it suits somebody else.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    DANIEL JORDAN.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Columbia University, Nov. 6, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0020"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    Dr. Irene Sargent's Reply to Dr. Dernburg
+</h2>
+<center>     Professor of the History of Fine Arts, Syracuse University.
+</center>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Contradicting Dr. Eliot, Dr. Bernhard Dernburg says:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     Schleswig-Holstein was a dual Dukedom that never belonged to
+     Denmark; but, having as its Duke the King of Denmark, as long
+     as he belonged to the elder line of the house of Oldenburg ...
+     Frederick VII. wanted to incorporate the two German Dukedoms
+     into Denmark.... Then the people stood up and expressed the
+     desire to remain with the German Federation.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    Such an assertion is a summary, inaccurate, and unfair manner of dealing
+    with perhaps the most complex series of diplomatic, legal, and racial
+    questions that arose in the nineteenth century. It would appear from the
+    best evidence that Schleswig was indissolubly united with the Crown of
+    Denmark. To maintain this principle Christian VIII. in 1846 issued
+    letters patent declaring that the royal line of succession (female) was
+    in full force, as far as Schleswig was concerned. As to Holstein, the
+    King stated that he was prevented from giving an equally clear decision,
+    and the reason of his hesitation lay in the assumption that the law of
+    the Salic Saxons excluding women from the throne would naturally prevail
+    in Holstein, where the Germans, their customs, and their language were
+    dominant. Two years later, Prussia sought to restore her prestige, lost
+    in the Revolution of 1848, by sending troops into the Duchies in order
+    to enforce the principle that this territory constituted two independent
+    and indivisible States, the government of which was hereditary in the
+    male line alone. The Prussian troops were afterward withdrawn by the
+    hesitating Frederic William, and there followed a succession of
+    protocols, constitutions, and compacts until the time of Bismarck, who,
+    in his "Reflections," Volume II., Page 10, in writing of the Duchies,
+    acknowledges:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "From the beginning I kept annexation steadily before my eyes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The master of statecraft conquered. But did the people "stand up and
+    express their desire to remain with the German Federation," as Dr.
+    Dernburg asserts?
+</p>
+<p>
+    If his assertion be true, why were the Danish "optants" subjected to
+    domiciliary visits, perquisitions, arrest, and expulsion? And why&mdash;only
+    to mention one instance of espionage&mdash;did the Prussian police confiscate
+    the issue of a Danish newspaper published in Schleswig because it
+    contained a reference to that Duchy under its historic name of South
+    Jutland?
+</p>
+<p>
+    The truth stands that the whole Schleswig-Holstein question is one that
+    involves the modern principle of "nationality," and, as such, enters of
+    necessity into the present European crisis. It is broadly understood by
+    Dr. Eliot and willfully misapprehended by his critic.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Passing on to consider Alsace-Lorraine, Dr. Dernburg declares that "it
+    had belonged to Germany until it was taken, against the will of the
+    people, under Louis XIV."
+</p>
+<p>
+    In this statement, as in the treatment of the previous question, facts
+    are mutilated and wrong impressions are given. Alsace, it is well known,
+    was included within the confines of ancient Gaul, its original
+    population was Celtic, and it passed, late in the fifth Christian
+    century, under the rule of the Franks, one of whose chieftains, Clovis,
+    became the founder of the first French monarchy. In dealing with its
+    later history Dr. Dernburg confuses the Holy Roman (Germanic) Empire
+    with Germany, considered in its modern sense. He appears to forget that
+    the reign of Louis XIV. was an age of absolutism and not of plébiscites.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He also ignores that the most strenuous efforts on the part of Germany
+    to strangle the French nationality and language in the imperial
+    territory (Alsace-Lorraine) have proved useless, although they have been
+    exerted constantly for almost a half century.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    IRENE SARGENT.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Professor of the History of Fine Arts.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Syracuse University, Nov. 3, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0021"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    DR. ELIOT'S FOURTH LETTER.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    Germany and World Empire
+</h3>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Each one of the principal combatants in Europe seems to be anxious to
+    prove that it is not responsible for this cruelest, most extensive, and
+    most destructive of all wars. Each Government involved has published the
+    correspondence between its Chief Executive and other Chief Executives,
+    and between its Chancellery or Foreign Office and the equivalent bodies
+    in the other nations that have gone to war, and has been at pains to
+    give a wide circulation to these documents. To be sure, none of these
+    Government publications seems to be absolutely complete. There seems to
+    be in all of them suppressions or omissions which only the future
+    historian will be able to report&mdash;perhaps after many years. They reveal,
+    however, the dilapidated state of the Concert of Europe in July, 1914,
+    and the flurry in the European Chancelleries which the ultimatum sent by
+    Austria-Hungary to Servia produced. They also testify to the existence
+    of a new and influential public opinion, about war and peace, to which
+    nations that go to war think it desirable to appeal for justification or
+    moral support.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These publications have been read with intense interest by impartial
+    observers in all parts of the world, and have in many cases determined
+    the direction of the readers' sympathy and good will; and yet none of
+    them discloses or deals with the real sources of the unprecedented
+    calamity. They relate chiefly to the question who struck the match, and
+    not to the questions who provided the magazine that exploded, and why
+    did he provide it. Grave responsibility, of course, attaches to the
+    person who gives the order to mobilize a national army or to invade a
+    neighbor's territory; but the real source of the resulting horrors is
+    not in such an order, but in the Governmental institutions, political
+    philosophy, and long-nurtured passions and purposes of the nation or
+    nations concerned.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    German Desire for World Empire.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The prime source of the present immense disaster in Europe is the desire
+    on the part of Germany for world empire, a desire which one European
+    nation after another has made its supreme motive, and none that has once
+    adopted it has ever completely eradicated. Germany arrived late at this
+    desire, being prevented until 1870 from indulging it, because of her
+    lack of unity, or rather because of being divided since the Thirty
+    Years' War into a large number of separate, more or less independent,
+    States. When this disease, which has attacked one nation after another
+    through all historic times, struck Germany it exhibited in her case a
+    remarkable malignity, moving her to expansion in Europe by force of
+    arms, and to the seizure of areas for colonization in many parts of the
+    world. Prussia, indeed, had long believed in making her way in Europe by
+    fighting, and had repeatedly acted on that belief. Shortly before the
+    achievement of German unity by Bismarck she had obtained by war in 1864
+    and 1866 important accessions of territory and leadership in all
+    Germany.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With this desire for world empire went the belief that it was only to
+    be obtained by force of arms. Therefore, united Germany has labored with
+    utmost intelligence and energy to prepare the most powerful army in the
+    world, and to equip it for instant action in the most perfect manner
+    which science and eager invasion could contrive. To develop this supreme
+    military machine universal conscription&mdash;an outgrowth of the conception
+    of the citizens' army of France during the Revolution&mdash;was necessary; so
+    that every young man in Germany physically competent to bear arms might
+    receive the training of a soldier, whether he wished it or not, and
+    remain at the call of the Government for military duty during all his
+    years of competency, even if he were the only son of a widow, or a
+    widower with little children, or the sole support of a family or other
+    dependents. In order to the completeness of this military ideal the army
+    became the nation and the nation became the army to a degree which had
+    never before been realized in either the savage or the civilized world.
+    This army could be summoned and put in play by the Chief Executive of
+    the German Nation with no preliminaries except the consent of the
+    hereditary heads of the several States which united to form the empire
+    in 1870-71 under the domination of Prussia, the Prussian King, become
+    German Emperor, being Commander in Chief of the German Army. At the word
+    of the Emperor this army can be summoned, collected, clothed, equipped
+    and armed, and set in motion toward any frontier in a day. The German
+    Army was thus made the largest in proportion to population, the best
+    equipped, and the most mobile in the world. The German General Staff
+    studied incessantly and thoroughly plans for campaigns against all the
+    other principal States of Europe, and promptly utilized&mdash;secretly,
+    whenever secrecy was possible&mdash;all promising inventions in explosives,
+    ordnance, munitions, transportation, and sanitation. At the opening of
+    1914 the General Staff believed that the German Army was ready for war
+    on the instant, and that it possessed some significant advantages in
+    fighting&mdash;such as better implements and better discipline&mdash;over the
+    armies of the neighboring nations. The army could do its part toward the
+    attainment of world empire. It would prove invincible.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    A Great German Navy.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The intense desire for colonies, and for the spread of German commerce
+    throughout the world, instigated the creation of a great German navy,
+    and started the race with England in navy building. The increase of
+    German wealth, and the rapid development of manufactures and commercial
+    sea power after 1870-71, made it possible for the empire to devote
+    immense sums of money to the quick construction of a powerful navy, in
+    which the experience and skill of all other shipbuilding nations would
+    be appropriated and improved on. In thus pushing her colonization and
+    sea-power policy Germany encountered the wide domination of Great
+    Britain on the oceans; and this encounter bred jealousy, suspicion, and
+    distrust on both sides. That Germany should have been belated in the
+    quest for foreign possessions was annoying; but that England and France
+    should have acquired early ample and rich territories on other
+    continents, and then should resist or obstruct Germany when she aspired
+    to make up for lost time, was intensely exasperating. Hence chronic
+    resentments, and&mdash;when the day came&mdash;probably war. In respect to its
+    navy, however, Germany was not ready for war at the opening of 1914;
+    and, therefore, she did not mean to get into war with Great Britain in
+    that year. Indeed, she believed&mdash;on incorrect information&mdash;that England
+    could not go to war in the Summer of 1914. Neither the Government nor
+    the educated class in Germany comprehends the peculiar features of party
+    government as it exists in England, France, and the United States; and,
+    therefore, the German leaders were surprised and grievously disappointed
+    at the sudden popular determination of Great Britain and Ireland to lay
+    aside party strife and take strenuous part in the general European
+    conflict.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The complete preparation of the German Army for sudden war, the
+    authority to make war always ready in the hands of the German Emperor,
+    and the thorough studies of the German Staff into the most advantageous
+    plans of campaign against every neighbor, conspired to develop a new
+    doctrine of "military necessity" as the all-sufficient excuse for
+    disregarding and violating the contracts or agreements into which
+    Prussia or the new Germany had entered with other nations. To gain
+    quickly a military advantage in attacking a neighbor came to be regarded
+    as proper ground for violating any or all international treaties and
+    agreements, no matter how solemn and comprehensive, how old or how new.
+    The demonstration of the insignificance or worthlessness of
+    international agreements in German thought and practice was given in the
+    first days of the war by the invasion of Belgium, and has been continued
+    ever since by violation on the part of Germany of numerous agreements
+    concerning the conduct of war into which Germany entered with many other
+    nations at the Second Hague Conference.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Sanctity of National Contracts.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    This German view of the worthlessness of international agreements was
+    not a cause of the present war, because it was not fully evident to
+    Europe, although familiar and of long standing in Germany; but it is a
+    potent reason for the continuance of the war by the Allies until Germany
+    is defeated; because it is plain to all the nations of the world, except
+    Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey at the moment, that the hopes of
+    mankind for the gradual development of international order and peace
+    rest on the sanctity of contracts between nations, and on the
+    development of adequate sanctions in the administration of international
+    law. The new doctrine of military necessity affronts all law and is
+    completely and hopelessly barbarous.
+</p>
+<p>
+    World empire now, as always, is to be won by force&mdash;that is, by conquest
+    and holding possession. So Assyria, Israel, Macedonia, Athens, Rome,
+    Islam, England, and France have successively believed and tried to
+    accomplish in practice. United Germany has for forty years been putting
+    into practice, at home and abroad, the doctrine of force as the source
+    of all personal and national greatness and all worthy human
+    achievements. In the support of this doctrine, educated Germany has
+    developed and accepted the religion of valor and the dogma that might
+    makes right. In so doing it has rejected with scorn the Christian
+    teachings concerning humility and meekness, justice and mercy,
+    brotherhood and love. The objects of its adoration have become Strength,
+    Courage, and ruthless Will-power; let the weak perish and help them to
+    perish; let the gentle, meek, and humble submit to the harsh and proud;
+    let the shiftless and incapable die; the world is for the strong, and
+    the strongest shall be ruler. This is a religion capable of inspiring
+    its followers with zeal and sustained enthusiasm in promoting the
+    national welfare at whatever cost to the individual of life, liberty, or
+    happiness, and also of lending a religious sanction to the extremes of
+    cruelty, greed, and hate. It were incredible that educated people who
+    have been brought up within earshot of Christian ethics and within sight
+    of gentle men and women should all be content with the religion-of-valor
+    plan. Accordingly, the finer German spirits have invented a supplement
+    to that Stone Age religion. They have set up for worship a mystical
+    conception of the State as a majestic and beneficent entity which
+    embraces all the noble activities of the nation and guides it to its
+    best achievements. To this ideal State every German owes duty,
+    obedience, and complete devotion. The trouble with this supplement to
+    the religion of valor is that it dwells too much on submission,
+    self-sacrifice, and discipline, and not enough on individual liberty and
+    self-control in liberty. Accordingly, when the valiant men got control
+    of the Government and carried the nation into a ferocious war, they
+    swept away with them all the devotees of this romantic and spiritual
+    State. The modern German is always a controlled, directed, and drilled
+    person, who aspires to control and discipline his inferiors; and in his
+    view pretty much all mankind are his inferiors. He is not a freeman in
+    the French, English, or American sense; and he prefers not to be.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    What German Domination Would Mean.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The present war is the inevitable result of lust of empire, autocratic
+    government, sudden wealth, and the religion of valor. What German
+    domination would mean to any that should resist it the experience of
+    Belgium and Northern France during the past three months aptly
+    demonstrates. The civilized world can now see where the new German
+    morality&mdash;be efficient, be virile, be hard, be bloody, be rulers&mdash;would
+    land it. To maintain that the power which has adopted in practice that
+    new morality, and in accordance with its precepts promised Austria its
+    support against Servia and invaded Belgium and France in hot haste, is
+    not the responsible author of the European war, is to throw away memory,
+    reason, and common sense in judging the human agencies in current
+    events.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The real cause of the war is this gradually developed barbaric state of
+    the German mind and will. All other causes&mdash;such as the assassination of
+    the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, the sympathy of Russia with
+    the Balkan States, the French desire for the recovery of
+    Alsace-Lorraine, and Great Britain's jealousy of German
+    aggrandizement&mdash;are secondary and incidental causes, contributory,
+    indeed, but not primary and fundamental. If any one ask who brought the
+    ruling class in Germany to this barbaric frame of mind, the answer must
+    be Bismarck, Moltke, Treitschke, Nietzsche, Bernhardi, the German
+    Emperor, their like, their disciples, and the military caste.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Germany Never Dreaded Russia.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Many German apologists for the war attribute it to German fear of
+    Russia. They say that, although Germany committed the first actual
+    aggression by invading Belgium and Luxemburg on the way to attack France
+    with the utmost speed and fierceness, the war is really a war of
+    defense against Russia, which might desirably pass over, after France
+    has been crushed, into a war against Great Britain, that perfidious and
+    insolent obstacle to Germany's world empire. The answer to this
+    explanation is that, as a matter of fact, Germany has never dreaded, or
+    even respected, the military strength of Russia, and that the recent
+    wars and threatenings of war by Germany have not been directed against
+    Russia, but against Denmark, Austria, France, and England. In her
+    colonization enterprises it is not Russia that Germany has encountered,
+    but England, France, and the United States. The friendly advances made
+    within the last twenty years by Germany to Turkey were not intended
+    primarily to strengthen Germany against Russia, but Germany against
+    Great Britain through access by land to British India. In short,
+    Germany's policies, at home and abroad, during the last forty years have
+    been inspired not by fear of Russia, or of any other invader, but by its
+    own aggressive ambition for world empire. In the present war it thinks
+    it has staked its all on "empire or downfall."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Germany Should Be Defeated.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Those nations which value public liberty and believe that the primary
+    object of Government is to promote the general welfare by measures and
+    policies founded on justice, good-will, and respect for the freedom of
+    the individual cannot but hope that Germany will be completely defeated
+    in its present undertakings; but they do not believe that Germany is
+    compelled to choose between a life of domination in Europe and the world
+    and national death. They wish that all her humane culture and her genius
+    for patient and exact research may survive this hideous war and guide
+    another Germany to great achievements for humanity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If the causes of the present immense catastrophe have been have
+    correctly stated, the desirable outcomes of the war are, no world empire
+    for any race or nation, no more "subjects," no Executives, either
+    permanent or temporary, with power to throw their fellow-countrymen
+    into war, no secret diplomacy justifying the use for a profit of all the
+    lies, concealments, deceptions, and ambuscades which are an inevitable
+    part of war and assuming to commit nations on international questions,
+    and no conscription armies that can be launched in war by Executives
+    without consulting independent representative assemblies. There should
+    come out from this supreme convulsion, a federated Europe, or a league
+    of the freer nations, which should secure the smaller States against
+    attack, prevent the larger from attempting domination, make sure that
+    treaties and other international contracts shall be public and be
+    respected until modified by mutual consent, and provide a safe basis for
+    the limitation and reduction of armaments on land and sea, no basis to
+    be considered safe which could fail to secure the liberties of each and
+    all the federated States against the attacks of any outsider or
+    faithless member. No one can see at present how such a consummation is
+    to be brought about, but any one can see already that this consummation
+    is the only one which can satisfy the lovers of liberty under law, and
+    the believers in the progress of mankind through loving service each to
+    all and all to each.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Extreme pacificists shrink from fighting evil with evil, hell with
+    hell, and advise submission to outrage, or at least taking the risk of
+    being forced into resigned submission. The believers in the religion of
+    valor, on the other hand, proclaim that war is a good thing in itself,
+    that it develops the best human virtues, invigorates a nation become
+    flaccid through ease and luxury, and puts in command the strong,
+    dominating spirit of a valid nation or race. What is the just mean
+    between these two extremes? Is it not that war is always a hideous and
+    hateful evil, but that a nation may sometimes find it to be the least of
+    two evils between which it has to choose? The justifiable and indeed
+    necessary war is the war against the ravager and destroyer, the enemy of
+    liberty, the claimant of world empire. More and more the thinkers of the
+    world see, and the common people more and more believe instinctively,
+    that the cause of righteous liberty is the cause of civilization. In the
+    conference which will one day meet to settle the terms of peace, and
+    therefore the future conditions of life in Europe, the example of the
+    American Republic in regard to armaments and war, the publicity of
+    treaties, and public liberty, security and prosperity may reasonably
+    have some influence.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 14, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0022"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    DR. ELIOT'S FIFTH LETTER.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    A Hopeful Road to Lasting Peace
+</h3>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    The great war has now been going on long enough to enable mankind to
+    form approximately correct views about its vast extent and scale of
+    operations, its sudden interference with commerce and all other helpful
+    international intercourse, its unprecedented wrecking of family
+    happiness and continuity, its wiping out, as it proceeds, of the
+    accumulated savings of many former generations in structures, objects of
+    art, and industrial capital, and the huge burdens it is likely to impose
+    on twentieth century Europe. From all these points of view, it is
+    evidently the most horrible calamity that has ever befallen the human
+    race and the most crucial trial to which civilization has been exposed.
+    It is, and is to be, the gigantic struggle of these times between the
+    forces which make for liberty and righteousness and those which make
+    for the subjection of the individual man, the exaltation of the State,
+    and the enthronement of physical force directed by a ruthless collective
+    will. It threatens a sweeping betrayal of the best hopes of mankind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Each of the nations involved, horrified at the immensity of the
+    disaster, maintains that it is not responsible for the war; and each
+    Government has issued a statement to prove that some other Government is
+    responsible for the outbreak. This discussion, however, relates almost
+    entirely to actions by monarchs and Cabinets between July 23 and Aug.
+    4&mdash;a short period of hurried messages between the Chancelleries of
+    Europe&mdash;actions which only prove that the monarchs and Ministers for
+    Foreign Affairs could not, or at least did not, prevent the
+    long-prepared general war from breaking out. The assassination of the
+    Archduke and Duchess of Hohenberg on the 28th of June was in no proper
+    sense a cause of the war, except as it was one of the consequences of
+    the persistent aggressions of Austria-Hungary against her southeastern
+    neighbors. Neither was Russian mobilization in four military districts
+    on July 29 a cause of the war; for that was only an external
+    manifestation of the Russian state of mind toward the Balkan peoples, a
+    state of mind well known to all publicists ever since the Treaty of
+    Berlin in 1878. No more was the invasion of Belgium by the German Army
+    on Aug. 4 a true cause of the war, or even the cause, as distinguished
+    from the occasion, of Great Britain's becoming involved in it. By that
+    action Germany was only taking the first step in carrying out a
+    long-cherished purpose and in executing a judicious plan of campaign
+    prepared for many years in advance. The artificial panic in Germany
+    about its exposed position between two powerful enemies, France and
+    Russia, was not a genuine cause of the war; for the General Staff knew
+    they had crushed France once, and were confident they could do it again
+    in a month. As to Russia, it was, in their view, a huge nation, but
+    very clumsy and dull in war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The real causes of the war are all of many years' standing; and all the
+    nations now involved in the fearful catastrophe have contributed to the
+    development of one or more of these effective causes. The fundamental
+    causes are: (1) The maintenance of monarchical Governments, each
+    sanctioned and supported by the national religion, and each furnished
+    with a Cabinet selected by the monarch&mdash;Governments which can make war
+    without any previous consultation of the peoples through their elected
+    representatives; (2) the constant maintenance of conscript armies,
+    through which the entire able-bodied male population is trained in youth
+    for service in the army or navy, and remains subject to the instant call
+    of the Government till late in life, the officering of these permanent
+    armies involving the creation of a large military class likely to become
+    powerful in political, industrial, and social administration; (3) the
+    creation of a strong, permanent bureaucracy within each nation for the
+    management of both foreign and domestic affairs, much of whose work is
+    kept secret from the public at large; and, finally, (4) the habitual use
+    of military and naval forces to acquire new territories, contiguous or
+    detached, without regard to the wishes of the people annexed or
+    controlled. This last cause of the war is the most potent of the four,
+    since it is strong in itself, and is apt to include one or more of the
+    other three. It is the gratification of the lust for world empire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of all the nations taking part in the present war, Great Britain is the
+    only one which does not maintain a conscript army; but, on the other
+    hand, Great Britain is the earliest modern claimant of world empire by
+    force, with the single exception of Spain, which long since abandoned
+    that quest. Every one of these nations except little Servia has yielded
+    to the lust for empire. Every one has permitted its monarch or its
+    Cabinet to carry on secret negotiations liable at any time to commit the
+    nation to war, or to fail in maintaining the peace of Europe or of the
+    Near East. In the crowded diplomatic events of last July, no phenomenon
+    is more striking than the exhibition of the power which the British
+    people confide to the hands of their Foreign Secretary. In the interests
+    of public liberty and public welfare no official should possess such
+    powers as Sir Edward Grey used admirably&mdash;though in vain&mdash;last July. In
+    all three of the empires engaged in the war there has long existed a
+    large military caste which exerts a strong influence on the Government
+    and its policies, and on the daily life of the people.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These being the real causes of the terrific convulsion now going on in
+    Europe, it cannot be questioned that the nation in which these complex
+    causes have taken strongest and most complete effect during the last
+    fifty years is Germany. Her form of government has been imperialistic
+    and autocratic in the highest degree. She has developed with great
+    intelligence and assiduity the most formidable conscript army in the
+    world, and the most influential and insolent military caste. Three times
+    since 1864 she has waged war in Europe, and each time she has added to
+    her territory without regard to the wishes of the annexed population.
+    For twenty-five years she has exhibited a keen desire to obtain colonial
+    possessions; and since 1896 she has been aggressive in this field. In
+    her schools and universities the children and youth have been taught for
+    generations that Germany is surrounded by hostile peoples, that her
+    expansion in Europe and in other continents is resisted by jealous
+    powers which started earlier in the race for foreign possessions, and
+    that the salvation of Germany has depended from the first, and will
+    depend till the last, on the efficiency of her army and navy and the
+    warlike spirit of her people. This instruction, given year after year by
+    teachers, publicists, and rulers, was first generally accepted in
+    Prussia, but now seems to be accepted by the entire empire as unified in
+    1871.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The attention of the civilized world was first called to this state of
+    the German mind and will by the triumphant policies of Bismarck; but
+    during the reign of the present Emperor the external aggressiveness of
+    Germany and her passion for world empire have grown to much more
+    formidable proportions. Although the German Emperor has sometimes played
+    the part of a peacemaker, he has habitually acted the war lord in both
+    speech and bearing, and has supported the military caste whenever it has
+    been assailed. He is by inheritance, conviction, and practice a
+    Divine-right sovereign whose throne rests on an "invincible" army, an
+    army conterminous with the nation. In the present tremendous struggle he
+    carries his subjects with him in a rushing torrent of self-sacrificing
+    patriotism. Mass fanaticism and infectious enthusiasm seem to have
+    deprived the leading class in Germany, for the moment, of all power to
+    see, reason, and judge correctly&mdash;no new phenomenon in the world, but
+    instructive in this case because it points to the grave defect in German
+    education&mdash;the lack of liberty and, therefore, practice in self-control.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The twentieth century educated German is, however, by no means given
+    over completely to material and physical aggrandizement and the worship
+    of might. He cherishes a partly new conception of the State as a
+    collective entity whose function is to develop and multiply, not the
+    free, healthy, and happy individual man and woman, but higher and more
+    effective types of humanity, made superior by a strenuous discipline
+    which takes much account of the strong and ambitious, and little of the
+    weak or meek. He rejects the ethics of the Beatitudes as unsound, but
+    accepts the religion of valor, which exalts strength, courage,
+    endurance, and the ready sacrifice by the individual of liberty,
+    happiness, and life itself for Germany's honor and greatness. A nation
+    of 60,000,000 holding these philosophical and religious views, and
+    proposing to act on them in winning by force the empire of the world,
+    threatens civilization with more formidable irruptions of a destroying
+    host than any that history has recorded. The rush of the German Army
+    into Belgium, France, and Russia and its consequences to those lands
+    have taught the rest of Europe to dread German domination, and&mdash;it is to
+    be hoped&mdash;to make it impossible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The real cause of the present convulsion is, then, the state of mind or
+    temper of Germany, including her conception of national greatness, her
+    theory of the State, and her intelligent and skillful use of all the
+    forces of nineteenth century applied science for the destructive
+    purposes of war. It is, therefore, apparent that Europe can escape from
+    the domination of Germany only by defeating her in her present
+    undertakings; and that this defeat can be brought about only by using
+    against her the same effective agencies of destruction and the same
+    martial spirit on which Germany itself relies. Horrible as are the
+    murderous and devastating effects of this war, there can be no lasting
+    peace until Europe as a whole is ready to make some serious and
+    far-reaching decisions in regard to Governmental structures and powers.
+    In all probability the sufferings and losses of this widespread war must
+    go further and cut deeper before Europe can be brought to the decisions
+    which alone can give securities for lasting peace against Germany on the
+    one hand and Russia on the other, or to either of these nations, or can
+    give security for the future to any of the smaller nations of
+    Continental Europe. There can, indeed, be no security for future peace
+    in Europe until every European nation recognizes the fact that there is
+    to be no such thing in the world as one dominating nation&mdash;no such thing
+    as world empire for any single nation&mdash;Great Britain, Germany, Russia,
+    Japan, or China. There can be no sense of security against sudden
+    invasion in Europe so long as all the able-bodied men are trained to be
+    soldiers and the best possible armies are kept constantly ready for
+    instant use. There can be no secure peace in Europe until a federation
+    of the European States is established, capable of making public
+    contracts intended to be kept, and backed by an overwhelming
+    international force subject to the orders of an international tribunal.
+    The present convulsion demonstrates the impotence toward permanent
+    peace of secret negotiations, of unpublished agreements, of treaties and
+    covenants that can be broken on grounds of military necessity, of
+    international law if without sanctions, of pious wishes, of economic and
+    biological predictions, and of public opinion unless expressed through a
+    firm international agreement, behind which stands an international
+    force. When that international force has been firmly established it will
+    be time to consider what proportionate reductions in national armaments
+    can be prudently recommended. Until that glorious day dawns, no patriot
+    and no lover of his kind can wisely advocate either peace in Europe or
+    any reduction of armaments.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The hate-breeding and worse than brutal cruelties and devastations of
+    the war, with their inevitable moral and physical degradations, ought to
+    shock mankind into attempting a great step forward. Europe and America
+    should undertake to exterminate the real causes of the catastrophe. In
+    studying that problem the coming European conference can profit by the
+    experience of the three prosperous and valid countries in which public
+    liberty and the principle of federation have been most successfully
+    developed&mdash;Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States.
+    Switzerland is a democratic federation which unites in a firm federal
+    bond three different racial stocks speaking three unlike languages, and
+    divided locally and irregularly between the Catholic Church and the
+    Protestant. The so-called British Empire tends strongly to become a
+    federation; and the methods of Government both in Great Britain itself
+    and in its affiliated Commonwealths are becoming more and more
+    democratic in substance. The war has brought this fact out in high
+    relief. As to the United States, it is a strong federation of
+    forty-eight heterogeneous States which has been proving for a hundred
+    years that freedom and democracy are safer and happier for mankind than
+    subjection to any sort of autocracy, and affords far the best training
+    for national character and national efficiency. Republican France has
+    not yet had time to give this demonstration, being incumbered with many
+    survivals of the Bourbon and Napoleonic régimes, and being forced to
+    maintain a conscript army.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is an encouraging fact that every one of the political or
+    Governmental changes needed is already illustrated in the practice of
+    one or more of the civilized nations. To exaggerate the necessary
+    changes is to postpone or prevent a satisfactory outcome from the
+    present calculated destructions and wrongs and the accompanying moral
+    and religious chaos. Ardent proposals to remake the map of Europe,
+    reconstruct European society, substitute republics for empires, and
+    abolish armaments are in fact obstructing the road toward peace and
+    good-will among men. That road is hard at best.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The immediate duty of the United States is presumably to prepare, on the
+    basis of its present army and navy, to furnish an effective quota of the
+    international force, servant of an international tribunal, which will
+    make the ultimate issue of this most abominable of wars not a truce, but
+    a durable peace.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the meantime the American peoples cry with one voice to the German
+    people, like Ezekiel to the House of Israel: "Turn ye, turn ye from your
+    evil ways; for why will ye die?"
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 8, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0023"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    THE LORD OF HOSTS.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By JOSEPH B. GILDER.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh."
+</p>
+<br>
+    <blockquote>
+      <blockquote>
+        <blockquote>
+          <blockquote>
+            <blockquote>
+              <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">    The warring hosts that gather<br>
+      To ravage, burn, and slay,<br>
+    Turn first to that dread Father<br>
+      To whom the nations pray:<br>
+<br>
+    "O God, our hearts Thou knowest,<br>
+      Our minds Thou readest clear;<br>
+    Where we go, there Thou goest&mdash;<br>
+      With Thee we have no fear.<br>
+<br>
+    "The folk that harm and hate us&mdash;<br>
+      Thy enemies, O Lord&mdash;<br>
+    Thou knowest how they bait us:<br>
+      Make brittle their strong sword!<br>
+<br>
+    "Against the foe that goaded<br>
+      We heed Thy call to fight:<br>
+    Our guns are primed and loaded,<br>
+      Our swords, how keen and bright!<br>
+<br>
+    "Make strong our hearts to serve Thee,<br>
+      Uphold our lifted hands;<br>
+    Let no petition swerve Thee<br>
+      To succor alien bands.<br>
+<br>
+    "So shall we burn and slaughter,<br>
+      Spread desolation wide,<br>
+    If still, by land and water,<br>
+      Thou fightest on our side."<br>
+<br>
+    The Lord of Hosts had listened&mdash;<br>
+      Had heard the rivals' prayer,<br>
+    Upraised where bayonets glistened<br>
+      And banners dyed the air;<br>
+<br>
+    And as His people waited<br>
+      An answer to their cry,<br>
+    Two bolts with lightning freighted<br>
+      Flashed from the angry sky.<br>
+<br>
+    To left, to right they darted,<br>
+      Impartially they fell:<br>
+    The hosts in terror started<br>
+      As they envisaged hell.<br>
+<br>
+    For wide their ranks were riven,<br>
+      Night blotted out the sky,<br>
+    As prostrate, dazed or driven,<br>
+      They caught their God's reply.<br>
+<br>
+    Then, as the blinding levin's<br>
+      Twin bolts were buried deep,<br>
+    Who dwelleth in the heavens<br>
+      Was heard to laugh&mdash;and weep!
+</p>
+              </blockquote>
+            </blockquote>
+          </blockquote>
+        </blockquote>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+<a name="2H_4_0024"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<br><hr><br>
+
+<h2>
+    A War of Dishonor
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By David Starr Jordan.
+</h3>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>     Late President of Leland Stanford Junior University, now its
+     Chancellor; Chief Director of the World Peace Foundation since
+     1910.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    In this war what of right and what of wrong? Not much of right, perhaps,
+    and very much of wrong. But there are degrees in wrong, and sometimes,
+    by comparison, wrong becomes almost right.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The armed peace, the peace of guns and dreadnoughts and sabre rattlers,
+    has come to its predestined end. Its armaments were made for war. Its
+    war makers and war traders, the Pan-Germanists in the lead, have done
+    their worst for the last nine years. They have been foiled time after
+    time, but they have their way at last. Their last and most fatal weapon
+    was the ultimatum. If Servia had not given them their chance they would
+    have found their pretext somewhere else. When a nation or a continent
+    prepares for war it will get it soon or later. To prepare for war is to
+    breed a host of men who have no other business, and another host who
+    find their profits in blood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the war began it had very little meaning. It was the third Balkan
+    war, brought on, as the others were, by intrigues of rival despotisms.
+    The peoples of Europe do not hate each other. The springs of war come
+    from a few men impelled by greed and glory. Diplomacy in Europe has been
+    for years the cover for robbery in Asia or Africa. Of all the nations
+    concerned not one had any wish to fight, and Belgium alone could fight
+    with clean hands.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And this fact gave the war its meaning. The invasion of Belgium changed
+    the whole face of affairs. As by a lightning flash the issue was made
+    plain: the issue of the sacredness of law; the rule of the soldier or
+    the rule of the citizen; the rule of fear or the rule of law. Germany
+    stands for army rule. This was made clear when, a year ago, she passed
+    under the yoke at Zabern. However devious her diplomacy in the past,
+    Britain stands today for the rule of law. The British soldier is the
+    servant of the British people, not their master.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The highest conception of human relations is embodied in the word law.
+    Law is the framework of civilization. Law is the condition of security,
+    happiness, and progress. War is the denial of all law. It makes scrap
+    paper of all the solemn agreements men and nations have established for
+    their mutual good.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The rape of Belgium made scrap paper of international law. The sowing of
+    mines in the fairways of commerce made scrap paper of the rights of
+    neutral nations. The torture of the Belgian people made scrap paper of
+    the rights of non-combatants.
+</p>
+<p>
+    War may be never righteous, but it is sometimes honorable. In honorable
+    war armies fight against armies, never against private citizens. If
+    armies give no needless provocation, they will receive none. The sacking
+    of Malines, Aerschot, Dinant&mdash;these are not acts of honorable war. The
+    wreck of Louvain, historic Louvain, the venerable centre for 500 years
+    of Catholic erudition, at the hands of blood-drunk soldiers was an act
+    of dishonorable war. It marks a stain on the record of Germany which the
+    ages will not efface.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A needed example," say the apologists for this crime. The Duke of Alva
+    gave the same "needed example" to these same people in his day. For
+    centuries the words "Spanish blood" struck terror into peoples' hearts
+    throughout the Netherlands. For centuries to come the word Prussian will
+    take its hated place.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The good people of Germany do not burn universities. Neither do they
+    make war for war's sake. They are helpless in the hands of a monster of
+    their own creation. The affair at Zabern a year ago testifies to their
+    complete subjugation. All the virtues are left to them, save only the
+    love of freedom. This the mailed fist has taken away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Germany of today is an anachronism. Her scientific ideals are of the
+    twentieth century. Her political ideals hark back to the sixteenth. Her
+    rulers have made her the most superb fighting machine in a world which
+    is soul-weary of fighting. For a nation in shining armor the civilized
+    World has no place. It will not worship them, it will not obey them. It
+    will not respect those who either worship or obey. It finds no people
+    good enough to rule other people against their will.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A great nation which its own people do not control is a nation without a
+    Government. It is a derelict on the international sea. It is a danger to
+    its neighbors, a greater danger to itself. Of all the many issues, good
+    or bad, which may come from this war, none is more important than this,
+    that the German people should take possession of Germany.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    DAVID STARR JORDAN.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Berkeley, Cal., Sept. 19, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0025"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    Might or Right
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By John Grier Hibben.
+</h3>
+<center>     President of Princeton University; author of works on logic
+     and philosophy.
+</center>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>
+    <i>The address printed below was delivered by President Hibben at the
+    opening of the Laymen's Efficiency Convention in New York City, Oct. 16,
+    1914.</i>
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    We are all of us sadly conscious of our failure to realize in any
+    adequate measure the standards of right conduct which we set for
+    ourselves. Attainment falls far short of purpose and desire. Through
+    want of courage, or it may be of inclination, or of sheer inertia, we
+    fail to obey perfectly the law of duty which we recognize as
+    imperatively binding upon us. There is, however, a more subtle kind of
+    failure as regards our moral endeavor and achievement which is due to
+    the unconscious shifting of these standards of right and wrong
+    themselves. It is not merely that we fail to do that which we know to be
+    right, but at times the very idea of right itself is strangely altered.
+    The good insensibly assimilates to itself certain elements of evil which
+    we allow and accept without full realization of the significance of this
+    moral alchemy to which the most fundamental of our ideas are often times
+    subjected. The idea of right no longer stands in its integrity, but is
+    compromised and even neutralized by conflicting thoughts and sentiments.
+    The things which at one time held first place in our estimate of life
+    become secondary. Our attitude toward men, and manners, and affairs
+    experiences a radical change. This in most cases takes place
+    unconsciously, or if conscious of it, we refrain from confessing it even
+    to ourselves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There are some, however, who are both frank enough and bold enough to
+    announce their belief in the radical doctrine which demands a complete
+    transformation of essential values. For them, good is evil and evil
+    good, and they seem not ashamed to avow it. The conspicuous German
+    philosopher of later years, Nietzsche, with a naďve simplicity insists
+    that the great need of our modern civilization is that which he
+    designates as "the transvaluation of all values." By this he means the
+    complete transformation of certain ideas of supreme value into their
+    direct opposites. He declares, for instance, that the central virtues of
+    Christianity, such as those of self-sacrifice, pity, mercy, indicate an
+    inherent weakness of the human race, and that the strong man dissipates
+    his energies through the offices of kindness and helpfulness. Thus the
+    law which commands us to bear one another's burdens must be regarded as
+    obsolete. Every man should be strong enough to bear his own burdens. If
+    not, he is a drag to the onward progress of humanity, and to assist him
+    is to do evil and not good. If you help the weak, you so far forth
+    assist in perpetuating an inferior type of manhood.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Nietzsche's "Moralic Acid."
+</h3>
+<p>
+    From this point of view, the definition of religion given in the Old
+    Testament should be revised, "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly
+    before thy God." In doing justice we must first be just to self; in
+    loving mercy it must not be at the expense of our own interests and
+    advantage, and we must not walk so humbly before our God as to give to
+    the world the appearance of weakness or lack of independence. As
+    Nietzsche insists, "The man who loves his neighbor as himself must have
+    an exceedingly poor opinion of himself." If the race is to be perfected,
+    everything and every person must be sacrificed in order to produce and
+    preserve the strong man at all hazards. There is a kind of "moralic
+    acid," as Nietzsche styles it, which is corroding the strength of
+    humanity in our modern day. We have discoursed too much of character,
+    too little of power; too much of self-sacrifice and too little of
+    self-assertion; too much of right, too little of might. Conscience not
+    only interferes with success, but also prevents the evolution of a
+    superior type of man, that superman who is not constrained by duty nor
+    limited by law, living his life "beyond good and evil."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The serious question which presents itself to our minds at this time is
+    whether our modern world has not been unconsciously incorporating these
+    ideas into its living beliefs&mdash;that is, those beliefs which reveal
+    themselves in actual living and doing, in daily purpose, in the
+    adaptation of means to ends, in the deeds which the world honors, and in
+    the achievements which it crowns with glory. There are many persons who
+    would not have the frankness of Nietzsche to say that might makes right,
+    and that a moral sense is the great obstacle to progress, and that in
+    "vigorous eras noble civilizations see something contemptible in
+    sympathy, in brotherly love, in the lack of self-assertion and
+    self-reliance." Our modern world may not explicitly subscribe to such
+    doctrines in their extreme and exaggerated expression, but nevertheless
+    may be unconsciously influenced by them. Our real opinions, however, are
+    to be tested by our sense of values as revealed by the things which we
+    crave, which we set our hearts upon, which we strive early and late to
+    gain, and sacrifice all else in order to secure. Have we not offered our
+    prayers to the God of might rather than the God of righteousness, to the
+    God of power rather than the God of justice, the God of mercy and of
+    love?
+</p>
+<p>
+    The time has come, in my opinion, for us to take account of the things
+    which we really believe, and of the God Whom we really worship. If we
+    have been following false gods, let us honestly endeavor to re-establish
+    fundamental and essential values, to discover anew what is of supreme
+    worth and set our faces resolutely toward its realization. The need of
+    our modern world today is the same as that of the ancient world at the
+    time of the coming of Christ. His message to the world as indicated by
+    His teaching, and His life was an arraignment of the ancient régime as
+    regards three crucial points.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The Brotherhood of Man.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    First, the religious and moral beliefs of that age had become purely
+    formal. There was the letter of conviction, but not the spirit of it.
+    The creed, the ritual, the ceremony were there, but the life had
+    departed. And so today our beliefs have lost vitality to a large extent
+    because we have been content to indulge in formulas oft repeated, which
+    have ceased to have significance for our thoughts or for our feelings.
+    We have allowed ourselves to be betrayed by words which are mere sounds
+    without substance. We have verbalized our beliefs, and have
+    depotentialed them of vital significance. Take, for instance, the
+    phrases, "The fatherhood of God" and "The brotherhood of man." They have
+    been so often upon our lips as to become trite; their real meaning has
+    disappeared. It is easy to repeat the words, and to be satisfied with
+    the repetition, and nevertheless remain wholly insensible to their
+    profound import, and under no compulsion whatsoever to obey their
+    sublime command. We assent to the formula: but it does not become a
+    determining factor in our purposes and plans. There is perhaps no age in
+    the history of the world which has so emphasized the idea of the
+    brotherhood of man as our own, and never in all history has there been
+    such a denial of this idea as by the present European war. If the
+    brotherhood of man had been the living, dominant idea of our
+    civilization, could this present tragedy of the nations have occurred?
+    If the world had believed profoundly in the idea of God, would we now be
+    daily reading of the ghastly scenes where human life is no longer
+    sacred, where love gives place to hate, where the constructive forces of
+    the world are superseded by the destructive, and all the passions of
+    man's brute inheritance are given full play and scope?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Second&mdash;In the teachings of Christ there was a remarkable expansion of
+    the idea of God. Instead of the tribal God worshipped as the God of
+    Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, He substituted the idea of God, as the
+    God of all peoples and all races, the God of the Jew and Gentile, of the
+    Greek and barbarian, of the bond and the free. It was the great apostle
+    of the Gentiles who at the centre of Greek civilization announced this
+    fundamental conception of Christianity to the old world:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on
+     all the face of the earth.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    This was the sublime idea of the God of a united humanity. The God of
+    the tribe had given place to the God of the whole world. That conception
+    was very foreign to the popular religious notions current at the time
+    of Christ, and it seems still further away from our ideas of the present
+    day. It is a very narrow and circumscribed view of God to regard Him as
+    concerned merely for our little insular affairs, to regard Him simply as
+    a God of the individual or of the home, or even one's nation. He
+    transcends all these limitations of particular interests and particular
+    needs. He is not merely our God but the God of all mankind. The children
+    of Israel called Him the God of battle, the God of hosts, that is, the
+    one who would give victory to them in their battles, and who would prove
+    the leader of their hosts. But Christ came to the world in God's name to
+    universalize this narrow tribal idea of God, proclaiming peace on earth
+    and good will to men. It was the dawn of a new era, the Christian era.
+    That light which shone upon the old world is darkened by the cloud
+    hanging low over Europe at the present time. We cannot think, however,
+    that it is permanently extinguished. To that light the nations of the
+    earth must again return.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The Area of Moral Obligation.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Third&mdash;Christ gave to the world of His day an enlarged idea of the area
+    of moral obligation. He insisted most stoutly upon the expansion of the
+    scope of individual responsibility. This freeing of the idea of duty
+    from the limitations of race prejudice is a natural corollary to the
+    idea of the universality of God's relation to the world. Corresponding
+    to the tribal view of God there is always an accompanying idea of the
+    restricted obligation of the individual. To care for one's own family or
+    one's own clan or tribe and present a hostile front to the rest of
+    mankind has always been the characteristic feature of primitive
+    morality. It was peculiarly the teaching of Christ which brought to the
+    world the idea that the area of moral obligation is co-extensive with
+    the world itself. There are no racial or national lines which can limit
+    the extent of our responsibility. The world today needs to learn this
+    lesson anew, and it is evident that it must acquire this knowledge
+    through bitter and desperate experiences. We must interpret in this
+    large sense the great moral dictum of the German philosopher, Kant, that
+    every one in a particular circumstance should act as he would wish all
+    men to act if similarly circumstanced and conditioned. This is the
+    complete universalizing of our moral obligations&mdash;stripping our sense of
+    duty of everything that is particular and local and isolated. The
+    natural tendency of human nature is to particularize our relations to
+    God and bound our relations to our fellow-men; to narrow our relations
+    to God so as to embrace only our direst needs, and to circumscribe our
+    relations to man so as to include in the field of responsibility only
+    those who are our kin or our own kind. The time has certainly come for
+    us to take larger views of the world, of man, and of God.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After the great calamity of this present war is passed there must
+    necessarily follow a period of reconstruction. It will not be merely the
+    reconstruction of national resources and international relations, but
+    it must be also a reconstruction of our fundamental conceptions of man
+    and of the relation of man to man the world over, and of the relation
+    also of man to God. We must ask anew the question, Who is our neighbor?
+    In this great moral enterprise you will naturally play a large and
+    significant part, for you belong to the class of men who are expected to
+    have strong and decided opinions in the face of a great world crisis,
+    and are capable of leading others toward the goal of a regenerated
+    humanity. To know the right and to maintain it, to fight against the
+    wrong, to impart courage to the timid, strength to the weak, and hope to
+    the faint-hearted; to forget self in the service of others and extend a
+    human sympathy to the ends of the earth, this is your vocation. It is
+    the call of the world, it is the voice of one calling to you out of a
+    distant past across the nineteen Christian centuries; it is the "spirit
+    of the years to come," summoning you to establish the Kingdom of God
+    upon earth.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0026"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    JEANNE D'ARC&mdash;1914.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By ALMA DURANT NICOLSON.
+</h3>
+<br>
+    <blockquote>
+      <blockquote>
+        <blockquote>
+          <blockquote>
+            <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">    Rise from the buried ages, O thou Maid,<br>
+    Rise from thy glorious ashes, unafraid,<br>
+    And wheresoe'er thy Brothers need thee most,<br>
+    Arise again, to lead thy tireless host.<br>
+    France calls thee as she called in days gone by!<br>
+    She calls thy spirit where her soldiers die;<br>
+    She knows thy courage and thy sacrifice,<br>
+    And wills today to pay the selfsame price,<br>
+    All-confident that when the work is done,<br>
+    She shall behold her Honor saved and Victory won.<br>
+<br>
+    God calls thee, Maid, from out the Past&mdash;<br>
+    The Past of France where thy strange lot was cast&mdash;<br>
+    And bid'st thee fling about this fearful hour<br>
+    Thy dauntless Faith, that was thy magic Power.<br>
+    And Freedom calls, with all-impelling voice,<br>
+    She calls the Sons of France, and leaves no choice,<br>
+    No waver and no alternating will;<br>
+    Where Freedom calls, all other calls are still,<br>
+    All-confident that when her work is done<br>
+    Ye shall behold your Country saved and Victory won.<br>
+</p>
+            </blockquote>
+          </blockquote>
+        </blockquote>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+<br><hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0027"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    The Kaiser and Belgium
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By John W. Burgess.
+</h3>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>     Dean of the Faculties of Political Science, Philosophy, Pure
+     Science, and the fine Arts at Columbia University; Roosevelt
+     Professor of American History and Institutions at Friedrich
+     Wilhelms University, Berlin, 1906-7; Visiting American
+     Professor to Austrian Universities, 1914-15; Decorated, Order
+     of Prussian Crown by the German Emperor and Order of the
+     Albrechts by the King of Saxony.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    FIRST ARTICLE.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    It is often said by historians that no truly great man is every really
+    understood by the generation, and in the age, for which he labors. Many
+    instances of the truth of this statement can be easily cited. Two of the
+    most flagrant have come within the range of my own personal experience.
+    The first was the character of Abraham Lincoln as depicted by the
+    British press of 1860-64 and as conceived by the British public opinion
+    of that era. Mr. Henry Adams, son and private secretary of Mr. Charles
+    Francis Adams, our Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain during that
+    critical era in our history, writes, in that fascinating book of his
+    entitled "The Education of Henry Adams,"
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     that "London was altogether beside itself on one point, in
+     especial; it created a nightmare of its own, and gave it the
+     shape of Abraham Lincoln. Behind this it placed another demon,
+     if possible more devilish, and called it Mr. Seward. In regard
+     to these two men English society seemed demented. Defense was
+     useless: explanation was vain. One could only let the passion
+     exhaust itself. One's best friends were as unreasonable as
+     enemies, for the belief in poor Mr. Lincoln's brutality and
+     Seward's ferocity became a dogma of popular faith."
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    Adams relates further that the last time he saw Thackeray at Christmas
+    of 1863 they spoke of their mutual friend Mrs. Frank Hampton of South
+    Carolina, whom Thackeray had portrayed as Ethel Newcome, and who had
+    recently passed away from life. Thackeray had read in the British papers
+    that her parents had been prevented by the Federal soldiers from passing
+    through the lines to see her on her deathbed. Adams writes that
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     in speaking of it Thackeray's voice trembled and his eyes
+     filled with tears. The coarse cruelty of Lincoln and his
+     hirelings was notorious. He never doubted that the Federals
+     made a business of harrowing the tenderest feelings of
+     women&mdash;particularly of women&mdash;in order to punish their
+     opponents. On quite insufficient evidence he burst into
+     reproach. Had he (Adams) carried in his pocket the proofs that
+     the reproach was unjust he would have gained nothing by
+     showing them. At that moment Thackeray, and all London society
+     with him, needed the nervous relief of expressing emotions;
+     for if Mr. Lincoln was not what they said he was, what were
+     they?
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    Mr. Lincoln sent over our most skillful politician, Thurlow Weed, and
+    our most able constitutional lawyer, William M. Evarts, and later our
+    most brilliant orator, Henry Ward Beecher, followed, for the purpose of
+    bringing the British people to their senses and correcting British
+    opinion, but all to little purpose. Gettysburg and Vicksburg did far
+    more toward modifying that opinion than the persuasiveness of Weed, the
+    logic of Evarts, or the eloquence of Beecher, and it took Chattanooga,
+    the March to the Sea, and Appomattox to dispel the illusion entirely.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Today we are laboring under a no less singular illusion than were the
+    English in 1862. The conception prevailing in England and in this
+    country concerning the physical, mental, and moral make-up of the German
+    Emperor is the monumental caricature of biographical literature. I have
+    had the privilege of his personal acquaintance now for nearly ten years.
+    I have been brought into contact with him in many different ways and
+    under many varying conditions, at Court and State functions, at
+    university ceremonies and celebrations, at his table, and by his
+    fireside surrounded by his family, when in the midst of his officials,
+    his men of science, and his personal friends, and, more instructive than
+    all, alone in the imperial home in Berlin and at Potsdam and in the
+    castle and forest at Wilhelmshöhe. With all this experience, with all
+    this opportunity for observation at close range, I am hardly able to
+    recognize a single characteristic usually attributed to him by the
+    British and American press of today.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the first place, the Emperor is an impressive man physically. He is
+    not a giant in stature, but a man of medium size, great strength and
+    endurance, and of agile and graceful movement. He looks every inch a
+    leader of men. His fine gray-blue eyes are peculiarly fascinating. I saw
+    him once seated beside his uncle, King Edward VII., and the contrast was
+    very striking, and greatly in his favor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the second place, the Emperor is an exceedingly intelligent and
+    highly cultivated man. His mental processes are swift, but they go also
+    very deep. He is a searching inquirer, and questions and listens more
+    than he talks. His fund of knowledge is immense and sometimes
+    astonishing. He manifests interest in everything, even to the smallest
+    detail, which can have any bearing upon human improvement. I remember a
+    half hour's conversation with him once over a cupping glass, which he
+    had gotten from an excavation in the Roman ruin called the Saalburg,
+    near Homburg. He always appeared to me most deeply concerned with the
+    arts of peace. I have never heard him speak much of war, and then always
+    with abhorrence, nor much of military matters, but improved agriculture,
+    invention, and manufacture, and especially commerce and education in all
+    their ramifications, were the chief subjects of his thought and
+    conversation. I have had the privilege of association with many highly
+    intelligent and profoundly learned men, but I have never acquired as
+    much knowledge, in the same time, from any man whom I have ever met, as
+    from the German Emperor. And yet, with all this real superiority of mind
+    and education, his deference to the opinions of others is remarkable.
+    Arrogance is one of the qualities most often attributed to him, but he
+    is the only ruler I ever saw in whom there appeared to be absolutely no
+    arrogance. He meets you as man meets man and makes you feel that you are
+    required to yield to nothing but the better reason.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    A Man of Warm Affections.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    In the third place, the Emperor impressed me as a man of heart, of warm
+    affections, and of great consideration for the feelings and well-being
+    of others. He can not, at least does not, conceal his reverence for, and
+    devotion to, the Empress, or his love for his children, or his
+    attachment to his friends. He always speaks of Queen Victoria and of the
+    Empress Friedrich with the greatest veneration, and once when speaking
+    to me of an old American friend who had turned upon him he said that it
+    was difficult for him to give up an old friend, right or wrong, and
+    impossible when he believed him to be in the right. His manifest respect
+    and affection for his old and tried officials, such as Lucanus and zu
+    Eulenburg and von Studt and Beseler and Althoff, give strong evidence of
+    the warmth and depth of his nature. His consideration for Americans,
+    especially, has always been remarkable. It was at his suggestion that
+    the exchange of educators between the universities of Germany and of the
+    United States was established, and it has been his custom to be present
+    at the opening lecture of each new incumbent of these positions at
+    the University of Berlin, and to greet him and welcome him to his work.
+    He is also the first to extend to these foreign educators hospitality
+    and social attention. To any one who has experienced his hearty welcome
+    to his land and his home the assertion that he is arrogant and
+    autocratic is so far away from truth as to be ludicrous. Again I must
+    say that I have never met a ruler, in monarchy or republic, in whom
+    genuine democratic geniality was a so predominant characteristic.
+</p>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0012"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img border="0" src="images/giddings.jpg" alt="Franklin H. Giddings" width="166" height="225">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-align: center">FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i>(Photo by the Misses Selby.)</i>
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <a href="#2H_4_0033">
+    <i>See Page 526</i> </a>
+</p>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0013"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/eucken.gif" width="159" height="225"
+alt="Rudolf Eucken">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-align: center">RUDOLF EUCKEN</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <a href="#2H_4_0035">
+    <i>See Page 534</i> </a>
+</p>
+<br>
+<p>
+    But the characteristic of the Emperor which struck me most forcibly is
+    his profound sense of duty and his readiness for self-sacrifice for the
+    welfare of his country. This is a general German trait. It is the most
+    admirable side of German nature. And the Emperor is, in this respect
+    especially, their Princeps. I remember sitting beside him one day, when
+    one of the ladies of his household asked me if I were acquainted with a
+    certain wealthy ultra-fashionable New York social leader. I replied, by
+    name only. She pressed me to know why not more nearly, why not
+    personally. And to this, I replied that I was not of her class; that I
+    could not amuse her, and that I did not approve of the frivolous and
+    demoralizing example and influence of one so favorably circumstanced for
+    doing good. The Emperor had heard the conversation, and he promptly
+    said: "You know in Germany we do not rate and classify people by their
+    material possessions, but by the importance of the service they render
+    to country, culture, and civilization." One of his sons once told me
+    that from his earliest childhood his father had instilled into his mind
+    the lesson that devotion to duty and readiness for sacrifice were the
+    cardinal virtues of a German, especially of a Hohenzollern. His days are
+    periods of constant labor and severe discipline. He rises early, lives
+    abstemiously and works until far into the night. There is no day laborer
+    in his entire empire who gives so many hours per diem to his work. His
+    nature is manifestly deeply religious and, in every sentence he speaks,
+    evidence of his consciousness that the policeman's club cannot take the
+    place of religious and moral principle is revealed. His frequent appeal
+    for Divine aid in the discharge of his duties is prompted by the
+    conviction that the heavier the duty the more need there is of that aid.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    His Passion for German Greatness.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    He undoubtedly has an intense desire, almost a passion, for the
+    prosperity and greatness of his country, but his conception of that
+    prosperity and greatness is more spiritual and cultural than material
+    and commercial. More than once have I heard him say that he desired to
+    see Germany a wealthy country, but only as the result of honest and
+    properly requited toil, and that wealth acquired by force or fraud was
+    more a curse than a blessing, and was destined to go as it had come. His
+    conception of the greatness of Germany is as a great intellectual and
+    moral power rather than anything else. Its physical power he values
+    chiefly as the creator and maintainer of the conditions necessary to the
+    production and influence of this higher power. I have often heard him
+    express this thought.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And in spite of this terrible war, the responsibility for which is by so
+    many erroneously laid at his door, I firmly believe him to be a man of
+    peace. I am absolutely sure that he has entered upon this war only under
+    the firm conviction that Great Britain, France, and Russia have
+    conspired to destroy Germany as a world power, and that he is simply
+    defending, as he said in his memorable speech to the Reichstag, the
+    place which God had given the Germans to dwell on. For seven years I
+    myself have witnessed the growth of this conviction in his mind and that
+    of the whole German Nation as the evidences of it have multiplied from
+    year to year until at last the fatal hour at Serajevo struck. I firmly
+    believe that there is no soul in this wide world upon whom the burden
+    and grief of this great catastrophe so heavily rest as upon the German
+    Emperor. I have heard him declare with the greatest earnestness and
+    solemnity that he considered war a dire calamity; that Germany would
+    never during his reign wage an offensive war, and that he hoped God
+    would spare him from the necessity of ever having to conduct a defensive
+    war. For years he has been conscious that British diplomacy was seeking
+    to isolate and crush Germany by an alliance of Latin, Slav, and Mongol
+    under British direction, and he sought in every way to avert it. He
+    visited England himself frequently. He sent his Ministers of State over
+    to cultivate the acquaintance and friendship of the British Ministers,
+    but rarely would the British King go himself to Germany or send his
+    Ministers to return these visits. More than once have I heard him say
+    that he was most earnestly desirous of close friendship between Germany,
+    Great Britain, and the United States, and had done, was doing, and would
+    continue to do, all in his power to promote it; but that while the
+    Americans were cordially meeting Germany half way, the British were
+    cold, suspicious, and repellent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I know that the two things which are giving him the deepest pain in this
+    world catastrophe, excepting only the sufferings of his own kindred and
+    people, are the enmity of Great Britain and the misunderstanding of his
+    character, feelings, and purposes in America. To remedy the first we
+    here can do nothing, but to dispel the second is our bounden duty; and I
+    devoutly hope that other evidence may prove sufficient to do this to the
+    satisfaction of the minds of my countrymen than was necessary to
+    convince the British Nation that the great-hearted Abraham Lincoln was
+    not a brute nor the urbane William H. Seward a demon of ferocity.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0028"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    Reply to Prof. Burgess
+</h2>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Burgess Kaiser is a truly admirable person. Every right-minded man
+    will be only too glad to believe all that Prof. Burgess affirms of him.
+    To be sure, there is a lurking sense that the professor "doth protest
+    too much." But let that go. In the present topsy-turvy state of the
+    world it is refreshing to hear of a man who loves his wife and children
+    in the good, old way. But just now the world is not interested in the
+    private, personal, peculiarly German characteristics of the Kaiser. We
+    outsiders must take him as he is known to the international world. We of
+    course trust that he is an able, cultivated, attractive gentleman. There
+    are many such in the world. But this gentleman happens to be the head of
+    one of the great nations. Our interest in him centres in his relations
+    to his neighbor nations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    An English friend of mine was appointed to duty in a tribe of savages in
+    Africa. I dislike to call them savages after the testimony of my friend.
+    But they were just plain, naked folk, living in primitive simplicity in
+    their native land. The chief of this little tribe was, as my friend
+    asserts, a superior man, and, in spite of his undress, a good deal of a
+    gentleman. In physique he was superb. A sculptor's heart would have
+    leaped for joy at sight of him. My friend said to see him teaching his
+    young son to throw a spear was a sort of physical music. He himself
+    could throw a spear to an incredible distance with the precision of a
+    rifle shot. He ruled his little kingdom with surprising wisdom and
+    fairness. He was welcomed everywhere among his people as the friend and
+    counselor. His family relations were unimpeachable. The same was true
+    throughout the tribe. He was devoutly pious. In short, he was a Burgess
+    Kaiser in the small. But he was the war lord of all that region. He was
+    fiercely jealous of all the neighboring tribes. He kept his own people
+    armed and drilled to the top of efficiency, ready for attack or
+    defense. He was noted for his hatred and contempt for his people except
+    his own. His forays were marked by savage cruelty. His military
+    necessities stopped at nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Need it be said that the surrounding tribes were in nowise interested in
+    this chief's physique or domestic virtues, or in his fidelity to his own
+    people? It is safe to affirm that the British Government did not ask
+    whether he had the body of a Michael Angelo's David or of a baboon from
+    the jungle. It did not ask whether he was good to his wife and children.
+    Most animals are. It did not care how devoted he was to his fetich. The
+    sole question was, What sort of public citizen is he? How does he stand
+    related to surrounding peoples? On what terms does he propose to live
+    with them? That precisely is what we want to know about the Kaiser.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Fortunately, we do not have to ask Prof. Burgess, or any group of
+    savants, or the German people. The Kaiser's record is known and read of
+    all men.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    JAMES H. ECOB,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    American Institute of Social Service.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    New York, Oct. 21, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0029"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    PROF. BURGESS'S SECOND ARTICLE.
+</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>
+    The Guarantee of Belgian Neutrality
+</h3>
+<p>
+    So much has been said about Belgian neutrality, so much assumed, and it
+    has been such a stumbling block in the way of any real and comprehensive
+    understanding of the causes and purposes of the great European
+    catastrophe, that it may be well to examine the basis of it and endeavor
+    to get an exact idea of the scope and obligation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of course, we are considering here the question of guaranteed
+    neutrality, not the ordinary neutrality enjoyed by all States not at
+    war, when some States are at war; the difference between ordinary
+    neutrality and guaranteed neutrality being that no State is under any
+    obligation to defend the ordinary neutrality of any other State against
+    infringement by a belligerent, and no belligerent is under any special
+    obligation to observe it. Guaranteed neutrality is, therefore, purely a
+    question of specific agreement between States.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the 19th day of April, 1839, Belgium and Holland, which from 1815 to
+    1830 had formed the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, signed a treaty
+    of separation from, and independence of, each other. It is in this
+    treaty that the original pledge of Belgian neutrality is to be found.
+    The clause of the treaty reads: "Belgium in the limits above described
+    shall form an independent neutral State and shall be bound to observe
+    the same neutrality toward all other States." On the same day and at the
+    same place, (London,) a treaty, known in the history of diplomacy as the
+    Quintuple Treaty, was signed by Great Britain, France, Prussia, Austria,
+    and Russia, approving and adopting the treaty between Belgium and
+    Holland. A little later, May 11, the German Confederation, of which both
+    Austria and Prussia were members, also ratified this treaty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the year 1866 the German Confederation was dissolved by the war
+    between Austria and Prussia, occasioned by the Schleswig-Holstein
+    question. In 1867 the North German Union was formed, of which Prussia
+    was the leading State, while Austria and the German States south of the
+    River Main were left out of it altogether. Did these changes render the
+    guarantees of the Treaty of 1839 obsolete and thereby abrogate them, or
+    at least weaken them and make them an uncertain reliance? The test of
+    this came in the year 1870, at the beginning of hostilities between
+    France and the North German Union. Great Britain, the power most
+    interested in the maintenance of Belgian neutrality, seems to have had
+    considerable apprehension about it. Mr. Gladstone, then Prime Minister,
+    said in the House of Commons: "I am not able to subscribe to the
+    doctrine of those who have held in this House what plainly amounts to an
+    assertion that the simple fact of the existence of a guarantee is
+    binding on every party to it, irrespective altogether of the particular
+    position in which it may find itself when the occasion for acting on the
+    guarantee arises."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    A One-Year Treaty.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Proceeding upon this view, the British Government then sought and
+    procured from the French Government and from the Government of the North
+    German Union separate but identical treaties guaranteeing with the
+    British Government the neutrality of Belgium during the period of the
+    war between France and the North German Union, the so-called
+    Franco-Prussian war, which had just broken out, and for one year from
+    the date of its termination. In these treaties it is also to be remarked
+    that Great Britain limited the possible operation of her military force
+    in maintaining the neutrality of Belgium to the territory of the State
+    of Belgium.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These treaties expired in the year 1872, and the present German Empire
+    has never signed any treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium.
+    Moreover, between 1872 and 1914 Belgium became what is now termed a
+    world power; that is, it reached a population of nearly 9,000,000
+    people, it had a well-organized, well-equipped army of over 200,000 men
+    and powerful fortifications for its own defense; it had acquired and was
+    holding colonies covering 1,000,000 square miles of territory, inhabited
+    by 15,000,000 men, and it had active commerce, mediated by its own
+    marine, with many, if not all, parts of the world. Now, these things are
+    not at all compatible in principle with a specially guaranteed
+    neutrality of the State which possesses them. The State which possesses
+    them has grown out of its swaddling clothes, has arrived at the age and
+    condition of maturity and self-protection, and has passed the age when
+    specially guaranteed neutrality is natural.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From all these considerations, I think it extremely doubtful whether, on
+    the first day of August, 1914, Belgium should have been considered as
+    possessing any other kind of neutrality than the ordinary neutrality
+    enjoyed by all States not at war, when some States are at war. In fact,
+    it remains to be seen whether Belgium itself had not forfeited the
+    privilege of this ordinary neutrality before a single German soldier had
+    placed foot on Belgian soil. A few days ago I received a letter from one
+    of the most prominent professors in the University of Berlin, who is
+    also in close contact with the Prussian Ministry of Education, a man in
+    whose veracity I place perfect confidence, having known him well for ten
+    years. He writes: "Our violation of the neutrality of Belgium was
+    prompted in part by the fact that we had convincing proof that there
+    were French soldiers already in Belgium and that Belgium had agreed to
+    allow the French Army to pass over its soil in case of a war between
+    France and us." Moreover, in the British "White Paper" itself, No. 122,
+    is to be found a dispatch from the British Ambassador in Berlin, Sir E.
+    Goschen, to Sir Edward Grey, containing these words: "It appears from
+    what he [the German Secretary of Foreign Affairs] said that the German
+    Government consider that certain hostile acts have already been
+    committed by Belgium. As an instance of this, he alleged that a
+    consignment of corn for Germany had been placed under an embargo
+    already." The date of this dispatch is July 31, days before the Germans
+    entered Belgium.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But placing these two things entirely aside, as well as the new
+    evidence, said to have just been found in the archives at Brussels, that
+    Belgium had by her agreements with Great Britain forfeited every claim
+    to even ordinary neutrality in case of a war between Germany and Great
+    Britain, I find in the British "White Paper" itself, No. 123, not only
+    ample justification, but absolute necessity, from a military point of
+    view, for a German army advancing against France, not only to pass
+    through Belgium, but to occupy Belgium. This number of the "White Paper"
+    is a communication dated Aug. 1 from Sir Edward Grey to Sir E. Goschen,
+    British Ambassador in Berlin. In it Sir Edward Grey informed Sir E.
+    Goschen that the German Ambassador in London asked him "whether, if
+    Germany gave a promise not to violate Belgian neutrality, we, Great
+    Britain, would remain neutral," and that he [Grey] replied that he
+    "could not say that," that he did not think Great Britain "could give a
+    promise of neutrality on that condition alone"; further, Sir Edward Grey
+    says: "The Ambassador pressed me as to whether I could not formulate
+    conditions on which we would remain neutral. He even suggested that the
+    integrity of France and her colonies might be guaranteed. I said that I
+    felt obliged to refuse definitely any promise to remain neutral on
+    similar terms, and I could only say that we must keep our hands free."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The Necessary Invasions.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    After this Sir Edward Grey declared in Parliament, according to
+    newspaper reports, that Great Britain stood, as to Belgian neutrality,
+    on the same ground as in 1870. With all due respect, I cannot so
+    understand it. In 1870 Great Britain remained neutral in a war between
+    the North German Union and France, and, with the North German Union,
+    guaranteed Belgium against invasion by France, and, with France,
+    guaranteed Belgium against invasion by the North German Union. On Aug.
+    1, 1914, the German Empire asked Great Britain to do virtually the same
+    thing, and Great Britain refused. It is, therefore, Germany who stood in
+    1914 on the same ground, with regard to Belgium neutrality, as she did
+    in 1870, and it is Great Britain who shifted her position and virtually
+    gave notice that she herself would become a belligerent. It was this
+    notice served by Sir Edward Grey on the German Ambassador in London on
+    Aug. 1, 1914, which made the occupation of Belgium an absolute military
+    necessity to the safety of the German armies advancing against France.
+    Otherwise they would, so far as the wit of man could divine, have left
+    their right flank exposed to the advance of a British army through
+    Belgium, and there certainly was no German commander so absolutely
+    bereft of all military knowledge or instinct as to have committed so
+    patent an error.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Belgium has Great Britain to thank for every drop of blood shed by her
+    people, and every franc of damage inflicted within her territory during
+    this war. With a million of German soldiers on her eastern border
+    demanding unhindered passage through one end of her territory, under the
+    pledge of guarding her independence and integrity and reimbursing every
+    franc of damage, and no British force nearer than Dover, across the
+    Channel, it was one of the most inconsiderate, reckless, and selfish
+    acts ever committed by a great power when Sir Edward Grey directed, as
+    is stated in No. 155 of the British "White Paper," the British Envoy in
+    Brussels to inform the "Belgian Government that if pressure is applied
+    to them by Germany to induce them to depart from neutrality, his
+    Majesty's Government expects that they will resist by any means in their
+    power."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is plain enough that Great Britain was not thinking so much of
+    protecting Belgium as of Belgium protecting her, until she could prepare
+    to attack Germany in concert with Russia and France. She was willing to
+    let Belgium, yea almost to command Belgium, to take the fearful risk of
+    complete destruction in order that she might gain a little time in
+    perfecting the co-operation of Russia and France with herself for the
+    crushing of Germany, and in order to hold the public opinion of neutral
+    powers, especially of the United States of America, in leash under the
+    chivalrous issue of protecting a weaker country, which she has done
+    little or nothing to protect, but which she could have effectively
+    protected by simply remaining neutral herself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We Americans have been greatly confused in mind in regard to the issues
+    of this war. We have confounded causes and occasions and purposes and
+    incidents until it has become almost impossible for any considerable
+    number of us to form a sound and correct judgment in regard to it. But
+    we shall emerge from that nebulous condition. We are beginning to see
+    more clearly now, and it would not surprise me greatly if the means used
+    for producing our confusion would some day come back, if not to plague
+    the consciences, at least to foil the purposes of their inventors.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0030"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    Reply to Prof. Burgess
+</h2>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Prof. Burgess's amazing communication on Belgian neutrality omits an
+    essential piece of evidence. Granting, for the sake of argument, that
+    the German Empire might repudiate all treaty obligations of the earlier
+    German confederations, (very odd law, this;) granting also the still
+    more novel plea that Belgium had outgrown the need, and the privilege of
+    neutralization, Germany had agreed to treat all neutral powers under the
+    following provisions of The Hague Conventions of 1907 concerning the
+    rights and duties of neutral powers:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     1. The territory of neutral powers is inviolable.
+</p>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+     2. Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or either
+     munitions of war or supplies across the territory of a neutral
+     power.
+
+</p>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em; text-align: center">
+     * * * * * * *</p>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     5. A neutral power must not allow any of the acts referred to
+     in Articles 2 to 4 to occur on its territory.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    This pledge the German Empire had solemnly made only seven years ago. It
+    would seem that Prof. Burgess may accept the distinction ably made by
+    Prof. Münsterberg between "pledges of national honor" and mere "routine
+    agreements," placing Hague treaties in the latter category.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The allegation that France and England secretly did unneutral acts in
+    Belgium is as yet without proof of any sort, and must be interpreted by
+    the commonsense consideration that a neutral Belgium was a defensive
+    bulwark for France and England. To have tampered with her neutrality
+    would have been motiveless folly. How much more decent and moral than
+    Prof. Burgess's meticulous weighing of national reincorporation as a
+    means of evading national obligations is Chancellor Hollweg's robust
+    plea of national necessity! Prof. Burgess's whole moral and mental
+    attitude in this case seems to be that of a corporation lawyer getting a
+    trust out of a hole under the Statute of Limitations or by some
+    reorganizing dodge.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jr.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Princeton, N.J., Nov. 4, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0031"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    America's Peril in Judging Germany
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By William M. Sloane.
+</h3>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     Late Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University;
+     ex-President National Institute of Arts and Letters and of the
+     American Historical Association; was secretary of George
+     Bancroft, the historian, in Berlin, 1873-5; author of works on
+     French History.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<p>
+    The American public has been carefully trained to avoid entanglement
+    with foreign affairs. This European war was so unexpected, so entirely
+    unforeseen, that we were at first bewildered, and then exasperated, by
+    our unreadiness to meet our own emergencies.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In our effort to fix responsibility we then became partisan to the verge
+    of moral participation and had to be called to our senses by the wise
+    proclamation and warning of our Chief Magistrate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Western Europe is a nearer neighbor than either Central or Eastern, and
+    what stern censors permit us to know is nicely calculated to arouse our
+    prejudice on one side or the other. Believing that, owing to cable
+    cutting and neutrality restrictions of wireless, as yet the plain truth
+    is not available, we ask for a suspension of judgment on both sides in
+    order that our Government may enjoy the undivided support of all
+    American citizens in its desire to secure a minimum of disturbance to
+    the normal course of our commercial, industrial, and agricultural life
+    by convulsions that are not of our making.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Fairness to ourselves means justice in the formation and expression of
+    opinion about not one or two but all the participants in a struggle for
+    European ascendency, with which we have nothing to do except as
+    overwhelming victory for either side might bring on a struggle for world
+    ascendency, with which, unhappily, we might have much to do. To
+    contemplate such a terrible event should sober us; the best preparation
+    for it is absolute neutrality in thought, speech, and conduct.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Our own history since independence is an unbroken record of expansion
+    and imperialism. Our contiguous territories have been acquired by
+    compulsion, whether of war, of purchase, of occupation, or of exchange.
+    We have taken advantage of others' dire necessity in the case of Great
+    Britain, France, Spain, Russia, and Mexico.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To rectify our frontier we compelled the Gladsden Purchase within the
+    writer's lifetime. As to our non-contiguous possessions, we hold them by
+    the right of conquest or revolution, salving our consciences with such
+    cash indemnity as we ourselves have chosen to pay, and even now we are
+    considering what we choose to pay, not what a disinterested court might
+    consider adequate, for the good-will of the United States of Colombia, a
+    good-will desired solely and entirely for an additional safeguard to the
+    Panama Canal and a prop to the policy or doctrine substituted by the
+    present Administration for the moribund Monroe Doctrine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In no single instance of virtual annexation or protectorate have we
+    consulted by popular vote either the desires of those inhabiting the
+    respective territories annexed or The Hague Tribunal. In every case we
+    have had one single plea and one only&mdash;self-interest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The entire American continent south of our frontier we have closed to
+    all European settlement, thereby maintaining for more than a century in
+    a magnificent territory an imperfect civilization which makes a sorry
+    use of natural resources which could vastly improve the condition of all
+    mankind if properly used.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This is the light in which European nations see us; our identity in
+    this policy from the dawn of our national existence onward they consider
+    a proof of our national character. It differs in no respect from their
+    own policies except in one.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But for them this exception is basic. We are a composite folk and they
+    are homogeneous, their blend being approximately complete. They have one
+    language, one tradition, one set of institutions and laws; a unity of
+    literature, habits, and method in life. Some European States are
+    composite, but each component part claims and cultivates its own style
+    and its own principles; each announces itself as a nationality with a
+    life to be maintained and a destiny to be wrought out somehow, either in
+    peace or in conflict.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With perhaps a single exception, they have an overflow of population,
+    due to natural generation, for the comfort and happiness of which they
+    seek either an expansion of territory or an improvement in the
+    productivity of their home lands; for those who must emigrate they
+    passionately desire the perpetuation of their nationality, with all it
+    implies.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In these respects they do not differ from us, except that perhaps we are
+    more determined and imperious. We cannot think politically in any other
+    terms than those of democratic government, either direct or
+    representative.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the present hour we are engaged in the very dubious experiment of
+    direct popular legislation and administration. We are trying to change
+    our Government radically, discarding its representative form for that of
+    delegation. The remotest cause of this is the desire to amalgamate all
+    our elements into homogeneity. So far this policy has resulted in a
+    demand, not for equality of political and civil rights, but for its
+    overthrow, substituting laws intended to create social and economic
+    equality by means of class legislation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These facts are not to the edification of other civilized States, and
+    subject us to harsh and contemptuous criticism.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is likewise very interesting that apparently the American people
+    believe in a monarchical democracy. One of our typical first citizens
+    has recently expressed his antipathy to the phrases "My monarchy," "My
+    loyal people," "My loyal subjects," used by one of the German monarchs
+    in summoning the nation to war, as implying a dynastic or personal
+    ownership of men.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Averse from Militarism.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The American masses dislike the sound of supreme war lord, but gladly
+    admit their own Chief Magistrate to be Commander in Chief of the army
+    and navy. To our ears the three German words are offensive, and well
+    they may be, for in the treacherous literal translation they are willful
+    perversion; but the much stronger English words are a delight to our
+    democracy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The phrases of monarchy are constantly used in Great Britain by its King
+    and its Emperor, but give no offense to his "loyal subjects," even the
+    most radical, who delight in them, as apparently do our people of
+    British origin. Why do they give such deep offense when employed by the
+    German Government through its King and Emperor? The social
+    stratification of Germany is not as marked as that of Great Britain; its
+    aristocracy is far less powerful; and Edward VII. proved that an adroit
+    and willful English monarch could involve his "loyal people" deeper in
+    harmful, secret alliances than William II., whose alliances and policies
+    were and are unconcealed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One of our greatest historians has earned a brilliant reputation in the
+    conclusive proof that oceans are the world's highways, while its
+    continents are its barriers. To the term "militarism" we attach an
+    opprobrious meaning; militarism is the more infamous in exact proportion
+    to its efficiency. We have been at little pains to define it, and as to
+    certain of its aspects are curiously complacent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The basic principle of our own nationality has long been the very vague
+    Monroe Doctrine, by the assertion of which we have prevented the
+    establishment on our nearest and remotest frontiers of strong military
+    powers, which might in certain events compel us to maintain a powerful
+    and numerous standing army, or even introduce the compulsory military
+    service of all voters, (women, of course, excepted.)
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet we propose to fight if necessary in order to prevent fighting, and
+    to this end maintain the second strongest and, for its size, the most
+    efficient fleet in the world. This is our militarism; that of Great
+    Britain has been to maintain a fleet double our own or any other in
+    size, for it is her basic principle to maintain an unquestioned
+    supremacy on the highways of commerce. To this we have meekly assented,
+    while other nations absorb our carrying trade and our flag waves over a
+    fleet of perhaps a dozen respectable oceangoing trading and passenger
+    ships. It is under her rather patronizing protection that we fight our
+    foreign wars and by pressure from her that we manage the Panama Canal
+    with nice and honorable attention to her interpretation of a treaty
+    capable of quite a different one. Whether or not this be "militarism" of
+    the utmost efficiency by sea is not difficult to decide. But we have
+    never styled it infamous.
+</p>
+<p>
+    While I am writing, Germans, whose basic principle is the most efficient
+    "militarism" by land, are publishing all abroad that the "militarism" of
+    France must be forever stamped out, so that they may dwell at peace in
+    the lands which are their home.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Within a generation France has accumulated a colonial empire second only
+    to that of Great Britain, while she has incessantly demanded the
+    reintegration of German lands, and especially a German city which she
+    arbitrarily annexed and held by "militarism" for about five generations.
+    The "militarism" of a republic and a democracy which retains the
+    essential features of Napoleonic administration has been quite as
+    efficient as that of a monarchical democracy like Great Britain, and may
+    easily prove more efficient than that of a monarchy like Germany.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Why should it be more infamous or barbarous in one case than the other?
+    And with what is this efficient military democracy allied in the
+    closest ties?
+</p>
+<p>
+    With Russia, an Oriental despotism which by the aid of French money has
+    developed a "militarism" by land so portentous in numbers, dimension,
+    and efficiency that its movements are comparable to those of Attila's
+    Huns. Escaped Russians in Western lands are denouncing German
+    "militarism" as the incubus of the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Which of the two should Americans regard as the greater danger?
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Menaces to Our Neutrality.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    It has wrung our hearts to consider the violation of Belgian neutrality,
+    for which both France and eventually even Great Britain have long been
+    prepared, but the latter has with little or no protest arranged with the
+    "bear that walks like a man" to disregard contemptuously the neutrality
+    of Persia in arranging spheres of influence, exactly as Japan, another
+    ally, is contemptuously disregarding the neutrality of China, the new
+    "republic" we were in such haste to recognize that we had to use the
+    cable. And what about Korea? It is a Japanese province in contravention
+    of the most solemn guarantees of its integrity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Leaving aside for the moment certain considerations like these, and they
+    might easily be indefinitely amplified, which should compel Americans to
+    unbiased consideration for others and preclude a dangerous partiality,
+    let us ask ourselves how in the event of mediation we could be an
+    impartial pacificator, behaving as we have hitherto done. The attitude
+    of our Government has been strictly neutral, neutral to the verge of
+    utter self-abnegation; and, as some regard it, timidity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But rock-fast as any democratic magistrate may be, public opinion must
+    and does influence him. Rightly or wrongly his agents would be even more
+    completely dominated, and rightly or wrongly they would be suspect in
+    view of our terrific partisanship on both sides since the commencement
+    of hostilities.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The efficiency of Government organs in "producing the goods," the
+    terrific power of organization on one side and mass on the other, have
+    been considered a menace to world equilibrium.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Whichever way the decision falls, the scrutiny of Europe will be turned
+    to us. Unless observation and instinct be utterly at fault, we have for
+    more than a decade been, after Germany, the worst-hated nation of all
+    that are foremost.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is pre-eminently our affair to mind our own business, as others have
+    minded theirs. Without cessation of noise and fury in America this is
+    impossible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Indeed, our emotional storms have already furnished proof of how we are
+    incapacitated from either enforcing our rights as neutrals or seizing by
+    the forelock the opportunity afforded to us as neutrals and from
+    enjoying the unquestioned privileges of neutrality.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is not altogether edifying to think that the close of the European
+    struggle, be it long or short, will probably find our ocean commerce
+    substantially where it was at the beginning, and that conflicts which
+    were not of our making will have been fought out before we are able to
+    secure our share of the world markets. Apparently the leaders in
+    commerce, industry, and trade, like the lawmakers and administrators,
+    are paralyzed by the imperative necessity of aiding panicstricken
+    tourists and panicstricken stay-at-homes. Apparently, too, our people
+    are suffering more in purse and general comfort than the actual
+    combatant nations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Clamorous for American sympathy and cash, we have on our shores
+    embassies from the belligerents, pleading their respective virtues and
+    sorrows.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Why, after all, should our chiefest concern be with them? Surely we may
+    be good Samaritans without a total disregard of our own interests and a
+    blindness to opportunity verging on impotency. There is no immorality in
+    the proper play of self-interest. It is the conflict of interests which
+    creates morality. But the spectators, even the maddest baseball "fans,"
+    do not play the game nor train for it. It is high time we ceased wasting
+    our energies in emotions and vain babble.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this writing the first line of defense against the Oriental deluge is
+    endangered. The Slav individually and in his primitive culture is
+    altogether charming. He is a son of the soil, picturesque in life and
+    creative; he is minstrel and poet, seer. But so far he is the carrier of
+    a low civilization, the prophet, priest, and king of autocracy and
+    absolutism. Never has there been a time in history when the higher
+    civilization was not in a savage struggle for existence. It is almost
+    the first time in three centuries that the highest civilizations were in
+    alliance with the lowest; not since the pugnacious Western powers of
+    Europe sued for favor at the Sublime Porte.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    In Peril of the Whirlwind.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    This ought to be a very sobering spectacle, but it seems to arouse the
+    delighted enthusiasm of an American majority. For such an aberration
+    there is but a single and efficient remedy: absorption in our own
+    affairs, the discriminating study of efficient methods to prevent our
+    being caught up by a whirlwind, even the outer edges of which may snatch
+    us into the vortex.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To change the metaphor, we revel in the pleasant propulsion of the
+    maelstrom's rim, unaware that every instant brings us closer to dangers,
+    escape from which would demand herculean effort. Irresponsible emotions
+    are, like those of the novel and the stage, when intensified to excess
+    utterly incompatible with action. And just such a paralysis seems for
+    six long weeks to have lamed the highest powers of America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The proportionate increase in population among the European powers is
+    overwhelmingly in favor of the Slavs. Their rate of increase by natural
+    generation is nearly three times that of even the Germans, with the
+    result that by the introduction of enforced military service into
+    Eastern Europe, (excepting Hungary and perhaps Rumania,) the military
+    balance of power has been completely changed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The wars among the Balkan States, including Turkey, have put on foot
+    armies of a dimension hitherto undreamed of among the South Slavs, and
+    the army of Russia is probably two and a half times larger than it
+    could have been thirty-five years ago.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The method by which Eastern Europe has succeeded in financing itself is
+    rather mysterious. We know, of course, that the original Franco-Russian
+    Alliance was based on reciprocal interests, and that large sums of
+    French money flowed into Russia, which partly developed the natural
+    resources of Russia and were partly in the shape of loans that in all
+    likelihood were used for war material.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Slavs in Germany.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The conflict between the Slavs and the Teutons all along the line on
+    which they border has therefore been in two ways intensified. In the
+    first place, just in proportion as Germany has become an industrial
+    State, the field work has been intrusted to immigrant Slavs, some of
+    whom come only for the season and return, but a very large number of
+    them&mdash;estimated at the present moment at close to a million&mdash;have
+    substantially settled within the borders of the German Empire. That is
+    to say, there is a constant injection of 1-1/2 per cent. of Slavic blood
+    into the territories of the German Empire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Suppose now that Russia should succeed in establishing the protectorate
+    over all Slavs which she desires, and at the same time should press back
+    the Germans on that border line, something very closely approximating a
+    new migration of peoples in Europe will take place.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As far as I know the German feeling, expressed both privately and
+    publicly, officially and unofficially, they have hoped to maintain their
+    complete consanguinity, if not homogeneity, within the lands they regard
+    as their home; and their preparations for war, their increase of their
+    military strength, have been made, professedly at least, solely in the
+    interest of defense. Americans can simply not realize&mdash;it is impossible
+    for them to realize&mdash;the difference in the degree of civilization and
+    culture on either side of a purely artificial boundary line.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Very fortunately it has entered the minds of several people lately to
+    write to the newspapers about the unhappy confusion that comes from the
+    use of words in a meaning which at home they do not connote at all.
+    Take, for example, the whole question of militarism. As we see it, it is
+    a matter altogether of degree. For defense against what the German
+    considers the most terrible danger that he personally has to confront,
+    it has been necessary from time to time to change both the size and the
+    composition of his forces, whether offensive or defensive, and they
+    therefore have introduced compulsory military service, an idea which has
+    always been very offensive to Anglo-Saxons, but which in cases of dire
+    necessity they have been compelled to utilize themselves, as, for
+    example, during our own civil war, the abandonment of voluntary
+    enlistment and the introduction of the draft.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, the compulsory military service of the German means that every man
+    is for a period of his life drafted and trained as a soldier. Forty
+    years ago there were a great many men who escaped by reason of one or
+    another provision of the law. That number was steadily diminished until
+    within eighteen months, when finally it was proclaimed that every German
+    who could endure the severity of that training must undergo it, and that
+    was due to the fact that the military balance of power of which I spoke
+    had been so completely changed by the re-armament of Russia and by the
+    formation of the South Slav armies in the Balkan Peninsula.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As a parallel we might imagine, not one troublesome neighbor, but four.
+    We might imagine a tremendous military power developed in Canada, and we
+    might imagine a hostile military power on the Atlantic side and another
+    one on the Pacific side, in which case we would beyond a question have
+    to expand our inchoate militarism, just in proportion as we came to feel
+    the necessity for a strong physical defensive or offensive in the way of
+    a great standing army, and we probably would do it without any
+    hesitation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, Germany has not any really bitter foe on the north, although there
+    is no love lost between the Germans and the Scandinavians; but it has an
+    embittered foe on the east, and another one on the west, and what has
+    proved to be an embittered foe upon the water and a very lukewarm
+    neutral State on the south, a State which had joined in alliance with
+    her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Italy had joined what Italy considered a defensive alliance, but not an
+    offensive alliance, and chose to regard the outbreak of this war as an
+    offensive movement on the part of Germany, and for that reason has
+    refused to participate in the struggle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I say for that reason because, having been accustomed to reading, all my
+    life, long diplomatic documents, really having been trained, you might
+    say, almost in the school of Ranke, who was the inaugurator of an
+    entirely new school of historical writing based on the criticism of
+    historical papers, I have come to realize that the dispatches of trained
+    diplomats are for the most part purely formal, and that while these
+    respective publications of Great Britain and of Germany have a certain
+    value, yet nevertheless the most important plans are laid in the
+    embrasures of windows, where important men stand and talk so that no one
+    can hear, or they are arranged and often times amplified in private
+    correspondence which does not see the light until years afterward, and
+    that the most important historical documents are found in the archives
+    of families, members of which have been the guiding spirits of European
+    policy and politics.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So that what the secret diplomacy of the last years may have been is as
+    yet utterly unknown, and certainly will not be known for the generation
+    yet to come and perhaps for several generations. The student in almost
+    any European capital is given complete access to everything on file in
+    the archives, including secret documents, only down to a certain date.
+    That date differs in various of these storehouses, but I think in no
+    case is it later than 1830.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If you ask why, there are the sensibilities of families to be
+    considered, there is the question of hidden policies which they do not
+    care to reveal, and then there is the whole matter of who the examining
+    student is. For instance, certain very important papers were absolutely
+    denied to me, as an American, in Great Britain&mdash;or at least excuses were
+    made if they were not absolutely denied&mdash;which were opened to an
+    Englishman who was working upon the same subject at about the same time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The reason for such observations at the present hour is plain enough.
+    Public opinion is formed upon what the public is permitted to know, and
+    is not formed upon the actual facts which the public is not permitted to
+    know. And for that reason Americans, remote as we are from the sources
+    of information, and especially remote from that most delicate of all
+    indications, the pulse of public opinion in foreign countries, ought to
+    be extremely slow to commit themselves to anything.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Attack on Sir Edward Grey.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Now, we have just had a very interesting incident. THE NEW YORK TIMES
+    printed recently what the British call their "White Paper," as well as
+    the German "White Paper." The editors of our most important journals
+    announced that they had read and studied those papers with care, and
+    that on the face of those papers, beyond any peradventure, Germany was
+    the aggressor. German militarism had flaunted itself as an insult in the
+    face of Europe. Germany had violated neutrality, Germany had committed
+    almost every sin known to international law, and therefore the whole
+    German procedure was to be reprobated.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Within a very short time a Labor member of Parliament, J. Ramsay
+    Macdonald, rises in his place, able and fearless, and, on the basis of
+    the "White Paper," as published and put in the hands of the British
+    public, attacks Sir Edward Grey for having so committed Great Britain in
+    advance to both Russia and France that, in spite of the representations
+    of the German Ambassador, he dared not discuss the question of
+    neutrality. This member of Parliament manifestly belongs to the powerful
+    anti-war party of Great Britain, a party two of whose members, John
+    Burns and Lord Morley, resigned from the Cabinet rather than condone
+    iniquity; a party which before the outbreak of the war made itself
+    heard and felt, and protested against the participation of Great
+    Britain, desiring localization of the struggle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Macdonald says that in his opinion this talk about the violation of
+    Belgian neutrality, from the point of view of British statesmen, is
+    absurd, because as long ago as 1870 the plans for the use of Belgium,
+    both by France and by Germany&mdash;in other words, the violation of its
+    neutrality&mdash;were in the British War Office, and that Mr. Gladstone rose
+    in his place and said he was not one of those whose opinion was that a
+    formal guarantee should stand so far in thwarting the natural course of
+    events as to commit Great Britain to war; and that has been the
+    announced and avowed policy of Great Britain all the way down since
+    1870, and that therefore talk about the violation of Belgian neutrality
+    is a mere pretext.
+</p>
+<p>
+    That is another instance of this secret agreement that goes on, which so
+    commits a man like Sir Edward Grey that in the pinch, when the German
+    Ambassador substantially proposed to yield everything to him and asked
+    him for his proposition, he cannot make any.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These facts are in the "White Paper." As far as I know, no editor in the
+    United States who claims to have studied thoroughly that "White Paper"
+    has ever brought this out, and they had not been published in that paper
+    at the time when Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith made their respective
+    speeches and committed the British Nation to the war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Another unhappy use of language which has been noted in the public press
+    is due to the literal translation of words. Americans simply do not know
+    what the word Emperor means. To most of them it connotes the later Roman
+    Emperors, or the autocratic Czar of Russia, or the short-lived but
+    autocratic quality of Napoleon III., so that when we use the word
+    Emperor we are thinking of an absolutely non-existing personage, unless
+    it be the Czar of Russia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We like very much to make sport of phrases from languages unfamiliar to
+    us, and we enjoy the jokes of ludicrous translations, and so we take
+    the term "Oberster Kriegsherr" and we translate it "Supreme War Lord."
+    What conception the average American forms of that is manifest. Whereas,
+    as a matter of fact&mdash;and this has already been pointed out both in
+    conversation and in public prints&mdash;the term means nothing in the world
+    but Commander in Chief of the German Empire, has not any different
+    relation whatsoever in the substance of its meaning than that which
+    Presidents of the United States have been in time of supreme danger to
+    the country. Mr. Lincoln was just as much an "Oberster Kriegsherr" at
+    one period of his term as the German Emperor could ever be; in fact,
+    rather more.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Sherman's March to the Sea.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    In truth, the sense of outrage which Americans feel over the horrors of
+    war, while most creditable to them, is very often based upon an
+    ignorance of the rules and regulations of so-called civilized warfare,
+    and upon a sentimentality, which, though also very creditable, is
+    unfortunately not one of the factors in the world's work. It would not
+    hurt Americans occasionally to recall Sherman's march to the sea, during
+    which every known kind of devastation occurred, or to recall Gen.
+    Hunter's boast that he had made the Valley of Virginia such a desert
+    that a crow could not find sustenance enough in it to fly from one side
+    to the other, and yet at that time, in what we considered the supreme
+    danger to our country, the conduct of those men was approved, and they
+    themselves were almost deified for their actions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    While parallels are dangerous and the existence of one wrong does not
+    make another action right, yet at the same time a very considerable
+    amount of open-mindedness must be exercised in a neutral country when
+    regarding the passionate devotions of combatant nations to their
+    culture, to their safety, to their interest; and it should be recalled
+    that in the heats and horrors of war it is extremely difficult, however
+    trained or disciplined troops may be, to prevent outrages, and that so
+    far as we have gone in accurate information the least that can be said
+    is that it is slowly dawning upon us that horror for horror and outrage
+    for outrage there has been no overwhelming balance on either side.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Allies (this interview was received Tuesday morning) firmly believe
+    that the struggle on the west is so indecisive up to this time that what
+    will count for them is the duration of the war. Lloyd George has just
+    said, not in the exact language, but virtually, what Disraeli said in
+    1878: "We don't want to fight; but, by jingo, if we do we have got the
+    ships, we have got the men, we have got the money, too." Those are the
+    words that brought into use the expression "jingoists."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, Lloyd George said the other day that it was the money which in the
+    long run would count and that Great Britain had that; and the meetings
+    that are held to induce Englishmen to enlist are addressed by speakers
+    who meet with lots of applause when they say: "We may not be able to put
+    the same number of men into the field immediately that Germany was able
+    to put or Russia was able to put, but in the long run, considering the
+    attitude of all the different parts of our empire, we will be able to
+    put just as many men, and therefore time is on our side both as regards
+    force in the field and money to sustain it." (The London Times confesses
+    that enlistment in Ireland is a failure.)
+</p>
+<p>
+    Lloyd George says that for a comparatively short time England's enemies
+    can finance themselves and be very efficient, but that as time passes
+    they unquestionably will exhaust not only their pecuniary means but
+    their resources of men as well. That is his position at this time.
+    Therefore, it does appear as if the long duration of the war was a thing
+    desired, at least in Great Britain, as being their hope of victory. Both
+    Great Britain and France are wealthy countries. Just how wealthy Germany
+    is I do not think they realize, nor do we know, nor what its ultimate
+    resources can be.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, looking at the allied line as a whole, we will suppose that the
+    German forces were overwhelmingly triumphant in France, and suppose,
+    likewise, which is by no means as strong a hypothesis, that Russia is
+    overwhelmingly victorious against Austria and the Eastern German Army;
+    then, of course, you have the situation in which that one of the Allies
+    which is triumphant will assert its leadership in the terms of peace
+    that will be reached, and would have the hegemony, as we call it, of all
+    Europe.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Russia's Position.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    So that the defeat of the Allies in the west and their overwhelming
+    success in the east would compel the acceptance, in any peace that might
+    be made, of such terms as Russia chose to dictate. She would have to be
+    satisfied, otherwise there would only be one outcome of it; that is, of
+    course, if Great Britain and France could not accept those terms, there
+    would be a rupture, and stranger things have been seen than Germany,
+    France, and Great Britain fighting against Russia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Stranger things than that have been seen; such changes in the alliances
+    between States have occurred at intervals from the seventeenth century
+    onward in Europe, a phase of the subject that is too lengthy to discuss
+    here, but which every student of history knows all about. And it is
+    thinkable that they might occur again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Suppose, on the other hand, that the Germans should imitate Frederick
+    the Great, which is not so preposterous as appears on the face of it,
+    because of comparatively easy means of transportation, and should be
+    able to make successive victorious dashes, first in the east and then in
+    the west, backward and forward; leadership would be hers, and France
+    would be a minor power for years to come.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Probably peace might come more quickly if neither side should be
+    absolutely victorious than otherwise. But for the moment I think that
+    the agreement among the Allies is a very portentous thing, as far as the
+    duration of the war is concerned.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you think that any secret agreement may exist; that France even now
+    may have made an agreement with Germany?" Mr. Sloane was asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I cannot think so. I think it very evident there is no such secret
+    agreement. If one existed it would be much more likely to be between
+    Russia and Germany. You remember the development of Prussia, which is,
+    of course, the commanding State in the German Empire, occurred by its
+    careful conservation of the policy which was laid down in the political
+    will of Frederick the Great, that of keeping friends with Russia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The fact of the matter is, Prussia was saved in the Napoleonic wars by
+    the act of Gen. Yorck at Tauroggen, when he suddenly abandoned the
+    French and went over to the Prussians, and while Russia has within half
+    a generation become intensely bitter against Germany, yet it is true
+    that the Baltic Provinces, in which the gentry and the burghers are
+    Germans, have furnished most important administrators to the Russian
+    Empire, a fact that causes much of the jealousy in Russia on the part of
+    the native-born Russians against the Germans of the Baltic Provinces.
+    Nevertheless, self-interest is a very important thing, and if Russia
+    thought for a moment that France was going to abandon her I think she
+    would turn to Germany right away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As time has developed the nations of today, it has come to be understood
+    by hard-headed statesmen that those who conduct their respective affairs
+    can have no other guiding principle than the interest of their own
+    State, no other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is a persistent feeling throughout the world that there is an
+    analogy between the individual man and organized society. There are
+    books written to show that States must and do pass through the various
+    stages through which an individual passes, namely, infancy, childhood,
+    youth, middle age, old age, decay. By a perfectly natural parallel the
+    majority of men apply the same morality to the State which they apply to
+    the individual, and they insist upon it that a State must be moral in
+    every respect; that it must have a conscience; that it must have virtue;
+    that it must practice self-denial; that it must not lay its hands on
+    what does not belong to it. In short, that it must as a State or as a
+    nation be "good," in exactly the same sense in which a person is "good."
+    In other words, they personify the State.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I have never heard of any speaker or writer who would not approve of
+    that as an ideal, and who would not desire that the millennium should
+    come upon earth now, and that exactly the same virtues that are held up
+    for personal ideals should be held up for national ideals.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I think we all believe that, but, as a matter of fact, in a world
+    constituted as ours is, the one test of a good Government, applied by
+    every individual, is the material prosperity of the people who live
+    under it, and for that reason if the people do not at first put in power
+    men who can give them material prosperity they will put such failures
+    out and try another set of rulers, and they will go on and on that way
+    until necessarily the policies of statesmen must be based upon the
+    interest of that State whose destinies are in their hands. So that the
+    only hope of relations between nations similar to those that exist
+    between good men and good women is that the individuals of that nation,
+    its population, its inhabitants, should consent to exercise the
+    self-denying virtues; and until that point is reached there can be no
+    good State in the sense in which there can be a good man. We ought all
+    to work for it, but it is not here now, and there are no signs on the
+    horizon of its approach.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In a war, therefore, every statesman studies the resources of his
+    nation, and when the time comes that it is manifestly his duty to put an
+    end to warfare, it is only by the public approval that he dares do it,
+    by showing that it is to their advantage to give up the things for which
+    they went to war, in greater or less degree.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Armed Peace Not Disarmament.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    And the man of shrewd insight, who knows when that point is reached, is
+    the leader who saves the face, so to speak, of these nations and steps
+    in and says:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, the whole moral force of the civilized world must be brought to
+    bear upon you to make a peace, the terms of which, if possible, shall
+    not discredit any of you, but at the same time shall be as elastic and
+    as proportionate to your respective gains and losses as will insure at
+    least a considerable period of peace, not an armistice, not an armed
+    armistice, though it may be an armed peace."
+</p>
+<p>
+    We see no signs anywhere in Europe that disarmament has any substantial
+    body of advocates in any nation. The basic principle hitherto of the
+    German people has been to have, not the largest, but the strongest army;
+    the basic principle of Great Britain, which sneers at militarism, has
+    been not only to have the most powerful fleet, but twice the most
+    powerful fleet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And what is the basic principle of the United States? The Monroe
+    Doctrine, to have no armed neighbor which shall compel us to violate by
+    its presence our dislike for compulsory military service or to expend
+    great sums for armament.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These are basic principles in each of us. Now, we have been able to
+    maintain the Monroe Doctrine by simply showing our teeth, but whether we
+    could maintain it in the future without an armed force sufficient to
+    give it sanction I think is doubtful, and for that reason the Monroe
+    Doctrine has undergone quite a number of modifications which I do not
+    need to explain here.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But this basic principle of ours that from Patagonia to the Mexican
+    frontier we will suffer no armed nation of Europe to make permanent
+    settlement and endanger our peace is exactly the same sort of principle
+    that the German holds when he says, "We must have the strongest army,"
+    and the same which the Englishman holds when he says, "We must have the
+    strongest fleet."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I want it distinctly understood that I am not a partisan. I am not pro
+    this or pro that or pro anything except pro-American, and the principal
+    impulse I have in trying to clarify my mind is my hope that there may be
+    an end to these hysterical exhibitions of partisanship, in which
+    (throughout this neutral nation) men indulge who still hold too
+    strongly, as I think, to the glory, honor, dignity, and traditions of
+    the lands of their origin.
+</p>
+<br><hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0032"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    An Answer by Prof. Ladd
+</h2>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>     Emeritus Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at Yale
+     University; Lecturer on Philosophy in India and Japan; has
+     received numerous decorations in Japan, where he was guest and
+     unofficial adviser of Prince Ito; ex-President of American
+     Psychological Association.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    It seems strange to me that a student of history with the training and
+    acumen of Prof. Sloane should overlook or minimize the important
+    distinction that must hold the chief place in enabling us to understand
+    the issues and appreciate the merits of the war now raging in Europe.
+    This distinction is that between the German people and Germanic
+    civilization, on the one hand, and, on the other, the present
+    Constitution and cherished ambitions of the German Empire under the
+    dominance of Prussia. The German people, by genuine processes of
+    self-development, have worked out for themselves a veritable spiritual
+    unity which manifests itself in language, laws, customs, and a large
+    measure of substantial uniformity in moral and religious ideals.
+    Germanic civilization, with its love of order, its high estimate of
+    education, its notable additions to science, philosophy, and art,
+    constitutes one of the most noble and beneficent contributions to the
+    welfare of mankind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the case is not at all the same with the German Empire as at present
+    constituted. It is not a historical development, a truly national
+    affair, as are the Empire of Great Britain, the Republics of France and
+    the United States, or the Empires of Russia and Japan. It is a modern
+    combination of politically divergent unities, forced by the ruthless but
+    infinitely shrewd policy of Bismarck and his coadjutors, misdirected and
+    perhaps driven to ruin by the man and his entourage, who, even if he is
+    King of Prussia "by the grace of God," is only Emperor of Germany "by
+    the will of the Princes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    We are diligently given to understand that all these "Princes" and all
+    the German people have entered heart and soul into this war, and without
+    the slightest doubt as to its righteousness and as to the destiny of the
+    empire, this modern military autocracy, ultimately to be completely
+    victorious. This is hard to believe, although it must be admitted that
+    the cowardice of the Socialists and the obsession of the professors are
+    remarkable phenomena. As to the latter, however, we must remember their
+    dependence on the Government, not only for their information and their
+    "call" to speak, but also for their positions in the Government system
+    of education.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As to the significance of the two names most prominently quoted in this
+    connection, I am not at all impressed, as so many of my colleagues
+    appear to be. An intimate friend of mine some twenty years ago was
+    several weeks en pension in the same house where Haeckel had his
+    apartment, and even then he was notorious for his hatred of foreigners
+    and of women. Those of us who have followed closely his career know how
+    often he has written with more than German professorial virulence
+    against those who differed from his theory of evolution, and that he is
+    at present scarcely more abusive of England than he has several times
+    been of his own Government and of the State Church because his system
+    was not made a matter of compulsory teaching. As to Eucken, the reasons
+    for his obsession are quite different. In his case the feeling and the
+    utterance are due to intellectual weakness rather than to virulence of
+    passion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After all, however, the temper of military and imperial Germany under
+    the dominance of Prussia has been essentially the same from the
+    beginning. In illustration of this, let me quote for your readers from a
+    poem of Heine, written as long ago as 1842. I do this the more readily
+    because I have recently seen, to my astonishment, Heine placed beside
+    Goethe as representing the better temper of the Germanic civilization as
+    opposed to the blinded judgment and immoral hatred of the modern German
+    Empire:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <blockquote>
+        <blockquote>
+          <blockquote>
+            <blockquote>
+              <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">    Germany's still a little child,<br>
+      But he's nursed by the sun, though tender;<br>
+    He is not suckled on soothing milk,<br>
+      But on flames of burning splendor.<br>
+<br>
+    One grows apace on such a diet;<br>
+      It fires the blood from languor;<br>
+    Ye neighbor's children, have a care,<br>
+      This urchin how ye anger!<br>
+<br>
+    He is an awkward infant giant,<br>
+      The oak by the roots uptearing;<br>
+    He'll beat you till your backs are sore,<br>
+      And crack your crowns for daring.<br>
+<br>
+    He is like Siegfried, the noble child,<br>
+      That song-and-saga wonder,<br>
+    Who, when his fabled sword was forged,<br>
+      His anvil cleft in sunder!<br>
+<br>
+    To you, who will our Dragon slay,<br>
+      Shall Siegfried's strength be given;<br>
+    Hurrah! how joyfully your nurse<br>
+      Will laugh on you from heaven!<br>
+<br>
+    The Dragon's hoard of royal gems<br>
+      You'll win, with none to share it;<br>
+    Hurrah! how bright the golden crown<br>
+      Will sparkle when you wear it!
+</p>
+              </blockquote>
+            </blockquote>
+          </blockquote>
+        </blockquote>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    But it would not be stranger than many other things which have happened
+    in human history if the defeat of German military imperialism should
+    result in restoring to Europe and spreading more widely over the world
+    the beneficent influence of Germanic civilization. Certainly they are
+    not the same thing, and they do not stand or fall together.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Yale University, Oct. 20, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0033"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    Possible Profits From War
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    INTERVIEW WITH FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS.
+</h3>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>     Dr. Giddings is Professor of Sociology and the History of
+     Civilization at Columbia University; author of many works on
+     sociology and political economy; President of Institut
+     Internationale de Sociologie, 1913.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<h3>
+    By Edward Marshall.
+</h3>
+<br>
+<p>
+    No man in the United States is better entitled to estimate the probable
+    social and economic outcome of the present European debacle than Prof.
+    Franklin H. Giddings of Columbia, one of the most distinguished
+    sociologists and political economists in the United States.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Today all Europe fights," he said to me, "but, also, today all Europe
+    thinks."
+</p>
+<p>
+    That is an impressive sentence, with which he concluded our long talk,
+    and with which I begin my record of it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He believes that this thinking of the men who crouch low in the drenched
+    trenches and of the women who tragically wait for news of them will
+    fashion a new Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He agrees with the remarkable opinions of President Butler, that that
+    new Europe will be marked by the rise of democracy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He sees the probability of broadened individual opportunity in it,
+    accompanied by the breaking down of international suspicions; and he
+    thinks that all these processes, which surely make for peace, will
+    surely bring a lasting peace.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the following interview, which Prof. Giddings has carefully reread,
+    will be found one of the most interesting speculative utterances born of
+    the war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The immediate economic cause of the war," said Prof. Giddings, "lay in
+    the affairs of Servia and Austria. Servia had been shut in. She had been
+    able to get practically nothing from, and sell practically nothing to,
+    the outside world, save by Austria's permission, while Austria, with
+    Germany professing fear of Slavic development, for years had been taking
+    every care to prevent the Balkan peoples from having free access to the
+    Adriatic.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Some financial profit arose from this interning of the little States,
+    but it is probable that the desire for this was all along entirely
+    secondary to the fear of Balkan, especially Servian, political and
+    economic development.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In the larger economic question Germany felt especial interest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In a comparatively few years she had made the greatest progress ever
+    made by any nation in an equal time, with the possible exception of that
+    made by the United States in a similar period after our civil war, and
+    it is probable that not even our own advance has equaled hers in
+    rapidity or extent, if all could be tabbed up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "She had worked out a great manufacturing scheme, she had developed an
+    immense internal commerce by means of her railroads and her Rhine and
+    other waterways, she had built up an enormous trade with Eastern Europe,
+    Western Asia, South America, and the United States.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "She had highly specialized in and become somewhat dependent on the
+    production of articles like dyestuffs and the commodities of the
+    pharmacopoeia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Her shipping had advanced until it closely crowded England's; her
+    finances, on the whole, were well handled and her credit was excellent,
+    while her wonderful system of co-operation between the Government and
+    manufacturing producers and commercial distributers of all kinds had
+    become the admiration of all nations. The extent to which her Government
+    facilitated foreign trade through obtaining and distributing costly
+    information might well be taken as the world's model.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whatever claims be made or contested about her contributions to culture
+    and theoretical science, there can be no argument about her material
+    achievements."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    German Achievements.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "Along every line her social organization of co-operation between the
+    Government and the people successfully handled problems feared by all
+    the outside world. While, as a result of the development of humane
+    feeling, England and the United States have been saying that ignorance,
+    vagabondage, and misery ought to be abolished, Germany has said, 'They
+    shall be!' And, saying it, she had actually commenced to abolish them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "She had cut down enormous wastes of human energy and, for the first
+    time in the history of the world, had established an economic minimum
+    below which men and families were not permitted to sink.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The cost of this was large; for insurance, colonies for tramps and
+    vagabonds, employment agencies, and the like; but Germany made it pay in
+    the creation of a nation built of loyal and efficient people. Both their
+    loyalty and their efficiency have been proved and reproved in the course
+    of the present struggle. They had accomplished marvels, they were ready
+    for amazing sacrifices.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, one of the principal reasons why Germany was able to do these
+    things, although, she probably ignored it and possibly would deny it, is
+    to be found in the free-trade policy of England.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "At any time during the past twenty years England could have checked
+    German progress effectively by the establishment of a protective tariff
+    system designed to encourage her own colonies and other nations with
+    whom she had long been on friendly and influential terms, to the utmost
+    development of exclusive trade privileges designed to shut out Germany.
+    Except for the long-established English policy of commercial freedom
+    Germany could not have accomplished for herself what she has.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Germany has been growing rapidly. Her birth rate has been high, but of
+    late it has been falling, and when the war began there were indications
+    that she soon would approach the low ratio of population increase
+    already characteristic of France, of New England and the Middle West in
+    the United States, and lately of England. But Germany's population was
+    still a growing one and, in a sense, a restive one.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The Malthusian theory has not worked out in the civilized world as
+    Malthus supposed it would, for the application of science to
+    manufacturing, agriculture, &amp;c., has prevented increasing populations
+    from pressing upon the means of subsistence; but in all parts of the
+    Western World the standards of living have been raised, the ambitions of
+    the average man and woman have expanded. They have lived better than
+    their parents lived, and they have wished their children to live better
+    still.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "However, we can place no limit upon the probable expansion of human
+    desires, and it is true that a population unchecked by the intelligent
+    action of the human will tends to increase at a rate more rapid than
+    that at which it is possible to raise the actual plane of human living.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The speed of the working of the two rules is different, perhaps, but
+    both are dynamic, and the population of Germany tended to grow more
+    rapidly than betterment of conditions could be provided, even under the
+    nation's splendid governmental and commercial efficiency.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The natural yearning of the nation, therefore, was toward colonial
+    expansion, and, although note that I make no charges against either the
+    German Government or German people, the nation probably has wished
+    sovereignty over Western Europe, through Belgium and Holland to the sea.
+    Its narrow outlet through Hamburg and Bremen was insufficient for its
+    needs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course, its trade and economic advance has sometimes conflicted
+    with that of other nations. It is natural for Germany to suppose that
+    England tried to block it. However, I think that all the evidence which
+    Germany has brought forward in proof of this is weak and improbable,
+    because England's great source of revenue has been her foreign trade,
+    and, above all, her carrying trade, and I am not partisan but stating
+    the obvious when I say that England prospers when the rest of the world
+    prospers, and that she has profited mightily through Germany's
+    commercial advance.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "These facts point to the conclusion that Germany really had everything
+    to gain by avoiding war and continuing her prosperous expansion along
+    commercial lines, increasing the strength of her grip in foreign
+    countries, as, for example, in South America."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Germany's Prosperous Commerce.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "In South America we Americans were not really competing with her. She
+    had studied the market and adopted the methods necessary to its
+    satisfaction; we had not. England was relatively losing her hold there.
+    In another twenty years Germany surely would have been one of the
+    greatest commercial and manufacturing nations which the world has ever
+    known. So it was not economic necessity, nor pressure approaching
+    economic necessity, which precipitated this war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think the German people, as they professed to do, did become greatly
+    alarmed over a possibility, magnified into a probability, that Russia,
+    taking up the cause of the Balkan peoples, would obtain Constantinople,
+    that Servia would make her way to the Adriatic, and that all possibility
+    of the expansion of Germany to the southeast would be blocked, and
+    Germany probably became alarmed over England's intentions&mdash;there were
+    many indications of something close to panic in Germany after it was
+    generally understood that King Edward figured in the pact with France.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I, for one, do not believe that the German fears of England were well
+    grounded; I do not believe that in the excitement the German mind worked
+    discriminatingly or that it is working with discrimination today. I
+    think that Germany has presented an extraordinary example of nation-wide
+    mobmindedness in a situation which offered nothing but ruin through war
+    and boundless advantages if she sat tight and waited for some one else
+    to strike the first blow, which, then, probably never would have been
+    struck.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So, although I have outlined what I think may fairly be regarded as
+    some of the economic conditions contributing to the war, I do not think
+    that it is entirely to be explained by economic causes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They fail to account for the actual precipitation of the conflict. I
+    think that there is no explanation of that, short of recognition of an
+    abnormal reaction of the German mind to a situation the nature of which
+    was mistaken, or, at least, exaggerated.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And, of course, there were other factors concerning which we shall not
+    know the truth for years, such as the personal influence of individual
+    minds in the German and other Governments. It will be long before the
+    complete history of the acts and negligence of diplomats and other
+    responsible Ministers will be written."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I asked Prof. Giddings if, in his opinion, the struggle is likely to
+    result in any wide and profound change in the economic life of the
+    world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes," he replied, "I think it is sure to. In the first place, for at
+    least half a generation, and perhaps longer, the producing capital of
+    the world will be much smaller than it was before the war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But in this speculation we must be cautious, because, so far, the
+    costly war material which has been consumed, such as fortresses
+    destroyed, guns worn out, ammunition consumed, soldiers' clothing, and
+    in general food, were principally accumulated and paid for long ago.
+    They have come out of the world's past production, and their cost
+    already has been written off.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The real loss, the new waste, over and above the devastation of Belgium
+    and other lands, has been of labor, productive activity which would have
+    been carried on during the period of the war had the struggle been
+    avoided, the destruction of the lives of men in their economic prime,
+    the maiming of others to the depletion of their future usefulness and
+    the loss to European fatherhood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But if the war lasts a long time, necessitating the general renewal of
+    ships, fortresses, weapons, and stores, the waste will be enormous, for
+    the actual money expenditure will then come out of funds newly
+    accumulated or charged against the future, and not out of those set
+    aside in the past for war purposes."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    One Great Change Occurring.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "Thus one great economic change already is occurring&mdash;the devastation
+    wrought, the destruction of hoarded funds and supplies and of useful
+    human life.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There are others which are probable, but also problematical, although I
+    think we fairly may take them into account.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Will the European nations, in settlement of their differences through
+    final terms of peace, simply endeavor to restore the old order, drawing
+    their lines of demarkation very strictly, enacting, for example, higher
+    tariffs, thinking that along that line will lie the easiest way of
+    re-establishing national finances?
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If so, the old contentions will be perpetuated. It will be the old
+    order of things over again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We shall again have the spirit of exclusiveness fostered and the old
+    suspicions bred. The old intense competition of nation with nation for
+    trade to the exclusion of other nations from the markets of the world
+    will return with its attendant inefficiency.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, on the other hand, the world will be an immense gainer through the
+    war if it is followed by a broad and rational review of the whole
+    situation and an adjustment of the map of Europe with due regard to the
+    ambitions and legitimate economic opportunities and capabilities of the
+    various peoples.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This war may be the greatest good the world has ever known if it leaves
+    Europe in a mental state disposed to Broaden opportunity, to break down
+    suspicions, to eliminate barriers, and make commerce much freer than it
+    has been.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then Europe's economic recovery will be rapid, animosities will die
+    quickly away, and every nation which is now involved will progress with
+    a new speed, seeing that opportunity is created only through superiority
+    in fair competition.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The next possibility, one far more nearly a probability, I think, than
+    the somewhat Utopian speculation in which I have just indulged, is that
+    after the war the world will have been deeply impressed by the
+    tremendous activity of Germany, whether she be victor or vanquished.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What is the secret of her efficiency as manifested in the mobilization
+    of her vast army, in her use of science in new military devices, in her
+    holding of the elements of her national life together during the
+    struggle, in her keeping her industries going in the face of
+    unprecedented difficulties&mdash;all to a degree never before dreamed of?
+    will be a general query.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Other nations will study the German plan, asking whether it is true, as
+    has been taught in America, that that Government is best which governs
+    least.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It may be that this war will result, entirely apart from the urgency of
+    the labor problem which it will magnify, and wholly on the grounds of
+    general efficiency, in a general inquiry as to whether or not the time
+    has come for quasi-socialistic national developments.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think it unlikely that the war will give impetus to that proletarian
+    socialism which is founded on class consciousness and class struggle;
+    but it may urge forward a socialistic movement based upon the large and
+    fruitful idea that the best hope for the future is offered by the most
+    complete and highly organized co-operation of all elements, all
+    interests, all agencies which in their combination make up national
+    structures.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As a matter of fact, I am an optimist, and I believe that this is about
+    what will come after this war ends.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To put my theory in slightly different terms, I believe that the
+    conflict will greatly further the development of what perhaps may be
+    called 'public socialism,' and I mean by that the highest attainable
+    organization of whole peoples for the production of commodities, the
+    furtherance of enterprise, and the promotion of the general well-being.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think that when the world sobers up it will ask: 'How did Germany do
+    it?'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whether she wins or loses that must be the universal query, for whether
+    she wins or loses her achievement has been in many ways unprecedented.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There can be but one answer to this query: She did it by an
+    organization which brought together in efficient co-operation the
+    individual, the quasi-private corporation, the public corporation, and
+    the Government upon a scale never before seen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The world is bound to take notice of this."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Will Fear Loss of Liberty.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    I asked Prof. Giddings to go beyond economics and to consider the war's
+    probable results in their broader sociological aspects.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If what I have predicted happens," he replied, "the democratic elements
+    of society in all nations will become apprehensive of the loss of
+    liberty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They will fear that in the interests of efficiency the perfected social
+    order will impose minute and unwelcome regulations upon individual life
+    and effort, and that a degree of coercive control will be established
+    which will end by making individuals mere cogs in the machine,
+    diminishing their importance, curtailing their usefulness and initiative
+    far more than is done by the great industrial corporations against which
+    the working classes already are protesting so loudly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And not only the working people but a large proportion of all other
+    classes will develop these fears, especially in those nations which,
+    during the last century, have built up popular sovereignty and
+    democratic freedom, as the terms are understood in England and America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We shall hear the argument that the loss of individual initiative and
+    personal self-reliance is too great a price to pay even for supreme
+    efficiency and the maximum production of material comforts.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The problem which such a conflict of interests and opinions will
+    present may be speculatively defined as that of trying to find a way to
+    reconcile a maximum of efficiency organization with a maximum of
+    individual freedom.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So stating it, we have to recognize that this has been the biggest
+    problem, in fact the comprehensive problem, that man, has faced
+    throughout human history, and the one which, really, he has been trying
+    to solve by the trial and error method in all his social experiments.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It is the sociological as distinguished from the merely economic
+    problem.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Human society exists because early in his career man discovered that
+    mutual aid, or team work, is, on the whole, in the struggle for
+    existence and the pursuit of happiness, a more effective factor than
+    physical strength or individual cleverness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Natural selection has acted not only upon individuals, but, in the
+    large sense, upon groups and aggregates of groups. The restrictions upon
+    individual life have developed in the interests of groups, or collective
+    efficiency.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On the other hand, collective efficiency has no meaning, it serves no
+    purpose apart from the amelioration of individual life and the
+    development of individual personality.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So long as groups fear one another and fight with one another the
+    restrictions upon individual liberty must be extreme in the interests of
+    the collective fighting efficiency of each group as a whole.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All the possibilities of personal development, of individual freedom,
+    are involved in the larger possibilities of friendly relations between
+    nation and nation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Already the co-operative instinct has so grown that if war and the fear
+    of war could be eliminated, mankind would have relatively little
+    difficulty in working out ways and means of combining Governmental
+    action with individual initiative for purposes of economic production,
+    education, the promotion of the public health, and the administration
+    of justice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All those principles and rules which we call Morality are, in fact,
+    mere rules of the game of life. We play the game or do not play it; we
+    are fair or unfair.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On the whole, most of us try to be fair because it has been found that
+    playing the game with a sense of fairness is the only way in which we
+    can succeed in working together for common ends without the necessity of
+    imposing upon ourselves coercive rules to hold our organization together
+    for possible mass attack upon the end in view.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Social life, in this sense of playing the game fairly, has made man the
+    superior of the brutes he sprang from. There is nothing mysterious or
+    recondite about it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In order to work together men must understand one another. Therefore,
+    natural selection has picked out the intelligent for survival in the
+    social world; and in order to work together intelligent men must depend
+    on one another, abiding by their covenants.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Therefore, again, natural selection has picked out what we call
+    Morality for survival in the social world. The whole further progress of
+    mankind would seem to hang upon the possibility that we can find a way
+    to limit and, if possible, to terminate wars between nations, for only
+    in that contingency can we hope to develop a social system in which a
+    supreme efficiency with a maximum of individual liberty can be combined
+    upon a working basis."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Application of the Facts.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "These are incontrovertible facts, and they find their application to
+    the existing European situation in various ways, the most important of
+    which will appear in the discovery that, valuable as conventions and
+    covenants of nation with nation may be, and intolerable as any violation
+    of them surely is, we cannot hope for general and unfailing observance
+    of them until the feeling of mankind and the whole attitude of the world
+    in respect to international as well as private conduct shall be that the
+    covenants and conventions shall become, in a degree, unnecessary.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Already it is apparent that the entire world, including the peoples of
+    the nations at war as well as the peoples of the nations remaining
+    happily at peace, have, begun to think these thoughts and reflect upon
+    their momentous importance.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Shocked and stunned as never before by a calamity for which we find no
+    measure in past human experience, mankind is bound to take at this
+    moment a more sober view, a broader and more rational view, of the
+    problems of responsibility and collective conduct than it hitherto has
+    been able even to attempt.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The world is sure to ask what things make for sobriety of judgment and
+    integrity of purpose. It is sure in future more carefully to weigh
+    relative values, and will be disposed to count as unimportant many
+    things for which hitherto the armed men of nations have rushed into war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In a word, this war has made the whole world think as no one thing ever
+    has made it think before, and, after all, it is upon the habit of
+    thought that we must depend for all rational progress.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Other wars and other great events have fostered sentiment, much of
+    which has been hopeful and useful; they have accomplished far-reaching
+    economic changes, many of them necessary.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But the reactions of this war will surely go beyond all previous
+    experience. They already are and must be, in a far greater measure,
+    profoundly intellectual, and one of the consequences of this fact
+    inevitably will be the broadening and deepening of the democratic
+    current.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When peace returns it will be seen that democracy has received a
+    hitherto unimagined impetus. Then it will be understood that democracy,
+    in one of its most important aspects, is popular thinking, that it is
+    the widest possible extension of the sense of responsibility.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A democratic world will be, all in all, a peace-loving world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We may confidently expect far-reaching changes in the internal
+    political organization of the nations now involved. In every nation of
+    Europe the people are asking: What, after all, is this conflict all
+    about?
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They will ask this many times, and however they may answer it they
+    will, by consequence, follow the question with another: Shall we go on
+    fighting wars about the necessity, expedience, and righteousness of
+    which we have not been consulted?
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And to this query they will find only one answer&mdash;an emphatic negative.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sooner or later there will be a comprehensive political reorganization
+    of Europe, and when its day comes the rearrangement will be along the
+    lines of a republic rather than along the lines of any monarchy, however
+    liberal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then international agreements will be unnecessary and there will be no
+    treaties to be broken&mdash;no 'scraps of paper' to be disregarded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Apparently Germany has been as successful in training her people to
+    think accurately along economic lines as she has been in training them
+    to work efficiently along such lines; and that accurate thought
+    undoubtedly is bearing startling fruit among the men today crouched in
+    the trenches on the firing lines."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Era of Individual Thought.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "England, on the other hand, and France have encouraged the free and
+    spontaneous life of democratic peoples. France and England, like the
+    United States, have been training their peoples to think efficiently of
+    and to appreciate and use liberty and initiative. And the men of these
+    two nations are, in turn, exercising that ability as they crouch in
+    their trenches.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In other words, this war has precipitated an era of sober individual
+    thought about the individual's rights and responsibilities. It will
+    everywhere bring about a wider political organization of mankind, a
+    greater freedom of trade and opportunity, a more serious and thorough
+    education, a more earnest attention and devotion to the higher interests
+    of life, giving such thought preference above that overemphasis of
+    material comforts which has been so marked a feature of recent human
+    history.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All these things will make for peace; and another and potent influence
+    will be the exhaustion of the weakened nations which will follow the
+    conflict. Because of that very weakness Europe will turn its unanimous
+    attention to the things of peace rather than to the things of war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The new Europe is being fashioned by those questioning men who now are
+    lying in the trenches.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They are searching in the universe for answers to such inquiries as
+    they never dreamed about before, and the women, worrying at home&mdash;they,
+    too, are busy with a search for answers to hitherto undreamed-of
+    questions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They all are pondering great things for the first time. Their pondering
+    will be fruitful.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Today all Europe fights, but, also, today all Europe thinks. And,
+    thinking, perhaps it may devise a better order, so that it may not ever
+    fight again."
+</p>
+<p>
+    &nbsp;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <img border="0" src="images/deco2.jpg" alt="decoration" width="300" height="128"></p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0034"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    "To Americans Leaving Germany"
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    A FAREWELL WORD.
+</h3>
+<br>
+<p>AMERICANS!</p>
+<p>
+    Citizens of the United States!
+</p>
+<p>
+    In this earnest moment in which you are leaving the soil of Germany and
+    Berlin, take with you from German citizens, from representatives of
+    trade and industry, who are proud to entertain friendly commercial
+    relations with the United States, a hearty farewell coupled with the
+    desire of a speedy return.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Together with this farewell we beg you to do us a favor. As our guests,
+    whom we have always honored and protected, we ask you to take this paper
+    with you as a memorial and to circulate the same among your authorities,
+    press, friends, and acquaintances.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For, we are well aware that the enemies of Germany are at work to make
+    you the instruments to lower Germany's people and army in the face of
+    the whole world in order to deceive foreign nations as to Germany's
+    policy and economical power. We ask you, as free citizens face to face
+    with free citizens, to circulate the real truth about Germany among your
+    people as compared to the lies of our enemies.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We beg you to take the following main points to heart:
+</p>
+<p>     1. The German Emperor and the German Nation wanted peace. The
+     cunning and breach of faith of our opponents have forced the
+     sword into the hands of Germany.</p>
+
+<p>
+     2. After war has been forced on us the German Nation, Emperor,
+     and Reichstag have granted everything in the most brilliant
+     unanimity for the war. No difference prevails in Germany any
+     longer, no difference between party, confession, rank or
+     position, but we are a united nation and army.</p>
+<p>
+     3. Our military organization and our mobilization has
+     proceeded with splendid precision. The mobilization was
+     accomplished during the course of a few days. In addition to
+     those who are compelled to serve, more than 1,200,000
+     volunteers have offered their services. All civil
+     organizations, from the head of industry and finance to the
+     smallest man downward, vie with each other in works of
+     voluntary aid and welfare.</p>
+<p>
+     4. In the field German arms have had splendid successes in the
+     first days of mobilization.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the east the Russian enemy has been driven from the German frontier,
+    in numerous small fights by our troops in conjunction with those of the
+    Austro-Hungarian monarchy. By successful coup de mains our navy has been
+    successful in damaging and alarming our Russian opponent in her Baltic
+    naval ports. The Russian port of Libau has been burned down and in
+    Russian Poland revolution has already begun. Russian mobilization is a
+    long way from being accomplished, the troops are badly, poorly
+    nourished, and many deserters sell their weapons and horses.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the west the German Army has gained imposing victories over Belgium
+    and France.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In Belgium, where the population unfortunately committed the most
+    barbarous atrocities against peaceful Germans before the war broke out,
+    comparatively weak German forces conquered the strong fortress of Ličge
+    a few days after the mobilization, inflicting severe damage on the enemy
+    and opening up the way via Belgium to France.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Valuable victories have been obtained over France on the Alsatian
+    frontier toward the strong French fortress of Belfort as well as in the
+    direction of the fortress Lunéville. At Mülhausen one and a half French
+    Army divisions were overthrown and driven back over the frontier with
+    heavy losses.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The strong and effective German fleet is on the watch against the
+    English fleet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    England's risk is great in staking her reputation as the strongest
+    naval power on one throw against the German fleet. Further, England runs
+    the danger that her large colonies, such as India and Egypt, will seize
+    a moment that has been long desired to revolt.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is for the United States to utilize the present moment to frustrate
+    by powerful initiative England's endeavors to keep down all nations,
+    including America, in the trade and traffic of the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Citizens of the United States! Take the conviction with you to your
+    homes that Germany will stake her last man and her last penny for
+    victory. Germany must conquer and will conquer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Remember! That after a successful victory Germany will make new
+    political and economical progress, and that America, as a shrewd
+    businesslike State and as a friend of Germany, will participate in such
+    progress.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Today we beg you earnestly to convey to your fellow-citizens that the
+    German Nation, as the safe refuge of civilization and culture, has
+    always protected the loyal citizens of its enemies in every manner in
+    contrast to Russia, France, and Belgium. By circulating this short
+    memorial among your fellow-citizens you are likewise insuring that also
+    in the future the United States will learn the truth about Germany's
+    battles and victories. Your friends here will always do the best in
+    their power to supply you with genuine news. We wish you a happy voyage
+    toward your home, so appreciated by all Germans, and hope to see you
+    again in a victorious and prosperous Germany.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    REPRESENTATIVES OF GERMAN INDUSTRY.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Berlin, Aug. 13, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0035"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    German Declarations
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Rudolf Eucken and Ernst Haeckel.
+</h3>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>     Dr. Eucken is Privy Councilor and Professor of Philosophy in
+     the University of Jena; won the Nobel Prize for Literature in
+     1908; has received many foreign honorary degrees and his
+     philosophy has been expounded in English.</p>
+<p>
+     Ernst Haeckel is Privy Councilor and late Professor of Zoology
+     at the University of Jena; has written many works on evolution
+     which have been translated into English.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<p>
+    The whole German world of letters is today filled with deep indignation
+    and strong moral resentment at the present behavior of England. Both of
+    us, for many years bound to England by numerous scientific and personal
+    ties, believe ourselves prepared to give open expression to this inward
+    revulsion. In close co-operation with like-minded English investigators
+    we have zealously exerted ourselves to bring the two great peoples
+    closer together in spirit and to promote a mutual understanding. A
+    fruitful reciprocal interchange of English and German culture seemed to
+    us worth while, indeed necessary, for the spiritual advance of mankind,
+    which today confronts such great problems. Gratefully we recall in this
+    connection the friendly reception which our efforts received in England.
+    So great and noble were the traits of English character which revealed
+    themselves to us that we were permitted to hope that in their sure
+    growth they would come to be superior to the pitfalls and seamy sides of
+    this character. And now they have proved inferior, inferior to the old
+    evil of a brutal national egotism which recognizes no rights on the
+    part of others, which, unconcerned about morality or unmorality, pursues
+    only its own advantage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    History furnishes in abundance examples of such an unscrupulous egotism;
+    we need recall here only the destruction of the Danish fleet (1807) and
+    the theft of the Dutch colonies in the Napoleonic wars. But what is
+    taking place today is the worst of all; it will be forever pointed at in
+    the annals of world history as England's indelible shame. England fights
+    in behalf of a Slavic, half-Asiatic power against Germanism; she fights
+    on the side not only of barbarism but also of moral injustice, for it is
+    indeed not forgotten that Russia began the war because she would permit
+    no radical reparation for a shameful murder.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is England whose fault has extended the present war into a world war,
+    and has thereby endangered our joint culture. And all this for what
+    reason? Because she was jealous of Germany's greatness, because she
+    wanted to hinder at any price a further growth of this greatness. For
+    there cannot be the least doubt on this point that England was
+    determined in advance to cast as many obstacles as possible in the way
+    of Germany's great struggle for national existence, and to hinder her as
+    much as possible in the full development of her powers. She (England)
+    was watching only for a favorable opportunity when she could break out
+    suddenly against Germany, and she therefore promptly seized on the
+    necessary German invasion of Belgium in order that she might cover with
+    a small cloak of decency her brutal national egotism. Or is there in the
+    whole wide world any one so simple as to believe that England would have
+    declared war on France also if the latter had invaded Belgium? In that
+    event she would have wept hypocritical tears over the unavoidable
+    violation of international law; but as for the rest she would have
+    laughed in her sleeve with great satisfaction. This hypocritical
+    Pharisaism is the most repugnant feature of the whole matter; it
+    deserves nothing but contempt.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The history of the world shows that such sentiments lead the nations not
+    upward but downward. For the present, however, we trust firmly in our
+    just cause, in the superior strength and the unyielding victorious
+    spirit of the German people. Yet we must at the same time lament deeply
+    that the boundless egotism we have referred to has disturbed for an
+    immeasurable period of time the spiritual co-operation of the two
+    peoples which promised so much good for the development of mankind. But
+    they wished it so on their side&mdash;on England alone falls the monstrous
+    guilt and the historical responsibility.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    RUDOLF EUCKEN.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    ERNST HAECKEL.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Jena, Aug. 18, 1914.
+</p>
+<br><hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0036"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    A Second Appeal
+</h2>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Universities of America:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    In a time when half of the world falls upon Germany full of hatred and
+    envy, we Germans derive great benefit from the idea of our being sure of
+    the friendly feeling of the American universities. If from any quarter
+    in the world, it must be from them that we expect the right
+    comprehension of the present situation and present attitude of Germany.
+    Numerous American scholars who received their scientific training at our
+    universities have convinced themselves of the quality and the peaceful
+    tendency of German work, the exchange of scientists has proved of
+    deepening influence on the mutual understanding, the lasting intercourse
+    of scholarly research gives us the feeling of being members of one great
+    community. This is why we entertain the hope that the scientific
+    circles of America will not give credit to the libels our enemies
+    propagate against us.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These libels, above all, accuse Germany of having brought about the
+    present war, she being responsible for the monstrous struggle which is
+    extending more and more over the whole world. The truth points to the
+    contrary. Our foes have disturbed us in our peaceful work, forcing the
+    war upon us very much against our desire. We are at a righteous war for
+    the preservation of our existence and at the same time of sacred goods
+    of humanity. The murder of Serajevo was not our work; it was the outcome
+    of a widely extending conspiracy pointing back to Servia, where for many
+    years already a passionate agitation against Austria had been carried
+    on, supported by Russia. It was Russia, therefore, that took the
+    assassins under her wings, and some weeks already before the war broke
+    out she promised her assistance to that blood-stained State. Nobody but
+    Russia has given the dangerous turn to the conflict; nobody but Russia
+    is to blame for the outbreak of the war. The German Emperor, who has
+    proved his love of peace by a peaceful reign of more than twenty-five
+    years, in face of the imminent danger, tried to intermediate between
+    Austria and Russia with the greatest zeal, but while he was negotiating
+    with the Czar Russia was busy with the mobilization of a large army
+    toward the German frontier. This necessitated an open and decisive
+    inquiry that led to the war. This only happened because Russia wanted it
+    so, because she wanted to raise the Muscovites against the Germans and
+    the Western Slavs and to lead Asia into the field against Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    France, too, might have kept the peace, the decision resting solely with
+    her. The security of Germany demanded that she should inquire what
+    France would do in the impending war; the answer of France unmistakably
+    betrayed her intention to join in the war. As a matter of fact, it was
+    not Germany but France who commenced the war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    England already before the war stood in close relations to France. From
+    the very beginning she has clearly shown that she by no means wanted to
+    keep absolutely neutral. From the very beginning she made endeavors to
+    protect France against Germany. Undoubtedly the German invasion in
+    Belgium served England as a welcome pretext to openly declare her
+    hostility. In reality, before the German invasion, already the
+    neutrality of Belgium had been given up in favor of the French. It has
+    been officially stated, e.g., that not only before but also after the
+    outbreak of the war French officers have been at Ličge in order to
+    instruct the Belgian soldiers as to the fortification service. England's
+    complaints of the violation of international law, however, are the most
+    atrocious hypocrisy and the vilest Pharisaism. At all times English
+    politics have unscrupulously disregarded all forms of law as soon as
+    their own interest was touched. During the last few weeks the same
+    method has been quite sufficiently manifested in the unlawful capture of
+    the Turkish warships, and still more so in the instigation of the
+    Japanese to undertake the detestable raid upon the German territory in
+    China, which needs must end in strengthening the power of that Mongolian
+    nation at the costs of Europeans and Americans.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How it is possible for a nation that in such a way has betrayed precious
+    interests of Western culture as soon as it seems to benefit them, how is
+    it possible for these accomplices of the Japanese robbery to put on the
+    air of being the guardians of morality?
+</p>
+<p>
+    We Germans did not want this war, but as it has been forced upon us we
+    shall carry it on bravely and vigorously. In the face of all envy and
+    hatred, all brutality and hypocrisy, Germany feels unshakably conscious
+    of serving a righteous cause and of standing up for the preservation of
+    her national self as well as for sacred goods of humanity; indeed, for
+    the very progress of true culture. It is from this conviction that she
+    draws her unrelenting force and the absolute certainty that she will
+    beat back the assault of all her enemies. This conviction does not stand
+    in need of any encouragement from abroad; our country absolutely relies
+    upon itself and confides in the strength of its right.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nevertheless, the idea of our American friends' thoughts and sympathies
+    being with us gives us a strong feeling of comfort in this gigantic
+    struggle. We both of us feel especially justified in pronouncing this as
+    being the conviction of all German scientists, as so many scientific and
+    personal relations connect us both with the universities of America.
+    These universities know what German culture means to the world, so we
+    trust they will stand by Germany.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    RUDOLF EUCKEN.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    ERNST HAECKEL.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Jena, Aug. 31, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0037"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    The Eucken and Haeckel Charges
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By John Warbeke.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center">     Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at Mount Holyoke
+     College.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i>A Letter to the Springfield Republican.</i>
+</p>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The Springfield Republican:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    The approval of President Wilson for neutrality of language can hardly
+    be construed into complacency in the face of monstrous evil. If a
+    judicial attitude of mind be not jeopardized a discussion of the issues
+    raised by Profs. Eucken and Haeckel ought to help us in the attainment
+    of impartial judgment. A long acquaintance with both these men makes it
+    hard for the present writer to give expression to such negative
+    criticism as he is constrained to do. But his plea can be only this: Not
+    truth but only passion can separate, and truth is greater even than
+    friendship.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The charge of "brutal national egoism" is laid at England's door. She is
+    declared to be the instigator of the present world war. "Upon her alone
+    falls the monstrous guilt and the judgment of history." Such language
+    from two benevolent philosophers, one of them a winner of the Nobel
+    Peace Prize for Idealistic Literature, seems to suggest a lack of
+    information among the German people, including its most enlightened
+    exponents, of not only their own published "White Paper" dispatches, but
+    also of the events of the last two months. It seems hardly possible that
+    in the case of these two gentlemen a deliberate campaign of vituperation
+    could have been inaugurated with determination to blind themselves to
+    facts clearly stated in the reports of both contending parties&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    First&mdash;That Servia, in reply to ten urgent demands on the part of
+    Austria, acquiesced in nine and proposed to submit the tenth, as
+    concerning her national integrity, to The Hague Tribunal. Austria,
+    nevertheless, declared war, with Germany's self-confessed assurances of
+    support.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Secondly&mdash;Germany was the second to declare war, the mobilization of
+    Russia being assigned as the reason for this step. The objection of
+    Germany's initial campaign, as shown by events, was not defense against
+    the confessedly slowly mobilizing Russians, however, but the humiliation
+    and subjugation of France. And the means employed to that end included
+    the treaty-breaking invasion, and more than invasion, of Belgium, who is
+    suffering because of this step "so necessary for Germany."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thirdly&mdash;England, as is repeatedly demonstrated by the official
+    documents, of both sides, strained every means to bring about a common
+    understanding. The appeals of Sir Edward Grey for more time in the
+    Servian ultimatum and for a council of Ambassadors were met by the
+    Austrian and German Governments respectively with evasion. And England
+    was the last of the great powers to enter the conflict, her plea being
+    the moral obligation of supporting treaties in which she guaranteed the
+    integrity of a weak neighbor and undertook to defend her ally, France,
+    when attacked.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The Case of England.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    We may justifiably ask, then, What basis is there for the charge that
+    England's "brutal, national egoism" provoked the world war? The answer
+    is a two-fold one. Historically, England has exhibited aggression in the
+    extension of her interests; morally, England supports the Russian
+    aggressor, who declined "to allow Austria the thoroughgoing punishment
+    of an ignominious murder," cloaking her real intentions behind the
+    mantle of a "contemptible sanctimoniousness" and "hypocrisy" concerning
+    treaty obligations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The first charge against England is unfortunately true. History records
+    instances of British aggression in the extension of her interests and
+    the cases cited (destruction of the Danish fleet and the taking of Dutch
+    colonies) are good examples. The implication, however, involved in the
+    statement is that such aggression is not to be found in the history of
+    Prussia. This is clearly an error.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From the time of the Markgrafen even unto the Agadir incident it has
+    been characteristic of Prussia to extend her boundaries and interests
+    under the plea of military necessity. Aggression is the only word to
+    characterize Frederick's seizure of Silesia and part of Poland. South
+    and East Prussia were added by the same forcible means (1793-1795). In
+    the Napoleonic wars Swedish Pomerania fell as the booty of military
+    necessity. Schleswig-Holstein was filched from Denmark (1866) by the
+    same "extension of her greatness." Once more it was the plea in
+    Alsace-Lorraine&mdash;"so necessary for Germany."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nor are we here urging immunity of criticism for ourselves. It is sadly
+    true that the history of many nominally Christian States, including that
+    of the United States, and not excluding the Papacy, includes chapters of
+    aggression. But the point involved, namely, the charge of England's
+    aggression in the present instance, is clearly an a priori one, based on
+    a presupposition of monopoly which lacks material support. No evidence
+    is presented to justify the statement, nor do the facts seem to allow of
+    any such construction.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The second argument, England's support of Russia's unwillingness to
+    permit the expiation of an ignominious murder, is a strange and
+    unfortunate commentary on how even in philosophic minds a preconceived
+    idea will distort the most unmistakable evidence. For Servia in her
+    reply to the Austrian demands agreed to have just punishment inflicted
+    upon the murderers, even going so far as to cause the arrest of those
+    perhaps unjustly suspected by the Austrian committee and to suggest an
+    international court. How, then, did Russia stand in the way of the
+    punishment? Austria declared war, with the self-confessed assurances of
+    German support, all too obviously for reasons other than the ones
+    mentioned in the ultimatum to which Servia acquiesced. The charge of
+    Russian mobilization in view of such a situation suggests the temper of
+    the man who, when caught in his own bear trap, tries to find his
+    neighbor at fault. Suppose Germany had remained on the defensive, would
+    war have been likely? Suppose Germany had not backed up the entirely
+    unjustifiable military movement of Austria, would the general war have
+    been probable?
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Where Nietzsche Comes In.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    It seems more likely when one passes in review the extant data that at
+    least one and a crucial cause for the present situation is the
+    "overwhelming power and unbending will to victory in the German people"
+    when confronted with an opportunity for the "further expansion of their
+    greatness." That such phrases should be in the mouths of our apologists
+    for the war is significant. And that the invasion of Belgium "so
+    necessary for the Germans" is treated by the spokesmen of morality
+    solely and confessedly from the standpoint of military expediency seems
+    to indicate the permeation of the Nietzsche superman into the very
+    stronghold of idealistic philosophy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It would, of course, be as absurd to suppose Nietzsche a direct cause of
+    this war as it would be to regard the Serajevo murderers as the sole
+    cause. Nietzsche was and is an exponent of his time, as well as one
+    reciprocally fostering such movements as Bernhardi militarism and the
+    Crown Prince's war book. Perhaps it will not be inappropriate here to
+    cite from "War and the People of War," in "Also Sprach Zarathustra,"
+    (Pages 67-68,) the magnum opus of Nietzsche:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     You should love peace as a means to new war and brief peace
+     more than a long one. Do you say, "It is a good cause by which
+     a war is hallowed"? I say unto you, It is a good war which
+     hallows every cause. War and courage have done greater things
+     than the love of one's neighbor. "What, then, is good?" you
+     ask. To be brave is good. Let young maidens say, "Good is to
+     be pretty and touching." But you are hateful? Well, so be it,
+     my brethren! Cast about you a mantle of the sublimely hateful.
+     And when your soul has become great it will become wanton; in
+     your greatness there will be malice, I know, and in malice the
+     proud heart will meet the weakling.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    This, we are told, is not to be taken literally&mdash;all is symbolism and
+    has a meaning other than the more direct one. But the fact remains, as
+    can be testified by the present writer from three years' residence as a
+    university student in Germany, that the rank and file as well as the
+    aristocracy&mdash;from laborers and small shopkeepers, petty officials, and
+    students to Judges of the Supreme Court and university professors who
+    have become "secret councilors" (Geheimrat)&mdash;not only in Berlin and Bonn
+    but in Munich and Heidelberg, all have become ominously full of the
+    doctrine of the survival of the fittest and the consequent expediency of
+    power, not only in intellectual rivalry but in Krupps and high
+    explosives.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Nietzsche fire may, perhaps, serve a purpose on the hearthstone of
+    our inmost life if it be to rescue us from complacency and secure
+    inanity, but in the form of electrically connected lyddite stores and
+    gasoline bombs it drives those who believe in a supernation to a
+    literal interpretation of the above widely popular philosophy. And, as
+    demonstrated at Louvain and Rheims, it goes far to obliterate the
+    memorials of a past which Nietzsche thought so contemptible a check upon
+    the prowess of the "blonde Bestie" as he progressed toward&mdash;toward the
+    superman.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was wide of the mark, therefore, to attribute that which bears the
+    stamp "made in Germany" to England. Bernhardi and the Crown Prince with
+    their thousands of officers and the multitudes in the ranks to whom
+    Nietzsche has become an inspiring motive are not to be construed as
+    English surely. Nor does the English "culture," so far as the present
+    writer is informed, contain a superman, unless it be Bernard Shaw!
+    English people have to import "beyond good and evil" philosophy, and as
+    historians of thought Profs. Eucken and Haeckel must know that it has
+    never had a foothold there. Had it been "brutal national egoism, knowing
+    no rights of others," which motivated Britain, she would not now have
+    gone to war&mdash;in order that she might profit finally by the inevitable
+    exhaustion of the Continent. And having taken the clear stand she has,
+    what but good-will and the consciousness of a just cause brought support
+    and sacrifice from the hands and lives of her grateful peoples all over
+    the earth? Would brutality have done it? The same question might be
+    asked concerning France's empire from which she derives chiefly the
+    consciousness of an extending civilization.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The Claims of German Culture.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    A word more should be added concerning the condescending tone generally
+    of the exponents of German culture and more specifically that of the
+    distinguished writers of the circular letter. They had up to the present
+    continued to hope for growth in English literary and scientific
+    development. Before this dismal egoism got the upper hand the English
+    people really and truly possessed some noble traits and so forth. As for
+    Russian culture, supposedly including its science and literature, music,
+    architecture and the rest, it is all effaced by a single "barbarism"!
+    The implication of such an attitude and such words is that the Kremlin
+    or Rheims, Shakespeare and Rembrandt, Michaelangelo, Darwin, Spinoza and
+    the treasures of Louvain might be easily paralleled or surpassed by
+    German cathedrals, German sculpture, German paintings, German literature
+    and so forth. It is not our present purpose to dispute the claim, but
+    only to remind the Teutons that in France and Belgium they have declared
+    war, not indeed upon supermen, but upon many gentlemen and some worthy
+    fruits of their spirits, and that they have destroyed much which
+    formerly enriched the life of the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is the claim of some objective German writers that a modicum of
+    modesty would prove the most substantial contribution to Teutonic
+    civilization. Defeat of German arms might, therefore, prove a blessing
+    to the self-lauded culture as well as call a halt to the brutal science
+    of Krupps. As instances of authors mentioned above, a passage from the
+    lamented Friedrich Paulsen's "System der Ethic" (Page 582) may, justly,
+    be cited: "Insolence still continues to impress the average German. The
+    spirit of English scientific intercourse forms a highly pleasing
+    contrast to the German habit. Take such writers as Mill and Darwin; they
+    speak to the reader as though he did them a favor by listening to them,
+    and whenever they enter upon a controversy, they do it in a manner
+    which expresses respect and a desire for mutual understanding. The
+    German scholar believes that it will detract from the respect due him if
+    he does not assume a tone of condescension or overbearing censure.
+    Examine the first scientific journal you may happen to pick up; even the
+    smallest anonymous announcement breathes the air of infinite
+    superiority."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A second passage is quoted from the great work of Wilhelm Scherer,
+    "Geschichte der Deutschen Litteratur" (Pages 20-21): "Recklessness seems
+    to be the curse of our spiritual development ... obstinacy in good and
+    in evil. Beauty we have not often served, nor long at a time." These
+    are, of course, not the judgments of the present writer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Conviction does not flow from the argument concerning England's brutal
+    egoism and reckless immorality under the cloak of sanctimoniousness; nor
+    is there strength in the appeal for Teuton culture. All has the tone of
+    special pleading and makes doubly significant a sentence from Nietzsche
+    when he pleads for an overcoming of our ideals of veracity: "'I have
+    done this thing,' says my memory, 'I could not have done this thing,'
+    says my pride and remains inexorable. Finally memory yields." ("Beyond
+    Good and Evil," Page 94.)
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    JOHN WARBEKE.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Sept. 23, 1914.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    &nbsp;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <img border="0" src="images/deco3.jpg" alt="decoration" width="300" height="118"></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    &nbsp;</p>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0015"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/matthews.jpg" width="142" height="225"
+alt="Brander Matthews">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-align: center">BRANDER MATTHEWS</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i>(Photo by Brown Bros.)</i>
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <a href="#2H_4_0038">
+    <i>See Page 541</i> </a>
+</p>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0016"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/hillis.jpg" width="143" height="225"
+alt="Newell Dwight Hillis">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-align: center">NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <a href="#2H_4_0049">
+    <i>See Page 573</i> </a>
+</p>
+<br><hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0038"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    Concerning German Culture
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Brander Matthews.
+</h3>
+<p>     Professor of Dramatic Literature at Columbia University;
+     author of many works on literature and the development of the
+     drama.
+</p>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the earnest and sincere appeals of various distinguished Germans,
+    Prof. Eucken, Prof. Haeckel, and the several authors of "The Truth About
+    Germany," we find frequent references to "German culture" as though it
+    was of a superior quality to the culture of every other nationality; and
+    we seem to perceive also a sustaining belief that Germany is not only
+    the defender of civilization, but its foremost exponent. We have no
+    right to question the good faith of scholars of the high character of
+    Eucken and Haeckel; and we cannot doubt their being honestly possessed
+    of the conviction that Germany is the supreme example of a highly
+    civilized State and the undisputed leader in the arts and sciences which
+    represent culture. It is plain that these German writers take this for
+    granted and that they would be indignantly surprised if it should be
+    questioned.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To an American who feels himself a sharer of the noble heritage of
+    English literature, and who has sat for more than forty years at the
+    feet of the masters of French literature, this claim cannot but come as
+    a startling surprise.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The most obvious characteristic of a highly civilized man is his
+    willingness to keep his word, at whatever cost to himself. For reasons
+    satisfactory to itself, Germany broke its pledge to respect the
+    neutrality of Luxemburg and of Belgium. It is another characteristic of
+    civilization to cherish the works of art which have been bequeathed to
+    us by the past. For reasons satisfactory to itself Germany destroyed
+    Louvain, more or less completely. It is a final characteristic of
+    civilized man to be humane and to refrain from ill-treating the
+    blameless. For reasons satisfactory to itself Germany dropped bombs in
+    the unbesieged City of Antwerp and caused the death of innocent women
+    and children. Here are three instances where German culture has been
+    tested and found wanting.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The Standard Bearer of Culture.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    But it may be urged that war has its own exigencies and that these three
+    instances of uncivilized conduct partook of the nature of military
+    necessities. Turning from the outrages of war to the triumphs of peace,
+    let us make a disinterested attempt to find out just what foundation
+    there may be for the implicit assertion that Germany is the standard
+    bearer of civilization.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Perhaps it is too petty to point out that manners are the outward and
+    visible sign of civilization, and that in this respect the Germans have
+    not yet attained to the standard set by the French and the English. But
+    it is not insignificant to record that the Germans alone retain a
+    barbaric mediaeval alphabet, while the rest of Western Europe has
+    adopted the more legible and more graceful Roman letter; and it is not
+    unimportant to note that German press style is cumbrous and uncouth.
+    Taken collectively, these things seem to show German culture is a little
+    lacking in the social instinct, the desire to make things easy and
+    pleasant for others. It is this social instinct which is the dominating
+    influence in French civilization and which has given to French
+    civilization its incomparable urbanity and amenity. It is to the absence
+    of this social instinct, to the inability to understand the attitude of
+    other parties to a discussion, to the unwillingness to appreciate their
+    point of view, that we may ascribe the failure of German diplomacy, a
+    failure which has left her almost without a friend in her hour of need.
+    And success in diplomacy is one of the supreme tests of civilization.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The claim asserted explicity or implicitly in behalf of German culture
+    seems to be based on the belief that the Germans are leaders in the arts
+    and in the sciences. So far as the art of war is concerned there is no
+    need today to dispute the German claim. It is to the preparation for war
+    that Prussia has devoted its utmost energy for half a century&mdash;in fact,
+    ever since Bismarck began to make ready for the seizing of unwilling
+    Schleswig-Holstein. And so far as the art of music is concerned there is
+    also no need to cavil.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But what about the other and more purely intellectual arts? How many are
+    the contemporary painters and sculptors and architects of Germany who
+    have succeeded in winning the cosmopolitan reputation which has been the
+    reward of a score of the artists of France and of half a dozen of the
+    artists of America?
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Since Goethe, Who?
+</h3>
+<p>
+    When we consider the art of letters we find a similar condition. Germany
+    has had philosophers and historians of high rank; but in pure
+    literature, in what used to be called "belles-lettres," from the death
+    of Goethe in 1832 to the advent of the younger generation of dramatists,
+    Sudermann and Hauptmann and the rest, in the final decade of the
+    nineteenth century&mdash;that is to say, for a period of nearly sixty
+    years&mdash;only one German author succeeded in winning a worldwide
+    celebrity&mdash;and Heine was a Hebrew, who died in Paris, out of favor with
+    his countrymen, perhaps because he had been unceasing in calling
+    attention to the deficiencies of German culture. There were in Germany
+    many writers who appealed strongly to their fellow-countrymen, but
+    except only the solitary Heine no German writer attained to the
+    international fame achieved by Cooper and by Poe, by Walt Whitman and by
+    Mark Twain. And it was during these threescore years of literary aridity
+    in Germany that there was a superb literary fecundity in Great Britain
+    and in France, and that each of these countries produced at least a
+    score of authors whose names are known throughout the world. Even
+    sparsely settled Scandinavia brought forth a triumvirate, Björnsen,
+    Ibsen, and Brandes, without compeers in Germany. And from Russia the
+    fame of Turgenef and of Tolstoy spread abroad a knowledge of the heart
+    and mind of a great people who are denounced by Germans as barbarous.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is probably in the field of science, pure and applied, that the
+    defenders of the supremacy of German culture would take their last
+    stand. That the German contribution to science has been important is
+    indisputable; yet it is equally indisputable that the two dominating
+    scientific leaders of the second half of the nineteenth century are
+    Darwin and Pasteur. It is in chemistry that the Germans have been
+    pioneers; yet the greatest of modern chemists is Mendeleef. It was Hertz
+    who made the discovery which is the foundation of Marconi's invention;
+    but although not a few valuable discoveries are to be credited to the
+    Germans, perhaps almost as many as to either the French or the British,
+    the German contribution in the field of invention, in the practical
+    application of scientific discovery, has been less than that of France,
+    less than that of Great Britain, and less than that of the United
+    States. The Germans contributed little or nothing to the development of
+    the railroad, the steamboat, the automobile, the aeroplane, the
+    telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the photograph, the moving
+    picture, the electric light, the sewing machine, and the reaper and
+    binder. Even those dread instruments of war, the revolver and the
+    machine gun, the turreted ship, the torpedo, and the submarine, are not
+    due to the military ardor of the Germans. It would seem as though the
+    Germans had been lacking in the inventiveness which is so marked a
+    feature of our modern civilization.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In this inquiry there has been no desire to deny the value of the German
+    contributions to the arts and to the sciences. These contributions are
+    known to all; they speak for themselves; they redound to the honor of
+    German culture; and for them, whatever may be their number, the other
+    nations of the world are eternally indebted to Germany. But these German
+    contributions are neither important enough nor numerous enough to
+    justify the assumption that German culture is superior or that Germany
+    is entitled to think herself the supreme leader of the arts and of the
+    sciences. No one nation can claim this lofty position, although few
+    would be so bold as to deny the superior achievement of the French in
+    the fine arts and of the English in pure science.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nations are never accepted by other nations at their own valuation; and
+    the Germans need not be surprised that we are now astonished to find
+    them asserting their natural self-appreciation, with the apparent
+    expectation that it will pass unchallenged. The world owes a debt to
+    modern Germany beyond all question, but this is far less than the debt
+    owed to England and to France. It would be interesting if some German,
+    speaking with authority, should now be moved to explain to us Americans
+    the reasons which underlie the insistent assertion of the superiority of
+    German civilization. Within the past few weeks we have been forced to
+    gaze at certain of the less pleasant aspects of the German character;
+    and we have been made to see that the militarism of the Germans is in
+    absolute contradiction to the preaching and to the practice of the great
+    Goethe, to whom they proudly point as the ultimate representative of
+    German culture.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    BRANDER MATTHEWS.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Columbia University in the City of New York, Sept. 18, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0039"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    Culture vs. Kultur
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.
+</h3>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Current discussion of the worth of German culture has been almost
+    hopelessly clouded by the fact that when a German speaks of Kultur he
+    means an entirely different thing from what a Latin or Briton means by
+    culture. Kultur means the organized efficiency of a nation in the
+    broadest sense&mdash;its successful achievement in civil and military
+    administration, industry, commerce, finance, and in a quite secondary
+    way in scholarship, letters, and art. Kultur applies to a nation as a
+    whole, implying an enlightened Government to which the individual is
+    strictly subordinated. Thus Kultur is an attribute not of
+    individuals&mdash;whose particular interests, on the contrary, must often be
+    sacrificed to it&mdash;but of nations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Culture, for which nearest German equivalent is Bildung, is the opposite
+    of all this. It is an attribute not of nations as a whole but of
+    accomplished individuals. It acquires national import only through the
+    approval and admiration of these individuals by the rest, who share but
+    slightly in the culture they applaud. The aim of culture is the
+    enlightened and humane individual, conversant with the best values of
+    the past and sensitive to the best values of the present. The
+    open-mindedness and imagination implied in culture are potentially
+    destructive to a highly organized national Kultur. A cultured leader is
+    generally too much alive to the point of view of his rival to be a
+    wholly convinced partisan. Hence he lacks the intensity, drive, and
+    narrowness that make for competitive success. He keeps his place in the
+    sun not by masterfully overriding others, but by a series of delicate
+    compromises which reconcile the apparently conflicting claims. Moreover,
+    he has too great a respect for the differences between men's gifts to
+    formulate any rigid plan which, requires for its execution a strictly
+    regimented humanity. He will sacrifice a little efficiency that life may
+    be more various, rich, and delightful.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hence nations with cultured leaders have generally been beaten by those
+    whose leaders had merely Kultur. The Spartans and Macedonians had
+    abundant Kultur; they generally beat the Athenians, who had merely very
+    high culture. The Romans had Kultur, and the Hellenistic world wore
+    their yoke. Germany unquestionably has admirable Kultur, and none of the
+    mere cultured nations who are leagued against her could hope to beat her
+    singly.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    She Does Not Desire Culture.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    On the other hand, Germany has singularly little culture, has less than
+    she had a hundred years ago, does not apparently desire it. She has
+    willingly sacrificed the culture of a few leading individuals to the
+    Kultur of the empire as a whole. Thus it is not surprising that Germany,
+    as measured by the production of cultured individuals, takes a very low
+    place today. Not only France and England, Italy and Spain, but also
+    Russia and America, may fairly claim a higher degree of culture. Here
+    the fetich of German scholarship should not deceive us. Culture&mdash;a
+    balanced and humanized state of mind&mdash;is only remotely connected with
+    scholarship or even with education. A Spanish peasant or an Italian
+    waiter may have finer culture than a German university professor. And in
+    the field of scholarship, Germany is in the main chiefly laborious,
+    accurate, and small-minded. Her scholarship is related not to culture,
+    but is a minor expression of Kultur. Such scholarly men of letters as
+    Darwin, Huxley, Renan, Taine, Boissier, Gaston Paris, Menendez y Pelayo,
+    Francis J. Child, Germany used to produce in the days of the Grimms and
+    Schlegels. She rarely does so now. Her culture has been swallowed up in
+    her Kultur.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The claim of Germany to realize her Kultur at the expense of her
+    neighbors is at first sight plausible. Her Kultur is unquestionably
+    higher than theirs. She has a sharply realized idea of the State, and
+    she has justified it largely in practice. In a certain patience,
+    thoroughness, and perfection of political organization her pre-eminence
+    is unquestionable. The tone of her apologists shows amazement and
+    indignation over the fact that the world, so far from welcoming the
+    extension of German Kultur, is actively hostile to that ambition. Yet,
+    even if it be conceded that Germany's Kultur is wholly good for
+    herself&mdash;surely a debatable proposition&mdash;it does not follow that it is
+    or would be a universal benefit. Nations may deliberately and
+    legitimately prefer their culture, with its admitted disadvantages, to
+    the Kultur which pleases Germany. England is often mocked for the way in
+    which she "muddles through" successive perils, yet she may feel that the
+    stereotyping of her people in a rigid administrative frame might be too
+    high a price to pay for constant preparedness. As for us Americans, we
+    have made a virtue, perhaps overdone it, of avoiding a mechanical
+    Kultur. We prefer the greatest freedom for the individual to the
+    perfectly regimented state. We will move toward culture and cheerfully
+    assume the necessary risks of the process.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Unlovely and Impressive.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    In a broader view, the war may be regarded as a contest between the
+    metallic, half-mechanical Kultur of Prussianized Germany and the more
+    flexible civilizations of States that have inherited culture or aspire
+    to it. Germany herself has rejected the humane and somewhat hazardous
+    ideal of culture, so she cannot wonder or complain when she sees that
+    the culture of the world is almost unanimously hostile to her. There is
+    no quarrel with German Kultur itself; merely a feeling that it has its
+    drawbacks, that it is, on the whole, as unlovely as it is impressive,
+    that there is quite enough of it in the world already, and that its
+    broad extension would be disastrous.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Meanwhile the nations of culture have much to learn from Germany's
+    Kultur. Flexibility may mean weakness. The United States, for example,
+    could well have a standing army and an army reserve commensurate with
+    its history and prospects without incurring any danger of militarism.
+    There is, finally, some disadvantage in being merely a culture nation,
+    for such a nation can add a large measure of Kultur without belying
+    itself. On the contrary, so highly developed a Kultur nation as the
+    German Empire puts itself in a position where it is almost impossible to
+    acquire any considerable degree of culture. Culture is the enemy of such
+    a state&mdash;it must remain in the Spartan or Macedonian stage. Rome began
+    to decline as soon as Hellenistic culture got the ascendency over the
+    old Latin Kultur. Kultur, in short, galvanizes; culture liberates. A
+    survey of modern Germany hardly warrants a desire for her world
+    dominion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If any reader is still unclear about the distinction between culture and
+    Kultur, let him examine his most-gifted friends as to their sympathies
+    in the present war, choosing, of course, persons who have no racial
+    reasons for taking sides. Almost without exception he will find they
+    fall into two sharply defined classes. The mental characteristics of his
+    pro-German friends will pretty certainly illustrate Kultur quite
+    concretely, while he may read the meaning of culture in his more-gifted
+    friends who favor the Allies.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jr.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Princeton, Nov. 6, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0040"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    The Trespass in Belgium
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By John Grier Hibben.
+</h3>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some time ago I received with many others an appeal "To the Civilized
+    World!" from certain distinguished representatives of German science and
+    art. I at once wrote to Prof. Eucken, whom I know, and who is one of the
+    signers of this document. I wished to draw his attention particularly to
+    the second statement of this appeal, which is as follows:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     It is not true that we trespassed in neutral Belgium. It has
+     been proved that France and England had resolved on such a
+     trespass, and it has likewise been proved that Belgium had
+     agreed to their doing so,
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    and I stated to him that "It is naturally to be expected of a group of
+    scholars that where reference is made to proof, some citation should be
+    given both of the sources of the proof and of its nature. I am sure you
+    will agree with me that it is of the very essence of scholarly method in
+    the treatment of any subject whatsoever that one should cite his
+    authority as regards every important and significant statement that is
+    made. No one of the distinguished group of scholars signing their names
+    to this letter would think of writing an article in his own specialty
+    and not add in the text or in a footnote the complete list of
+    authorities for his several assertions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In your appeal, however, the most important statement by far which you
+    make, and the one bearing most intimately upon the honor and integrity
+    of your nation, is left without even the attempt to support it, save the
+    bare assertion by you and your colleagues. In the interests of a fair
+    understanding of Germany's position, I feel that it is incumbent upon
+    you to give us who are under such a deep debt of gratitude to German
+    scholarship in our own lives the opportunity of a full knowledge of all
+    the facts which definitely bear upon this present situation."
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the time of writing Prof. Eucken, I also wrote to a friend of mine,
+    Dr. A.E. Shipley, the Master of Christ's College, Cambridge, England,
+    asking him if he could get for me some authoritative statement from the
+    British Foreign Office concerning the assertion that "it has been proved
+    that France and England had resolved on such a trespass, and it has
+    likewise been proved that Belgium had agreed to their doing so." I have
+    just received a letter from Mr. Shipley, stating that Lord Haldane had
+    prepared a statement in answer to this question. Thinking that your
+    readers would be interested in seeing this, I am sending it to you.
+    Faithfully yours,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    JOHN GRIER HIBBEN.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Princeton, N.J., Nov. 24, 1914.
+</p>
+<br><hr>
+<p style="text-align: center">     <i>(Inclosure from Lord Haldane to the Master of Christ's
+     College, Cambridge.)</i>
+     </p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em; text-align: right">
+     10 Downing St., Whitehall, S.W., Nov. 14.</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+     Dear Master of Christ's:</p>
+
+<p>
+     The inclosed memoranda have been specially prepared for me by the Foreign
+     Office in answer to your question.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right">Yours truly,</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right">     HALDANE.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p style="text-align: center">     (MEMORANDUM.)</p>
+<p>
+     It is quite untrue that the British Government had ever
+     arranged with Belgium to trespass on her country in case of
+     war, or that Belgium had agreed to this. The strategic
+     dispositions of Germany, especially as regards railways, have
+     for some years given rise to the apprehension that Germany
+     would attack France through Belgium. Whatever military
+     discussions have taken place before this war have been limited
+     entirely to the suggestion of what could be done to defend
+     France if Germany attacked her through Belgium.</p>
+<p>
+     The Germans have stated that we contemplated sending troops to
+     Belgium. We had never committed ourselves at all to the
+     sending of troops to the Continent, and we had never
+     contemplated the possibility of sending troops to Belgium to
+     attack Germany.</p>
+<p>
+     The Germans have stated that British military stores had been
+     placed at Maubeuge, a French fortress near the Belgian
+     frontier, before the outbreak of the war, and that this is
+     evidence of an intention to attack Germany through Belgium. No
+     British soldiers and no British stores were landed on the
+     Continent till after Germany had invaded Belgium and Belgium
+     had appealed to France and England for assistance. It was only
+     after this appeal that British troops were sent to France;
+     and, if the Germans found British munitions of war in
+     Maubeuge, these munitions were sent with our expedition to
+     France after the outbreak of the war. The idea of violating
+     the neutrality of Belgium was never discussed or contemplated
+     by the British Government.</p>
+<p>
+     The extract inclosed, which is taken from an official
+     publication of the Belgian Government, and the extract from an
+     official statement by the Belgian Minister of War, prove that
+     the Belgian Government had never connived, or been willing to
+     connive, at the breach of the treaty that made the maintenance
+     of Belgian neutrality an international obligation. The moment
+     that there appeared to be danger that this treaty might be
+     violated the British Government made an appeal for an
+     assurance from both France and Germany, as had been done in
+     1870 by Mr. Gladstone, that neither of those countries would
+     violate the neutrality of Belgium if the other country
+     respected it. The French agreed, the Germans declined to
+     agree. The appeal made by the British Government is to be
+     found in our first "White Paper" after the outbreak of the
+     war.</p>
+<p>
+     The reason why Germany would not agree was stated very frankly
+     by Herr von Jagow, the German Minister for Foreign Affairs, to
+     Sir Edward Goschen, our Ambassador in Berlin; and it is
+     recorded in the second "White Paper" that we published. The
+     attitude of the British Government throughout has been to
+     endeavor to preserve the neutrality of Belgium, and we never
+     thought of sending troops to Belgium until Germany had invaded
+     it and Belgium had appealed for assistance to maintain the
+     international treaty.</p>
+<p>
+     We have known for some years past that in Holland, in Denmark,
+     and in Norway the Germans have inspired the apprehension that,
+     if England was at war with Germany, England would violate the
+     neutrality of those countries and seize some of their harbors.
+     This allegation is as baseless as the allegation about our
+     intention to violate the neutrality of Belgium, and events
+     have shown it to be so. But it seems to be a rule with Germany
+     to attribute to others the designs that she herself
+     entertains; as it is clear now that, for some long time past,
+     it has been a settled part of her strategic plans to attack
+     France through Belgium. A statement is inclosed, which was
+     issued by us on Oct. 14 last, dealing with this point.</p>
+<p>
+     This memorandum and its inclosures should provide ample
+     material for a reply to the German statements.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+     Foreign Office, Nov. 9, 1914.</p>
+
+<hr>
+<h3>
+    Belgian Official Denials.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Here is inclosed a copy of the note of Aug. 3 sent by M. Davignon,
+    Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Herr von Below Saleske, the
+    German Minister at Brussels, included in the Belgian "Gray Paper," and
+    printed in full in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Oct. 18 and reprinted in THE
+    TIMES'S pamphlet of the war's diplomatic papers. This is the note
+    expressing the "profound and painful surprise" caused to King Albert's
+    Government by the German invitation to it to abandon Belgian neutrality
+    and denying that France had, as alleged by Germany, manifested any such
+    intention.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A second inclosure gives this clipping from The London Times of Sept.
+    30:
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">     OFFICIAL STATEMENT.</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>
+     The German press has been attempting to persuade the public
+     that if Germany herself had not violated Belgian neutrality,
+     France or Great Britain would have done so. It has declared
+     that French and British troops had marched into Belgium before
+     the outbreak of war. We have received from the Belgian
+     Minister of War an official statement which denies absolutely
+     these allegations. It declares, on the one hand, that "before
+     Aug. 3 not a single French soldier had set foot on Belgian
+     territory," and, again, "it is untrue that on Aug. 4 there was
+     a single English soldier in Belgium." It adds:</p>
+<p>
+     "For long past Great Britain knew that the Belgian Army would
+     oppose by force a 'preventive' disembarkation of British
+     troops in Belgium. The Belgian Government did not hesitate at
+     the time of the Agadir crisis to warn foreign Ambassadors, in
+     terms which could not be misunderstood, of its formal
+     intention to compel respect for the neutrality of Belgium by
+     every means at its disposal, and against attempts upon it from
+     any and every quarter."
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<h3>
+    The "Agreement" of 1903.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The third inclosure is this British official communiqué:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-align: right">     14 October, 1914.</p>
+<p>
+     The story of an alleged Anglo-Belgian agreement of 1906
+     published in the German press, and based on documents said to
+     have been found at Brussels, is only a fresh edition of a
+     story which has been reproduced in various forms and denied
+     on several occasions. No such agreement has ever existed.</p>
+<p>
+     As the Germans well know, Gen. Grierson is dead and Col. (now
+     Gen.) Barnardiston is commanding the British forces before
+     Tsing-tau. In 1906 Gen. Grierson was on the General Staff at
+     the War Office, and Col. Barnardiston was Military Attaché at
+     Brussels. In view of the solemn guarantee given by Great
+     Britain to protect the neutrality of Belgium against violation
+     from any side, some academic discussions may, through the
+     instrumentality of Col. Barnardiston, have taken place between
+     Gen. Grierson and the Belgian military authorities as to what
+     assistance the British Army might be able to afford to Belgium
+     should one of her neighbors violate that neutrality. Some
+     notes with reference to the subject may exist in the archives
+     at Brussels.</p>
+<p>
+     It should be noted that the date mentioned, namely, 1906, was
+     the year following that in which Germany had, as in 1911,
+     adopted a threatening attitude toward France with regard to
+     Morocco, and, in view of the apprehensions existing of an
+     attack on France through Belgium, it was natural that possible
+     eventualities should be discussed.</p>
+<p>
+     The impossibility of Belgium having been a party to any
+     agreement of the nature indicated or to any design for the
+     violation of Belgian neutrality is clearly shown by the
+     reiterated declarations that she has made for many years past
+     that she would resist to the utmost any violation of her
+     neutrality from whatever quarter and in whatever form such
+     violation might come.</p>
+<p>
+     It is worthy of attention that these charges of aggressive
+     designs on the part of other powers are made by Germany, who,
+     since 1906, has established an elaborate network of
+     strategical railways leading from the Rhine to the Belgian
+     frontier through a barren, thinly populated tract,
+     deliberately constructed to permit of the sudden attack upon
+     Belgium, which was carried out two months ago.
+</p>
+<p>
+     &nbsp;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+     <img border="0" src="images/deco4.jpg" alt="decoration" width="300" height="117"></p>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0041"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    Apportioning the Blame
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Arthur v. Briesen.
+</h3>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>     Of the law firm of Briesen &amp; Knauth; Doctor of Laws, New York
+     University; philanthropist; has served the American public as
+     head of important civic bodies and Governmental commissions.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Having been requested by you to express my views with reference to the
+    war which is now lacerating Europe, I take pleasure to comply with your
+    desire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As an American citizen I am, of course, under obligations to be neutral
+    and to send no ammunition to either belligerent. At the same time the
+    German blood in my veins naturally causes me to sympathize with Germany
+    in this conflict. But even if we leave out of consideration any matter
+    of sympathy, if we look upon the situation in an entirely unbiased
+    spirit, the conclusion which I propose to lay before you appears to be
+    irresistible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The questions that seem to have agitated the American public mostly in
+    connection with this awful conflict have been:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     <i>First</i>&mdash;Who is to blame for bringing about this war, and,</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+     <i>Second</i>&mdash;Assuming that Germany was not to blame for beginning
+     the war, is she to blame for violating the neutrality of
+     Belgium?
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    If we should find the fault regarding the first question to lie
+    primarily with England and secondarily with Russia, we should at once
+    clear the German people and their Government from the charge that has
+    heretofore been brought against them for having incited the war. And if
+    we should find that the neutrality of Belgium was not binding upon any
+    country whose existence or whose interests were threatened by other
+    countries, that fact would then absolve either country from a charge
+    which thus far seems to have been brought against one of them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>How was the war brought about?</i> As far back as 1906 it is known, and
+    can be proved by the files of New York papers, to say nothing of
+    official correspondence now found in Brussels and elsewhere, that
+    measures were started by England to circumscribe or isolate the German
+    Empire, and treaties were entered between England, France, and Russia
+    (the Triple Entente) to insure joint action against Germany when
+    necessary.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Germany herself has been peaceful, progressive, and anxious to retain
+    her position as a nation undisturbed by others, as a nation that should
+    advance in art, in science, in population, and in all things that make
+    happiness through peace. What was the situation in other countries?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Since 1870 <i>France</i> had cried for revenge (<i>revanche</i>). Its school
+    books, newspapers, public speakers, and political leaders were all
+    charged with the one great idea of seeking revenge against Germany for
+    having retaken Alsace and Lorraine in 1870, which France had wrongfully
+    occupied since the time of Louis XIV. Alsace and Lorraine had been
+    German for centuries before; they were wrested from Germany without even
+    a semblance of an excuse at the close of the seventeenth century, and
+    were largely German in language and in spirit in 1870. Goethe's studies
+    in Strassburg and his visits to Frederica von Sesenheim in the
+    eighteenth century show that he was living in a German country whenever
+    he was in Alsace. A <i>united</i> Germany did not exist prior to 1870.
+    However, the cry for revenge was there, and France distinctly declared
+    it to be her policy to take her revenge as soon as opportunity offered.
+    France was, therefore, a pronounced enemy of Germany ever since 1870,
+    and when asked by the German Government on July 31, 1914, whether she
+    would remain neutral in a Russian-German war (Annex 25, German "White
+    Paper") she answered: "France would do that which might be required of
+    her <i>by her interests</i>." This answer was given on Aug. 1, 1914, (Annex
+    27, German "White Paper.") Today we may well ask France whether, since
+    Aug. 1, 1914, she has done that which was required by her interests.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Russia</i> may next be looked at. How did Russia become involved in this
+    contest? The little kingdom of Servia, which had familiarized itself
+    with the fine art of disposing of crowned heads by throwing its King and
+    Queen, Alexandra and Draga, out of the window of their castle, caused
+    through its officials and its followers to have the heir to the Austrian
+    throne and his wife cruelly assassinated on June 28, 1914. This
+    assassination was an act of enmity toward Austria and a step toward the
+    enlargement of Servia. Deeming her existence threatened and her national
+    dignity offended, Austria sent a rather sharp demand under date of July
+    23, 1914, to Servia, requiring prompt and thorough satisfaction for the
+    gross attack made upon her and her reigning family through Servia's
+    official directions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Strange to say, however, the British "White Book" shows that three days
+    before, on July 20, 1914, Sir Edward Grey, (Paper 1, British "White
+    Book,") wrote to Sir E. Goschen, British Ambassador at Berlin, a letter
+    in which he states:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     In fact, the more Austria could keep her demand within
+     reasonable limits, and the stronger the justification she
+     could produce for making any demand, the more chance there
+     would be of smoothing things over. <i>I hated the idea of a war
+     between any of the great powers</i>, and that any of them should
+     be dragged into a war by Servia would be detestable.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    On July 24, 1914, the Austrian message to Servia became known to all
+    countries, and on the same day Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador
+    at St. Petersburg, wrote that he had been asked by Mr. Sazonof, Russian
+    Minister of Foreign Affairs, to meet him at the French Embassy to
+    discuss matters, as Austria's step clearly meant that war was imminent.
+    He wrote that Mr. Sazonof expressed himself as follows (British Paper
+    6):
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     He hoped that his Majesty's Government would not fail to
+     <i>proclaim their solidarity with Russia and France</i>. The French
+     Ambassador gave me to understand that France would fulfill all
+     the obligations entailed by her alliance with Russia, if
+     necessity arose, besides supporting Russia strongly in any
+     diplomatic negotiations.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    Later, on July 29, 1914, Sir George Buchanan wrote to Sir Edward Grey
+    (Paper 72, English "White Book") as follows:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     I made it clear to his Excellency that, <i>Russia being
+     thoroughly in earnest, a general war could not be averted</i> if
+     Servia were attacked by Austria.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    Sir George Buchanan would not have said that if he had not been
+    authorized to do so. He would not have said a "general war could not be
+    averted if Servia were attacked by Austria"; and by "general war" he
+    meant, and we all understand he meant, a war between England, France,
+    and Russia on one side and Germany and Austria on the other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Servia's reply to the demand of Austria, which was dated July 25, 1914,
+    not being deemed satisfactory, Austria proceeded to a punitive
+    expedition against Servia, and she repeatedly asserted and assured all
+    the other powers that the expedition was merely punitive and that
+    neither the independence nor the territorial integrity of Servia were at
+    all involved or in any danger.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But all this had no effect upon Russia. In fact, when Russia was first
+    informed of the Austrian demand (Annex 4, German "White Book") Minister
+    of Foreign Affairs Sazonof made wild complaints on <i>July</i> 24, 1914,
+    against Austria-Hungary. What he said most definitely was this:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     <i>That Russia could not possibly permit the Servian-Austrian
+     dispute to be confined to the parties concerned.</i>
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    This was the keynote of the Russian situation and of the Russian
+    intention. Russia wanted, of course, to expand its realm as far
+    westward as possible, and it wanted to take advantage of the opportunity
+    offered by the necessary consequences of the dreadful insult and cruelty
+    practiced by Servia on Austria, not only to prevent the punishment of
+    Servia, but also to proceed against Germany, for, as Paper 4 says:
+    "Russia could not possibly permit the Servian-Austrian dispute to be
+    <i>confined</i> to the parties concerned."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Who, then, was to blame for not allowing the war to be confined, for not
+    permitting Austria to punish the murderers of her King, but utilizing
+    this opportunity for the purpose of bringing about the great war which
+    Russia and France had carefully prepared long ago? The great war which
+    should involve all the civilized nations in a conflict, and threaten to
+    extinguish Austria and to carry barbarism into the heart of Europe! She
+    <i>did</i> not permit the Servian-Austrian dispute to be confined to the
+    parties concerned.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Again, in Paper 56, (English "White Book,") we find the English
+    Ambassador to Austria writing to Sir Edward Grey on July 27, 1914, the
+    following:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     If actual war broke out with Servia it would be <i>impossible</i>
+     to localize it, for <i>Russia</i> was not prepared to give way
+     again.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    Again, in Paper 72, (English "White Book,") dated July 28, 1914, from
+    the English Ambassador in Russia to Sir Edward Grey:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     I made it clear to his Excellency (German Ambassador) that,
+     <i>Russia being thoroughly in earnest</i>, a general war could not
+     be averted if Servia were attacked by Austria.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    Paper 121, (English "White Book,") British Ambassador in Berlin to Sir
+    Edward Grey under date of July 31, 1914:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     He (the German Secretary of State) again assured me that both
+     the Emperor William, at the request of the Emperor of Russia,
+     and the German Foreign Office had even up till last night been
+     urging Austria to show willingness to continue
+     discussions&mdash;and telegraphic and telephonic communications
+     from Vienna had been of a promising nature&mdash;<i>but Russia's
+     mobilization had spoiled everything</i>.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    I could repeat, <i>ad infinitum</i>, quotations from these books to show
+    that Russia not only wanted this war if Austria wanted to punish Servia
+    for her misdeeds, but started it against the protest of Germany, and
+    started it, I sincerely believe, largely because encouraged by Great
+    Britain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>England</i>: The letter written by the Belgian Chargé at St. Petersburg to
+    his Government on July 30, 1914, which letter was published in THE NEW
+    YORK TIMES on Oct. 7, 1914, and which letter, nearly a month before, had
+    been published abroad and never disavowed by the Belgian Government,
+    states distinctly on the part of Belgium:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     <i>What is incontestable is that Germany has striven here, as
+     well as at Vienna, to find some means of avoiding a general
+     conflict....</i> M. Sazonof, Russian Foreign Minister, has
+     declared that it would be impossible for Russia not to hold
+     herself ready and to mobilize, but that these preparations
+     were not directed against Germany. This morning an official
+     communiqué to the newspapers announces that "the reserves have
+     been called under arms in a certain number of Governments."
+     Knowing the discreet nature of the official communiqué one can
+     without fear assert that <i>mobilization is going on
+     everywhere</i>.</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+     ... One can truly ask one's self whether the whole world does
+     not desire war and is trying merely to retard its declaration
+     a little in order to gain time. England began by allowing it
+     to be understood that she did not want to be drawn into a
+     conflict. Sir George Buchanan (British Ambassador) said that
+     openly. Today one is firmly convinced at St. Petersburg&mdash;one
+     has even the assurance of it&mdash;that England will support
+     France. This support is of enormous weight, and <i>has
+     contributed not a little to give the upper hand to the war
+     party</i>.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    The German Emperor during these times believed England to be really and
+    honestly striving to avoid the war; he went so far as to announce in one
+    of his letters published in the "White Book" that "he had shoulder to
+    shoulder with England tried to bring about a peaceful solution." It
+    certainly now appears that all this while England had made her
+    arrangements with France and with Russia, and had strengthened the war
+    party in Russia to such an extent that Russia's desire to set Europe
+    afire was rendered possible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Belgian neutrality.</i> It is charged that Germany violated an alleged
+    treaty with Belgium, which treaty is supposed to have guaranteed the
+    integrity of Belgium. When Germany found her efforts to maintain peace
+    frustrated, Russian troops having crossed the German frontier on the
+    afternoon of Aug. 1, while France opened hostilities on Aug. 2, she
+    announced to Belgium on Aug. 2, 1914, that she found herself under
+    obligation, to prevent a French attack through Belgium, to pass through
+    Belgian territory; she expressed her readiness to guarantee the
+    integrity of the kingdom and its possessions and to pay any damage
+    caused if Belgium would, in a friendly way, permit such a passage of
+    troops through it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The English "White Book" contains, Paper 151, dated Aug. 3, 1914, which
+    paper we repeat in full:
+</p>
+<p>
+    (British Minister to Belgium to Sir Edward Grey.)
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     French Government have offered through their Military Attaché
+     the support of five French Army corps to the Belgian
+     Government. Following reply has been received today: We are
+     sincerely grateful to the French Government for offering
+     eventual support. In the actual circumstances, however, <i>we do
+     not propose to appeal to the guarantee of the powers</i>. Belgian
+     Government will decide later on the action which they may
+     think it necessary to take.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    In short, Belgium says in the foregoing notice to France, that she does
+    not propose to appeal to the guarantee of the powers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Was Germany justified in disregarding any previous treaty which related
+    to Belgium if her interests required her so to do?
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>United States Supreme Court:</i> In its unanimous opinion in the Chinese
+    exclusion cases, reported on Pages 581 to 611 of Vol. 130 of United
+    States Reports, the Supreme Court of the United States had this very
+    question before it. A treaty had been entered into by the United States
+    and China, allowing Chinese subjects the right to visit and reside in
+    the United States and to there enjoy the same privileges that are
+    enjoyed by citizens of the United States. After that treaty an act of
+    Congress was passed in violation of the treaty, providing it to be
+    unlawful thereafter for Chinese laborers to enter the United States. The
+    question was, whether we had the right to violate a treaty solemnly
+    entered into with another country? On this subject the court said (Page
+    600):
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     The effect of legislation upon conflicting treaty stipulations
+     was elaborately considered in THE HEAD MONEY CASES, and it was
+     there adjudged: "that so far as a treaty made by the United
+     States with any foreign nation can become the subject of
+     judicial cognizance in the courts of this country, it is
+     subject to such acts as Congress may pass for its enforcement,
+     modification, or repeal," 112 U.S. 580, 599. This doctrine was
+     affirmed and followed in WHITNEY v. ROBERTSON, 124 U.S. 190,
+     195. It will not be presumed that the legislative department
+     of the Government will lightly pass laws which are in conflict
+     with the treaties of the country; <i>but that circumstances may
+     arise which would not only justify the Government in
+     disregarding their stipulations, but demand in the interests
+     of the country that it should do so, there can be no question.
+     Unexpected events may call for a change in the policy of the
+     country.</i>
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    In the same opinion the Supreme Court calls attention to an act passed in
+    1798, declaring that the United States were freed and exonerated from the
+    stipulations of previous treaties with France. This subject was fully
+    considered by Justice Curtis, who held, as the Supreme Court says (Page
+    602): <b>"That whilst it would always be a matter of the utmost
+    gravity and delicacy to refuse to execute a treaty, the power to do so
+    was a prerogative of which no nation could be deprived without deeply
+    affecting its independence."</b></p>
+<p>
+    We observe, therefore, that under our own ideas of international law the
+    United States claims the right to disregard its stipulations if the
+    interests of the country should require it. And the same right we should
+    concede to other nations. Particularly to Germany in the present
+    instance, when we find her battling for her very existence against
+    enemies that seek to destroy her, against enemies that surround her on
+    all sides, against enemies that do not hesitate to bring troops into the
+    conflict from the wilds of Africa and Asia, and who do not hesitate to
+    drag Japan into this war, causing her to disregard Chinese neutrality in
+    her effort to capture a small settlement, lawfully occupied in China by
+    a handful of German soldiers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In this connection I quote the British sentiment, as expressed by
+    Gladstone regarding Belgium neutrality in the year 1870:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     But I am not able to subscribe to the doctrine of those who
+     have held in this House, what plainly amounts to the assertion
+     that the simple fact of the existence of a guarantee is
+     binding to every party to it, irrespective altogether of the
+     particular position in which it may find itself at the time
+     when the occasion for <i>acting on the question arises</i>.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    This shows that England herself reserved the right, whenever her
+    interests required her to do so, to act in violation of the treaty with
+    Belgium. That, at least, is my understanding of Gladstone's language.
+    England did not respect Danish neutrality a hundred years ago, when she
+    destroyed the Danish fleet at Copenhagen because her interests required,
+    and England does not now, through its Asiatic ally, and directly,
+    respect Chinese neutrality, claiming the right primarily to consult her
+    own interests. Should this right, asserted by our own Supreme Court, and
+    actually assumed by England and Japan, be denied to Germany? Finally, I
+    understand that The Hague Conference of 1907 drafted a convention which
+    reads:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     The territory of neutral powers is inviolable. Belligerents
+     are forbidden to move troops or convoys of either munitions of
+     war or supplies across the territory of a neutral power. Great
+     Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy refused to sign
+     it and did not sign it. Russia was not represented.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    MILITARISM. There is one more subject which many people in this country
+    have failed to understand, and that is the matter of militarism. German
+    militarism is supposed to be something dreadful, and many good people
+    believe that it would be a great advance toward eternal peace if that
+    militarism could be wiped out. Well, now, let us see.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If Germany did not require every one of her sons to spend a year, or at
+    most two years, in the army, and if she had not provided for all these
+    men sufficient arms and accoutrements for immediate use in case of war,
+    what would have happened when Russia entered her territory, or when
+    France came on a like errand?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Any one who lives among enemies is expected to be sufficiently prepared
+    to defend himself should they attack him, be he ever so peaceful.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the time the United States of America was born there was no such
+    thing as Germany. Every country around it had a slice of it. Napoleon
+    took the larger western part of Germany as his property, England held
+    Hanover, the former Kingdom of Poland held Saxony, Austria held Silesia,
+    and so there was no Germany. The Teutonic races had no home in which
+    they could develop and live without interference by others. To prevent
+    such interference Germany of all nations needed an army; to prevent
+    similar interference at sea England of all nations needed a navy. That
+    great British Navy bears precisely the same relation to the protection
+    of Great Britain at sea which the German Army bears to the protection of
+    Germany on land.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To sum up, what are the countries fighting for? Russia for her
+    enlargement; she has no grudge whatever against Germany except that it
+    exists. France for revenge; she has no grudge whatever against Germany
+    except that she wants revenge for 1870. What grudge has England against
+    Germany, except that Germany has grown commercially, financially, and
+    industrially to a position which threatens to crowd England into a
+    second rank? Jealousy appears to control the English attitude.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The position apparently assumed by England is best expressed by the King
+    of England in his telegram to Prince Henry of Prussia, dated July 30,
+    1914:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     My Government is doing its utmost, suggesting to Russia and
+     France to <i>suspend further military preparations</i> if Austria
+     will consent to be satisfied with occupation of Belgrade and
+     neighboring Servian territory as a hostage for satisfactory
+     settlement of her demands, other countries meanwhile
+     suspending their war preparations. Trust William will use his
+     great influence to induce Austria to accept this proposal,
+     thus proving that Germany and England are working together to
+     prevent what would be an international catastrophe.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    On July 31, the very next day, Sir Edward Grey wrote the telegram, No.
+    111, (English "White Book,") to the British Ambassador at Berlin, in
+    which we find the following:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">     I would undertake to sound St. Petersburg, whether it would be
+     possible for the four disinterested powers to offer to Austria
+     that they would undertake to see that she obtained full
+     satisfaction of her demands on Servia, provided that they did
+     not impair Servian sovereignty and the integrity of Servian
+     territory. <i>As your Excellency is aware, Austria has already
+     declared her willingness to respect them.</i> (Established by
+     Paper 3, July 24, and Paper 5, July 26, German "White Book.")
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    Hence, we find that all King George said he wanted had been granted, and
+    yet England entered into the war. Why? Probably because she thought, as
+    France had expressed it, that she acted in pursuance of her interests.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And what is Germany fighting for? Does she want anything from anybody?
+    She wants to be left alone; she always wanted to be left alone; she
+    prospered while she was left alone; she grew while she was left alone.
+    Not being left alone she has to defend herself. Hence, I bespeak for
+    Germany and for her side fair play, just judgment on behalf of the
+    American people.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    ARTHUR v. BRIESEN.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    New York, Oct. 17, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0042"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    PARTING.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By LOUISE VON WETTER.
+</h3>
+<br>
+    <blockquote>
+      <blockquote>
+        <blockquote>
+          <blockquote>
+            <blockquote>
+              <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">    Sodger lad, O sodger lad,<br>
+      The dawn will see ye marchin'&mdash;<br>
+    The nicht drag's on&mdash;its dark is out<br>
+      Wi' searchlichts, shiftin', archin'.<br>
+<br>
+    Sodger lad, O sodger lad,<br>
+      D'ye mind our Summer meetin'?<br>
+    And noo, ye'll gang. The heather's dead ...<br>
+      I canna keep frae greetin'.<br>
+<br>
+    Sodger lad, my sodger lad&mdash;<br>
+      D'ye mind, my time is nearin'?<br>
+    Alone&mdash;alone&mdash;wi'out yer hand!<br>
+      How shall I keep frae fearin'?<br>
+<br>
+    Sodger lad, O sodger lad,<br>
+      Far, far awa' ye're goin'&mdash;<br>
+    I'll not dare count the leagues an' days&mdash;<br>
+      <i>Gude God! The cocks are crowin'!</i><br>
+<br>
+    Sodger lad, my luve, my dear,<br>
+      Awake! The morn is grayin'!<br>
+    E'en tho' my heart drags, sick wi' dread,<br>
+      I wouldna have ye stayin'.<br>
+</p>
+              </blockquote>
+            </blockquote>
+          </blockquote>
+        </blockquote>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0043"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    French Hate and English Jealousy
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Kuno Francke.
+</h3>
+<br>
+<p>
+    It is easy to see why American public opinion should have condemned by
+    an overwhelming majority the diplomatic acts of Austria and Hungary
+    which have been the immediate occasion of the terrific explosion which
+    now shakes the foundations of the whole civilized world. Austria's break
+    with Servia and Germany's violation of Belgian neutrality&mdash;the one
+    leading to war between Russia and Germany, the other bringing England
+    into the fray&mdash;must appear to the uninitiated as reckless and
+    indefensible provocations and as wanton attacks upon the laws of
+    nations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The thoughtful observer, however, should look beyond the immediate
+    occasion of this world conflict and try to understand its underlying
+    causes. By doing so he will, I believe, come to the conclusion that
+    fundamental justice is to be found on the German side, and that Germany
+    has been forced to fight for her life.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is an unquestionable fact that the unification of Germany and the
+    establishment of a strong German Empire, half a century ago, were
+    brought about against the bitter opposition of France, and that the
+    defeat incurred by France in 1870, in her attempt to prevent German
+    unification, is at the bottom of the constant irritation that has
+    agitated Europe during the last forty-three years. Germany's policy
+    toward France during these forty-three years has been one of utmost
+    restraint and forbearance, and has been dictated by the one desire of
+    making her forget the loss of the two provinces, German until the
+    seventeenth century and inhabited by German stock, which were won back
+    from France in 1870. Whether the acquisition of these provinces was a
+    fortunate thing for Germany may be doubted. The possession of
+    Alsace-Lorraine has certainly robbed Germany of the undivided sympathy
+    of the world, which she otherwise would have had. But it is probably
+    true that from the military point of view Alsace-Lorraine was needed by
+    Germany as a bulwark against the repetition of the many wanton French
+    invasions from which Germany has had to suffer since the time of the
+    Thirty Years' War and the age of Louis XIV.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Sought to Heal the Breach.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    However this may be, Germany has done her best during the last four
+    decades to heal the wounds struck by her to French national pride. She
+    abetted French colonial expansion in Cochin-China, Madagascar, Tunis.
+    She yielded to France her own well-founded claims to political influence
+    in Morocco. In Alsace-Lorraine itself she introduced an amount of local
+    self-government and home rule such as England has not accorded even now
+    to Ireland. While Ireland still is waiting for a Parliament at Dublin,
+    Strassburg has been for years the seat of the Alsace-Lorraine Diet, a
+    provincial Parliament based on universal suffrage. And even in spite of
+    the incessant and inflammatory French propaganda which last year led to
+    such unhappy counter-strokes as the deplorable Zabern affair, there can
+    be no reasonable doubt that the people of Alsace-Lorraine have been
+    gradually settling down to willing co-operation with the German
+    administration&mdash;an administration which insures them order, justice, and
+    prosperity. Nothing is a clearer indication of the peaceable trend which
+    affairs have lately taken in Alsace-Lorraine than the fact that the
+    Nationalists, i.e., French party, in the Strassburg Diet has never been
+    able to rise above insignificance, and that, on the other hand, a
+    considerable number of responsible officers in the civil administration,
+    including the highest Governmental positions, have been occupied by
+    native Alsatians.
+</p>
+<p>
+    While Germany has thus repeatedly shown her willingness and desire to
+    end the ancient feud, France has remained irreconcilable; and
+    particularly the intellectual class of France cannot escape the charge
+    that they have persistently and willfully kept alive the flame of
+    discord.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It surely cannot be said that the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine is a
+    vital necessity to France. Without Alsace-Lorraine France has recovered
+    her prosperity and her prestige in a manner that has been the admiration
+    of the world. It is a mere illusion to think that the reconquest of
+    Alsace-Lorraine would add to her glory. It would have been a demand of
+    patriotism for the intellectual class to combat this illusion. Instead
+    of this, every French writer, every French scholar, every French orator,
+    except the Socialists, year in and year out, has been dinning into the
+    popular ear the one word revenge.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    France to Blame.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    There can be little doubt that Prof. Gustave Lanson, the distinguished
+    literary historian, voiced the sentiments of the vast majority of his
+    countrymen when in a lecture, delivered some years ago at Harvard, he
+    stated that France could not and would not reorganize the peace of
+    Frankfurt as a final settlement, and that the one aim of the French
+    policy of the last forty years had been to force Germany to reopen the
+    Alsace-Lorraine question.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If there were people in Germany inclined to overlook or to minimize this
+    constantly growing menace from France, their eyes must have been opened
+    when in 1912 the French Government, having previously abolished the
+    one-year volunteers, raised the duration of active military service for
+    every Frenchman from two years to three, and, in addition to this,
+    called out in the Autumn of 1913 the recruits not only of the year whose
+    turn had come, namely, the recruits born in 1892, but also those born
+    in 1893. This was a measure nearly identical with mobilization; it was a
+    measure which clearly showed that France would not delay much longer
+    striking the deadly blow. For no nation could possibly stand for any
+    length of time this terrific strain of holding under the colors its
+    entire male population from the twentieth to the twenty-fourth year. No
+    wonder that the Paris papers were speaking as long ago as the Summer of
+    1912 of the regiments stationed in the Eastern Departments as the
+    "vanguard of our glorious army," and were advocating double pay for
+    them, as being practically in contact with the enemy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The second foe now threatening the destruction of Germany is England.
+    Can it truly be said that England's hostility has been brought about by
+    German aggression? True, Germany has built a powerful navy; but so have
+    Japan, the United States, France, and even Italy. Has England felt any
+    menace from these? Why, then, is the German Navy singled out as a
+    specially sinister threat to England? Has German diplomacy during the
+    last generation been particularly menacing to England? Germany has
+    acquired some colonies in Africa and in the Far East. But what are
+    Kamerun and Dar-es-Salaam and Kiao-Chau compared with the colonial
+    possessions of the other great powers? Where has Germany pursued a
+    colonial aggressiveness that could in any way be compared with the
+    British subjugation of the South African republics or the Italian
+    conquest of Tripoli or the French expansion in Algiers, Tunis, and
+    Morocco, or the American acquisition of the Philippines?
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Her Open-Door Policy.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Wherever Germany has made her influence felt on the globe she has stood
+    for the principle of the open door. Wherever she has engaged in colonial
+    enterprises, she has been willing to make compromises with other nations
+    and to accept their co-operation, notably so in the Bagdad railway
+    undertaking. And yet, the colonial expansion of every other nation is
+    hailed by England as "beneficial to mankind," as "work for
+    civilization"; the slightest attempt of Germany to take part in this
+    expansion is denounced as "intolerable aggression," as evidence of the
+    "bullying tendencies of the War Lord."
+</p>
+<p>
+    What is the reason for this singular unfairness of England toward
+    Germany, of this incessant attempt to check her and hem her in? Not so
+    much the existence of a large German Navy as the encroachment upon
+    English commerce by the rapidly growing commerce of Germany has made
+    Germany hateful to England. The navy has simply added to this hate of
+    Germany the dread of Germany. But if there had been no German Navy, and
+    consequently no dread of Germany, this hate of Germany might have come
+    to an explosion before now. For the history of the last 300 years proves
+    that England has habitually considered as her mortal enemy any nation
+    which dared to contest her commercial and industrial supremacy&mdash;first
+    Spain, then Holland, then France, and now Germany. As long as German
+    firms, by the manufacture of artificial indigo, keep on ruining the
+    English importation of indigo from India, and as long as the German
+    steamship lines keep on outstripping the prestige of the English boats,
+    there can be no real friendship between England and Germany. Although
+    England has repeatedly proposed to Germany naval agreements, these
+    agreements were avowedly meant to perpetuate the overwhelming
+    preponderance of England's fighting power, so that she would at any
+    moment be in a position to crush German commercial rivalry for all time.
+    She apparently thinks that this moment has now come.
+</p>
+<p>
+    That Germany's third implacable enemy, Russia, is clearly the aggressor,
+    and not the defender of her own national existence, need hardly be
+    demonstrated. She poses as the guardian of the Balkan States. But is
+    there any case on record where Russia has really protected the
+    independence of smaller neighboring countries? Has she not crushed out
+    provincial and racial individuality wherever she has extended her power?
+    Is it not the sole aim of her national policy to Russianize forcibly
+    every nationality under her sway?
+</p>
+<p>
+    In Finland she has gone back on her solemnly pledged word to maintain
+    the Finnish Constitution, and is ruthlessly reducing one of her most
+    highly developed provinces to the dead level of autocratic rule. In her
+    Baltic provinces she is trying to destroy, root and branch, whatever
+    there is left of German culture. Wherever the Russian Church holds
+    dominion intellectual blight is sure to follow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To think, therefore, that Russia would promote the free development of a
+    number of independent Balkan States under her protectorate is to shut
+    one's eyes to the whole history of Russian expansion. No, Russian
+    expansion in the Balkans means nothing less than the extinction of all
+    local independence and the establishment of Russian despotism from the
+    Black Sea to the Adriatic.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Why Germany Supports Austria.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Not Russia, but Austria, is the natural protector of the equilibrium
+    between the existing States on the Balkan Peninsula and their natural
+    guardian against Russian domination. Austria is their nearest neighbor;
+    indeed, the possession of Bosnia and Herzegovina makes her a Balkan
+    State herself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Being herself more than half of Slavic stock, she has every reason for
+    living on good terms with the various Slav kingdoms south of her. Being
+    herself forced, through the conglomerateness of her population, to
+    constant compromises in her internal affairs between conflicting
+    nationalities within her borders, she could not possibly absorb a large
+    additional amount of foreign territory. She is bound to respect the
+    existing lines of political demarkation in the Balkans, and her sole
+    object can be through commercial treaties and tariff legislation to open
+    up what used to be European Turkey to her trade and her civilizing
+    influence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In this she must clearly be supported by Germany. For only if Austria is
+    left free to exercise her natural protectorate over the Balkan States
+    can the passage between Germany and the Near Orient, one of the most
+    important routes of German commerce, be kept open.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Russia's unwillingness, then, to allow Austria a free hand in her
+    dealings with Servia was an open menace to Germany, a challenge which
+    had to be accepted unless Germany was prepared to abdicate all her
+    influence in the Near Orient and to allow Russia to override the
+    legitimate claims and aspirations of her only firm and faithful ally.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This formidable coalition of the three greatest European powers,
+    threatening the very existence of Germany, has now been joined by Japan,
+    openly and boldly for the purpose of snatching from Germany her one
+    Asiatic possession.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If any additional proof had been needed to make it clear that, if
+    Germany wanted to retain the slightest chance of extricating herself
+    from this worldwide conspiracy against her, she had to strike the first
+    blow, even at the risk of offending against international good manners,
+    this stab in the back by Japan would furnish such proof.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0044"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    Dr. Sanderson Replies
+</h2>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    Although I hate to enter into a controversy with Prof. Kuno Francke, who
+    was once my excellent friend, I cannot refrain from answering his
+    article which appeared in last Sunday's NEW YORK TIMES.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How can any one say, in all fairness, that Germany's policy toward
+    France during the last forty-three years has been one of the utmost
+    restraint and forbearance, and has been dictated by the one desire to
+    make her forget the loss of the two provinces? What are the facts? We
+    know that not once, but again and again, since 1878, Germany has tried
+    to provoke France into war. We know that on one occasion Queen Victoria
+    herself threatened the Kaiser with Great Britain's intervention if he
+    did not desist from his intended attack on France. And to cite only the
+    two most recent instances, the Agadir affair and the enforced
+    resignation of the French Premier, Delcassé! Would Germany have
+    swallowed such insults?
+</p>
+<p>
+    This may be the German conception of "utmost restraint and forbearance,"
+    but it appeared to the French, as it did to the rest of the world, that
+    it required their utmost restraint and forbearance to remain calm under
+    the affronts.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The fact that Alsace-Lorraine was German up to the seventeenth century,
+    and inhabited by German stock, cannot be brought forward today, after
+    more than 200 years, to justify the retaking of those provinces by the
+    Germans. The whole world would be in a state of continual warfare if
+    nations claimed provinces or States that belonged to them once upon a
+    time. Richelieu's idea was that the Rhine was the natural and
+    geographical frontier between France and Germany, and the war was
+    undertaken to carry out that plan. Since then the inhabitants have
+    become French, and the attempts to re-Germanize them have proved futile.
+    Prof. Francke may well doubt if the acquisition of these provinces was a
+    fortunate thing for Germany. It was undoubtedly the most unfortunate
+    thing not only for Germany but for France and the rest of Europe, for it
+    kept open a wound which might have been healed either by a return of the
+    lost provinces, with or without compensation, or by granting them
+    autonomy, or, better still, by leaving it to the inhabitants to choose
+    for themselves, as France did with Nice and Savoy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The ruthless methods of a Bismarck are no longer of this age. They are
+    too odious, and the human conscience revolts at them. What a
+    preposterous idea, in this twentieth century, to compel by force
+    millions of people to renounce their traditions and even their
+    language! If Great Britain had followed the same method in dealing with
+    the French Canadians, instead of loyal subjects she would have made
+    rebels of them all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is neither right nor just nor truthful to say that Germany has done
+    her best during the last four decades to heal the wounds struck by her
+    to French national pride. On the contrary, Germany's attitude has been
+    all along one of studied provocation; and if the instances already
+    mentioned are not sufficient, many others could be added.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Germany abetted French colonial expansion. Well, by what right should
+    she have opposed it? And if she yielded to France in Morocco, it was
+    only after France had given Germany part of her African possessions
+    rather than go to war with her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It will be news to the world to be informed that there can be no
+    reasonable doubt that the people of Alsace-Lorraine have been gradually
+    settling down to willing co-operation with the German administration.
+    Certainly such a statement is in violent contradiction with all we hear
+    and read and know of the state of mind, the feelings, and aspirations of
+    the inhabitants of those two provinces.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To argue that the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine is not a vital
+    necessity to France; that without these provinces she has recovered her
+    prosperity and her prestige, and that it is mere illusion to think that
+    the reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine would add to her glory is pure
+    sophistry. It is just as if you said to a man whom you had robbed of
+    some valuable property: "What does it matter? You are just as well off
+    without it." Yes, Prof. Larson did voice the sentiment of the vast
+    majority of his countrymen when he stated that France could not and
+    would not recognize the treaty of Frankfurt. If I have an enemy who
+    takes me by surprise and with revolver leveled at my head compels me to
+    sign a paper by which I despoil myself to his advantage, what is the
+    validity of such a document?
+</p>
+<p>
+    That is the way that all Frenchmen of all classes look upon the treaty
+    of Frankfurt, wrung from them under duress.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The term "revanche" is a slogan. It simply typifies in one word the
+    reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine; but it does not carry with it the idea of
+    willfully laying waste the enemy's country, burning and pillaging,
+    shooting inoffensive non-combatants, and cleaning banks of all the gold
+    they contain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Another statement which is misleading in Prof. Francke's article is the
+    one which refers to the "growing menace from France," in which he speaks
+    of the increasing armament that has been going on in that country since
+    1912. But what is called in Germany "the menace from France" is called
+    in the latter country "the menace from Germany." Who started these
+    enormous armaments? Each time Germany increased her army France was
+    forced to do the same; and when France recently increased from two to
+    three years the duration of military service, it was her only way of
+    meeting Germany's increase of 500,000 men.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The attempt to change the rôles and present France to the world as the
+    aggressor, or even as premeditating an attack upon Germany, is futile.
+    It is a strange and yet not uncommon psychological fact that the hate of
+    the conqueror is often greater than that of the conquered; and it is
+    German, not French, hate which has forced Germany into this savage war.
+    France had recovered too rapidly from her disasters; she was too rich;
+    her colonies were too vast and too prosperous; she must be crushed. What
+    right had she to have large colonies when Germany, the superior nation,
+    had none worth mentioning? There you have the key to the Kaiser's
+    repeated provocations and to his final attack.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In regard to England and Russia, the writer will simply confine himself
+    to the statement that if the German Imperial Government can produce as
+    clean a bill of health as the "White Paper" of the British Foreign
+    Office, just published, it will do more to convince American public
+    opinion of the justice of its cause than anything that has yet been
+    written in the press by Germans and their sympathizers.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    R.L. SANDERSON.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Yale University, New Haven, Conn., Sept. 5, 1914.
+</p>
+<a name="2H_4_0045"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h2>
+    In Defense of Austria
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Baron L. Hengelmuller.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center">     Late Austro-Hungarian Ambassador to the United States.
+</p>
+<br>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i>The following letter was written by Baron Hengelmuller to Col. Theodore
+    Roosevelt.</i>
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    ABBAZIA, Sept. 25, 1914.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    My Dear Mr. Roosevelt:
+</p>
+<p>
+    Our correspondence has suffered a long interruption. Your last letter
+    was from July of last year. I do not know whether you ever received my
+    answer, by which I thanked you for your preface to my book. You were in
+    Arizona when I wrote it, and soon after your return you started for
+    Brazil. At the occasion of your son's wedding I sent him a telegram to
+    Madrid, but I had no chance to write to you because I had no information
+    with regard to the length of your stay and your whereabouts in Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now I write to you at the time of a most momentous crisis in the world's
+    history, and I do so impelled by the desire to talk with you about my
+    country's cause and to win your just and fair appreciation for the same.
+    I wish I could address my appeal to the American people, but having no
+    standing and no opportunity to do so, I address it to you as to one of
+    America's most illustrious citizens with whom it has been my privilege
+    to entertain during many years the most friendly relations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Since the outbreak of the war our communications with America are slow
+    and irregular. In the beginning they were nil. From the end of July to
+    the middle of August we received neither letters, telegrams, nor papers.
+    I suppose it was the same with you concerning direct news from us. Our
+    adversaries had the field all for themselves and they seem to have made
+    the most of it. To judge from what I have learned since and from what I
+    could glean in our papers, the New York press seem to have written about
+    us and Germany very much in the same tone and spirit as they did about
+    you during your last Presidential campaign. I have seen it stated that
+    The Outlook published an article in which Austro-Hungary was accused of
+    having brought about the war through her greed of conquest and the
+    overbearing arrogance of her behavior toward Servia. I do not know
+    whether I cite correctly, as I have not seen the article, and I am aware
+    that you have severed your connection with The Outlook after your return
+    from Brazil. I only mention the statement as an illustration of what I
+    have said above, for if a review of the standing of The Outlook opens
+    its columns to such a glaringly false accusation the daily papers have
+    certainly not lagged behind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is natural that our adversaries should be anxious to win the
+    sympathies of the American people. So are we. But it is not for this
+    purpose that I now write to you. Sympathy is a sentiment and, as a rule,
+    not to be won by argument. What I want to discuss with you are the
+    causes of this war and the issues at stake.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The Cause of the War.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Undoubtedly the war broke out over our conflict with Servia, but this
+    conflict was not of our seeking. We had no wish of aggrandizement or
+    extension of power at the expense of Servia, but Servia covets territory
+    which belongs to us, and for years has pursued her ends by the most
+    nefarious and criminal means. The assassination of our heir to the crown
+    and his consort was not an isolated fact, but only the most glaring
+    link in a long chain of plotting and agitating against us. This
+    attitude of Servia toward us dates back to the day when the gang of
+    officers who murdered their own King came to power, and when it became
+    their policy to keep a hold over their own people by exciting their
+    ambitions against us. This policy reached its first climax when we
+    declared the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which we had occupied
+    and developed for thirty years. You were in office then, and the events
+    of the time are familiar to you. The crisis ended then by Servia's
+    formal acknowledgment that our annexation violated none of her rights,
+    and by her promise to cultivate henceforth correct and friendly
+    relations with us. This promise was not kept. The plotting continued,
+    lies were disseminated about a pretended oppression of our South Slav
+    population, and associations were formed for the purpose of stirring
+    them to discontent and if possible to treason.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Things came to a second climax with the murder of Archduke Francis
+    Ferdinand. The plot for this crime was hatched in Servia, the bombs and
+    revolvers for its execution were furnished there, and Servian officers
+    instructed the murder candidates in their use. At last we could stand it
+    no longer. What we wanted from Servia was the punishment of the plotters
+    and accomplices and a guarantee for normal relations in the future. This
+    was the object of our ultimatum. Servia made a show of complying with
+    some of our demands, but in reality her answer was evasive.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These facts are exposed and authenticated in the note which we sent to
+    the powers after having presented our ultimatum in Belgrade and in the
+    memorandum which accompanied it. I do not know whether the American
+    papers published these documents at the time. Today they are outstripped
+    by greater events, but for the just appreciation of our proceedings in
+    regard to Servia they are indispensable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In reality, however, our conflict with Servia was not the cause of the
+    great war now raging, but only the spark which brought the overloaded
+    powder barrel to explosion. Who talks of Servia today, and who believes
+    that France, England, and Japan are making war on Germany and on us
+    because of Servia? The war broke out because Russia decided to shield
+    Servia against the consequences of her provocations and because, owing
+    to preconcerted arrangements, the situation in Europe was such that the
+    action of one great power was bound to bring all or nearly all the
+    others into the field. And again those preconcerted arrangements were
+    the outcome of a mass of pent-up passions, of hatred, envy, and
+    jealousy, the like of which&mdash;all Hague conferences and pacific unions
+    notwithstanding&mdash;the world has never seen before.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We are fully aware of the danger which threatened us from Russia when we
+    formulated our demands in Belgrade. Russia's population is three times
+    as large as ours and it was not with a light heart that our Emperor-King
+    took his final resolution. But our national honor and our very existence
+    as a self-respecting power were at stake. We could not hesitate. Now we
+    are in a struggle for life or death and we mean to carry it through with
+    full confidence in the rightfulness of our cause and in the force of our
+    arms. In one respect events have already belied the calculations of our
+    enemies, who counted on internal dissensions within our own borders. I
+    am happy to say that Croatians, Slovenes, and a large majority of our
+    own Servians are fighting in our ranks with the same valor and
+    enthusiasm as Czechs, Rumanians, Poles, Magyars, and Germans.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But why did Russia decide to assail us? During the whole nineteenth
+    century she has shown herself a very shifty and unreliable protectress
+    of Servia. She made use of the smaller country when it suited her own
+    aggressive purposes against others, and she dropped it whenever it
+    served her ends. It was so at the time of the Turkish war of 1877 and of
+    the Berlin Congress, and it remained so until with the advent of the
+    present dynasty Servia offered a sure prospect of becoming and remaining
+    a permanent tool in Russia's hands and a thorn in our flesh.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Russia is an aggressive power. For 200 years she has extended her
+    dominions at the cost of Sweden first, of Poland and Turkey afterward.
+    Now she thinks our turn has come. Finding us to be in the way of her
+    ultimate aims in the Balkan Peninsula, she began to regard us as her
+    enemy. For years the propaganda for undermining the bases of our empire
+    has been carried on in the name of Pan-Slavism. It seems that she judged
+    that now the time had come to draw the consequences and to bring things
+    to a final issue. With what result remains to be seen.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Germany Bound to Aid Austria.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    By the terms of our treaty of alliance Germany was bound to come to our
+    assistance if we were attacked by Russia. There was no secrecy about
+    that treaty. Its text had been made public long ago and its purely
+    defensive character brought to the knowledge of the world. No more than
+    we did Germany entertain hostile intentions or nourish hostile feelings
+    against Russia. There were no clashing interests to excite the first, no
+    historical reminiscences to justify the second. If it is otherwise in
+    Russia, it is because her present leaders find German power in the way
+    of their conquering aspirations against us. Germany, true to her
+    obligations, hastened to our side when she saw us menaced, and when she
+    declared war she did it because she had positive information that in
+    spite of formal and solemn assurances to the contrary Russia
+    mobilization was proceeding.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The terms of the Franco-Russian alliance have never been made public.
+    Whether it was concluded merely for defensive or also for offensive
+    purposes, and whether France was obliged by her treaty to draw the sword
+    in the present case, remains therefore a matter of surmise. But there is
+    no mystery about the feelings of France with regard to Germany, and no
+    doubt about the greed for revenge which during the last forty-four years
+    has swayed the overwhelming majority of her people and been the
+    dominant factor of her foreign policy. It was for this object that she
+    entered into her alliances and agreements, and it is for this cause that
+    she is fighting now.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is simple hypocrisy to talk about German aggressiveness against
+    France. France stood in no danger of being attacked by Germany if she
+    had chosen to remain neutral in the latter's war with Russia. Asked
+    whether she would do so, she replied that her actions would be guided by
+    her interests. The meaning of this reply was clear, and left Germany no
+    choice. The formal declaration of war became then a mere matter of
+    political and military convenience, and has no bearing on the moral
+    issue of the case.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But why has England plunged into this war? Officially and to the world
+    at large she has explained her resolution by Germany's violation of
+    Belgian neutrality, and in the royal message to Parliament it was
+    solemnly declared that England could not stand by and passively tolerate
+    such a breach of international law and obligations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    No Austrian can read this declaration otherwise than with a mournful
+    smile. Its futility has been exposed by the question which Englishmen of
+    standing and renown have put to their Government, viz., whether they
+    would equally have declared war on France if that violation of
+    neutrality had first come from her side. In face of this question having
+    remained unanswered, and in face of what has come to light since about
+    French preparations in Belgium, there is no need to expiate on this
+    subject. All that there is to be said about it has been said by the
+    German Chancellor in open session of the Reichstag, and all that may be
+    added is the remark that, considering England's history and what she did
+    before Copenhagen in 1807, she of all nations should be the last to put
+    on airs of moral indignation over the application of the principle that
+    in time of war "salus reipublicae suprema lex est."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The existence of a convention binding England to France in case of war
+    has&mdash;as far as I know&mdash;never been admitted officially by England. As I
+    see now from manifestations of Englishmen disapproving of their
+    country's participation in the war, the belief exists nevertheless that
+    such a convention had been concluded. But whether England's declaration
+    of war was the consequence of previously entered obligations or the
+    outcome of present free initiative, the main fact remains that in the
+    last resort it sprang from jealousy of Germany's growing sea power and
+    commercial prosperity. This feeling was the dominant factor in English
+    foreign policy, just as greed for revenge was in France. It was the
+    propelling power for the agreements which England has made and for
+    others which she endeavored but did not succeed in bringing about.
+</p>
+<p>
+    England claims the dominion over the seas as her native right, and, what
+    is more, she holds it. Her title is no better and no worse than that of
+    the Romans when they conquered the world, or of the Turkish Sultans in
+    the days of their power. Like them, she has succeeded in making good her
+    claim. For three centuries the nations of Continental Europe have been
+    hating, fighting, and devastating each other for the sake of strips of
+    frontier land and a shadowy balance of power. These centuries were
+    England's opportunity, and she has made the most of it. That she should
+    mean to keep what she has and hold to her maritime supremacy as to the
+    apple of her eye is natural. Whether it is for the benefit of mankind
+    that it should be so, and whether the world in general would not be
+    better off if there existed a balance of power on sea as well as on
+    land, does not enter into the present discussion. What is more to the
+    purpose is that in reality England's sea power stood in no danger at
+    all. To any thinking and fair-minded observer it must be clear that
+    Germany, hemmed in by hostile neighbors in the east and west, and
+    obliged, therefore, to keep up her armaments on land, would not have
+    been able to threaten England's maritime superiority for generations to
+    come. If the issue has been thrown into the balance, it has been done so
+    by England's own doing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But it is not only the nascent German Navy that excited the distrust
+    and envy of England. German colonies and every trading German vessel
+    seem equally to have become thorns in English eyes. The wish to sweep
+    those vessels from off the seas, to destroy all German ports, in one
+    word, to down Germany, has long been nourished and lately openly avowed
+    in England. Norman Angell's theories about the great illusion of the
+    profitability of modern warfare seem to have made mighty small
+    impression on his countrymen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Russian lust of conquest, French greed of revenge, and English envy were
+    the forces at work in the European powder magazine. The Servian spark
+    ignited it, but the explosion was bound to come sooner or later. What
+    alone could have stopped it would have been England's stepping out of
+    the conspiracy. That she did not do so, in fact became its really
+    directing power, will forever remain a blot on her history.
+</p>
+<p>
+    About Japan's motives and methods I do not think it necessary to write.
+    American public opinion will hardly need any enlightenment on this
+    subject. America forced Japan out of the isolation in which she had
+    lived during centuries. I hope the day may not come when she will wish
+    that she had not done so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The issues of the war stand in relation to its causes and the same
+    attempts have been made to distort and falsify them in the eyes of the
+    American public. I have seen it stated in a New York paper that this war
+    is a fight between civilization and barbarism, and I have seen a member
+    of the present English Cabinet quoted as having said that the issue was
+    one between militarism and freedom, civilization and freedom standing,
+    of course, in both cases on the side of our enemies.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Not a War for Civilization.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    More idiotic rot&mdash;excuse the expression&mdash;I have never read in my life.
+    What has civilization to do with Servia's murderous plotting against us?
+    What with Russia's desire to shield her from the consequences of her
+    aggressions and to demonstrate to the world that we are of no account
+    in the Balkans and to establish her own&mdash;more or less
+    veiled&mdash;protectorate there? And if the case of civilization is advanced
+    by Japan's ousting Germany from Kiao-Chau, why should it not be equally
+    furthered if Japan did the same to England in Hongkong, Singapore, or,
+    if the opportunity offered, in India itself? And a person must be indeed
+    at his wits' end for arguments to proclaim Russia as a standard bearer
+    of freedom in her war against us. Compare her treatment of Poles, Finns,
+    Ukrainanians (small Russians) and Hebrews with the freedom which the
+    different nationalities enjoy in our empire! And England herself. Is it
+    for freedom's sake that she holds Gibraltar and that she subjugated the
+    Boers?
+</p>
+<p>
+    No! Civilization and freedom have nothing to do with the issues at stake
+    now, least of all in the sense that our enemies have drawn the sword for
+    their cause. It is a war for conquest and supremacy stirred up by all
+    the hateful passions in human nature, fully as much as any war that has
+    ever been waged before. But we did not stir it up. We are fighting for
+    our existence, right and justice are on our side, and so we trust will
+    victory be.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The causes of the war are clear. To make its issues still clearer,
+    imagine for a moment and merely for argument's sake the consequences of
+    our adversaries being successful. Russia, England, and Japan would
+    remain masters of the field. Is this a consummation any thinking
+    American can wish for?
+</p>
+<p>
+    These are the considerations I wished to lay before you, and I ask your
+    assistance to bring them before the American people. I ask for no reply,
+    no manifestation of feelings or opinion from you. What I ask you is to
+    publish this letter as an open letter addressed by me to you, signed
+    with my full name. How to do this I leave entirely to you. It goes
+    without saying that your private reply, if you favor me with one, will
+    be treated as such.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Hoping to meet you in better times, and sending our kindest regards to
+    Mrs. Roosevelt, believe me, yours most sincerely,
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    BARON L. HENGELMULLER.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Abbazia, Sept. 25, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0046"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    Russian Atrocities
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By George Haven Putnam.
+</h3>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>     Publisher, Director of the Knickerbocker Press, Secretary
+     American Copyright League; decorated with the Cross of the
+     Legion of Honor, France.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is possible that the letter presented herewith from a German neighbor
+    (who is a stranger to me) may be of interest to your readers as an
+    example of a curious confusion of thought into which have fallen Germans
+    on both sides of the Atlantic in regard to the issues of the present
+    struggle and the conduct and the actions of the German Army. I am
+    inclosing a copy of my reply to Mr. Thienes.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    New York, Nov. 4, 1914.
+</p>
+<center>
+    THE LETTER.
+</center>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 1914.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    Mr. George Haven Putnam.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    DEAR SIR:</p>
+<p>
+    Now that you have shown your &quot;true&quot; spirit of neutrality toward Germany,
+    would you not be kind enough to give us a similar piece of your wisdom and
+    describe in detail the way the Russians acted in East Prussia during their
+    short stay there, and how they murdered, tortured, and assaulted women and
+    girls, and cut children and infants to pieces without even the provocation
+    of &quot;sniping&quot;?
+</p>
+<p>
+    This, your new article in THE TIMES, I anticipate with the greatest
+    interest.
+</p>
+<p align="right" style="text-align: right">RUDOLF F. THIENES. </p>
+<center>
+    THE REPLY.
+</center>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    Rudolf F. Thienes, Esq.
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    MY DEAR SIR:</p>
+<p>
+    Your letter of the 28th inst., intended as a rejoinder to a letter recently
+    printed by me in THE TIMES, is written under a misapprehension in regard to
+    one important matter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Americans, who are in a position to judge impartially in regard to
+    the issues of the war, have criticised the official acts which have
+    attended the devastation of Belgium, not because these acts were
+    committed by Germans, but because they were in themselves abominable and
+    contrary to precedents and to civilized standards.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If the Russians had, under official order, burned Lemburg, including the
+    university and the library, and executed the Burgomaster, they would
+    have come under the same condemnation from Americans that has been given
+    to Germans for the burning of Louvain and Aerschot and the shooting of
+    the Aerschot Burgomaster. I am myself familiar with Germany. I am an
+    old-time German student, and I have German friends on both sides of the
+    Atlantic, and I am in a position to sympathize with legitimate
+    aspirations and ideals of these German friends.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am convinced, however, that no nation can secure in this twentieth
+    century its rightful development unless its national conduct is
+    regulated with a "decent respect to the opinions of mankind." The
+    references made in my TIMES letters were restricted to official actions;
+    things done under the direction of the military commanders acting in
+    accord with the instructions or the general policy of the Imperial
+    Government.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The misdeeds of individual soldiers are difficult to verify. While these
+    are always exaggerated, it remains the sad truth that every big army
+    contains a certain percentage of ruffians, and that when these ruffians
+    are let loose in a community, with weapons and with military power
+    behind them, bad things are done. It is my own belief that the material
+    in the German Army (which is the best fighting machine that the world
+    has ever seen) will compare favorably with that of any army in the
+    world, and that the percentage of wrongful acts on the part of the
+    German soldiers has been small. Such misdeeds, sometimes to be
+    characterized as atrocities, are the inevitable result of war, and they
+    bring a grave responsibility upon a Government which (to accept as well
+    founded the frank utterances of the leaders of opinion in Germany) has
+    initiated this war for the purpose of "crushing France and of breaking
+    up the British Empire."
+</p>
+<p>
+    You appear to think that it is in order for Germany to visit upon
+    unoffending Belgians reprisal for the misdeeds (as far as such misdeeds
+    may be in evidence) committed by Russians in East Prussia. I cannot see
+    that this contention is in accord with justice or with common sense.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    New York, Oct. 28, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0047"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    "The United States of Europe"
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    INTERVIEW WITH NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER.
+</h3>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>     Dr. Butler is President of Columbia University; received
+     Republican electoral vote for Vice President of the United
+     States, 1913; President of American Branch of Conciliation
+     Internationale; President American Historical Association;
+     Trustee Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Commander
+     Order of the Red Eagle (with Star) of Prussia; Commandeur de
+     Legion d'Honneur of France.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<h3>
+    By Edward Marshall.
+</h3>
+<br>
+<p>
+    The United States of Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, firmly
+    believes that the organization of such a federation will be the outcome,
+    soon or late, of a situation built up through years of European failure
+    to adjust government to the growth of civilization.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He thinks it possible that the ending of the present war may see the
+    rising of the new sun of democracy to light a day of freedom for our
+    transatlantic neighbors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He tells me that thinking men in all the contending nations are
+    beginning vividly to consider such a contingency, to argue for it or
+    against it; in other words, to regard it as an undoubted possibility.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dr. Butler's acquaintance among those thinking men of all shades of
+    political belief is probably wider than that of any other American, and
+    it is significant of the startling importance of what he says that by
+    far the greater number of his European friends, the men upon whose views
+    he has largely, directly or indirectly, based his conclusions, are not
+    of the socialistic or of any other revolutionary or semi-revolutionary
+    groups, but are among the most conservative and most important figures
+    in European political, literary, and educational fields.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This being unquestionably true, it is by no means improbable that in the
+    interview which follows, fruit of two evenings in Dr. Butler's library,
+    may be found the most important speculative utterance yet to appear in
+    relation to the general European war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dr. Butler's estimate of the place which the United States now holds
+    upon the stage of the theatre of world progress and his forecast of the
+    tremendously momentous rôle which she is destined to play there must
+    make every American's heart first swell with pride and then thrill with
+    a realization of responsibility.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The United States of Europe, modeled after and instructed by the United
+    States of America! The thought is stimulating.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Said Dr. Butler:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The European cataclysm puts the people of the United States in a unique
+    and tremendously important position. As neutrals we are able to observe
+    events and to learn the lesson that they teach. If we learn rightly we
+    shall gain for ourselves and be able to confer upon others benefits far
+    more important than any of the material advantages which may come to us
+    through a shrewd handling of the new possibilities in international
+    trade.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I hesitate to discuss any phase of the great conflict now raging in
+    Europe. By today's mail, for example, I received long, personal letters
+    from Lord Haldane, from Lord Morley, from Lord Weardale, and from Lord
+    Bryce. Another has just come from Prof. Schiemann of Berlin, perhaps the
+    Emperor's most intimate adviser; another from Prof. Lamasch of Austria,
+    who was the Presiding Judge of the British-American arbitration in
+    relation to the Newfoundland fisheries a few years ago, and is a member
+    of the Austrian House of Peers. Still others are from M. Ribot, Minister
+    of Finance in France, and M. d'Estournelles de Constant. These
+    confidential letters give a wealth of information as to the intellectual
+    and political forces that are behind the conflict.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You will understand, then, that without disloyalty to my many friends
+    in Europe, I could not discuss with freedom the causes or the progress
+    of the war, or speculate in detail about the future of the European
+    problem. My friends in Germany, France, and England all write to me with
+    the utmost freedom and not for the public eye; so you see that my great
+    difficulty, when you ask me to talk about the meaning of the struggle,
+    arises from the obligation that I am under to preserve a proper personal
+    reserve regarding the great figures behind the vast intellectual and
+    political changes which really are in the background of the war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If such reserve is necessary in my case, it seems to me that it also is
+    necessary for the country as a whole. The attitude of the President has
+    been impeccable. That of the whole American press and people should be
+    the same.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Especially is it true that all Americans who hope to have influence, as
+    individuals, in shaping the events which will follow the war, must avoid
+    any expression which even might be tortured into an avowal of
+    partisanship or final judgment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Even the free expression of views criticising particular details of the
+    war, which might, in fact, deserve criticism, might destroy one's chance
+    of future possible usefulness. A statement which might be unquestionably
+    true might also be remembered to the damage of some important cause
+    later on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There are reasons why my position is, perhaps, more difficult than that
+    of some others. Talking is often a hazardous practice, and never more so
+    than now.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The World is at crossroads, and everything may depend upon the United
+    States, which has been thrust by events into a unique position of moral
+    leadership. Whether the march of the future is to be to the right or to
+    the left, uphill or down, after the war is over, may well depend upon
+    the course this nation shall then take, and upon the influence which it
+    shall exercise.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If we keep our heads clear there are two things that we can bring
+    insistently to the attention of Europe&mdash;each of vast import at such a
+    time as that which will follow the ending of this war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The first of these is the fact that race antagonisms die away and
+    disappear under the influence of liberal and enlightened political
+    institutions. This has been proved in the United States.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We have huge Celtic, Latin, Teutonic and Slavic populations all living
+    here at peace and in harmony; and, as years pass, they tend to merge,
+    creating new and homogeneous types. The Old World antagonisms have
+    become memories. This proves that such antagonisms are not mysterious
+    attributes of geography or climate, but that they are the outgrowth
+    principally of social and political conditions. Here a man can do about
+    what he likes, so long as he does not violate the law; he may pray as he
+    pleases or not at all, and he may speak any language that he chooses.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The United States is itself proof that most of the contentions of
+    Europeans as to race antagonisms are ill-founded. We have demonstrated
+    that racial antagonisms need not necessarily become the basis of
+    permanent hatreds and an excuse for war."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Hyphens Are Going.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "If human beings are given the chance they will make the most of
+    themselves, and, by living happily&mdash;which means by living at peace&mdash;they
+    will avoid conflict. The hyphen tends to disappear from American
+    terminology. The German-American, the Italio-American, the
+    Irish-American all become Americans.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So, by and large, our institutions have proved their capacity to
+    amalgamate and to set free every type of human being which thus far has
+    come under our flag. There is in this a lesson which may well be taken
+    seriously to heart by the leaders of opinion in Europe when this war
+    ends.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The second thing which we may press, with propriety, upon the attention
+    of the people of Europe after peace comes to them is the fact that we
+    are not only the great exponents but the great example of the success of
+    the principle of federation in its application to unity of political
+    life regardless of local, economic, and racial differences.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If our fathers had attempted to organize this country upon the basis of
+    a single, closely unified State, it would have gone to smash almost at
+    the outset, wrecked by clashing economic and personal interests. Indeed,
+    this nearly happened in the civil war, which was more economic than
+    political in its origin.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, though we had our difficulties, we did find a way to make a
+    unified nation of a hundred million people and forty-eight
+    Commonwealths, all bound together in unity and in loyalty to a common
+    political ideal and a common political purpose.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just as certainly as we sit here this must and will be the future of
+    Europe. There will be a federation into the United States of Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When one nation sets out to assert itself by force against the will, or
+    even the wish, of its neighbors, disaster must inevitably come. Disaster
+    would have come here if, in 1789, New York had endeavored to assert
+    itself against New England or Pennsylvania.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As a matter of fact, certain inhabitants of Rhode Island and
+    Pennsylvania did try something of the sort after the Federal Government
+    had been formed, but, fortunately, their effort was a failure.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The leaders of our national life had established such a flexible and
+    admirable plan of government that it was soon apparent that each State
+    could retain its identity, forming its own ideals and shaping its own
+    progress, and still remain a loyal part of the whole; that each State
+    could make a place for itself in the new federated nation and not be
+    destroyed thereby.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There is no reason why each nation in Europe should not make a place
+    for itself in the sun of unity which I am sure is rising there behind
+    the war clouds. Europe's stupendous economic loss, which already has
+    been appalling and will soon be incalculable, will give us an
+    opportunity to press this argument home.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "True internationalism is not the enemy of the nationalistic principle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On the contrary, it helps true nationalism to thrive. The Vermonter is
+    more a Vermonter because he is an American, and there is no reason why
+    Hungary, for example, should not be more than ever before Hungarian
+    after she becomes a member of the United States of Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Europe, of course, is not without examples of the successful
+    application of the principle of federation within itself. It so happens
+    that the federated State next greatest to our own is the German Empire.
+    It is only forty-three years old, but their federation has been notably
+    successful. So the idea of federation is familiar to German publicists.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It is familiar, also, to the English, and has lately been pressed there
+    as the probable final solution of the Irish question.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It has insistently suggested itself as the solution of the Balkan
+    problem.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In a lesser way it already is represented in the structure of
+    Austria-Hungary."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    America's Great Work.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "This principle of nation building, of international building through
+    federation, certainly has in it the seeds of the world's next great
+    development&mdash;and we Americans are in a position both to expand the
+    theory and to illustrate the practice. It seems to me that this is the
+    greatest work which America will have to do at the end of this war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "These are the things which I am writing to my European correspondents
+    in the several belligerent countries by every mail.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The cataclysm is so awful that it is quite within the bounds of truth
+    to say that on July 31 the curtain went down upon a world which never
+    will be seen again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This conflict is the birth-throe of a new European order of things. The
+    man who attempts to judge the future by the old standards or to force
+    the future back to them will be found to be hopelessly out of date. The
+    world will have no use for him. The world has left behind forever the
+    international policies of Palmerston and of Beaconsfield and even those
+    of Bismarck, which were far more powerful.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When the war ends conditions will be such that a new kind of
+    imagination and a new kind of statesmanship will be required. This war
+    will prove to be the most effective education of 500,000,000 people
+    which possibly could have been thought of, although it is the most
+    costly and most terrible means which could have been chosen. The results
+    of this education will be shown, I think, in the process of general
+    reconstruction which will follow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All the talk of which we hear so much about, the peril from the Slav or
+    from the Teuton or from the Celt, is unworthy of serious attention. It
+    would be quite as reasonable to discuss seriously the red-headed peril
+    or the six-footer peril.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There is no peril to the world in the Slav, the Teuton, the Celt, or
+    any other race, provided the people of that race have an opportunity to
+    develop as social and economic units, and are not bottled up so that an
+    explosion must come.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It is my firm belief that nowhere in the world, from this time on, will
+    any form of government be tolerated which does not set men free to
+    develop in this fashion."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I asked Dr. Butler to make some prognostication of what the United
+    States of Europe, which he so confidently expects, will be. He answered:
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Has Advanced Much.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "I can say only this: The international organization of the world
+    already has progressed much further than is ordinarily understood. Ever
+    since the Franco-Prussian war and the Geneva Arbitration, both
+    landmarks in modern history, this has advanced inconspicuously, but by
+    leaps and bounds.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The postal service of the world has been internationalized in its
+    control for years. The several Postal Conventions have been evidences of
+    an international organization of the highest order.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Europe abounds in illustrations of the international administration of
+    large things. The very laws of war, which are at present the subject of
+    so much and such bitter discussion, are the result of international
+    organization.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They were not adopted by a Congress, a Parliament, or a Reichstag. They
+    were agreed to by many and divergent peoples, who sent representatives
+    to meet for their discussion and determination."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    One of the Examples.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "In the admiralty law we have a most striking example of uniformity of
+    practice in all parts of the world. If a ship is captured or harmed in
+    the Far East and taken into Yokohama or Nagasaki, damages will be
+    assessed and collected precisely as they would be in New York or
+    Liverpool.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The world is gradually developing a code for international legal
+    procedure. Special arbitral tribunals have tended to merge and grow into
+    the international court at The Hague, and that, in turn, will develop
+    until it becomes a real supreme judicial tribunal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course the analogy with the federated State fails at some points,
+    but I believe the time will come when each nation will deposit in a
+    world federation some portion of its sovereignty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When this occurs we shall be able to establish an international
+    executive and an international police, both devised for the especial
+    purpose of enforcing the decisions of the international court.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Here, again, we offer a perfect object lesson. Our Central Government
+    is one of limited and defined powers. Our history can show Europe how
+    such limitations and definitions can be established and interpreted, and
+    how they can be modified and amended when necessary to meet new
+    conditions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My colleague, Prof. John Bassett Moore, is now preparing and publishing
+    a series of annotated reports of the international arbitration
+    tribunals, in order that the Governments and jurists of the world may
+    have at hand, as they have in the United States Supreme Court, reports,
+    a record of decided cases which, when the time comes, may be referred to
+    as precedents.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It will be through graded processes such as this that the great end
+    will be accomplished. Beginning with such annotated reports as a basis
+    for precedents, each new case tried before this tribunal will add a
+    further precedent, and presently a complete international code will be
+    in existence. It was in this way that the English common law was built,
+    and such has been the admirable history of the work done by our own
+    judicial system.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The study of such problems is at this time infinitely more important
+    than the consideration of how large a fine shall be inflicted by the
+    victors upon the vanquished."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The Chief Result.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "There is the probability of some dislocation of territory and some
+    shiftings of sovereignty after the war ends, but these will be of
+    comparatively minor importance. The important result of this great war
+    will be the stimulation of international organization along some such
+    lines as I have suggested.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dislocation of territory and the shifting of sovereigns as the result
+    of international disagreements are mediaeval practices. After this war
+    the world will want to solve its problems in terms of the future, not in
+    those of the outgrown past.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Conventional diplomacy and conventional statesmanship have very
+    evidently broken down in Europe. They have made a disastrous failure of
+    the work with which they were intrusted. They did not and could not
+    prevent the war because they knew and used only the old formulas. They
+    had no tools for a job like this.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A new type of international statesman is certain to arise, who will
+    have a grasp of new tendencies, a new outlook upon life. Bismarck used
+    to say that it would pay any nation to wear the clean linen of a
+    civilized State. The truth of this must be taught to those nations of
+    the world which are weakest in morale, and it can only be done, I
+    suppose, as similar work is accomplished with individuals. Courts, not
+    killings, have accomplished it with individuals.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One more point ought to be remembered. We sometimes hear it said that
+    nationalism, the desire for national expression by each individual
+    nation, makes the permanent peace and good order of the world
+    impossible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To me it seems absurd to believe that this is any truer of nations than
+    it is of individuals. It is not each nation's desire for national
+    oppression which makes peace impossible; it is the fact that thus far in
+    the world's history such desire has been bound up with militarism.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The nation whose frontier bristles with bayonets and with forts is like
+    the individual with a magazine pistol in his pocket. Both make for
+    murder. Both in their hearts really mean murder.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The world will be better when the nations invite the judgment of their
+    neighbors and are influenced by it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When John Hay said that the Golden Rule and the open door should guide
+    our new diplomacy he said something which should be applicable to the
+    new diplomacy of the whole world. The Golden Rule and a free chance are
+    all that any man ought to want or ought to have, and they are all that
+    any nation ought to want or ought to have.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One of the controlling principles of a democratic State is that its
+    military and naval establishments must be completely subservient to the
+    civil power. They should form the police, and not be the dominant factor
+    of any national life.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As soon as they go beyond this simple function in any nation, then that
+    nation is afflicted with militarism.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It is difficult to make predictions of the war's effect on us. As I see
+    it, our position will depend a good deal upon the outcome of the
+    conflict, and what that will be no one at present knows.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If a new map of Europe follows the war, its permanence will depend upon
+    whether or not the changes are such as will permit nationalities to
+    organize as nations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The world should have learned through the lessons of the past that it
+    is impossible permanently and peacefully to submerge large bodies of
+    aliens if they are treated as aliens. That is the opposite of the mixing
+    process which is so successfully building a nation out of varied
+    nationalities in the United States.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The old Romans understood this. They permitted their outlying vassal
+    nations to speak any language they chose and to worship whatever god
+    they chose, so long as they recognized the sovereignty of Rome. When a
+    conquering nation goes beyond that, and begins to suppress religions,
+    languages, and customs, it begins at that very moment to sow the seeds
+    of insurrection and revolution.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My old teacher and colleague, Prof. Burgess, once defined a nation as
+    an ethnographic unit inhabiting a geographic unit. That is an
+    illuminating definition. If a nation is not an ethnographic unit, it
+    tries to become one by oppressing or amalgamating the weaker portions of
+    its people. If it is not a geographic unit, it tries to become one by
+    reaching out to a mountain chain or to the sea&mdash;to something which will
+    serve as a real dividing line between it and its next neighbors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The accuracy of this definition can hardly be denied, and we all know
+    what the violations of this principle have been in Europe. It is
+    unnecessary for me to point them out.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Races rarely have been successfully mixed by conquest. The military
+    winner of a war is not always the real conqueror in the long run. The
+    Normans conquered Saxon England, but Saxon law and Saxon institutions
+    worked up through the new power and have dominated England's later
+    history. The Teutonic tribes conquered Rome, but Roman civilization, by
+    a sort of capillary attraction, went up into the mass above and
+    presently dominated the Teutons.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The persistency of a civilization may well be superior in tenacity to
+    mere military conquest and control.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The smallness of the number of instances in which conquering nations
+    have been able successfully to deal with alien peoples is extraordinary.
+    The Romans were unusually successful, and England has been successful
+    with all but the Irish, but perhaps no other peoples have been
+    successful in high degree in an effort to hold alien populations as
+    vassals and to make them really happy and comfortable as such.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One of the war's chief effects on us will be to change our point of
+    view. Europe will be more vivid to us from now on. There are many public
+    men who have never thought much about Europe, and who have been far from
+    a realization of its actual importance to us. It has been a place to
+    which to go for a Summer holiday.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, suddenly, they find they cannot sell their cotton there or their
+    copper, that they cannot market their stocks and bonds there, that they
+    cannot send money to their families who are traveling there, because
+    there is a war. To such men the war must have made it apparent that
+    interdependence among nations is more than a mere phrase.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All our trade and all our economic and social policies must recognize
+    this. The world has discovered that cash without credit means little.
+    One cannot use cash if one cannot use one's credit to draw it whenever
+    and wherever needed. Credit is intangible and volatile, and may be
+    destroyed over night.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I saw this in Venice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On July 31 I could have drawn every cent that my letter of credit
+    called for up to the time the banks closed. At 10 in the morning on the
+    1st of August I could not draw the value of a postage stamp.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yet the banker in New York who issued my letter of credit had not
+    failed. His standing was as good as ever it had been. But the world's
+    system of international exchange of credit had suffered a stroke of
+    paralysis over night.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This realization of international interdependence, I hope, will
+    elevate and refine our patriotism by teaching men a wider sympathy and a
+    deeper understanding of other peoples, nations, and languages. I
+    sincerely hope it will educate us up to what I have called 'The
+    International Mind.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When Joseph Chamberlain began his campaign after returning from South
+    Africa his keynote was, 'Learn to think imperially.' I think ours should
+    be, 'Learn to think internationally,' to see ourselves not in
+    competition with the other peoples of the world, but working with them
+    toward a common end, the advance of civilization."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    A Note of Optimism.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "There are hopeful signs, even in the midst of the gloom that hangs over
+    us. Think what it has meant for the great nations of Europe to have come
+    to us, as they have done, asking our favorable public opinion. We have
+    no army and navy worthy of their fears. They can have been induced by
+    nothing save their conviction that we are the possessors of sound
+    political ideals and a great moral force.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In other words, they do not want us to fight for them, but they do want
+    us to approve of them. They want us to pass judgment upon the humanity
+    and the legality of their acts, because they feel that our judgment
+    will be the judgment of history. There is a lesson in this.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If we had not repealed the Panama Canal Tolls Exemption act last June
+    they would not have come to us as they are doing now. Who would have
+    cared for our opinion in the matter of a treaty violation if, for mere
+    financial interest or from sheer vanity, we ourselves had violated a
+    solemn treaty?
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When Congress repealed the Panama Canal Tolls Exemption act it marked
+    an epoch in the history of the United States. This did more than the
+    Spanish war, than the building of the Panama Canal, or than anything
+    else I think of, to make us a true world power.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "As a nation we have kept our word when sorely tempted to break it. We
+    made Cuba independent, we have not exploited the Philippines, we have
+    stood by our word as to Panama Canal tolls.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In consequence we are the first moral power in the world today. Others
+    may be first with armies, still others first with navies. But we have
+    made good our right to be appealed to on questions of national and
+    international morality. That Europe is seeking our favor is the tribute
+    of the European nations to this fact."
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0048"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    A New World Map
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Wilhelm Ostwald.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center">     Late Visiting Professor to Harvard and Columbia Universities
+     from the University of Leipsic.
+</p>
+<br>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>
+    <i>The following article is extracted from a letter written by Prof.
+    Ostwald to Edwin D. Mead, Director of the World Peace Foundation.</i>
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    The war is the result of a deliberate onslaught upon Germany and Austria
+    by the powers of the Triple Entente&mdash;Russia, France, and England. Its
+    object is on the part of Russia an extension of Russian supremacy over
+    the Balkans, on the side of France revenge, and on the side of England
+    annihilation of the German Navy and German commerce. In England
+    especially it has been for several centuries a constant policy to
+    destroy upon favoring occasion every navy of every other country which
+    threatened to become equal to the English Navy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Germany has proved its love of peace for forty-four years under the most
+    trying circumstances. While all other States have expanded themselves
+    by conquest, Russia in Manchuria, England in the Transvaal, France in
+    Morocco, Italy in Tripoli, Austria in Bosnia, Japan in Korea, Germany
+    alone has contented itself with the borders fixed in 1871. It is purely
+    a war of defense which is now forced upon us.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the face of these attacks Germany has until now (the end of August)
+    proved its military superiority, which rests upon the fact that the
+    entire German military force is scientifically organized and honestly
+    administered.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The violation of Belgian neutrality was an act of military necessity,
+    since it is now proved that Belgian neutrality was to be violated by
+    France and England. A proof of this is the accumulation of English
+    munitions in Maubeuge, aside from many other facts.
+</p>
+<p>
+    According to the course of the war up to the present time, European
+    peace seems to me nearer than ever before. We pacificists must only
+    understand that unhappily the time was not yet sufficiently developed to
+    establish peace by the peaceful way. If Germany, as everything now seems
+    to make probable, is victorious in the struggle not only with Russia and
+    France but attains the further end of destroying the source from which
+    for two or three centuries all European strifes have been nourished and
+    intensified, namely, the English policy of world dominion, then will
+    Germany, fortified on one side by its military superiority, on the other
+    side by the eminently peaceful sentiment of the greatest part of its
+    people, and especially of the German Emperor, dictate peace to the rest
+    of Europe, I hope especially that the future treaty of peace will in
+    the first place provide effectually that a European war such as the
+    present can never again break out.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I hope, moreover, that the Russian people, after the conquest of their
+    armies, will free themselves from Czarism through an internal movement
+    by which the present political Russia will be resolved into its natural
+    units, namely, Great Russia, the Caucasus, Little Russia, Poland,
+    Siberia, and Finland, to which probably the Baltic provinces would join
+    themselves. These, I trust, would unite themselves with Finland and
+    Sweden, and perhaps with Norway and Denmark, into a Baltic federation,
+    which in close connection with Germany would insure European peace, and
+    especially form a bulwark against any disposition to war which might
+    remain in Great Britain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For the other side of the earth I predict a similar development under
+    the leadership of the United States. I assume that the English dominion
+    will suffer a downfall similar to that which I have predicted for
+    Russia, and that under these circumstances Canada would join the United
+    States, the expanded republic assuming a certain leadership with
+    reference to the South American republics.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The principle of the absolute sovereignty of the individual nations,
+    which in the present European tumult has proved itself so inadequate and
+    baneful, must be given up and replaced by a system conforming to the
+    world's actual conditions and especially to those political and economic
+    relations which determine industrial and cultural progress and the
+    common welfare.
+</p>
+<p>
+    &nbsp;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <img border="0" src="images/deco5.jpg" alt="decoration" width="300" height="49"></p>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0017"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/butler.jpg" width="141" height="225"
+alt="Nicholas Murray Butler">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-align: center">NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <a href="#2H_4_0047">
+    <i>See Page 565</i> </a>
+</p>
+<br>
+<a name="image-0018"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/briesen.jpg" width="133" height="225"
+alt="Arthur von Briesen">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-align: center">ARTHUR VON BRIESEN</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <a href="#2H_4_0041">
+    <i>See Page 548</i> </a>
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0049"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    The Verdict of the American People
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Newell Dwight Hillis.
+</h3>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>     <i>Dr. Hillis, who occupies the pulpit of Plymouth Church,
+     Brooklyn, made famous by the pastorate of the late Henry Ward
+     Beecher, delivered the following remarkable sermon on the
+     European War on Sunday, Dec. 20, 1914, choosing as his text
+     the words: "From whence come wars? Come they not from your own
+     lusts?"</i>
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<p>
+    Nearly five months have now passed by since the German Army invaded
+    Belgium and France. These 140 days have been packed with thrilling and
+    momentous events. While from their safe vantage ground the American
+    people have surveyed the scene, an old régime has literally crumbled
+    under our very eyes. Europe is a loom on whose earthen framework
+    demiurgic forces like Frederick the Great, Bismarck, and Napoleon once
+    wove the texture of European civilization. Now the demon of war has,
+    with hot knife, shorn away the texture, and a modern Czar and Kaiser,
+    King and President, with Generals and Admirals, are weaving the warp and
+    woof of a new world. One hundred years ago the forces that bred wars
+    were political forces; today the collision between nations is born of
+    economic interests. The twentieth century influences are chiefly the
+    force of wealth and the force of public opinion. These are the giant
+    steeds, though the reins of the horses may be in the hands of Kings and
+    Kaisers. In Napoleon's day antagonism grew out of the natural hatred of
+    autocracy for democracy, of German imperialism for French radicalism.
+    Today Germany is not even interested in France's republican form of
+    Government, nor is France concerned with Germany's imperial autocrat.
+    But all Europe is intensely concerned with the question of economic
+    supremacy or financial subordination.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Ever since Oliver Cromwell's day England has been the mistress of the
+    seas, and Germany is envious and believes that she has a right to
+    supplant England in this naval leadership. France has long been the
+    banker of Europe, and Germany covets financial leadership. From whence
+    come wars? Come they not from men's lusts? Now that long time has
+    passed, it is quite certain that neither Napoleon nor Bismarck nor
+    William II. understood the future. It is a proverb that yesterday is a
+    seed, today the stalk, and tomorrow is the full corn in the ear.
+    Napoleon was a practical man, but he could not see the shock in the
+    seed. When Napoleon said, "One hundred years from now Europe will be all
+    republican or all Cossack"&mdash;Napoleon was quite wrong. Forty years ago
+    Bismarck said that he had reduced France to the level of a fourth-class
+    nation, and that henceforth France did not count; while as for the
+    Balkan States, "the whole Eastern question is not worth the bones of a
+    Pomeranian grenadier"&mdash;Bismarck was quite wrong. The present Kaiser has
+    no imagination. A man of any prevision of the future might have foreseen
+    that any attack upon England would settle the Irish question; that any
+    treaty with Turkey would force Italy, as Turkey's enemy in the late
+    Italian-Turkish war, to break with Germany; any man with the least
+    instinct for diplomacy might have known that the twentieth century man
+    is so incensed by an enemy's trespass upon his property, that Belgium
+    would have resisted encroachment, and so cost Germany the best three
+    weeks of the entire war. If the history of great wars tells us anything,
+    it tells us that the first qualification of the statesman and diplomat
+    is an intuitive knowledge of a future that is the certain outcome of the
+    present. There has been no foresight on the part of the makers and
+    advisers of this war. Years ago, when the Austrian Emperor visited
+    Innsbruck, the Burgomaster ordered foresters to go up on the mountain
+    sides and cut certain swaths of brush. At the moment the man with his
+    axe did not know what he was doing, but when the night fell, and the
+    torch was lifted on the boughs, the people in the city below read these
+    words written in letters of fire, "Welcome to our Emperor." Today the
+    demon of war has been writing with blazing letters certain lessons upon
+    the hills and valleys of Europe, and fortunate is that youth who can
+    read the writing and interpret aright the lessons of the times.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The people of the republic now realize for the first time what are the
+    inevitable fruits of imperialism and militarism. One of the perils of
+    America's distance from the scenes of autocracy is that our people have
+    come to think that the forms of government are of little importance. We
+    hear it said that climate determines government and that one nation
+    likes autocracy and another limited monarchy, that we like democracy
+    self-government, and that the people are about as happy under one form
+    of control as another. This misconception is based upon a failure to
+    understand foreign imperialism. Superficially, the fruits of autocracy
+    are efficiency, industrial wealth, and military power. But now, after
+    nearly five months of constant discussion, our people understand
+    thoroughly the other side of imperialism. The 6,000,000 of
+    German-Americans living in this country, with their high type of
+    character, millions who have left their native land to escape service in
+    the army, the burdens of taxation involved in militarism, and the law of
+    lčse majesté, should have opened our eyes long ago. During the last five
+    years I have lectured in more than one hundred cities on the New Germany
+    and the lessons derived from her industrial efficiency, with the
+    application of science to the production of wealth, but I did not
+    appreciate fully the far-off harvest of militarism. And, lest an
+    American overstate the meaning of militarism, let me condense
+    Treitschke's view. He holds that the nation should be looked upon as a
+    vast military engine; that its ruler should be the commander of the
+    army; that his Cabinet should be under Generals; that the whole nation
+    should march with the force of an armed regiment; that the real "sin
+    against the Holy Ghost was the sin of military impotence; that such an
+    army should take all it wants and the territory it needs and explain
+    afterward." Manufacturers are essentially inventors of cannons and guns
+    and dreadnoughts, incidentally self-supporting men. Bankers are here to
+    finance the army and incidentally to make money. Physicians are here to
+    heal the wounded soldiers. Gymnasiums are founded to train soldiers.
+    Women are here to breed soldiers, and militarism is the path that will
+    bring Germany to her place in the sun. The youth is first of all to be a
+    soldier and incidentally to be a man. No one has indicted Germany's
+    militarism in stronger language than the distinguished German-American,
+    Carl Schurz. In words that burn the great statesman expressed his hatred
+    of the imperialism and militarism against which he helped to organize a
+    revolution that led to his flight to this country. Of late Americans
+    have been asking themselves certain questions.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The American Ideal vs. the German.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    What will be the result if Germany is allowed to seize any smaller State
+    whose territory and property she covets? Is all Europe to become an
+    armed camp? What is the meaning of this German professor's article in
+    The North American Review, written two or three years ago, in which he
+    says that once she is victorious the Monroe Doctrine will go and the
+    United States will receive the "thrashing she so richly deserves"? Must
+    we then go over to the military ideal? If Germany supports 8,000,000
+    soldiers out of 66,000,000, must we withdraw from productive industry
+    12,000,000 men for at least two or three of the best years of their
+    young life? Must we start in on a programme of ten dreadnoughts a year
+    instead of building ten colleges and universities for the same sum of
+    money? Of late Americans who love their country have been searching
+    their own hearts. Merchants hitherto busied with commerce are asking
+    themselves whither this country is drifting. Is Germany to compel us to
+    become a vast military machine? This military question is a subject of
+    discussion on the street cars and in the stores, at the dining room
+    table. No articles in paper and magazine are so eagerly read and
+    analyzed. The American ideal is not a military machine, but a high
+    quality of manhood. To make men free, with the gift of self-expression;
+    to make men wise through the public school and the free press; to make
+    men self-sufficing and happy in their homes, through freedom of
+    industrial contracts; to make men sound in their manhood through
+    religious liberty for Jew and Gentile and Catholic and Protestant&mdash;these
+    are our national ideals. America stands at the other pole of the
+    universe from imperialism and militarism. So far from being willing to
+    desert the political faith of the fathers, this war has confirmed our
+    confidence in self-government. Liberty to grow, freedom to climb as high
+    as industry and ability will permit, liberty to analyze and discuss the
+    views of President, Congress, Governor&mdash;these are our rights. In a
+    military autocracy there can be no liberty of the printing press. If a
+    man criticises the Kaiser, he goes to jail; in this republic, if Horace
+    Greeley criticises Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln does not send the
+    great editor to jail, but writes the latter, "My paramount object is to
+    save the Union," and vindicates himself at the bar of the nation. An
+    American editor or citizen would choke to death in Germany. He could not
+    breathe because of the mephitic gases of imperialism and militarism. For
+    a long time some of us did not realize what was involved, but now we do
+    realize the difference between the fruits of democratic self-government
+    and the fruits of military imperialism.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The last five months have brought a new realization to American citizens
+    as to the rights and liberties of small States. In the republic the sin
+    of trespass is one of the blackest of sins. Here we hold to the
+    sanctity of property. A man's home is his castle, a citadel that cannot
+    be invaded even by the power of the State. So deep is the American
+    hatred of trespass against property rights that imperialism finds it
+    impossible to understand this. Here the individual is a king of kings in
+    his native right, and takes out an injunction against the city that
+    wishes to trespass upon his property. This antagonism manifests itself
+    in the laws that safeguard the small shopkeeper against the big firm,
+    and the small manufacturer against any company with its billion dollars
+    of capital. This antagonism to the sin of trespass has lent a peculiar
+    sanctity to treaties between Canada and the United States. We have one
+    hundred millions of people, and Canada nine millions. We need many
+    things that Canada has, but it is intellectually unthinkable that "we
+    should take what we want and explain afterward," or that we should
+    violate our treaty guaranteeing neutrality to Canada. Our frontier line
+    is three thousand miles long. There is not a fort from Maine to
+    Victoria. If we adopted Germany's position we would have to build one
+    thousand forts, withdraw two million young men from the farm, factory,
+    store and bank, and load the working people with taxes to support them.
+    In a free land, and in God's world, there should be a place for the poor
+    man and for the small nation. In the olden time there was a king who had
+    herds and flocks, and a poor man who had one pet lamb. It came to pass
+    that a stranger claimed the right of hospitality at the rich man's
+    palace, and the king sent out and took the poor man's one lamb and gave
+    it for food to the stranger. And, soon or late, the time will come when
+    history will tell the story of Germany's taking little Belgium, and
+    conscience, like a prophet, will indict the militarism that seized the
+    one lamb that belonged to the poor man. This episode is not closed. The
+    German representative who says that Belgium is a part of Germany may be
+    right in terms of future government and war, but the incident has just
+    begun in the memory of the soldiers who never can forget that they first
+    broke their sacred treaty, and then, when the Belgian defended his home
+    as his castle, butchered the man, who died with a sacred treaty in his
+    hand. Why, all over this land, teachers, fathers, editors, authors, have
+    found it necessary to say to the young men and women of the republic,
+    "Do not sign your name to an obligation unless you intend to keep it."
+    Keep your faith. Remember that your word given should be as good as your
+    bond. "Swear to your own hurt, and change not." All this is inevitable,
+    as the result of Germany's trespass upon the property and the homes of
+    Belgium. In some European lands the State is everything and the
+    individual nothing. In this republic the individual is first, and the
+    State is here to safeguard his rights and see to it that no one
+    trespasses upon his property. The time will come when the nation that
+    breaks its treaties and sows to the wind shall of that wind reap the
+    whirlwind. It is an awful thing for a nation to make it inevitable that
+    hereafter when other people sign a treaty with that country, that our
+    representatives shall say: "Before we sign this treaty with you, we wish
+    to ask one question. Later, if it is to your interest to break this
+    treaty, is this document to be sneered at as a scrap of paper? Or does
+    this treaty mean the faith of a nation that will die rather than break
+    its word, given before the tribunal of civilized States?"
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The Death of the Tribal God Idea.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    This great war and one or two of the leaders thereof have killed the old
+    tribal idea of God. In the twentieth century it seems almost ludicrous
+    to find that the conception of the ancient Hebrews is still held by some
+    rulers. Be the reasons what they may, of late there has been a strange
+    recrudescence of the tribal God idea. This is the twentieth century, not
+    the tenth! Think of a man sending his soldiers into Belgium, saying,
+    "Make yourselves as terrible as the Huns of Attila, and the Lord our God
+    will give you victory." Just as if God were not the God of the whole
+    earth, a disinterested God, a God who makes His sun to shine and His
+    rain to fall upon all His children, without regard to race or clime or
+    color. Why, it is as artless as the way the old Hebrew peasant called on
+    God to blast his enemy's field, and drown his children with floods, and
+    smite his herds with the plague. The tribal idea of God belongs with the
+    ox cart, the medicine man, the cave dweller. This is an era of science.
+    Whatever is true is universal, not racial. If the heart beats and the
+    blood circulates in a German soldier's veins, the blood flows in the
+    veins of the people of England and France. If the earth goes around the
+    sun in Berlin, the earth goes around the sun in Petrograd and Edinburgh.
+    If there are seven rays in the sunbeam, why, the discussion is closed,
+    and it is a universal fact. And if Jesus was right when He said, "God is
+    our Father, and all the races are our brothers, and the world has been
+    fitted up by God as an Eden garden for His children," then no man or
+    ruler should ever adopt the view of the peasant and the cave man, and
+    try to make the Eternal God a tribal God. The unconscious humor in the
+    statements of one or two men as to their tribal God idea has added to
+    the gayety of nations. But when any view is laughed at, it is doomed.
+    From the very moment that the doctrine of election, that made God love a
+    few aristocrats and pass the non-elect by, became a matter of joke in
+    the comic papers, that theory was dead. Not otherwise is it with this
+    idea of a tribal God. When Barry Paine begins to say,
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <blockquote>
+        <blockquote>
+          <blockquote>
+            <blockquote>
+              <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">    Led by William, as you tell,<br>
+    God has done extremely well,
+</p>
+              </blockquote>
+            </blockquote>
+          </blockquote>
+        </blockquote>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    the tribal idea has been relegated to the theological scrap-heap. The
+    peasant's view must go. In this age men must be citizens of all
+    countries and of the universe. God is a sun Who shines for the poor
+    man's hut as truly as for the rich man's palace. The Judge of all the
+    earth is also the Father of all the races, and He will do men good and
+    not evil.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In view of the events of the last few months, all Americans now realize
+    as never before the futility of war as a means of settling disputes.
+    Indeed, it may be doubted whether any war has ever settled any question.
+    Defeat did not convince the South that they were wrong in their idea of
+    State rights or slavery. If the South has given up both ideas today it
+    is because time, events, and social progress have changed their view,
+    not because the sword convinced them. Bismarck's victory at Versailles
+    and von Moltke's at Sedan did not settle the dispute with France. To
+    keep one billion dollars of indemnity Germany must have spent five
+    billions on forts and armies in the government of Alsace and Lorraine.
+    Germany's apparent victory simply put Germany's trouble with France out
+    at compound interest, and left the next generation of Germans to pay
+    several billions of dollars of accrued debt through hatred. Plainly it
+    is folly not to reconstitute the map of Europe. The frontier lines of
+    the geographer should exactly coincide with the racial lines. The German
+    race, with their peculiar ideals, ought not to try to govern the French
+    race. It is an expensive experiment. It is an impossible experiment. The
+    plan is doomed to failure in advance. And when the day of payment comes
+    it is quite certain that the questions at issue will not have been
+    settled by regiments of soldiers. They must finally be settled by an
+    appeal to some court of arbitration that will do justice and love mercy;
+    that will insist upon the rights of the smaller States, and make it
+    impossible for the great ones of the earth to trespass upon the property
+    and the liberties of brave little peoples.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Imperialism Confuses Men's Judgments.</h3>
+<p>
+    Out of the smoke of battle another lesson is written for all who have
+    eyes to read. In view of the mistakes made by men who have absolute
+    power it is now certain that exemption from criticism is a bad thing for
+    any man, and that endless adoration destroys the ruler's power to think
+    in straight lines. There never lived a man who was not injured by
+    perpetual compliments. Strong men are willing to pay cash for criticism.
+    Flattery will conceal the weakness, and they know that pitiless
+    criticism will expose the danger and perhaps save them. No man is so
+    unfortunate as the man who is put on a throne lifted up beyond the
+    reach of plain truth telling. It is doubtful if so many blunders were
+    ever made by statesmen and diplomats as were made at the beginning of
+    this war. Just think of one Government being wrong in all these
+    particulars at the same time! Lincoln said, "You can't fool all of the
+    people all of the time." Yes, that may be true in a republic, but you
+    certainly can fool all the diplomats and Generals and do it all the
+    time&mdash;during July and August, in any event. Call the roll of the
+    diplomatic blunders, and the list is long. First, England will be
+    neutral and Ireland will keep her from going to war; second, Italy will
+    be our ally; third, Belgium will be neutral and allow us to trespass
+    upon her property and her homes; fourth, France is unprepared and Paris
+    will fall within three weeks; fifth, an alliance with Turkey, despite
+    her polygamy and butcheries in Armenia and the civilized world's hatred
+    for her cruelties, will help us; sixth, Japan will hold Russia in check;
+    seventh, the Czar will be attacked by Bulgaria, Italy, and China. It
+    seems incredible that any ruler and group of diplomats could be so
+    entirely wrong, all the time, on every question, for a whole Summer! Was
+    there no man as diplomat who had the wisdom to see that an attack upon
+    England would end the disputes in Ireland? And bind together Canada,
+    Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India into a new United States of
+    Great Britain? Was there no statesman with enough prevision of the
+    future, and with courage to tell the people in Wilhelmstrasse that the
+    certain result would be the United States of Balkany, to stand
+    henceforth as a barrier between Germany and the Bosphorus? Was there no
+    one to remind Berlin that Italy had just completed a war with Turkey and
+    that any treaty with Turkey meant inevitably the breaking of friendship
+    with Italy? Alas! for the man who is elevated to a throne, in whose
+    presence men burn incense, pour forth flattery that he may breathe its
+    perfume, sing songs of praise that he may slumber!
+</p>
+<p>
+    In concluding our survey of the nations and the stake of each country
+    in the war, there is one reflection that must be obvious to all thinking
+    men. This little fire of last August has become a world conflagration.
+    The nation that first sent out her armies was Germany. There is a
+    high-water mark of battle in every war, and after that, the invading
+    waves begin their retreat. The high-water mark of Napoleon's was
+    Austerlitz and the waves ebbed away at Waterloo. The high-water mark of
+    the civil war was Gettysburg, and the tide ebbed out at Appomattox.
+    Belgium's defense cost Germany the three most important weeks of the
+    war, and her high-water mark was when she was within twenty miles of
+    Paris. Occasional eddies and returns of the tide there may be, but
+    nothing is more certain than that there are ten nations and six hundred
+    millions of men that had rather die than have militarism imposed upon
+    themselves and their children. Americans who admire German efficiency,
+    the German people, and want to see German science preserved, and feel an
+    immeasurable debt to Martin Luther, do not want Germany destroyed. But
+    Germany will not listen to England, nor France, nor America. There is
+    only one voice that can reach Germany&mdash;it is the voice of the
+    German-Americans in this country. They are six million strong. They are
+    among the most honored and esteemed folk in American life. Their
+    achievements are beyond all praise. The Germans have built Milwaukee and
+    have done much for St. Louis. The Germans have been great forces in
+    Cincinnati and Chicago and New York. What wealth among their bankers!
+    What prosperity among German manufacturers! What solidity of manhood in
+    these German Lutherans! Was there ever a finer body of farming folk than
+    the German landowners of the Middle West? The republic owes the
+    German-American a great debt as to liberty through men like Carl Schurz.
+    Take Martin Luther and German liberty of thought out of the republic and
+    this land would suffer an immeasurable loss. Many of these
+    German-Americans own great estates and have investments in the
+    Fatherland. Today these six million German-Americans have the centre of
+    the world's stage. This war is a conflagration that will probably burn
+    itself out. But if the six million German-Americans organize themselves
+    and hold great meetings of protest in New York and Brooklyn and Chicago
+    and Milwaukee, in St. Louis and Cincinnati; if German-American editors
+    and bankers and business men united their voice, they would be heard.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    German-American Man of the Hour.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    And do they not owe something to this republic? Having come to the
+    kingdom for such a crisis as this, should they not use their influence
+    with the Fatherland? Having escaped conscription and years of military
+    service, with heavy taxation and enjoyed the liberty of the press;
+    having become convinced that militarism does not promote the prosperity
+    and manhood of the people, why should they not as one man ask the
+    Fatherland now to present their cause to arbitrators? To no body of
+    American citizens has there ever come a more strategic opportunity, or a
+    responsibility so heavy. Some of the most thoughtful men in this land
+    believe that the destiny of Germany rests now largely with the leaders
+    of the 6,000,000 German-Americans in our country. But no matter what the
+    outcome, let no man think that God and justice are not fully equal to
+    this emergency. The great vine of Liberty was planted by Divine hands in
+    the Eden garden. Just now men are feeding the blossoms of the tree of
+    life to their war horses and splitting the boughs of that tree into
+    shafts for their spears. The storm roars through the branches, but the
+    storm will die out. Better days are coming. It may be that the
+    convulsion of war will do for Europe what the earthquake did for the
+    rude folk of Greece&mdash;cracked the solid rock and exposed the silver veins
+    that gave the wealth with which rude men built Athens, with its art, its
+    literature, its law and its liberty. Take no counsel of crouching fear,
+    God is abroad in the world. With Him a thousand years are as one day.
+    When a long time has passed let us believe that self-government will be
+    found to be the most stable form of government, and that these golden
+    words, Liberty, Opportunity, Intelligence, and Integrity, will be the
+    watch-words not only of the republic, but of all the nations of the
+    earth.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0050"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    Interview With Dr. Hillis
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    <i>From the Brooklyn Eagle.</i>
+</h3>
+<br>
+<p>
+    A frank declaration that he was opposed to Germany in the present great
+    war was the answer returned today [Dec. 21, 1914] by the Rev. Dr. Newell
+    Dwight Hillis to the protests against his sermon at Plymouth Church last
+    night, in which he scored militarism and the Kaiser.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Not only did Dr. Hillis come out with the statement that he had said and
+    meant all to which exception was taken in his sermon, but, in an
+    interview today in his study, in the Arbuckle Institute, he asserted as
+    well that he had told but little of what he had come to believe about
+    Germany. This position, he said, was that America and all the world must
+    hope for German defeat, and must see that Germany was in the wrong.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I was for Germany five months ago," said Dr. Hillis. "I have been
+    lecturing for five years about the lessons we might learn from Germany.
+    Five months ago, it may be remembered, I gave an interview, in which I
+    praised Germany and in which I took the part of the German people in the
+    dreadful war that had come.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But I have changed my mind. I have seen that I was mistaken. Several
+    months ago I gave instructions to my lecture bureau to withdraw my
+    lecture, 'The New Germany,' from my list. That was about the middle of
+    September, and it was only then that I realized what a German success
+    would mean to the world&mdash;how there could be nothing else but a world of
+    armed camps, how we in this country, too, would have to adopt militarism
+    in order to live.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just prior to that time, in the first of my Sunday evening sermons in
+    this course, I had praised the Kaiser. I believed in the German ideals,
+    I believed in German progress, German inventions, German principles. But
+    I was wrong. I have now become convinced of what I never imagined
+    before&mdash;that in the German viewpoint the only sin against the Holy Ghost
+    is military impotency, and, to use Treitschke's words again, the only
+    virtue is militarism."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The pastor of Plymouth uttered this attack upon Germany with a
+    scornfulness which the printed word can hardly indicate. He was as
+    strongly against Germany&mdash;more strongly against Germany now than he had
+    before been in favor of Germany, he said. It was a position, he said, to
+    which everybody in the United States was turning, and it was inevitable
+    that Germany should find the world against her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In his frank avowal of his position regarding Germany and the Kaiser,
+    Dr. Hillis admitted, too, that his sermon last night had contained more
+    than appeared on the surface. When he stated in the sermon that no man
+    or ruler should ever adopt the view of the peasant and the cave man, and
+    try to make the Eternal God a tribal God, he had the Kaiser in mind,
+    said Dr. Hillis. The sermon is published in full in today's sermon pages
+    of The Eagle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In addition, Dr. Hillis said that while he believed that his sermon
+    could not be considered in any way a violation of President Wilson's
+    appeal for neutrality, yet, indirectly, the passages to which exception
+    had been taken could be rightly construed as an attack upon Germany and
+    the Kaiser.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You believe that it is right for a minister to use the pulpit to
+    express his own views upon a subject like this?" was asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I do not believe that it is right for a minister to air his peculiar
+    political views upon any subject&mdash;personal, social, or economic,"
+    answered Dr. Hillis, emphatically. "The church is a conservatory where a
+    warm, genial atmosphere should be created. My conception of the work of
+    a minister is that he is to create an atmosphere in the church on Sunday
+    so that the Republican with the tariff, the Democrat who believes in
+    free trade, and the Single Taxer can all grow and express their judgment
+    during the week.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The sun and the Summer shine for all kinds of seeds and roots, and the
+    minister and the church should create an atmosphere in which all
+    temperaments and races and faiths can grow. It is quite true that there
+    were some of my German friends and members who rather protested against
+    my view last night. But they had the same right and liberty to protest
+    that I have. A German physician told me plainly that he thought that
+    within six months I would change my view, and with the new light go over
+    to the position of his native land, and even thought that I might
+    retract all my studies, that are apparently prejudiced in favor of the
+    republic and self-government and the liberty of the press. Well, if I do
+    change my views and am converted to his viewpoint, I certainly will
+    retract my statements. But I think this improbable. The task of
+    converting me should be let out as a Government contract&mdash;in piecemeal."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dr. Hillis was reminded here that a number of people were said to have
+    left the church last night in the course of his sermon as a sign of
+    protest against the expression of his views. Asked if it were true, Dr.
+    Hillis answered:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I did not see many leave," and then declared that it was impossible to
+    imagine that war should not be discussed in the churches as it was being
+    discussed everywhere else. He continued with the assertion that he
+    believed it was his duty as the minister of Plymouth Church to say what
+    he had, and then made this assertion with a vehemence that was almost
+    startling:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whenever the time comes that I have to add God and the devil together
+    and divide by two in the name of neutrality, I'll withdraw. I'm not
+    going to sacrifice my manhood for what some people call neutrality."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was on this score that Dr. Hillis came out with his unequivocal
+    declaration that he was against Germany and against the Kaiser. He
+    asserted that the viewpoint of the German people would have to be
+    changed if they were to take the place in the world he had thought their
+    due, five months ago, and he stated there could be no doubt but that the
+    war was occasioned by Germany's lust for power&mdash;political, industrial,
+    economic.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I believe that the real issue of this war is largely industrial,"
+    continued Dr. Hillis. "It is an industrial war and not a political war.
+    Some days ago I said that the real fight between Germany and the nations
+    opposed to her was a fight for the possession of the iron fields
+    recently discovered in Northern France. That statement regarding
+    Germany's iron deposits and the whole economic situation has been
+    challenged.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Instead of modifying my position, I wish to reaffirm it. This is an age
+    of steel. Without hematite iron deposits Germany cannot build her
+    steamships, her cannon, her railways, her factories. German engineers
+    have been saying for five years that another five years will exhaust her
+    present iron supply. On Page 221 of the volume 'Problems of Power,' the
+    author says that within a generation 20,000,000 of Germany's people will
+    have to leave their native land. The pressure of iron and the call of
+    steel led to Germany's development of the Morocco situation, where there
+    are valuable iron mines. A short time ago French engineers discovered
+    the largest and richest body of iron ore in Europe. Fullerton, in his
+    book on the subject, expresses the judgment that one province has enough
+    hematite iron ore to last Europe for the next 150 years.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This diplomat and author said plainly two years ago, in one of his
+    review articles, that Germany would go to war to obtain the iron
+    deposits in Northern France, and that if she loses the war, she will
+    fall behind in the manufacturing race, and that the French bankers and
+    French engineers will make France the great manufacturing force and the
+    richest people in Europe. The Napoleonic wars were wars between
+    political ideas. The collision was between autocracy and bureaucracy and
+    French democracy and radicalism. The new antagonism grows out of
+    economic conditions. Germany wants to supersede England upon the seas,
+    and Germany wants the iron mines of France, and this is the whole
+    situation in a nutshell.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I am not sinning against the law of neutrality. I am trying to
+    freshen the old American ideals of self-government for the young men and
+    women in Plymouth Church. If the whole-hearted support of America's free
+    institutions involves indirectly a dissent from imperialism and
+    militarism, I am not responsible. I admit there is a necessary
+    condemnation of autocracy involved in the mere publication of the
+    Declaration of Independence. Ours is a Government of laws and not of
+    men, and I have been discussing the principles of self-government and
+    not rulers who represent imperialism.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Neutrality does not mean the wiping out of conviction. There are some
+    men who think that neutrality means adding God and the devil together
+    and dividing by two. And there are some statesmen who seem to think that
+    neutrality means adding together autocracy and democracy, and halving
+    the result. I do not share that view. I believe it is the first duty of
+    the German-American and the native-born American to uphold the
+    fundamental principles of self-government, and of an industrial
+    civilization as opposed to a military machine, and if this means protest
+    and criticism, then that protest must be accepted."
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0051"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    TIPPERARY.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By JOHN B. KENNEDY.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center">(At the other end of the long, long road.)</p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <blockquote>
+        <blockquote>
+          <blockquote>
+            <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    Who is it stands at the full o' the door?<br>
+      Mary O'Fay, Mother O'Fay.<br>
+    An' what is she watching an' waiting for?<br>
+      Och, none but her soul can say.<br>
+<br>
+    There's a list in the Post Office long an' black,<br>
+      With tidings bad, and woeful sad;<br>
+    The names of the boys who'll ne'er come back,<br>
+      An' one is her darling lad.<br>
+<br>
+    We showed her the list; but she cannot read,<br>
+      So we told her true, yes, we told her true.<br>
+    Her old eyes stared till they'd almost bleed,<br>
+      An' she swore that none of us knew.<br>
+<br>
+    She's waiting now for Father O'Toole,<br>
+      Till he goes her way at the noon of day.<br>
+    She's simperin' white&mdash;the poor old fool,<br>
+      For she knows what the priest'll say.</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+    * * * * * * *<br>
+</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">    Who is it sprawls upon the sod<br>
+      At the break o' day? It's Mickey O'Fay;<br>
+    His eyes glare up to the walls of God,<br>
+      And half of his head is blown away.<br>
+<br>
+    What is he doing in that strange place,<br>
+      Torn and shred, and murdered dead?<br>
+    He's singin' the psalm of the fighting race<br>
+      As his soul soars wide o'erhead.<br>
+<br>
+    He killed three foemen before he fell<br>
+      (Och, the toll he'd take and the skulls he'd break!)<br>
+    And he shrieked like a soul escaped from Hell<br>
+      As he died for the Sassenach's sake.<br>
+<br>
+    Who shall we blame for the awful thing&mdash;<br>
+      For the blood that flows and the heart-wrung throes?<br>
+    Kaiser or Czar; statesman or King?<br>
+      Och, leave it to Him Who Knows!<br>
+</p>
+            </blockquote>
+          </blockquote>
+        </blockquote>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0052"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    As America Sees the War
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Harold Begbie.
+</h3>
+<br>
+    <h3>I. </h3>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>     <i>In order to determine how American public opinion concerning
+     the war is running, The London Daily Chronicle sent Mr. Begbie
+     to this country. The two articles printed below appeared in
+     The Chronicle</i>.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    Every day of my sojourn in this country deepens the desire in my mind to
+    see an increasing unity of understanding between America and England. I
+    feel that the audacity of America, its passion for the Right Thing, and
+    its impatience with the spirit of muddling through are the finest
+    incentives for modern England, England at this dawn of her political
+    renascence. I feel, too, as Americans themselves most willingly
+    acknowledge, that Great Britain has something to give to America out of
+    the ancient treasury of her domestic experience. Finally, I like
+    Americans so heartily that I want to be the best of friends with them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But it was only last night in this old and mighty city of Philadelphia
+    that the greatest of reasons for an alliance was brought sharply home to
+    my mind. I had thought, loosely enough, that since we speak the same
+    language, share many of the same traditions, and equally desire peace
+    for the prosperity of our trade, surely some alliance between us was
+    natural, and with a little effort might be made inevitable. The deeper,
+    more political, and far grander reason for this comradeship between the
+    two nations had never definitely shaped itself to my consciousness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Enlightenment came to me in the course of conversation with two
+    thoughtful Philadelphians whose minds are centred on something which
+    transcends patriotism and who work with fine courage and remarkable
+    ability for the triumph of their idea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One of these men said to me: "You speak of an alliance between England
+    and America; do you mind telling us what you mean by that term
+    alliance?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    I explained that I had no thought in my mind of treaties and tariffs;
+    that the word "alliance" meant nothing more to me than conscious
+    friendship, and that such a disposition between two nations thinking in
+    the same language, speaking and writing the same language, must result,
+    I thought, in an ever-multiplying volume of trade, to the great
+    advantage of both parties.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Thinks Little of Blood Ties.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Out of this explanation came the following statement, made by the second
+    Philadelphian: "I am as desirous as you are for such an understanding. I
+    desire it so greatly that I venture to offer you a warning on the
+    subject. It would be a mistake on your part, I am convinced, to advocate
+    any such friendship, any such understanding, any such alliance, if you
+    prefer that word, on the score of blood ties or a common speech. Believe
+    me, the American, to speak generally, thinks very little of such
+    matters. When America was far more English in its population than it is
+    now scarcely any country was more unpopular with us than your country.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I can remember when hatred for England was a kind of gospel with
+    Americans. The Irish fanned that hatred. Your country had behaved badly
+    toward us, war had left its scar on our memories, we rejoiced that we
+    had thrown off a yoke which we felt to be definitely tyrannous. What,
+    then, has produced the change in America&mdash;America, whose population is
+    now made up from nearly all the nations of the earth? Have your people
+    thought why we are on their side in this present war? Have they asked
+    themselves that question? If so, and they have answered it with such a
+    phrase as 'blood is thicker than water,' I can assure you they give not
+    only a false answer but an answer which betrays amazing ignorance, if
+    you will forgive the word, of this country's population. Blood thicker
+    than water! Why, look at our names; our blood is world's blood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We're a nation of all the nations. The English element is only one
+    element. Our ancestors were French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Norwegian,
+    Russian, Danish, Irish, Greek, and Italian. The modern American citizen
+    is no more English than the Boers of South Africa are English. And yet
+    in overwhelming figures the American population is on the side of the
+    Allies, and particularly on the side of England. Why?"
+</p>
+<h3>
+    England Stands for Democracy.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "It is," he continued, "because England of all the nations on the earth
+    stands for the democratic ideals which are the very breath of life to
+    America. Modern England is for us the greatest of democracies. You lead
+    the way to the rest of the world, if not in science and art, at any rate
+    here in the great business of humanity's social existence. We see that
+    the old England of privilege and obstinate prerogatives and bull-headed
+    conservatism is dead. All your best qualities, straight dealing,
+    honesty, fearless justice, and faith in the goodness of human nature are
+    devoted now to the only ideals which can save progress from rot and
+    decay. Your democracy is master. It has no overlords. And, from what we
+    can gather since this war broke out, it would seem that your aristocracy
+    is coming more and more into line with the democracy, making great
+    sacrifices, showing a deeper appreciation of the democracy and shedding
+    the worst of its prejudices in the common love of liberty and right.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We hope that your aristocracy may render as great a service to the
+    extravagant plutocracy of this country as your democracy has rendered to
+    our democracy. To make life better, that's the work of all intelligent
+    people. That's what our democracy is after, and, because your democracy
+    is after the same thing, that's why we are on your side in this war.
+    Under all the sentiment on the subject this is the bedrock fact. We're
+    for England because we're for the ideals of democracy. That we speak the
+    same language is only an accident. It's your spirit we desire to share,
+    the spirit which desires to make life kinder, sweeter, better, more
+    beautiful, and more righteous. America believes in civilization. It
+    doesn't want culture in bearskin and top boots. It wants civilization,
+    and civilization means a culture that takes in the whole of a man's
+    being&mdash;his body, his mind, his spirit. Well, we think you're after the
+    same ideal; we believe that you're as conscious of humanity as we are,
+    and we begin to realize pretty acutely that in a world rather barbarous
+    on the whole, come to think of it, we can't afford to lose England."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The other man added: "Germany stands for nearly everything we Americans
+    are opposed to, tooth and nail. We just loathe militarism.
+    Conscription's a thing we abominate. And feudalism is more dead over
+    here than in any country in the world."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But bear in mind," said the first, "we have few people in America
+    better than the Germans. The Germans are almost the most efficient of
+    our immigrants. They've taught us a lot. We owe them a mighty big debt.
+    Before their coming we were prodigals. We used up our natural resources
+    with a ruthless disregard for the future. We leveled our forests for
+    timber, and just scratched the top soil of the land for corn. Now we're
+    learning to farm scientifically and to conserve our wealth. And this is
+    due in no small degree to the Germans. The German, emancipated from
+    feudalism and kaiserism, is a pretty good citizen. In fact, among the
+    men who have most helped modern America we reckon Germans and Irishmen."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I told them this story: A man in New York was speaking the other day to
+    Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador. Count von Bernstorff was
+    endeavoring to prove to this important personage that England had forced
+    the war upon Germany out of jealousy of her trade competition. "Sir,"
+    said the American, "you really must not tell me that, and I advise you
+    not to tell such a tale to other Americans. For we know very well that
+    we are greater trade rivals of England than you are, and that, in spite
+    of that fact, here on this continent of America we have got 3,000 miles
+    of British frontier without a fort or a gun." He then said to the
+    Ambassador: "No, Sir; your mistake all through has been in making an
+    enemy of England when your best interest was to make friends with her.
+    If you had made friends with England, you would have got all you
+    wanted." To this accusation, I understand, the Ambassador made answer
+    that Germany had endeavored to make friends with England, but had been
+    repulsed. We have a different record in England. The American quietly
+    reminded the Ambassador of the fact that England admits German goods
+    free of tariff charges.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Germany Represents Autocracy.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The two Philadelphians perfectly agreed with the justice of this
+    accusation, and declared again that it was because Germany represented
+    all the perils and slavishness of autocracy, and because England
+    represented the freedom, the justice, and the passion for social welfare
+    which inspire all living democracies, that America was so absolutely on
+    the English side.
+</p>
+<p>
+    They spoke of Ireland, and expressed the hope that the Conservative
+    Party would do nothing to hinder that great settlement which has done so
+    much to increase American respect for England.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We recognize over here," said one, "that the Liberal Party, in going to
+    the rescue of Belgium, sacrificed some of its greatest ideals on the
+    altar of national righteousness. War must have been a bitter draught for
+    Lloyd George. Your social programme will be checked for many years. But
+    if the Conservatives attempt to spoil the Irish settlement, that will be
+    worse than anything else. It will mean confusion for you at home and
+    loss of reputation abroad."
+</p>
+<p>
+    I spoke of what I had heard on this subject from Irish-Americans, and
+    they confirmed everything recorded in my former article. The three great
+    things, outside of increasing opportunities for intercourse, which have
+    drawn modern America toward England, they told me, are the social
+    legislation of the Liberal Party, the triumph of home rule, and
+    England's keeping her word to Belgium. By these three things, I was
+    assured, the old animosities against England have been destroyed, and a
+    spirit of enthusiasm for English ideals has been born among Americans.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I should like to say that, while many American women love England for
+    the beauty and repose of her social life, and most eloquently base their
+    affection on the assertion that blood is thicker than water, the men of
+    America are sometimes inclined, and not unnaturally, to disapprove of
+    this pleasing sentimentalism. I now begin to perceive that the men of
+    America are not jealous of England's social life, but anxious to put
+    their friendship on a more substantial foundation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Liberalism not only uplifts democracy; it establishes England in the
+    affection of all vital democracies. If the Conservatives, so liberal and
+    charming in their private lives, combine with the Liberals after this
+    hideous war to reconstruct our national life and to consolidate the
+    empire, how great will be the harvest reaped by our children!
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is in the high and lofty name of civilization that the American
+    people are anxious to make friends with the people of Great Britain. We
+    have both got something to live for greater than patriotism and
+    imperialism, greater because it includes them both.
+</p>
+    <h3>II. </h3>
+<h3>
+    Irish-American Feeling
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Until I came to America I had not the least idea of the depth of hatred
+    which has existed among Irish-Americans toward England. Nothing that I
+    ever encountered in Ireland itself is comparable with this transatlantic
+    fury of unforgiving hate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    An Irishman who had held very high office in America, a well-educated, a
+    kindly, and a judicious man, told me that when war with Germany was in
+    the air he could not prevent himself from hailing this opportunity for
+    declaring his hatred, his undying hatred, of England. His father had
+    suffered frightfully in the great famine; every story he ever heard at
+    his mother's knee was a story of English tyranny, English brutality,
+    English rapacity; England, for him, stood at the rack centre, the
+    lustful and bestial slave driver, the cruel and merciless extortioner.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This man's good judgment, however, would not suffer him to approve of
+    German militarism, and as events moved forward he gave his support more
+    and more to the cause of the Allies.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But I want you to know," he told me, striking the table with his hand
+    and watching me carefully, "that I was dead against John Redmond for
+    saying that Ireland must go to the aid of England. Ireland's call was to
+    go to the aid of civilization. If Germany had stood for civilization, I
+    should have been on Germany's side and dead against England.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I tell you, at the beginning of this business I longed to see England
+    defeated, humiliated, broken to the dust. But civilization is of such
+    enormous consequence that I put my natural hatred of England on one
+    side. The violation of Belgium made me an anti-German. And with the vast
+    majority of Irishmen in America it was the same thing. The menace of
+    German militarism forced us into your camp.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I am perfectly certain that but for the violation of Belgium there
+    would have been in this country among Irish-Americans an open movement
+    publicly proclaimed in favor of Germany. That is my fixed opinion. And I
+    happen to know what I am talking about."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    No Hatred of England.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    I gathered in the course of his conversation that Irish friendliness
+    toward England is a final manifestation of a change in the feeling of
+    all America toward England. It was not very long ago that President
+    Cleveland wanted war with England. Hatred of England was at one time as
+    fiercely handed down from generation to generation by Americans as by
+    Irish-Americans. We have to thank our English stars that America has
+    outgrown this historic hate and that Irish-Americans now show the new
+    and happier feeling of their compatriots.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I asked this Irishman, no one better able throughout America to express
+    a just opinion on the subject, what difference had been made in the
+    feeling toward England by the passing of the Home Rule bill.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It was the passing of that bill," he replied, "which finished the work
+    begun by German militarism. Home rule has softened our feelings toward
+    England, particularly among the thousands of Irish-Americans who are
+    born over here and whose fathers have become too Americanized to
+    remember the sufferings of their ancestors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There is still some hatred of England, but not very much. It is a
+    sentimental, a poetic hatred, not a political hatred. One finds it among
+    a few individuals. What agitation is now going on is secret and
+    underground, a sure proof that it is unrepresentative. We ignore it. It
+    means nothing. No; the passing of the Home Rule bill has given balance
+    to the Irish mind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It has helped Irish-Americans to realize that the dreadful sins of
+    England are sins of a dead and gone England, and it has helped them to
+    see that the present England, so far as its democracy is concerned,
+    sincerely desires to make reparation for the past. In fact, the war and
+    the Home Rule bill together have produced such a transformation in the
+    Irish-American nature as I, for one, never expected and never hoped to
+    see."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He then warned me that this great change might suffer a dangerous
+    reaction if England allows the religious bigotry of Ulster to split
+    Ireland into two camps. To the Irish-American Ireland is a country, a
+    home, and a shrine, one and indivisible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Such a surrender," said my friend, "would not only be fatal to Ireland
+    but fatal to something even greater than Ireland, and that is the cause
+    of religion in an age of increasing paganism. For the world can only be
+    saved from the ruin of paganism, as we are beginning to see very clearly
+    in America, by a union of religious forces.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I am a Catholic, but I say that any man who says 'Only through my door
+    can you enter into heaven' is a bad Christian. There are many doors into
+    heaven. What we have all got to do, Catholics and non-Catholics, is to
+    insist together that there is a heaven, that there is a life after
+    death, that there is a God. The more doors the better. No one has a
+    monopoly of heaven.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And to Ireland is offered the opportunity, greater than politicians
+    appear to perceive, of presenting to the world an example of tolerance
+    and compromise in the supreme interests of religion which may have
+    incalculable results for the whole world. But what will happen if
+    England bows before the worst and the stupidest bigotry the modern world
+    can show? Not only will you strike a blow at Ireland and a blow at
+    Irish-American sympathy, but a blow at the vitals of religion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "For it is only by sinking religious differences and making a common
+    advance against this universal paganism that religion can save the soul
+    of civilization. If you do not see the truth of that fact in England I
+    think you must be blind. The fullness of civilization hangs upon
+    religious union; religious dissension is the enemy."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Change in Ulster.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Another Irish-American who was present on this occasion, an accomplished
+    man of letters and a traveler, asked me what England felt about Ulster's
+    share in the responsibility for the present war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I myself have seen two letters from Ulster," he said, "in which the
+    phrase occurs, 'Rather the Kaiser than the Pope.' These letters were
+    written before the war. Ulster, no doubt, has now changed her tune. But
+    it was that spirit, surely, and the reports sent to Berlin by German
+    officers who visited Ulster and inquired into the military character of
+    Carsonism which persuaded Germany that England would not fight."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Irish-Americans are persuaded that Sir Edward Carson is in very great
+    measure responsible for all the ruin and death and bitter suffering of
+    the enormous catastrophe. He boasted that he would make civil war, and
+    such were his preparations that in any other country in the world civil
+    war would have been inevitable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Germany counted on that civil war. The British Army was said to be
+    completely under the influence of Carsonism. The real catastrophe for
+    the diplomacy of Berlin was not India's loyalty and the vigorous
+    uprising of the young dominions, but the dying down of Ulster mutiny.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These Irish-Americans have hated the ruling classes in England, not only
+    for sins of the past but for the unworthy and most cruel opposition
+    offered by those ruling classes, in the name of religious intolerance,
+    to the ideals of the Irish Nation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Unionist politicians sneer at the subscriptions sent by Irish
+    servant girls in America to help the cause of Ireland they should
+    reflect that not only do they fail to make a good joke, not only do they
+    exhibit a horribly bad taste, but they spread hatred of England through
+    the thousands and thousands of people. For it is the loyalty of the
+    poorest of these Irish-Americans, the sacrifices perpetually made by
+    the humblest of them, which should move us to see, as it has certainly
+    moved the American people to see, that the cause of Irish liberty is
+    noble and undying.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Religious Education.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    With all my heart I would beg Unionists in England to reflect
+    conscientiously upon this very significant state of affairs in America:
+</p>
+<p>
+    A non-Catholic Bible used to be read in the public schools of America
+    down to the year 1888. A Catholic agitation against this Bible reading
+    was begun in 1885, and in 1888 the custom was finally abolished. From
+    that date to this there has been no religious instruction of any kind in
+    the public schools of America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bigotry and intolerance won that victory. The Catholic Church, in its
+    folly, destroyed religious teaching in the schools of the country.
+    Catholics themselves are now looking back on that agitation with
+    religious repentance and political regret.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The result of this abolition is that Catholics and non-Catholics who
+    believe in the importance of religious instruction, and who see the
+    pagan effect of purely secular instruction, do not send their children
+    to the public schools.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "These schools, for which Christians are heavily taxed, are in the
+    possession of the Hebrews. If nothing is done to alter the existing
+    state of things Americans themselves assure me that in five-and-twenty
+    years America will be a pagan country. But a fight is to be made to
+    avert this disaster at the Constitutional Convention to be held next
+    month.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What we have to do," my Irish friend told me, "Catholics and
+    non-Catholics alike, is to appeal for schools representing Catholic and
+    non-Catholic teaching. Instead of the various churches fighting against
+    each other they must fight together, helping one another to get the
+    schools they demand. Only in this way can we save civilization."
+</p>
+<p>
+    This is how the Irishman, breathing the free air of America, and in
+    America rising to positions of extraordinary power and responsibility,
+    views the foundational question of religion; while England allows
+    herself to be dragged at the heels of the frothing fanatic who has
+    actually dared to raise the unholy battle cry of "Rather the Kaiser than
+    the Pope."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Let the Unionist Party hesitate before it seeks to revive this hideous,
+    utterly irrational and most unchristianlike spirit at the very heart of
+    the British Empire. The sower of hate is the reaper of death.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0053"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    TO MELOS, POMEGRANATE ISLE.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By GRACE HARRIET MACURDY.
+</h3>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>     (Destroyed by Athens, 416 B.C., because of her refusal to
+     break neutrality.&mdash;Thucydides V., 84-116; Euripides, "Trojan
+     Women.")
+</p>
+      <blockquote>
+        <blockquote>
+          <blockquote>
+            <blockquote>
+              <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">    O thou Pomegranate of the Sea,<br>
+      Sweet Melian isle, across the years<br>
+    Thy Belgian sister calls to thee<br>
+      In anguished sweat of blood and tears.<br>
+<br>
+    Her fate like thine&mdash;a ruthless band<br>
+      Hath ravaged all her loveliness.<br>
+    How Athens spoiled thy prosperous land<br>
+      Athenian lips with shame confess.<br>
+<br>
+    Thou, too, a land of lovely arts,<br>
+      Of potter's and of sculptor's skill&mdash;<br>
+    Thy folk of high undaunted hearts<br>
+      As those that throb in Belgium still.<br>
+<br>
+    Within thy harbor's circling rim<br>
+      The warships long, with banners bright,<br>
+    Sailed bearing Athens' message grim&mdash;<br>
+      "God hates the weak. Respect our Might."<br>
+<br>
+    The flame within thy fanes grew cold,<br>
+      Stilled by the foeman's swarming hordes.<br>
+    Thy sons were slain, thy daughters sold<br>
+      To serve the lusts of stranger lords.<br>
+<br>
+    For Attic might thou didst defy<br>
+      Thy folk the foeman slew as sheep,<br>
+    Across the years hear Belgium's cry&mdash;<br>
+      "O Sister, of the Wine-Dark Deep,<br>
+<br>
+    "Whose cliffs gleam seaward roseate.<br>
+      Not one of all my martyr roll<br>
+    But keeps his faith inviolate,<br>
+      Man kills our body, not our soul."
+</p>
+              </blockquote>
+            </blockquote>
+          </blockquote>
+        </blockquote>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0054"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    What America Can Do
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Lord Channing of Wellingborough.
+</h3>
+    <blockquote>
+<p><i>Lord Channing, who makes the following suggestion to American
+statesmen, was born in the United States of the well-known
+Channings of Boston. His father was the Rev. W.H. Channing,
+Chaplain of the House of Representatives during the civil war
+and a close friend of President Lincoln. Lord Channing has
+been for twenty-five years a member of the British Parliament,
+and for the last three years a member of the House of Lords,
+having been created first Baron of Wellingborough in 1912. He
+is President of the British National Peace Congress.</i>
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    As a member of the British Legislature for a generation, and a lifelong
+    Liberal, and having also the closest ties of blood with America, and a
+    proud reverence for her ideals, I would wish, with the utmost respect,
+    to offer some comments on one specific aspect of present affairs, as
+    they affect America, which does not seem to have been marked off with
+    the distinctness its importance calls for.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This is the greatest crisis in the history of the world, and attention
+    concentrates itself on the attitude of the greatest neutral State.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is unthinkable that America can divest herself of responsibility for
+    the final outcome. This seems as clearly recognized in America as in
+    Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To us in England this war is a life or death struggle between two
+    principles&mdash;Pan-Germanism on the one side, with its avowed purpose to
+    impose its hegemony and its rigid system of ideas and organization on
+    the rest of the world, not by consent, but by irresistible military
+    force; on the other side the claim of the other nations, large and
+    small, to maintain inviolate their freedom and individuality, and to
+    think and work out for themselves their own political and economic
+    future in their own way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The one principle would seem the flat contradiction of all that America
+    stands for, the other principle would seem to be precisely the essential
+    idea of free self-government and democratic evolution, in which are
+    rooted the very life and being of America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For this reason there is instinctive and profound sympathy on the part
+    of the great majority of native Americans with the cause of England and
+    her allies.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This sympathy is not merely the tie of blood or the unity of ideals.
+    Reason has convinced Americans that the supreme principles and highest
+    interests of America will be best safeguarded if the Allies win.
+</p>
+<p>
+    They dread instinctively what might happen if Pan-Germanism absorbed the
+    smaller nationalities, crushed the great free countries like France and
+    England, and dominated the whole world with the "mailed fist," not only
+    Europe and the Far East, but South America and the Pacific. Perhaps the
+    hint of Count Bernstorff that Canada may be treated like Belgium, and
+    the Monroe Doctrine like other "scraps of paper," may also have thrown
+    some light for Americans on a "Germanized" future! And a cast-iron
+    system of commercial and industrial monopoly dictated by German needs
+    cannot attract.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    America Can't Stand Apart.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    That is one side that American statesmen have to consider. There is, of
+    course, another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The United States visibly form the greatest force the world has yet seen
+    to bring together, to unite, to assimilate, in the development of their
+    vast territories, measureless resources, and complicated industries, all
+    that is best from all the other great nations, welding slowly but
+    surely, through free institutions, these new elements into instruments
+    for the fuller realization of the generous and noble ideals for which
+    America stands. Perhaps an eighteenth or even fifteenth part of the
+    population is of German origin, a percentage not far from equal to that
+    contributed by the United Kingdom and Canada.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is thus not only the broad question of avoiding war with Germany,
+    whose people have so large a share in the life of America, a war doubly
+    unwelcome at all times because of the innumerable links of science,
+    invention, professional training, of commerce, and of personal
+    friendship; but there is also the local question of peace and good-will
+    in the daily work of America as between huge sections of her population.
+    These visible facts not unnaturally give great weight to the argument
+    for neutrality. No wise man on this side of the Atlantic will try to
+    ignore them, or take exception to the dignity and correctness with which
+    the American Executive has dealt with the grave problem before it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Neutrality has, of course, its limits and conditions, logical and moral.
+    Those limits and conditions, the possibility of their infringement in
+    such a way as to make some change of policy imperative, are matters
+    solely for the United States.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The point the present writer wishes to press is on a different plane,
+    and is precisely this:
+</p>
+<p>
+    America does not and can not stand wholly apart from supreme European
+    decisions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    America is as responsible as Europe for the great extensions,
+    definitions, the strengthening and modification of international law.
+    America stands forth as the apostle of arbitration, to widen the area
+    within which disputed points may be determined amicably. America stands
+    also as the chief signatory of the great world conventions which have
+    settled new rules for the conduct of war, to mitigate its horrors,
+    especially for non-combatants.
+</p>
+<p>
+    America has taken a noble part in framing machinery for securing peace
+    and justice, and in moving forward the landmarks of civilization as
+    against savagery, and of human mercy as against cruel terrorism.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Can America safely or wisely divest herself of the duty thus placed upon
+    her, logically and morally, by her participation in this, the noblest
+    work of our age?
+</p>
+<p>
+    And is it wise or is it safe to indefinitely postpone the discharge of
+    this duty?
+</p>
+<p>
+    By the events of the last three months the whole of this new charter of
+    humanity has been challenged and is at stake.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Is it not sound policy as well as an imperative duty to take some step
+    here and now to "stop the rot" and to make good here and now as much as
+    we can of what we have won and wish to keep?
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Belgium's Wrongs.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Admittedly a "guiltless and unoffending nation,"<a href="#note-1"><small>1</small></a> whose neutrality and
+    independence had been solemnly guaranteed by treaty, to which the powers
+    concerned in the war were parties, has had her treaty rights violated by
+    one of these powers on the cynical plea that there is no right or wrong
+    as against national interest, that necessity obeys no law, and treaties
+    are "scraps of paper." This is not matter for inquiry or judicial
+    decision at some later date. It has been frankly avowed by the German
+    Government from the outset of this war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Again, this admitted wrong is not the sudden and unavoidable outcome of
+    events unforeseen and uncontrollable. It has been deliberately planned
+    years ahead, with elaborate preparation of railway and other facilities,
+    and with every invention and contrivance, to rush in irresistible
+    forces; to subvert and destroy the independent State that Germany was
+    herself pledged to defend.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Thirdly, this policy of absolute annihilation of Belgium, of its right
+    to live its own life, its right even to preserve those monuments of its
+    noble and beautiful history which had become treasured heirlooms of the
+    whole world, has been carried out with a ruthless barbarity to the
+    people, and especially the non-combatants, for which it is hard to find
+    a parallel in the worst incidents of the Thirty Years' War or of the
+    devastation of the Palatinate. To bring the actual guilt home to those
+    who actually did or ordered these deeds to be done in individual cases
+    is one thing. The broad fact that these barbarous deeds were done stands
+    manifest and insistent, and demands such instant action as can be taken
+    by a great and responsible people.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And, lastly, there is the undisguised adoption of the policy of
+    terrorizing non-combatants to submission by such acts as forcing women
+    and children to walk before the advancing enemy, the wholesale burning
+    of houses, shooting of hostages and other non-combatants, and the
+    dropping of bombs from aeroplanes not on forts or troops, but on places
+    where women and children can be killed or injured.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And all this tragic sweeping away of such good things as had been won
+    with worldwide consent, at the instance of the Czar in initiating The
+    Hague policy, has gone on, so far as it could go on, with equal horror,
+    throughout Northern France. Rheims and Senlis have suffered the fate of
+    Louvain and Termonde and Malines, and Paris has had her quota of women
+    and children wantonly slain by bombs, exactly like Antwerp.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The Threat to England.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    And America knows, as we here in England know, from the open menace of
+    the German press, writing of England as the <i>one supreme enemy</i>, that it
+    is the full intention of Germans, if they can, to carry through England,
+    too, even more ruthlessly, the same policy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We are fighting here, and are confident that we shall fight with
+    success, not only to protect our English homes and to guard the historic
+    buildings of this land but to make an end of this Prussian terrorism of
+    the world; to secure no national aggrandizement, but to secure a
+    permanent and solid peace, based on guaranteed liberties, and a rational
+    settlement of the question of armaments.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These questions touch us all the more because many of us have been the
+    most persistent friends of international peace and have specially
+    labored to promote happy and friendly relations with the German people.
+    The present writer, who was honored by election as President of this
+    year's National Peace Congress, has been associated with the work of men
+    like Lord Brassey, Sir John Lubbock, (later Lord Avebury,) as a member
+    of the Anglo-German Friendship League, and has repeatedly in Parliament
+    argued against any hostile or provocative attitude toward Germany. This
+    war is our answer and our reward!
+</p>
+<h3>
+    America in the Settlement.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    So far as can be judged from authoritative words of President Wilson and
+    ex-President Roosevelt, America does and will claim a right to share in
+    the final settlement of the terms of a permanent and stable peace.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If that claim is sound, if the efforts of America to create better
+    machinery for securing peace and for generously and humanely vindicating
+    the liberties and happiness of nations and of the individuals who make
+    them up do entitle America to a voice, and a potent voice, in the work
+    of mending and remaking the world after this terrific catastrophe, then
+    I would submit with all respect that it is really idle to wait till all
+    the recognized principles of what has been held to be right or wrong as
+    between nations, and what has been held to be right or wrong in the
+    methods of conducting war have gone overboard, without one word of
+    protest; we must save the world first, if we are to have a real chance
+    of remaking it on lines which are worth having.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nothing but good could come from immediate action by the American
+    Executive to assert as they, best of all nations, could assert, now and
+    at once in terms uncompromising, unanswerable, that the ground taken up
+    by international consent in the past generation must be held now and
+    hereafter, and accepted as an essential basis of the final settlement.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such a pronouncement now by America would make a landmark in
+    history&mdash;would render a measureless service to the whole world in
+    emancipation from the persistent degradation of the twin doctrines that
+    might makes right, and that necessity knows no law, and would bring to
+    America herself imperishable honor and glory in the fearless assertion
+    and eternal consecration of her own noblest ideals.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I would submit further that such a national declaration by America
+    involves no violation of neutrality, and is in no sense inconsistent
+    with the spirit of official utterances already made.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To take the latter first&mdash;we have had notable utterances from the
+    President and from the ex-President.
+</p>
+<p>
+    President Wilson seems to have given a sympathetic hearing to the
+    mission which laid the case of Belgium before him, both as to the
+    violation of Belgium's neutrality and as to the cruel treatment of the
+    non-combatant population and the wanton destruction of towns and
+    villages and of precious historical monuments. He is understood to have
+    promised an investigation, and it is gathered from the Indépendance
+    Belge this week that this investigation has been, and is being, carried
+    out by American Military Attachés in Belgium, and also at the London
+    Embassy of the United States.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Again, President Wilson's recent letter to the Kaiser, while confirming
+    neutrality in precise terms, went on to intimate that there must be a
+    "day of settlement" and that "where injustices have found a place
+    results are sure to follow, and all those who have been found at fault
+    will have to answer for them." If the "general settlement" does not
+    sufficiently determine this, there is the ultimate sanction of "the
+    opinion of mankind" which will "in such cases interfere." He would
+    apparently reserve judgment until the end of the war, but in no way
+    disclaims or surrenders American responsibility.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Roosevelt is not tied by official responsibility, and can speak with
+    less restraint and more freedom. In The Outlook he has substantially
+    accepted and indorsed all that is material in the Belgian case.
+</p>
+<p>
+    America should help in securing a peace which will not mean the
+    "crushing the liberty and life of just and inoffending peoples or
+    consecrate the rule of militarism," but which "will, by international
+    agreement, minimize the chances of the recurrence of such worldwide
+    disaster," and "will, in the interests of civilization, create
+    conditions which will make such action" as the violation of Belgian
+    treaty rights "impossible in the future."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Like President Wilson, he seems to think that the time for judicial
+    pronouncement on acts presumably guilty and wrongful will come at the
+    conclusion of the war. At the same time he surrenders no part of
+    America's responsibility, but reaffirms it with all the force of his
+    trenchant style.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But elsewhere, and later, he has insisted on the "helplessness"&mdash;the
+    "humiliating impotence created by the fact that our neutrality can only
+    be preserved by failure to help to right what is wrong."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Mr. Roosevelt's Remedy.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    And he has gone on to adumbrate his practical remedy&mdash;"a world league"
+    with "an amplified Hague Court," made strong by joint agreement of the
+    powers, to secure "peace and righteousness," and to vindicate the just
+    decisions of such a court by "a union of forces to enforce the decree."
+    He adds that this might help to obtain a "limitation of armaments that
+    would be real and effective."
+</p>
+<p>
+    That so happy a plan may be capable of realization would be the hope of
+    all wise men.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But where I take exception with Col. Roosevelt is as to America's
+    present "impotence"&mdash;that nothing effectual can be done by America
+    without breaking her own neutrality.
+</p>
+<p>
+    That view I wholly traverse. It might conceivably be felt by America,
+    under certain grave eventualities, that neutrality must be broken.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But it is clear that the articles of The Hague Convention of 1907 amply
+    provide for the type of action here and now by the United States which
+    I have ventured to lay before American statesmen in this paper. And, in
+    my opinion, it is conceivable that more good might be achieved by
+    America taking that action, while maintaining her neutrality.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It goes without saying, it really needs no demonstration, that nearly
+    every international agreement embodied in The Hague Convention has been
+    broken, wholly or in part, in the letter and in the spirit, in the
+    proceedings of this unhappy year.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The violation of the territory of a neutral State by the transit of
+    belligerent troops and other acts of war is forbidden, (Articles 1, 2,
+    3, 4, &amp;c.) It is the duty of the neutral State not to tolerate, (Article
+    5,) but to resist such acts, and her forcible resistance is not to be
+    regarded as an act of war, (Article 10.)
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Interference with Neutrals.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    That, of course, covers the case of Belgium completely and establishes
+    absolutely that there is, and need be, no breach of neutrality in
+    resistance thus legally sanctioned to illegal interference with neutral
+    rights.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is hardly necessary to recapitulate the articles that have been torn
+    up. To refer to the most striking, there is the repeated bombardment of
+    undefended towns, pillage incessant throughout Belgium and Northern
+    France, (Articles 28 and 47;) the levying of illegal contributions,
+    (Articles 49 and 52;) the seizure of cash and securities belonging to
+    private persons, banks, and local authorities, (Articles 52 and 56;)
+    collective penalties for individual acts for which the community as a
+    whole are not responsible, (Article 50.) Articles 50 and 43 should have
+    made impossible the punitive destruction of Visé, Aerschot, Dinant, and
+    Louvain, and numberless villages; Article 56 should have preserved from
+    destruction institutions and buildings dedicated to religion, education,
+    charity, hospitals, &amp;c. All these wrongful acts, committed everywhere,
+    have been prohibited by these articles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The gradual introduction of the policy of terrorism has been ably traced
+    by perhaps the highest French authority on international law, Prof.
+    Edouard Clunet, formerly President of the Institute of International
+    Law, in a recent address.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Bombardment par intimidation" was adopted by the Germans in 1870 and
+    used at Strassburg, Paris, Péronne, &amp;c., shells being directed and
+    conflagrations spread in the inhabited parts of towns apart from the
+    fortifications. Germany herself assented to serious mitigations of this
+    practice at the Conference of Brussels in 1874 and at The Hague in 1907.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The worst evolution of the policy of terrorism has been in the throwing
+    from aeroplanes of bombs, explosive or incendiary. M. Clunet lays down
+    that, by the most recent decision of the institute, bomb throwing from
+    aeroplanes must follow the rules of bombardment by artillery. This would
+    prohibit such bombs without formal notice. But in Antwerp bombs were
+    dropped without notice over the Royal Palace, to the peril of the Queen
+    and her young children, and the number of peaceable inhabitants killed
+    or injured was thirty-eight, three children being mutilated in their
+    beds. In Paris, besides the bombs dropped on Notre Dame, bombs were
+    deliberately dropped in the public streets and a number of peaceable
+    victims killed or wounded. The dropping of bombs as an act of war on
+    fortresses, ammunition depots, Zeppelin sheds, &amp;c., is, of course,
+    legal. But the bomb dropping adopted in Belgium and France, and
+    threatened in England, if the opportunity arises, is undisguised
+    terrorism, and not war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is important to note also that at Brussels in 1874 Antwerp addressed
+    a petition to the conference praying that any bombardment should be
+    limited to fortifications only. The commission of the conference, which
+    included three well-known German Generals and two professors, recognized
+    the justice of this plea and recommended Generals to conform to it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the one point that should appeal most strongly to the patriotism as
+    well as the idealism of America is the fact that the instructions of
+    1863 for armies in campaign, drawn up by the United States Government
+    in the height of the civil war, first codified the laws for the conduct
+    of war, and have been the source and starting point of all these later
+    international agreements.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And it should be remembered that both Germany and America signed the
+    Fourth Convention of The Hague with its annexed regulations as to sieges
+    and bombardments (Articles 22 to 28) and the further provision which may
+    even yet be applied punitively to the proceedings of the present war.
+    "The belligerent who shall have violated the provisions of the said
+    regulation shall be held liable for an indemnity."
+</p>
+<p>
+    And if it be thought that America can render no help in such a position
+    as the present without violating her neutrality, the answer is that by
+    Article 3 of Convention 1 of The Hague, 1907, neutral powers have the
+    right to offer their suggestions (bons offices) or their mediation, even
+    during the course of hostilities. And further: "The exercise of this
+    right must never be considered by one or the other of the parties to
+    the conflict as an unfriendly act."
+</p>
+<p>
+    With all submission, I earnestly urge on the leaders of American thought
+    to support this attempted interpretation of the supreme duty and the
+    noble opportunity the present position places before their country.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One more word. I referred to the possible benefit of neutrality being
+    maintained while this protest against wrong and appeal for right is at
+    the same time advanced.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Is it not more than probable that there is an immense section of
+    moderate though patriotic opinion in the great German people which at
+    heart deprecates the extreme doctrines of conquest and world supremacy
+    in pursuit of which the great, the wonderful achievements of the German
+    race in science, in industry, in the extension of commerce, are being
+    rashly risked?
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    CHANNING OF WELLINGBOROUGH.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    40 Eaton Place, London S.W., Oct. 29, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0055"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    TO A COUSIN GERMAN.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Adeline Adams.
+</h3>
+    <blockquote>
+      <blockquote>
+        <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">My Hans, you say, with self-applausive jest,<br>
+"When Albert gave his Belgians Caesar's name&mdash;<br>
+'Bravest of all the Gauls'&mdash;surely 'twere shame<br>
+The King, unthorough man, forgot the rest:<br>
+<br>
+"'Bravest because most far from all the best<br>
+Provincial culture.'"<a href="#note-2"><small>2</small></a> Friend, if now your aim<br>
+Be that fine thoroughness your people claim,<br>
+Read on: "Such culture's wares, it stands confest,<br>
+<br>
+"Oft weaken minds." And Caesar's word was just.<br>
+If men, bedeviled under culture's star,<br>
+Have left Louvain a void where flames still hiss,<br>
+Speared babes, and stamped the world's own Rose to dust,<br>
+God grant that Belgium's soul may dwell afar<br>
+Forever, from a culture such as this!
+</p>
+        </blockquote>
+      </blockquote>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0056"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    What the Economic Effects May Be
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Irving Fisher.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center">Professor of Political Economy at Yale University; member of
+many scientific societies.
+</p>
+<br>
+<p>
+    When the future historian chronicles the facts of the present great
+    world struggle and attempts to analyze its causes and effects the
+    economic losses, gains, shiftings, and dislocations will form an
+    important part of the story. It is, of course, quite impossible at this
+    time to know, in any detail, what all the economic results will be. Much
+    will depend on how long the war lasts, how many people and how much
+    property are destroyed, what financial devices are resorted to in order
+    to finance it, and which side is finally victorious.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The most palpable and the most fundamental effects will be a partial
+    stoppage of earnings in the nations directly concerned, i.e., a
+    reduction in the "real income," which consists of enjoyable goods. All
+    the other important results follow from this.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cost, however reckoned, is sure to be stupendous. Prof. Richet is
+    quoted as reckoning it at $50,000,000 a day. This is probably more than
+    half the total income of all the inhabitants of the warring countries.
+    The highest estimates of the total income of the United Kingdom, France,
+    and Germany, estimates of Bowley, Laverge, and Buchel, respectively,
+    total up less than $70,000,000 a day. Russia and Austria are poor
+    countries per capita, and would scarcely bring the grand total to
+    $100,000,000 a day. Moreover, the loss of real income to Europe is, I
+    imagine, in reality much greater than Richet's estimate, chiefly because
+    he takes little account of the indirect costs, which may well be the
+    greatest of all. The cost to the fiscal departments of Government is
+    probably only a small part of the total cost which the people will have
+    to bear. The killing and disabling of the men engaged will cut off the
+    financial support of European families to the tune of hundreds of
+    millions of dollars per year. The physical destruction of capital
+    through the devastation of crops, the burning and demolishing of
+    merchant ships and buildings, the crippling of industry through the
+    sudden withdrawal of labor and raw materials, the introduction of new
+    trade risks, and the cutting off of transportation, both internal and
+    foreign, make up a sum of items which cannot be measured, but which may
+    exceed those which can. Last, but not least, is the impairment of that
+    subtle but vital basis of business, commercial credit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In short, the central effect is a vast impairment of Europe's current
+    income and of the capital from which her future income will flow. It
+    means a veritable impoverishment of vast populations. The great burden
+    will bear heaviest, of course, on the poor. It will impinge very
+    unequally and will cause a great redistribution of wealth. As always
+    happens, some people, mostly lucky speculators, will come out of the
+    męlée wealthier than before. This fact will not serve to lessen the
+    discontent of the masses, which their impoverishment is sure to create.
+    Food prices will be high, the earnings of labor will be low, and after
+    the war unemployment will be great, due to the impossibility of quick
+    absorption into the industrial system of returned soldiers, as well as
+    other maladjustments which the war is sure to bring.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The victor may secure indemnity for part of the loss, but not for all;
+    he will, in spite of himself, be a net loser. Taxes will be a crushing
+    burden, merely to secure funds with which to pay high interest on vast
+    new war debts, to say nothing of funds with which to purchase new
+    armaments&mdash;if again the nations are forced, by lack of international
+    control, to resume the stupendous folly of racing each other in military
+    equipments.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Bankruptcy and Revolution.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    It may well be that among the economic consequences of the war there
+    will be some national bankruptcies, and that among the political
+    consequences will be revolutions. High prices, high taxes, low wages,
+    and unemployment make an ominous combination. We may be sure that
+    discontent will be profound and widespread. This discontent is pretty
+    sure to lead, especially in the defeated nations where there is no
+    compensating "glory," to strong revolutionary movements just as was the
+    case in Russia after her defeat by Japan. Whether or to what extent
+    these movements, in which "Socialism" in the various meanings of that
+    word is sure to play a part, will succeed, depends on the relative
+    strength of opposing tendencies which cannot yet be measured. One
+    possible if not probable result may be, as I suggested in THE TIMES two
+    weeks ago, some international device to secure disarmament and to
+    safeguard peace.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Though part of the losses to Europe will be permanent, her chief loss
+    will be coterminous with the war. She will, therefore, seek ways and
+    means to fill in this immediate hole in her income in order to "get by."
+    To do this she must borrow; that is, she must secure her present bread
+    and butter from us and other nations and arrange to repay later out of
+    the fruits of peace. She can stint herself, but not enough to meet the
+    situation. She must borrow. And in one way and another she will satisfy
+    this necessity by borrowing in the United States.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Most of the strange and unprecedented phenomena which we have witnessed
+    in the last month, in rapid succession, are due to this pressing
+    necessity of the belligerent peoples to cash in now and trust to good
+    fortune to pay later. As soon as the war became even probable Europe
+    tried to cash in on our securities. The pressure for our gold pushed it
+    toward Europe faster than it could move. Exchange jumped to the
+    gold-shipping point of $4.89 per pound sterling, and did not stop. In
+    some cases it reached $7. This was partly due to the desire to get our
+    gold and bolster up a credit structure, tottering before the deadly blow
+    of war; but it was also partly due to the need of ready money for
+    supplies of all kinds. This need applies not only to the Governments,
+    but to the individual people. To obtain this ready money they threw back
+    on us the securities they had purchased of us in former years. They
+    wanted us to take back these titles to future income and give them
+    instead titles to present income. Had they secured our gold their next
+    step would have been to spend part of it for supplies, and this would
+    have caused any foreign dealers to whom they applied to place orders
+    with us. The gold then might have turned the exchanges and have been
+    brought back to us in return for our wheat and other products.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This double transaction is in essence one&mdash;a barter of present income in
+    the form of our wheat to Europe for future income in the form of
+    investment securities. It was interfered with by the refusal of the
+    insurance companies to insure the gold and by the closing of Stock
+    Exchanges against the inundating flood of securities. The first
+    difficulty, as to transporting gold, has been largely removed by
+    arranging for drafts against stocks of it kept on both sides of the
+    Atlantic. This will save the need of sending it on risky voyages back
+    and forth, and any final net balances can be liquidated after the war.
+    The second obstacle, the closure of the Stock Exchanges, is more
+    formidable, but cannot completely or permanently prevent the
+    transactions which so many people on both sides are anxious to
+    consummate. Curb markets and limited cash sales on the Exchanges
+    themselves are doing some of this business, and, sooner or later, much
+    more will be done, whether the Exchanges are open or not. Europe needs
+    our wheat and cannot pay for it except with securities, partly because
+    her own industry is paralyzed, partly because ocean transportation is
+    difficult.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    What Dumping Securities Means.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Few people seem to realize that the dumping of securities on our shores
+    and the efforts of foreign Governments, such as France and Switzerland,
+    to borrow money in our markets are at the bottom very much the same
+    thing. They are simply two forms of securing present supplies from
+    America in return for future supplies, the dividends and interest on
+    securities from Europe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It does not much matter whether we buy Government bonds or other
+    securities. If we buy of French capitalists their holdings in American
+    railway securities we simply provide them with the wherewithal to take
+    the French Government loans themselves. They virtually become, without
+    our knowledge, the go-between through which we lend, as it were, to the
+    French Government, in spite of ourselves. It is doubtless well, as a
+    matter of policy, to refuse to loan directly to France, but we must not
+    for a moment conclude that France or any other nation will have to
+    finance the war without our aid. We shall not be consciously helping any
+    particular nation, but we shall be actually helping any nation which can
+    trade with us. Evidently England will get more of our help than any
+    other nation because her shores are more accessible. Germany is more
+    isolated. Unless she possesses a larger food stock than commercial
+    statistics indicate she will be pressing for our food supplies, which
+    may reach her indirectly, we selling to Holland and Holland to Germany;
+    also reversely, via Holland or via Austria and Italy, Germany may sell a
+    stream of securities the other end of which we receive. Whether directly
+    or by devious routes there will inevitably be, so far as I can see, a
+    vast exchange of commodities passing to Europe for securities coming
+    from Europe. In this interchange will be found the dominant economic
+    effect of the war on the United States.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Foreign nations will get their much-needed loans on better terms, even
+    if less promptly, by the circuitous process mentioned than if they
+    could borrow directly in our markets; for their own citizens will pay
+    higher prices than we would, even if, to get the money, they have to
+    sell their other investment securities to us at a considerable
+    sacrifice. England has sold Treasury bills for seventy-five millions of
+    dollars on as low a "basis" as 3-3/4 per cent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In this virtual trade of this year's crops for titles to future years'
+    crops we shall get a high price for the former and pay a low price (in
+    present valuation) for the latter. Investment securities are, and will
+    be, a drug on the market. In other words, the rate of return to the
+    investor will be high; the rate of interest on long-time loans will be
+    high and stay high, that on short-time loans may fluctuate greatly. The
+    rise in the rate of interest on long-time investments is one of the most
+    vital and far-reaching effects of the war. At bottom, interest always
+    arises from the exchange of present and future goods. The rate of
+    interest, as I have tried to show in my book of that title, is simply
+    the crystallization, in a market rate, of the impatience of the human
+    race for its bread and butter. War has now produced such impatience in
+    populations of hundreds of millions. It is this impatience which dumps
+    the securities upon us, sends down their price, and sends up the rate of
+    interest. As Byron W. Holt has said, there is no moratorium for hunger.
+    The fall of securities in Europe produces the like fall in this and
+    other countries.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One of the consequences to America of being forced to play the rôle of
+    money lender and one of the consequences of the rise in the rate of
+    interest here, or what amounts to the same thing, the fall in the prices
+    of bonds, will be an increased difficulty of financing our own
+    enterprises. Only the most promising enterprises will be able to sell
+    their securities. This means that we shall be neglecting, to some
+    extent, our own enterprises, to finance the European war instead.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This general depreciation of investment securities will doubtless lead
+    to many bankruptcies, if not to a genuine crisis. It will also give
+    tempting opportunities to investors. The likelihood of a genuine panic
+    is lessened by the fact that every one recognizes the real cause of the
+    disturbance and that insolvency is not suspected. According to the best
+    commercial observers, the previous liquidation had been fairly well
+    completed. Unless they are mistaken, disaster will not be likely to
+    follow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We repeat that since the necessities of Europe have forced her to buy
+    our food in return for her investments, it is evident that during the
+    war food prices will be high and security prices, especially bonds, will
+    be low. These are the two facts of greatest economic significance to us.
+    To the country as a whole they defer some of our pleasures till after
+    the war. Uncle Sam will cut down for the present on his eating and
+    drinking, his clothes, shelter, and amusements in order to share his
+    rations with Europe. Instead of the pleasures foregone he will
+    invest&mdash;not in new enterprises at home, but in old ones&mdash;American and
+    possibly European also&mdash;purchased of Europe. We can never have our cake
+    and eat it too. In this case we shall let Europe eat some of it on
+    condition that she in turn shares hers with us after the war. Moreover,
+    we shall trade off a relatively small piece of our present cake for a
+    relatively large piece of Europe's future cake. In other words, Europe
+    will fill up the great breach in her income now impending by inducing us
+    to make a small breach in ours. The result will be that the course of
+    our real income, that is, economic satisfaction or enjoyable
+    consumption, will imitate in some degree that of Europe. This is,
+    reduced to its lowest terms, the chief economic result of the war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But to many the question is, do we gain or lose, as compared with what
+    might have been the case if there had been no war? I do not think any
+    one can answer that question with certainty. Europe is willing to
+    mortgage its future to us on terms very advantageous to us; but when the
+    future comes, the purchasing power of money will probably be so much
+    lessened as to have absorbed all our advantage. Probably we shall lose
+    slightly on the whole. But it is not economically impossible that there
+    will be a net gain. In either case the net effect will, I believe, be
+    small.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of more importance will be the various effects on various classes.
+    Certain people will be greatly benefited by the rise in food prices and
+    the fall in security prices. The farming classes will profit by the
+    former; the investing classes by the latter. Those who have the good
+    fortune to belong to both classes will grow rich. The farmer who is in a
+    position to save money will both make more money to save and be able to
+    invest it more advantageously after he has saved it. If he lends to his
+    neighbors he will find the market rate of interest high. Even if he buys
+    more land the purchase price will be restrained from the great rise we
+    might expect from the prosperity of farming by the fact that the "number
+    of years purchase," as the phrase is in England, will be small, or, in
+    other words, that the interest basis, which enters into every land
+    price, will be high.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Labor Will Not Suffer Much.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    On the other hand the general consumer of farm products will suffer from
+    another advance in that part of his cost of living, while the debtor
+    classes will suffer from the fall in bonds or rise in interest. Many
+    speculators on the Stock Exchange, those who have speculated for a rise,
+    are in effect undoubtedly ruined already, and many borrowers at banks on
+    collateral security will feel the pinch from the depreciation of their
+    property and the hard terms of renewing their loans.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And the laboring man, who forms the majority, what of him? It seems
+    improbable that he will be greatly affected, that is, on the average. He
+    will have to pay more for his food, and food constitutes more than a
+    third of his budget. But some articles he buys will probably fall and he
+    may secure higher wages because of the withdrawal of competing laborers.
+    Some labor may rise, especially in the industries benefited by the war,
+    such as, for instance, farming and other food industries, canning, flour
+    mills, sugar, &amp;c., the automobile industry and perhaps ammunition and
+    steel. In other industries thrown out of gear for lack of foreign
+    markets or for lack of foreign raw material, the wage earner may lose in
+    wages and employment. In other words, labor will be dislocated in spots,
+    like the other parts of our industrial machinery.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Important dislocations will be felt in the fields of shipping and
+    banking. One consequence is that American enterprise has now the golden
+    opportunity to capture a good share of each. The outbreak of the war and
+    the simultaneous opening of the Panama Canal will tend to divert the
+    course of trade from Europe to South America. Probably our merchant
+    marine can be developed more successfully for this South American trade
+    than it could for the European trade. New York can largely take the
+    place of London as the world's exchange centre for Pan-American trade.
+    This opportunity is increased by the possibilities in the new Banking
+    act for the establishment of branch banks abroad.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With these opportunities and the rise of interest in Europe, the United
+    States will change to a great degree from a debtor to a creditor nation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One of the dislocations of the war in the United States will be the
+    cutting off of imports of a large part of our dutiable commodities, and
+    therefore the loss of national revenue. There is an urgent need to
+    compensate for this loss by some other form of tax.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But it is well not to lose perspective, to remember that dislocations
+    are not necessarily losses, that, however loudly they are proclaimed in
+    news columns, they are small in extent, when considered in relation to
+    our whole trade, that this country of ours is a vast one, and that the
+    rank and file of Americans will be but slightly affected by the
+    war&mdash;especially by contrast with our friends, now fighting each other,
+    across the sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We are too nearly self-supporting to be prostrated. Our foreign trade is
+    and always has been a trifling matter compared with our internal
+    commerce. The internal commerce paid for by money and checks annually
+    in the United States amounts to nearly five hundred billions of dollars,
+    which is more than a hundred times as much as our combined exports and
+    imports.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Almost all of what has been said so far had grown out of the prospect
+    that the prices of foods and other materials needed in Europe will be
+    high, while the prices of securities which Europe does not need and
+    cannot afford will be low. Other prices will rise or fall according to
+    special circumstances. Like a bomb-shell, the effect of the war will be
+    to disperse or scatter prices at all angles of rises and falls. The
+    prices of luxuries will be lowered. The prices of chemicals will be
+    raised. The same article will fall in price in one country and rise in
+    another if the transportation from the former to the latter is
+    interfered with. This is true today of cotton.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There has already been a speculative movement to anticipate these
+    changes and arbitrarily to mark some prices up and some prices down. But
+    as this is guesswork, and will be subject to frequent revision, one of
+    the striking phenomena will doubtless be an increase in the variability
+    of prices. The general level of prices will tend to rise. The rise will
+    probably be greatest in little countries like Belgium, which are in the
+    war zone and largely dependent on foreign trade. The rise will be less
+    in England and in the United States than on the Continent. In fact, it
+    is conceivable that in England the hoarding of money and the shock to
+    credit, which is as predominant there as it is here, may actually lower
+    the general level of prices during the war, especially if we could
+    include in the index number the prices of securities, luxuries, and
+    articles of English internal trade. If any nation tries the old
+    experiment of paying its bills in irredeemable paper money, that
+    desperate expedient will have the same result that it did with us during
+    the civil war. Inflation of the currency will expel gold from that
+    country and raise its price level higher than elsewhere.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After the war is over prices will probably not retreat, but will move
+    upward even faster than before. There may then come the familiar "boom"
+    period, which may culminate in a commercial crisis in a few years after
+    the close of the war, as was true after the Crimean war, the American
+    civil war, and the Franco-Prussian war. The rebound will probably be
+    fastest in England. Statistical price curves of many nations usually
+    show an upward turn when war begins and another when it ends. The war
+    will thus aggravate a rise of prices already in prospect.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It would take considerable space to give, completely, the reasons for
+    these prognostications, but I have tried to justify them in a brief
+    addendum to a book to be issued this week on "Why Is the Dollar
+    Shrinking?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The sudden lightning bolt of war produced as one of its first economic
+    effects a general dislocation of credit machinery in Europe and to some
+    extent in this country. We heard at once that letters of credit of
+    travelers in Europe were uncashable. Gold was hoarded everywhere. It is
+    estimated that about $30,000,000 in gold was hoarded in New York in the
+    first week in August. Runs on banks were frequent. Bank reserves were
+    depleted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The moratorium was resorted to to avoid a general cataclysm of
+    bankruptcies which might have occurred&mdash;not from actual insolvency but
+    from mere insufficiency of cash.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To me one of the most striking phenomena was the promptness and
+    effectiveness of the co-operative actions by which, so far, any business
+    cataclysm has been avoided. The closure of Stock Exchanges perhaps saved
+    us from general financial panic. Most striking of all is the manner in
+    which the Governments of the world have come to the rescue of business.
+    Those of us who were brought up in the old laissez-faire school have to
+    rub our eyes. Had the world been guided by laissez-faire ideas, in this
+    emergency we should in all probability have witnessed by this time the
+    greatest collapse of credit the world has ever seen. Almost all the
+    large and effective measures to meet the many emergencies arising were
+    taken by Governments. The moratorium must be counted among the
+    Governmental acts which, so far at least, have saved the day for
+    business credits. In England the Government permitted suspension of the
+    Bank act, (not of the Bank, as many Americans seem to imagine.)
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Improvised Accounting Methods.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The Bank of England has been enabled to rediscount a great mass of
+    acceptances by the guarantee of the British Government against loss in
+    so doing. These in the end will amount to several hundred millions of
+    dollars. Emergency notes were issued by Governmental authority on both
+    sides of the Atlantic, and in the arrangements made for special gold
+    funds in Canada and in France the Governments of England and France
+    played the important parts. Thus have been improvised methods of
+    international accounting by which the transportation of gold balances
+    may be deferred and largely dispensed with. Our own Government has
+    co-operated in the currency exchange and credit situation in many ways.
+    It made provision for sending gold to Europe for our stranded
+    countrymen. It promptly revised the banking and shipping laws.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Whether further instability will be found to need such bolstering we
+    cannot be sure. The present outlook is that business conditions are
+    fairly sound and stable. In which direction across the Atlantic the
+    title to gold will tend to change cannot as yet be foreseen. It will
+    depend largely on how much Europe wants our products and how large a
+    sacrifice she is willing to make in selling us her securities. It will
+    also depend on possible issues of paper money. Fortunately, we are the
+    happy possessors of over $1,500,000,000 in gold, and it is inconceivable
+    that any large part of this should flow out&mdash;unless we should be so
+    insensate as to inflate the currency.
+</p>
+<p>
+    If we keep our heads, we shall at the end of the war be in the proud
+    position of being the only great nation whose economic resources have
+    not even been strained.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0057"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    Effects of War on America
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Roland G. Usher.
+</h3>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>Head of Department of History at Washington University; author
+of "Pan-Germanism," "The Rise of the American People," &amp;c.
+</p>
+
+    </blockquote>
+
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>From The Boston Transcript, Sept. 2, 1914.</i>
+</p>
+<br>
+<p>
+    The events of the last few days of July, 1914, showed the Americans the
+    far-reaching effects of a state of war. There are now few who would say,
+    as used to be so common, that a European war would make no difference to
+    us. The closing of the New York Stock Exchange, the great shipments of
+    gold and its consequent scarcity in the United States, the closing of
+    the New England cotton mills, the cessation of export to Europe and of
+    transatlantic communication with the Continent were instantaneous
+    effects of a war 3,000 miles away obvious even to the apathetic and the
+    heedless. With these we have not here to do; such are already past
+    history. There is, however, a legitimate field for speculation as to the
+    probable effects on the United States of the continuation of the state
+    of war in Europe for months or years. The permanent results of a war
+    naturally cannot be predicted in advance, but in the light of the
+    history of the past, certain changes and developments in the United
+    States appear so probable if the war continues as to reach almost the
+    realm of certainty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Needless to say, the European war will not involve the United States in
+    actual hostilities. It is highly improbable that either our army or our
+    navy will see service. We are too distant from the seat of war; too
+    entirely devoid of interests the combatants might seriously injure which
+    a resort to war could remedy; too completely incapable of aiding or
+    abetting one or the other in arms to cause them to assail us. Even were
+    we not as a nation of a peaceable disposition, even had we not a
+    President blessed with a singularly clear head and able to keep his
+    temper, we should still stand little chance of going to war. One
+    eventuality alone might affect us&mdash;Japan might attempt some measures of
+    aggression in the Far East which would interest us as possessors of the
+    Philippines, but that is practically foreclosed by her official
+    announcement that she will side with England. The effects of the war
+    upon the United States will be indirect effects; they will be economic
+    in character, though far-reaching and significant for every man, woman,
+    and child in the country.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The economic structure of the United States rests today upon the
+    assumption of the interdependence of international trade, upon an
+    international division of labor, where England makes some things,
+    Germany others, and we still more, all of which are exchanged. In a
+    sense each country manufactures and produces for the whole world, and in
+    turn expects the rest of the world to buy its products and to
+    manufacture and produce things for its consumption. While something of
+    this sort has always been true in international trade, the process
+    reached during the nineteenth century an unprecedented development which
+    actually made countries interdependent, or, if you will, actually
+    dependent for the necessities of life upon each other's prosperity and
+    continued activity. Hand in hand went the expansion of the international
+    credit structure, based upon public confidence in the mutual honesty of
+    merchants, until finally personal checks have begun to be exchanged
+    (between the United States and England at least) at par and without
+    investigation or previous indorsement by the banks on which they were
+    drawn.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With the outbreak of war a striking and artificial change, a totally
+    uneconomic and unnatural factor, came to transform the situation and
+    leave the United States for all practical purposes in contact with only
+    two of her really large customers. We have no merchant marine and cannot
+    therefore avail ourselves of our neutral status to trade with the
+    belligerents. We shall be compelled (for a time at least) to ship in
+    English bottoms to such ports as English ships can make&mdash;which will
+    practically be limited to England, France, Portugal, Spain, and the
+    Mediterranean ports. The ordinary commercial roads to Russia through the
+    Baltic are automatically closed by the location of the German fleet, and
+    probably England and France, deprived of other outlets for their own
+    trade, will nearly monopolize the trade with Russia through the
+    Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the other hand, the mobilization of armies and fleets in Europe will
+    draw millions of men from the field and factories where they have been
+    accustomed to make what we have usually bought. The war will vastly
+    diminish and in many cases stop altogether the stream of imports to the
+    United States. These millions of men in the field and on the sea will
+    not possess most of the economic wants they had in time of peace and
+    will become conscious of many which they usually did not feel. The war
+    will diminish and in many cases entirely stop the stream of ordinary
+    American exports to Europe. Because of the stoppage of the European
+    supply of things we have usually bought of them, and the cessation of a
+    European demand for things we have usually sold to them, the conditions
+    of the home market, both in regard to what we must buy in it, and to
+    what we must sell in it, will be vitally changed. When our present
+    supplies of European importations are exhausted, we shall be obliged to
+    make for each other and buy from each other the things which we happen
+    to be no longer able to import or export. A great readjustment of the
+    economic fabric in the United States will take place if the war lasts
+    longer than a comparatively short time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    How long a time that must be will depend entirely upon the sharpness of
+    the break in the economic life of Europe, and the amount of supplies
+    they have on hand, which, as they will not now need them at home, they
+    will be anxious to sell in the United States. Indeed, it would not be
+    surprising if there was for a short time a glut of English and French
+    manufactured goods in the United States market.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Europe May Depend On Us.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Of late years the commercial relationship between the United States and
+    Europe has changed very greatly. For centuries we were a debtor
+    community, buying largely from Europe, possessed only of crude staple
+    products for export, and scarcely able by a series of expedients and
+    exchanges to pay for what we bought. Tobacco for many decades, then
+    cotton, were the only commodities of which much was exported direct to
+    Europe. Then came, during the European famines of 1846, 1861, and 1862,
+    an enormous demand for American grain. Yet only during the last few
+    decades have we been able to export largely manufactured products or
+    been able to deal with Europe on an equality of terms. We are no longer
+    a debtor nation; we are no longer dependent upon Europe; the United
+    States is an integral and essential part of the interdependent
+    international economic fabric. Indeed, if the war continues ten years,
+    Europe may be dependent upon us.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In a sense we are not ready to meet the crisis. During the last ten or
+    fifteen years the exports of foodstuffs have fallen off greatly, and the
+    supply in this country has actually declined in proportion to
+    population. There has been also a most marked increase in the exports of
+    manufactured goods and a decided increase in the importation of raw
+    materials, including foodstuffs. Now will come an enormous demand from
+    Europe for the very things of which we have not produced so much and
+    exported little or nothing&mdash;bacon, eggs, butter, beef. The demand will
+    also be greatly increased for woolen cloth, raw leather, shoes, steel
+    in all its forms, railroad equipment of all sorts, automobiles and
+    machinery, and, in particular, coal and gasoline. To supply this demand
+    old industries will be expanded and new ones created, and a shift of
+    capital and labor will inevitably take place to the industries for which
+    a demand becomes clear in Europe, as soon as it seems reasonably certain
+    that the war will last, beyond the present year.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    An American Merchant Marine.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Above all, an American merchant marine is likely to be seen again upon
+    the seas. There will be German ships in plenty for sale, in all
+    probability, unless Germany wins an immediate victory on the sea, and
+    the advantage of an unquestioned neutral status, easily obtained by a
+    bona-fide purchase, will be so great that American capital will probably
+    invest largely in freight steamers and ocean liners. It seems entirely
+    unlikely that England, while she remains mistress of the seas, should
+    recognize as valid the registration in the United States of vessels
+    actually owned by belligerents or regard as anything more than
+    masquerading their appearance under the American flag. England has never
+    recognized any one's "right" to do anything at sea in time of war which
+    did not accrue directly to her own benefit. It is scarcely necessary to
+    say that she will not allow trade with Germany or Austria while she can
+    prevent it. The only refuge will be the sale of the ship by the foreign
+    owner to Americans who will trade with England, her allies, and strictly
+    neutral nations. As always in time of war, privateering and smuggling
+    will be profitable, and trade with Germany, unless she is immediately
+    victorious at sea, will offer to the adventurous plenty of risk and the
+    certainty of huge profits. During the Napoleonic wars the flats and bars
+    of the German coast along the North Sea offered light vessels a great
+    opportunity and the pursuing warships great obstacles. A modern
+    motor-driven light craft will now have an enormous advantage over
+    destroyers or cruisers. Here, as a century ago, many an American will
+    find an opportunity to make a fortune.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The preoccupation of Europe with the war and the opening of the Panama
+    Canal will afford the United States an unrivaled opportunity to develop
+    trade with Canada, South America, Australia, New Zealand, India, China,
+    and the Far East in general. We have never bulked large in the eyes of
+    these countries and there has been much speculation as to the reasons
+    why the German succeeded so well in South America and why the Englishman
+    did so much business in China. Whether from sentiment or from a national
+    habit that prefers English goods, the English colonies have bought more
+    largely of the mother country than they have of us. But now that the war
+    has closed the German factories, called German commercial agents home,
+    and sent German ships racing to neutral harbors; now that the Panama
+    Canal brings us some thousands of miles nearer to Australia and New
+    Zealand than they are to London via Suez; now that England will be busy
+    manufacturing for Europe and will have less to sell her colonies, these
+    particular parts of the world will probably be compelled to look for
+    their manufactured goods to the United States. Indeed, if one were not
+    afraid of being accused of gross exaggeration, he might take heart and
+    proclaim his conviction that a long and really inclusive European war
+    would give the United States a practical monopoly of the South American
+    and Pacific trade, provided always that the United States acquire by
+    purchase a merchant marine and that the Panama Canal becomes feasible in
+    January for large ships.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Foreigners Leaving America
+</h3>
+<p>
+    One other effect of the war has already begun to reveal itself in the
+    emigration from America of thousands of Servians, Austrians, Russians,
+    Germans, Frenchmen, going home to take their places in the ranks. While
+    many of these men are brave and honorable citizens, the fact that they
+    respond to such a call proves them not yet Americans. The war will tend
+    to remove a goodly part of the distinctly foreign element in the
+    country, the part not yet amalgamated, and therefore the part most alien
+    to our institutions and the most difficult to place in our social
+    structure. If the war continues, Europe will draw every able-bodied man
+    who can be influenced to go. Far more important, immigration will
+    probably become negligible not only during the war, but for some time
+    after it. Usually the reason for leaving home lies in the crowded
+    population of European States and the lack of opportunity for
+    advancement, plus the glib tongue of some agent of a contractor or of a
+    steamship company. In recent years those who have come have not been
+    desirable additions to our population because they came from nations
+    alien in blood, language, religion and institutions, and were not
+    therefore easily knit into our national structure and absorbed. There
+    will be little, if any, further immigration. The men are wanted for the
+    army and will not be allowed to leave during the war. After peace is
+    restored, they will be imperatively needed in the fields and factories
+    and every effort will be made to retain them. In fact, it does not take
+    any wild stretch of the imagination for one acquainted with the results
+    of the Thirty Years' War and of the Napoleonic wars to conceive that,
+    from the view of economic opportunity and rewards, Europe might become a
+    more favorable scene for the truly capable and ambitious than America is
+    today. The tendency of a war is to absorb the best of a nation and to
+    leave the dregs. For the power of organization and the fire of
+    initiative Europe will at no distant date be ready to pay well.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    The Effect of Economic Readjustment.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Unquestionably the economic readjustment which the war will force upon
+    the United States will have an immediate and serious effect on
+    individuals. Some will profit largely and promptly. All who at present
+    possess large stocks of food, leather, oil, woolen cloth will be able to
+    dispose of them at enormous profits. From the greater volume of freight
+    the railroads will benefit directly. But while the farmers and
+    cattle-men, the steel and oil kings are rejoicing in the opportunity,
+    all industries which depend chiefly upon exportation or which
+    manufacture an amount beyond the normal American demand, will be closing
+    the factories or curtailing the output. For a time certain individuals,
+    perhaps a relatively large number of individuals, will suffer
+    inconvenience, loss, anxiety, and even privation. But the vast demand
+    for labor in other industries, and the almost certain extensive demand
+    for relatively unskilled labor ought not to make the period of
+    transition long or the amount of suffering considerable. After all, the
+    vast majority of the people of the United States are connected with
+    farming, with the manufacture or production of the very things for which
+    there will most likely be a great demand, or with the transportation and
+    distribution of both imports and exports to the rest of the community.
+    In certain industries, like the manufacture of cotton cloth, which is
+    localized in New England to such an extent that whole districts are
+    dependent upon it for a livelihood, the distress will be great, for the
+    factories closed upon the declaration of war and the workers are a long
+    distance from the Western fields, where laborers are only too scarce.
+    The cheapening of transportation, the rapidity of communication, the
+    superior mobility of the population today over ten years ago, make it
+    probable that these people will soon find new places.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Concomitant with the war came a rise of prices. Foodstuffs especially
+    advanced sharply and will certainly continue to rise until some material
+    increase of the supply is assured beyond a peradventure. The tendency in
+    England and above all on the Continent for the cities to buy great
+    supplies to guard against possible want will increase this tendency.
+    But, without question, should the war last, a rise in the whole level of
+    prices of everything, including labor, will take place in the United
+    States. It will affect some individuals adversely, but for most will be
+    in the long run almost negligible. For those who actually produce or
+    handle goods which advance in price the result will be a profit, because
+    the price of the commodity they have to sell will almost certainly
+    advance sooner and faster than the prices of the commodities they
+    themselves are compelled to buy. In time the two will equalize and they
+    will be precisely where they were before the war; they will pay out with
+    one hand what they take in with the other. In nearly all cases where the
+    individual produces or shares in the production of an actual commodity a
+    general rise in prices, even to the extent which this war threatens to
+    produce, will be to him only a temporary advantage or disadvantage.
+    True, wages and salaries in industrial pursuits will not quite keep pace
+    with the rise in foodstuffs, and factory workers and clerks will not
+    benefit to the same extent nor as soon as the farmers will. People whose
+    incomes are derived from stocks in the businesses which prosper will
+    probably receive much more than they pay by reason of the increased
+    prices of other commodities, and certainly cannot be worse off than
+    before.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    America's Real Sufferers.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The real sufferers in America will be those who hold stock in the
+    enterprises which fail or cease to operate, and that far larger class
+    who are dependent on a fixed salary. Professors and teachers of all
+    sorts and grades; people living on annuities or small incomes derived
+    from bonds or real estate; those dependent on the rent derived from
+    leases for a term of years of dwelling houses, office buildings and the
+    like, these will lose a material amount, exactly in proportion to the
+    rise in prices. To that extent, the purchasing power of the stated
+    number of dollars they receive will depreciate and that much they will
+    lose beyond a peradventure. In time, some relief will be afforded by a
+    tardy rise in salaries, by the expiration of leases and the payment of
+    bonds, but the actual losses of the intervening years have never been in
+    any way refunded in like cases in the past.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For some individuals, then, the European war will spell strict economy;
+    for a comparatively few, let us hope, ruin. For the country as a whole,
+    considered as a social and economic unit, a long war will introduce an
+    era of astounding prosperity. Never before has the country had, and
+    certainly it will never again have, almost a monopoly of the world's
+    trade thrust into its hands. The United States will have only one real
+    competitor, England, and, should the English Navy prove itself less
+    capable than is expected, or should England and her colonies be forced
+    to order a general mobilization of their armies, the United States might
+    conceivably remain the only great mercantile community to which the
+    world could look for supplies. No such eventuality need be predicated to
+    prove that the continuation of this war or a series of wars will create
+    a demand for manufactured goods such as our merchants have never dreamed
+    of. And they will command war prices. It means employment with rich
+    reward for capital and labor alike&mdash;a vastly increased foreign market, a
+    much greater domestic market, high prices, and a steadily voracious
+    demand for the entire output. The result will be the rapid
+    diversification of industry in the United States, the creation of
+    industries never before possible because of European competition, the
+    invention of machines to meet new needs. The normal economic development
+    will be accelerated decades.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After the close of the European war, when manufacturing and production
+    are resumed, America will find herself overproducing and face to face
+    with another economic readjustment necessary to meet the new situation.
+    Then will ensue a commercial crisis with all its attendant suffering and
+    trouble such as the United States has probably never seen and which will
+    be violent and serious in proportion to the length of the war.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0058"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    Germany of the Future
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    AN INTERVIEW WITH M. DE LAPREDELLE.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    Exchange Professor from the University of Paris at Columbia University.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    By Edward Marshall.
+</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>
+    In the American press French views of the great war's significance have
+    been less common than British views and far less frequent than German
+    views. Therefore, this talk with M. de Lapredelle, Exchange Professor
+    from the University of Paris at Columbia, will have especial interest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This very distinguished Frenchman, although but 43 years old, has won
+    high eminence in his native land, especially in the domain of
+    international law, which is his branch at the University of Paris. Also
+    he is Directeur de Recuel des Arbitrages Internacioneaux, he is the
+    editor of The International Law Review in Paris, he is a member of the
+    Committee on International Law for the French Department of Justice, he
+    is a member of the French Committee on Aerial Navigation, he is General
+    Secretary of the French Society of International Law, and he occupies
+    other important posts and bears other important scholastic honors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He is a cautious conversationist, as might be expected of one who has so
+    deeply delved into the most cautious of all professions, but in the mind
+    of the thoughtful reader this should add to the value of his utterances,
+    which, as expressed in the following columns, were carefully revised by
+    him before going into type.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I asked M. de Lapredelle to estimate the great war's probable effect
+    upon education.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course it is too early to guess intelligently," he replied, "for the
+    effect of the war will be dependent entirely upon the results of the
+    war, and, while we of the Allies have no doubt of our ultimate victory,
+    it is the fact that victory has not been won as yet by either side.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In talking with you my impulse is to assume what I feel in my
+    heart&mdash;the certainty of German defeat, but I must not do that, although
+    all the letters which I get from the front and from Paris express a
+    growing confidence in the victory of the Allies.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But it is too early to attempt intelligent detailed prophecy as to the
+    effect of the great struggle upon the world's philosophy, or upon any
+    other phase of its intellectual development.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Almost certainly, however, a reaction against certain Germanic
+    influences will be apparent after the war ends, for the world will not
+    want ever to risk repetition of the horrors of this struggle, and it
+    will be plain that they were the inevitable fruit of Germany's attempt
+    at intellectual domination.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This German assumption was due, largely, to their victory in 1870, but
+    it went far beyond the bounds of reason, far beyond the fields in which
+    German achievement really had established legitimate supremacy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The momentum of victory often has led humanity into excess. It led
+    Germany into excessive claims of social superiority and into an
+    excessive assumption of intellectual supremacy. Even in the eyes of
+    others it gave Germany an unwarranted intellectual prestige.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Really, the German is not a big thinker; he is an immensely careful
+    thinker.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Above everything, the German is an observer&mdash;a very diligent
+    observer&mdash;and his mental eyes are likely to be so close to the wall
+    that he sees only a single brick in it, wholly failing to get a
+    comprehensive view of the whole structure.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Germans are very careful students. They attach a vast importance to
+    detail. I think it is not unfair to say that, with the German, the
+    smaller, the more minute the detail, the more it interests him. The
+    German loves to write a big book on a small subject, and, loving it, he
+    does it well.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But there are more exalted tasks, as, for example, the writing of big
+    books upon big subjects, giving the world fresh visions of new and
+    far-flung vistas. The German loves to catalogue and catalogues almost
+    with genius; he loves to deliver long lectures upon microcosms.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cataloguing and the near-sightedness which may arise from intense study
+    of the atom, to the exclusion of the collective organism, whether that
+    collective organism be the human individual or the social mass, may
+    render immense service to the world, but it never will be the only
+    service necessary, and, if pursued to the exclusion of all other
+    investigations, such study is likely to produce an aggravated narrowness
+    of vision. Narrow vision is certain to eventuate in selfishness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The Germans became selfish after this fashion. The present struggle is
+    the war of selfishness against world advance.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Innumerable, or at least many, individuals have furnished smaller
+    parallels to the course which Germany has taken as a nation. The
+    individual with the truly and exclusively scientific mind is likely to
+    go too far into abstractions, built from a possible misinterpretation of
+    minutiae.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The ideal national intellectual development will combine both fact and
+    theory, will join rationalism to idealism, and will be far more like
+    that of certain nations which I shall not name than it will be like that
+    of Germany. These nations which I shall not name have both.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In other words, it seems to be the fixed idea of the German that the
+    German civilization is the only civilization; but it is not the thought
+    of France or England that their civilizations are the only ones.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This very lack of what may be defined as national egotism in France and
+    England enables these nations to work, as Germany does not, for world
+    science and world development&mdash;the growth of civilization as a whole.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Germany's scientific work is for German science, she thinks of
+    civilization only as German civilization. The world's other great
+    nations&mdash;and may I say the world's great Latin nations
+    especially?&mdash;internationalize their science and their civilization."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Why the Philosopher Is Important.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "One must be struck by the fact that Germany's critical philosophy
+    formed the basis of her educational system and, therefore, the basis of
+    her social system, and that it had in it the basis of the war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It cannot be denied, I think, that her education, as well as her
+    politics and militarism, directly pointed to this great conflict.
+    Indeed, the industrialism, the politics, the philosophy of Germany all
+    find their logical expression in present events.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hegel was the first, in the beginning of the last century, to insist
+    upon the ideas which, already being paramount in him, quickly became
+    paramount in his followers, serving as the basis for the development of
+    Prussia. To him this represented all and everything; to him divinity on
+    earth was incarcerated in the State, and, therefore, the development of
+    the State, not justice, was, in his mind, the object of all law.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Since this beginning that has been the consistent German viewpoint, and
+    increasingly so. The glorification of the State has included, of
+    necessity, the sacrifice of the individual, and this has been conducted
+    ruthlessly in Germany itself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course the State which considers it right to sacrifice the
+    individuals of its own citizenship will be sure to consider it right to
+    sacrifice the individuals of other nations' citizenships.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That explains why international law never has been considered binding
+    by the German; it explains why international law was not considered
+    binding when Belgium stood in the path of Germany's march toward Paris.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "International law never has bound the German; it never will bind him
+    until he changes his national psychology.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ihering, one of Germany's greatest theoretical jurists and a scholar in
+    the matter of Roman law, declared, 'Right is the child of might.' He did
+    not say exactly that right is might, but he defined it as 'the child of
+    might.'
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That may be taken as the German keynote, for this man is of such great
+    influence in Germany that his utterances must have an enormous effect.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Treitschke, the historian, in his teaching in Berlin, naturally drew
+    some of his inspiration from these two men. For him the State need
+    consider no law save that which will promote its own expansion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Moral law, he holds, need not and must not stand in the way of the
+    prosperity and growth of States, as it frequently must obstruct the
+    prosperity and growth of individuals.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Under this theory the State has two functions&mdash;these are, inside the
+    country, to make law; outside the country, to make war. Germany denies
+    the right of an extraneous law to decide upon the details of right and
+    wrong within a country, and that is why Germany defies and even denies
+    international law.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If it happens that a treaty which the State has entered into later
+    proves to be obstructive to some expansion which is thought to be a
+    necessity of the State's destiny, that treaty may be disregarded with
+    the full approval of Germany's national morality, although similar
+    conduct on the part of an individual in Germany would be considered
+    highly reprehensible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The State may bind itself to secure advantage, but, also, it may unbind
+    itself to secure advantage, and this without consultation with, or the
+    approval of, the other party or parties to the contract.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This theory becomes confusing to the student reared in other nations
+    under different educational influences. It indicates beyond
+    contradiction that Germany feels no sense of duty toward other nations,
+    but only an obligation to further her own interests.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Germany has immense patriotism but no humanitarianism. Her only duty is
+    to herself. Her national egotism can be characterized by no other word
+    than selfishness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It is a curious phenomenon that at a time when humanitarianism in its
+    broadest sense has become the keynote of all other of the great nations
+    it has not become at all the keynote of German civilization."
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Teutonic Superexcitation.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    "It is impossible that such pride, such a sense of arrogant national
+    superiority as that which marks Germany, should maintain among a
+    democratic people; it is possible only to a very aristocratic country.
+    What has happened is its logical outgrowth in the country which it has
+    infected.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In Germany this sense of national pride, of intolerance of others, even
+    of contempt for others, has been developed until it amounts to
+    superexcitation. It not only affects Germany's relations to other
+    peoples, but it affects the relations of Germans to one another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Different classes of the German population continually exhibit it in
+    their dealings with one another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It is continually illustrated in those events which have been the
+    wonder of visiting foreigners&mdash;episodes of the contemptuous
+    ill-treatment of subordinate German soldiers by their superiors. It goes
+    beyond that, manifesting itself in the treatment of all civilians by the
+    lowest soldier, and, further still, in the attitude even of the lowest
+    civilian to all foreigners, even the highest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The German individual may not consider himself superior to all
+    individuals of other nationalities, but he will be sure to consider his
+    nation so far superior to every other that there can be no comparison
+    between it and them. His is a peculiar arrogance. It is not at all
+    personal; it is purely national; but none the less it is arrogance, and
+    all arrogance is dangerous.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A hierarchy always exists in aristocratic countries; the hierarchical
+    idea has been developed further in Germany than elsewhere.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This has given Germany an unfortunate impulse. If to this impulse we
+    add that other born of all her various victories since 1866, especially
+    those which were won while Germany was realizing Bismarck's dream of
+    triumph 'through fire and blood'&mdash;her industrial victories, her
+    scientific advance, her social progress&mdash;and consider the Germanic
+    tendency toward egotism, we do not find ourselves surprised when we
+    find, examine, and appraise exactly what we have today in Germany.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The perversion of national sentiment into national arrogance has been
+    the definite, although, perhaps, unrealized and unintended, aim of every
+    educational influence which has been at work in Germany since 1870. It
+    has amounted to an unparalleled perversion of a nation's sentiment
+    toward all the outside world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This war marks the crisis of this German pride.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Germany's course throughout has borne all the earmarks of a national
+    ego-mania. The whole German people, as a nation, not always, perhaps, as
+    individuals, have fallen victim to the most colossal attack of ego-mania
+    which the world ever has known.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Combine this ego-mania with another delusion&mdash;the entirely unjustified
+    conclusion that Germany was the object of a worldwide persecution&mdash;and
+    it is unnecessary to search further for the causes of the war, just as
+    it is unnecessary to search further for reasons for the combination of
+    practically all other Europe against Germany.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What would German victory mean to the world, if German victory came,
+    save the worldwide dominance of German egotism, imposed at the expense
+    of every other people? France would not escape, England would not
+    escape, and, I assure you, you, America, would not escape. German
+    victory would be far more than a European disaster&mdash;it would be a world
+    disaster.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of all the nations in the world perhaps the United States and France
+    have stood most notably for the ideas of international justice. This
+    really makes your interest in the outcome of the present war indirectly
+    as great as ours.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I cannot see how the people of the United States can feel otherwise
+    than that not only their hearts but their reason demands victory for the
+    Allies, not because of any wish for the destruction of Germany, but
+    because of the wish for the preservation of the world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Indeed, it is inconceivable that victory for the Allies can mean
+    destruction for Germany. It can mean only the destruction of German
+    militarism, which has brought about the perversion of the German mind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No abler mind exists. Its release from the thralldom which has fettered
+    it would be a vast world service, would, indeed, be a vast benefit to
+    Germany herself. It is curious, but true, that I believe Germany's own
+    salvation depends upon her absolute defeat in this great war.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A few weeks before the war began Prof. Schucking expressed regret that
+    Germany&mdash;that is, the German Government&mdash;should be so antagonistic to
+    international spirit. The fact that he made this expression shows that,
+    in spite of and beyond military Germany, the intellectual élite, the
+    cream of the élite in Germany, has remained faithful to the traditions
+    of the great philosopher, Kant.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The intellectual élite&mdash;the cream of the élite&mdash;therefore may be
+    absolved from all responsibility. Loyalty to the teachings of Kant will
+    make it possible for the friends of humanity in all nations to join with
+    Germany for human advancement on the basis of universal justice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "After the victory of the Allies a new Germany will appear; it will be a
+    liberal Germany, willing to renounce the narrow Prussian ideals, finding
+    again the old German ideal in its disinterested form, a Germany which
+    will be able to join hands with other nations, to help them in taking up
+    again the works of international civilization, which Prussian Germany
+    herself brutally brought to an end, with insolent scorn of right&mdash;an act
+    for which she is now paying and must pay the penalty."
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0059"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    Germany the Aggressor
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Albert Sauveur.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    Professor of Metallurgy at Harvard University.
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Times:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    German professors and editors and other German sympathizers in the
+    present struggle of nations have attempted the difficult task of
+    convincing the American public, first, that Germany was not the
+    aggressor, and, second, that she is conducting a war of civilization
+    directed primarily against Russia, that Europe may not fall under
+    Muscovite domination. The German Chancellor has made similar claims,
+    while in the German "White Paper," published in full in THE NEW YORK
+    TIMES of Aug. 24, it is likewise attempted to fasten the responsibility
+    for this war on Germany's opponents.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A close and impartial study of both the English and German "White
+    Papers" must suffice to convince the reader that Germany clearly was the
+    aggressor and that England made every possible effort first to prevent a
+    war between Austria and Servia and later to localize the conflict.
+    Germany, on the contrary, by insisting from the start that there should
+    be no intervention in the settlement of the dispute between Servia and
+    her ally, Austria, made a European war inevitable. The sophistry,
+    inaccuracies, and unwarranted conclusions of the German professors and
+    editors have not helped their cause. The irrefutable facts remain,
+    first, that Austria with the knowledge and approval of Germany presented
+    to Servia an ultimatum so worded that she knew that the conditions
+    imposed could not be complied with by any nation retaining a spark of
+    self-respect; second, that after Servia had accepted Austria's ultimatum
+    with the single exception of the most offensive clause, which she
+    proposed to submit to arbitration, Austria, with Germany's consent,
+    proclaimed herself unsatisfied and immediately declared war on Servia;
+    third, that Germany and Austria knew that a war with Servia meant a war
+    with Russia, and that a war with Russia meant a general European
+    conflagration; fourth, that Germany declared war on Russia, started the
+    invasion of France before declaring war, and, by refusing to respect the
+    neutrality of Belgium, to which she was solemnly pledged, forced both
+    Belgium and England into the war. In the face of so flagrant a violation
+    of all sentiments making for peace no sophistry will avail in attempting
+    to protect Germany from the odium of being responsible for the greatest
+    calamity the civilized world has ever seen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    We are told that Germany is conducting this war in the interest of
+    civilization, that her chief purpose is to protect Europe from the
+    domination of the Slav. And to ward off this Muscovite danger Germany is
+    at present making desperate efforts to crush England and France, the
+    standard bearers of democracy in Europe! In her war for civilization she
+    is employing the methods of barbarian tribes, methods condemned by
+    civilized nations and which have already horrified the world. It is
+    hardly conceivable that Russia, which the German Chancellor describes as
+    a semi-Asiatic, slightly cultured barbaric nation, could have committed
+    in Belgium the atrocities imputed to the Germans had she conquered that
+    country in similar circumstances.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is manifest that Germany's supreme desire is to fasten Teutonic rule
+    on Europe, to crush Russia, to be sure, but also to crush France and
+    French civilization and to reduce England to the rank of a second-class
+    nation. It is obvious that this is a struggle between militarism and its
+    evils as represented by the Hohenzollern dynasty and democracy as
+    represented by England and France.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    ALBERT SAUVEUR.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 5, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0060"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    Militarism and Christianity
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Lyman Abbott.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i>A Letter to The New York Sun.</i>
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">Editor in Chief of The Outlook; author of numerous works on
+theology, religion, and democracy.
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    <i>To the Editor of The New York Sun:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    In answer to your request for a statement of the causes and meaning of
+    the European war I write with necessary brevity, both because of the
+    limits on my time and the limits on your crowded columns.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What is the cause of the explosion of a powder magazine? The gases
+    stored in the powder. The lighted match is the occasion, not the cause
+    of the explosion. The cause of the European war is the spirit of envy,
+    jealousy, selfishness and suspicion in the so-called Christian nations.
+    The assassination by a Servian of the Crown Prince of Austria was only
+    the lighted match which set the European combustibles in flame.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the United States we recognize the truth that the interests of each
+    State are identical with the interests of the Union, and that no State
+    can permanently prosper by reason of the misfortune of its neighbor. In
+    the German Empire since its unification each principality similarly
+    recognizes that the interests of the German Empire and the interests of
+    the several principalities are essentially identical. But there is no
+    such recognition of the common interest binding the warring nations of
+    Europe together.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Each nation looks with envy on the prosperity of its neighbor and acts
+    upon the assumption that its neighbor is a rival, and that its own
+    commerce and wealth can be built up only at the expense of its rival.
+    New York is quite willing that the harbor of Boston should be improved.
+    Bremen is quite willing that the harbor of Hamburg should be improved.
+    The west coast of England does not object to harbor facilities on the
+    east coast of England. But Germany envies England's harbor facilities,
+    and England and Germany are both resolved to prevent if possible Russia
+    from getting harbor facilities on the Mediterranean Sea. Not every
+    individual German, Austrian, Frenchman, and Englishman holds this
+    opinion, but the policies of these nations are governed by this spirit
+    of international rivalry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A striking illustration of this spirit, perhaps the most striking
+    illustration in modern international life, is furnished by the military
+    party in Prussia. Gen. Bernhardi, in a volume entitled "Germany and the
+    Next War," has given what may be regarded as a semi-official
+    interpretation of German militarism. He holds that life is a struggle
+    for existence, with a survival of the fittest, and the strongest is the
+    fittest; that a military organization constitutes the true strength of a
+    nation; that there is no higher power in human life, certainly none in
+    international life, than the power of physical force; that only the
+    strong nation has a right to exist, and he objects to international
+    arbitration because it recognizes the right to life of a small nation.
+    In this volume he calls on Germany to establish a "world sovereignty" by
+    force of arms, and he indicates what should be the twofold purpose of
+    Germany in the next war, namely, to crush France and to establish such
+    world sovereignty of Germany.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Militarism to Blame.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    It was this spirit which led Germany into the present war; this spirit
+    which denied that Belgium had any rights which Germany was bound to
+    respect; this spirit which inspired the military party in Germany to
+    regard its treaty with France and England guaranteeing the neutrality of
+    Belgium as only a "scrap of paper," and this spirit which could not and
+    apparently still does not comprehend why Belgium should be bound in
+    honor to defend her neutrality, or why England, with no very direct and
+    immediate interests to protect, should feel herself bound to come to the
+    defense of her weaker neighbor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The delay of the German Army, which is likely to prove disastrous to her
+    designs, has demonstrated in her own chosen field that there is a force
+    in national honor and national conscience which can put up a very
+    efficient resistance to Krupp guns.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is a great mistake to suppose that all Germany is actuated by this
+    spirit of militarism. Frederick William Wile, for over seven years the
+    chief German correspondent of The London Daily Mail, in an article in
+    The Outlook recently said: "There are 66,000,000 Germans; 65,000,000 of
+    them did not want war; the other million are the war party." But he adds
+    that now Germany is absolutely united and that the Germans will not
+    stack arms "till the last among them capable of shouldering a rifle is
+    incapacitated, till the last copper pfennig capable of purchasing
+    ammunition of war has vanished from their impoverished grasp."
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is in this nothing extraordinary. Whoever is responsible for
+    bringing on the war, the interests, the welfare, and in some sense the
+    honor of Germany are apparently involved in it. And yet it may be true,
+    and I believe it is true, that the defeat of Germany will be its
+    salvation, for it will be the overthrow of the spirit of militarism
+    inherited from Frederick the Great, and this has been the bane of the
+    German Empire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In our civil war there was at first only a minority in most of the
+    Southern States in favor of secession, but when the national troops
+    invaded Virginia the South was as united for State independence as the
+    North was for national union, and yet today it will be difficult to find
+    anywhere in the South an intelligent man who does not recognize the
+    truth that the defeat of secession and the emancipation of the slave
+    have been of inestimable benefit to the Southern States.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I make no attempt here to apportion the responsibility for this war
+    between the several powers engaged in it. However this responsibility
+    must be shared among them I can see but one meaning in the awful
+    campaign. The victory of Germany would mean the victory of Prussian
+    militarism. The defeat of Germany will mean the defeat of Prussian
+    militarism, the rehabilitation of Germany as a great industrial and
+    educational power in the world, and probably the practical overthrow of
+    military autocracy in all Western Europe.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Divine Right of Kings Obsolete.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    The campaigns of Napoleon ended for Western Europe the Divine right of
+    Kings. The campaigns of the Allies will end for Western Europe the
+    Divine right of the armed man. The Russo-Japanese war gave to Russia its
+    first representative assembly, the Duma. It is not unreasonable to hope
+    that the present European war will result in greatly enlarging the
+    powers of the Duma and establishing true constitutional government in
+    Germany, a government in which the Ministry will be responsible not to
+    the Emperor but to the Reichstag; and the power both of the purse and
+    the sword will not be in the hands of an aristocratic oligarchy but in
+    the hands of the common people.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is not strange that men should point to this, perhaps the greatest
+    war of history, as an evidence that Christianity is a failure. If
+    Christianity professed to be able by a miracle to transform human nature
+    at once, such a war would be fatal to its claim. But no such claim can
+    be made for Christianity. It is a great human movement, a phase of the
+    gradual evolution of man, governed by conscience and reason, out of the
+    brute, governed by appetite and passion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Man as he is seen in the world to day is an unfinished product. He is in
+    the making. The best that can be said of a Christian is that he is
+    further along toward the goal of humanity than the barbarian.
+    Theological doctrines such as the Trinity, the Atonement, and the like
+    are not the essential doctrines of Christianity. The essential doctrine
+    is that life is a struggle for others as well as for self; that in this
+    struggle every one owes a duty to his neighbor, and the stronger he is
+    and the greater the need of his neighbor the more imperative is his
+    duty; that as the father and the mother care for, educate and govern
+    their child until he grows able to care for, educate and govern himself,
+    so always the strong men and women owe the duty of protection,
+    education, and, in some measure, government to the weaker of the human
+    race until they have outgrown the need for it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In so far as autocracy is the rule of the few for the benefit of the few
+    it is paganism. In so far as democracy is the rule of the many for the
+    benefit of the many it is Christianity. He who believes this will
+    perhaps believe with me that in a true sense this is a religious war,
+    the war of conscience, honor, the moral sense against the rule of the
+    bayonet and the bullet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cynic who thinks this war demonstrates the failure of Christianity
+    should not forget such facts as the heroic struggle of Belgium to
+    maintain her neutrality, the resolve of England at every cost to
+    maintain her pledges to Belgium, the Red Cross following the armies in
+    the field and ministering to the sick, the wounded and the suffering,
+    regardless of their nationality, the general kind treatment to
+    prisoners, accentuated by some very horrible exceptions, and all this
+    contrasted with the enslaving, torturing, the crucifying, the flaying
+    alive of prisoners captured in war by barbaric nations before the dawn
+    of Christianity.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    LYMAN ABBOTT.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    Cornwall-on-Hudson, Sept. 17, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0061"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    VIGIL
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By HORTENSE FLEXNER.
+</h3>
+<br>
+
+    <blockquote>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">I have waited with my mothers down the dim, uncertain ages,<br>
+    I have waited in the cave and hut and tower,<br>
+From the first dawn's nameless fear<br>
+To the death-list posted here<br>
+    I have slain my soul in waiting, hour by hour.<br>
+<br>
+Under pelt of beast, trap-taken, or the leaves by chance winds blow,<br>
+    Under tunic, peasant hemp, or cloth of gold,<br>
+By the fire, in low flame burning,<br>
+I have crouched in silence, yearning,<br>
+    And as now, my helpless heart has waited cold.<br>
+<br>
+Ancient is the part I play&mdash;like a cloak of heavy mourning,<br>
+    I take it, bending, from a million women's hands.<br>
+They have worn it, they have torn it,<br>
+Agonizing, they have borne it,<br>
+    And its folds are dark with heart-break of all lands.<br>
+<br>
+Oh, the woman figure standing, with the face toward the horizon,<br>
+    Oh, the hand above the eyes to ease the strain!<br>
+Gaunt and barren, stricken, lonely,<br>
+With the empty memories only,<br>
+    We have stood, the dry-eyed sentries of our pain.<br>
+<br>
+Nothing we can do to stop them, nothing we can say to hold them;<br>
+    Taking sunlight, laughter, youth, they swing away,<br>
+And the things they leave grow strange,<br>
+House and street and voices change,<br>
+    But the women and the burdened hours stay.<br>
+<br>
+I have waited with my mothers down the dim, uncertain ages,<br>
+    While my children die, I pray the centuries through,<br>
+And I wonder in my fear<br>
+At the death-list posted here<br>
+    If God has left the women waiting, too!
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0062"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    Nietzsche and German Culture
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Abraham Solomon.
+</h3>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    <i>A Letter to The New York Evening Post.</i>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+    Sir:</p>
+
+<p>
+    Those who trace the German militaristic doctrines to Nietzsche's influence
+    commit Pastor Mander's sin when he told Mrs. Alving to bar from her library
+    a book which he had never read. Nietzsche was an inveterate enemy of
+    efficiency, astigmatic with regard to practical life, and he never worked
+    out a philosophy in the accepted sense of the term. He was a lyric poet who
+    wrote psychology when he failed to sustain the poetic mood. In the Engadine
+    and at Sils-Maria, brooding in a rocky void wherein he touched the sharp
+    edge of infinity, he sang a Dionysian hymn to life against the melancholy
+    products of German learning and against those Nihilistic snares which he
+    thought lurked in Christian doctrine. There he worked out the mystic idea of
+    &quot;Eternal Recurrence&quot; and his song of Zarathustra with the bell strokes of
+    noon.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What he knew of history he used for an analysis of values, and not for
+    State polity. He shrank from the irritations of reality, and he had
+    little patience with the national mania cultivated after Sedan, warning
+    his country that their victory was not one of a superior culture, that
+    Germany had no style but a barbaric mixture of many styles; and he
+    pointed out the essential difference between culture and erudition.
+</p>
+<p>
+    His unfinished work, "The Will to Power," was an attempt to house his
+    lyric passions in an architectural frame. The façade of the structure,
+    as posthumously revealed to us, is an indication that he was really
+    engaged in building a Tower of Babel. Power, Affirmation, Yea-Saying he
+    considered the attributes of life, and he found in them recompense for
+    his weakness and his lack of capacity for happiness. He was a master of
+    the exquisite nuances of vision, but since he touched real life at the
+    circumference, and not at the centre, his philosophical valuations are
+    bizarre, and have only a literary value.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is superficial to make Treitschke and Bernhardi his disciples, as
+    some American writers have made Roosevelt his disciple. Treitschke is a
+    heavy-footed historian who raised the axiom of self-preservation into a
+    philosophy of force. Von Bernhardi's book, though extreme in its
+    expression, is based on the fundamental truth that if Germany desired a
+    just proportion of oversea territories (a proportion denied her by
+    England) she would have to gain it by force of arms. In the development
+    of this idea he makes many generalizations calculated to dazzle the
+    multitude and to imbue it with the courage to expansion. Treitschke
+    would have rested in obscurity but for the war; Bernhardi does not
+    pretend to talents as a philosopher.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The real origin of Germany's policy in the last forty years may be
+    derived from the eminently practical and direct mind of Bismarck. From
+    reading of history he learned that chicane and force had been utilized
+    as the roads to power, of which fact he found ample demonstration in the
+    histories of England and Russia. He proved himself a true adept by using
+    chicane and force to achieve German unity, after the theorists had
+    failed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Those who glibly condemn a lyric philosopher in order to make out a case
+    against Germany reveal the weakness of their position. It is strange
+    that these lantern-eyed critics haven't cited Heine as an enemy of
+    democracy because he adored Napoleon. Was it because Heine lived for
+    years in Paris on the adulation of advanced feminines?
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    ABRAHAM SOLOMON.
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    New York, Oct. 13, 1914.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0063"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    Belgium's Bitter Need
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    By Sir Gilbert Parker.
+</h3>
+    <blockquote>
+<p>
+    <i>Sir Gilbert Parker, M.P., went to Holland at the request of the
+    American Committee for the Relief of Belgium a week ago to inquire into
+    the work of the committee and the needs of the Belgians.</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+    <i>Sir Gilbert visited frontier towns and the camps of the refugees for
+    the purpose of making a personal investigation into the conditions. That
+    he is deeply impressed by the desperate need of the Belgians may be
+    gathered from the following graphic statement and appeal, dated Dec. 5,
+    1914, to the American people:</i>
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<br>
+<p>
+    Since the beginning of the war the hearts of all humane people have been
+    tortured by the sufferings of Belgium. For myself the martyrdom of
+    Belgium had been a nightmare since the fall of Ličge. Whoever or
+    whatever country is to blame for this war, Belgium is innocent. Her
+    hands are free from stain. She has kept the faith. She saw it with the
+    eyes of duty and honor. Her Government is carried on in another land.
+    Her King is in the trenches. Her army is decimated, but the last
+    decimals fight on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Her people wander in foreign lands, the highest and lowest looking for
+    work and bread; they cannot look for homes. Those left behind huddle
+    near the ruins of their shattered villages or take refuge in towns which
+    cannot feed their own citizens.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    Abyss of Want and Woe.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    Many cities and towns have been completely destroyed; others, reduced or
+    shattered, struggle in vain to feed their poor and broken populations.
+    Stones and ashes mark the places where small communities lived their
+    peaceful lives before the invasion. The Belgian people live now in the
+    abyss of want and woe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All this I knew in England, but knew it from the reports of others. I
+    did not, could not, know what the destitution, the desolation of Belgium
+    was, what were the imperative needs of this people, until I got to
+    Holland and to the borders of Belgian territory. Inside that territory I
+    could not pass because I was a Britisher, but there I could see German
+    soldiers, the Landwehr, keeping guard over what they call their new
+    German province. Belgium a German province!
+</p>
+<p>
+    There at Maastricht I saw fugitives crossing the frontier into Holland
+    with all their worldly goods on their shoulders or in their hands, or
+    with nothing at all, seeking hospitality of a little land which itself
+    feels, though it is neutral, the painful stress and cost of the war.
+    There, on the frontier, I was standing between Dutch soldiers and German
+    soldiers, so near the Germans that I could almost have touched them, so
+    near three German officers that their conversation as they saluted me
+    reached my ears.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I begin to understand what the sufferings and needs of Belgium are. They
+    are such that the horror of it almost paralyzes expression. I met at
+    Maastricht Belgians, representatives of municipalities, who said that
+    they had food for only a fortnight longer. And what was the food they
+    had? No meat, no vegetables, but only one-third of a soldier's rations
+    of bread for each person per day. At Ličge, as I write, there is food
+    for only three days.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What is it the people of Belgium ask for? They ask for bread and salt,
+    no more, and it is not forthcoming. They do not ask for meat; they
+    cannot get it. They have no fires for cooking, and they do not beg for
+    petrol. Money is of little use to them, because there is no food to be
+    bought with money.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Belgium under ordinary circumstances imports five-sixths of the food she
+    eats. The ordinary channels of sale and purchase are closed. They
+    cannot buy and sell if they would. Representatives of Belgian
+    communities told me at Maastricht yesterday that the crops were taken
+    from their fields&mdash;the wheat and potatoes&mdash;and were sent into Germany.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    No Work, but Taxes Continue.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    There is no work. The factories are closed because they have not raw
+    material, coal, or petrol, because they have no markets.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And yet war taxes are falling with hideous pressure upon a people whose
+    hands are empty, whose workshops are closed, whose fields are idle,
+    whose cattle have been taken, or compulsorily purchased without value
+    received.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In Belgium itself the misery of the populace is greater than the misery
+    of the Belgian fugitives in other countries, such as Holland, where
+    there have come since the fall of Ličge one and a half million of
+    fugitives. To gauge what that misery in Belgium is, think of what even
+    the fugitives suffer. I have seen in a room without fire, the walls
+    damp, the floor without covering, not even straw, a family of nine women
+    and eight children, one on an improvised bunk seriously ill. Their home
+    in Belgium was leveled with the ground, the father killed in battle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Their food is coffee and bread for breakfast, potatoes for dinner, with
+    salt&mdash;and in having the salt they were lucky&mdash;bread and coffee for
+    supper. Insufficiently clothed, there by the North Sea, they watched the
+    bleak hours pass, with nothing to do except cling together in a vain
+    attempt to keep warm.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Multiply this case by hundreds of thousands and you will have some hint
+    of the people's sufferings.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In a lighter on the River Maas at Rotterdam, without windows, without
+    doors, with only an open hatchway from which a ladder descends, several
+    hundred fugitives spend their nights and the best parts of their days in
+    the iron hold, forever covered with moisture, leaky when rain comes,
+    with the floor never dry, and pervasive with a perpetual smell like the
+    smell of a cave which never gets the light of day. Here men, women, and
+    children were huddled together in a promiscuous communion of misery,
+    made infinitely more pathetic and heartrending because none complained.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At Rosendaal, at Scheveningen, Eysden, and Flushing, at a dozen other
+    places, these ghastly things are repeated in one form or another.
+    Holland has sheltered hundreds of thousands, but she could not in a
+    moment organize even adequate shelter, much less comforts.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In Bergen-op-Zoom, where I write these words, there have come since the
+    fall of Antwerp 300,000 hungry marchers, with no resources except what
+    they carry with them. This little town of 15,000 people did its best to
+    meet the terrible pressure, and its citizens went without bread
+    themselves to feed the refugees. How can a small municipality suddenly
+    deal with so vast a catastrophe? Yet slowly some sort of order was
+    organized out of chaos, and when the Government was able to establish
+    refugee camps through the military the worst conditions were moderated,
+    and now, in tents and in vans on a fortunately situated piece of land,
+    over 3,000 people live, so far as comforts are concerned, like Kaffirs
+    in Karoo or aborigines in a camp in the back blocks of Australia. The
+    tents are crammed with people, and life is reduced to its barest
+    elements. Straw, boards, and a few blankets and dishes for rations&mdash;that
+    constitutes the ménage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Children are born in the hugger mugger of such conditions, but the good
+    Holland citizens see that the children are cared for and that the babies
+    have milk. Devoted priests teach the children, and the value of military
+    organization illuminates the whole panoply of misery. Yet the best of
+    the refugee camps would seem to American citizens like the dark and
+    dreadful life of an underworld, in which is neither work, purpose, nor
+    opportunity. It is a sight repugnant to civilization.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The saddest, most heartrending thing I have ever seen has been the
+    patience of every Belgian, whatever his state, I have met. Among the
+    thousands of refugees I have seen in Holland, in the long stream that
+    crossed the frontier at Maastricht and besieged the doors of the
+    Belgian Consul while I was there, no man, no woman railed or declaimed
+    against the horror of their situation. The pathos of lonely, staring,
+    apathetic endurance is tragic beyond words. So grateful, so simply
+    grateful, are they, every one, for whatever is done for them.
+</p>
+<h3>
+    None of the Refugees Begs.
+</h3>
+<p>
+    None begs, none asks for money, and yet on the faces of these frontier
+    refugees I saw stark hunger, the weakness come of long weeks of famine.
+    One man, one fortunate man from Verviers, told me he could purchase as
+    much as 2s. 8d. worth of food for himself, his wife, and child for a
+    week.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Think of it, American citizens! Sixty-six cents' worth of food for a
+    man, his wife, and child for a whole week, if he were permitted to
+    purchase that much! Sixty-six cents! That is what an average American
+    citizen pays for his dinner in his own home. He cannot get breakfast, he
+    can only get half a breakfast, for that at the Waldorf or the Plaza in
+    New York.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This man was only allowed to purchase that much food if he could,
+    because if he purchased more he would be taking from some one else, and
+    they were living on rations for the week which would represent the food
+    of an ordinary man for a day. A rich man can have no more than a poor
+    man. It is a democracy of famine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There is enough food wasted in the average American household in one day
+    to keep a Belgian for a fortnight in health and strength. They want in
+    Belgium 300,000 tons of food a month. That is their normal requirement.
+    The American Relief Committee is asking for 8,000 tons a month,
+    one-quarter of the normal requirements, one-half of a soldier's rations
+    for each Belgian. The American Committee needs $5,000,000 a month until
+    next harvest. It is a huge sum, but it must be forthcoming.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of all the great powers of the world the United States is the only one
+    not at war or in peril of war. Of all the foremost nations of the world
+    the United States is the only one that can save Belgium from starvation
+    if she will. She was the only nation that Germany would allow a foothold
+    for humanity's and for Christ's sake in Belgium. Such an opportunity,
+    such responsibility, no nation ever had before in the history of the
+    world. Spain and Italy join with her, but the initiative and resources
+    and organization are hers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Around Belgium is a ring of steel. Within that ring of steel are a
+    disappearing and for ever disappearing population. Towns like
+    Dendermonde, that were of 10,000 people, have now 4,000, and in
+    Dendermonde 1,200 houses have fallen under the iron and fire of war.
+    Into that vast graveyard and camp of the desolate only the United States
+    enters with an adequate and responsible organization upon the mission of
+    humanity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    No such opportunity was ever given to a people, no such test ever came
+    to a Christian people in all the records of time. Will the American
+    Nation rise to the chance given to it to prove that its civilization is
+    a real thing and that its acts measure up with its inherent and
+    professed Christianity?
+</p>
+<p>
+    I am a profound believer in the great-heartedness of the United States,
+    and there is not an American of German origin who ought not gladly and
+    freely give to the relief of people who, unless the world feeds them,
+    must be the remnant of a nation; and the world in this case is the
+    United States. She can give most.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The price of one good meal a week for a family in an American home will
+    keep a Belgian alive for a fortnight.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Probably the United States has 18,000,000 homes. How many of them will
+    deny themselves a meal for martyred Belgium? The mass of the American
+    people do not need to deny themselves anything to give to Belgium. The
+    whole standard of living on the American Continent, in the United States
+    and Canada, is so much higher than the European standard that if they
+    lowered the scale by one-tenth just for one six months the Belgium
+    problem would be solved.
+</p>
+<p>
+    I say to the American people that they cannot conceive what this strain
+    upon the populations of Europe is at this moment, and, in the cruel
+    grip of Winter, hundreds of thousands will agonize till death or relief
+    comes. In Australia in drought times vast flocks of sheep go traveling
+    with shepherds looking for food and water, and no flock ever comes back
+    as it went forth. Not in flocks guided by shepherds, but lonely,
+    hopeless units, the Belgian people take flight, looking for food and
+    shelter, or remain paralyzed by the tragedy fallen upon them in their
+    own land.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Their sufferings are majestic in simple heroism and uncomplaining
+    endurance. So majestic in proportion ought the relief to be. The Belgian
+    people are wards of the world. In the circumstances the Belgian people
+    are special wards of the one great country that is secure in its peace
+    and that by its natural instincts of human sympathy and love of freedom
+    is best suited to do the work that should be done for Belgium. If every
+    millionaire would give a thousand, if every man with $100 a month would
+    give $10, the American Committee for the Relief of Belgium, with its
+    splendid organization, its unrivaled efficiency, through which flows a
+    tide of human sympathy, would be able to report at the end of the war
+    that a small nation in misfortune had been saved from famine and despair
+    by a great people far away, who had responded to the call, "Come over
+    and help us!"
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+    GILBERT PARKER.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0064"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h2>
+    A CORRECTION.
+</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>
+    Under the head of "Russia's 'Little Brother,'" on Page 364 of this
+    magazine history, in its issue of Dec. 26, 1914, appeared a statement
+    taken from The New York Sun of Oct. 12, 1914, and attributed to George
+    Bakhmeteff, Russian Ambassador at Washington. Our attention has been
+    called to the following editorial paragraph printed by The Sun on Oct.
+    14, embodying the Russian Ambassador's denial of its authenticity:
+</p>
+    <blockquote>
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">The Sun on Monday printed in good faith what it believed to be
+an authorized statement of the views and sentiments of Mr.
+George Bakhmeteff, Russian Ambassador to the United States.
+Ambassador Bakhmeteff telegraphs to us from Washington as
+follows:
+</p>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">
+"I most emphatically deny having spoken one single word to the
+reporter who published an interview with me in your paper. I
+have not even seen one, and must insist on your publishing
+this very categorical and direct statement."
+</p>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">Of course, we publish the Ambassador's denial not less in
+justice to our readers and to ourselves than to him, at the
+same time expressing our extreme regret that The Sun should
+have been led to believe that it was presenting the Russian
+case as viewed by Mr. Bakhmeteff with his full acquiescence.
+</p>
+    </blockquote>
+<p>
+    We add our cordial regret to that of The Sun that this repudiated
+    statement should have gained further circulation.&mdash;Editor.
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_4_0065"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<h3>
+    [English Cartoon]
+</h3>
+<h2>
+    Certainly Not!
+</h2>
+<a name="image-0019"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/cartoon.jpg" width="329" height="400"
+alt="English Cartoon">
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p style="text-align: center">
+    TURKEY, THE OFFICE BOY (to his master): Please, Sir, can I have a day off?</p>
+<br>
+<hr>
+<a name="2H_FOOT"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+
+<h3>
+    FOOTNOTES
+</h3>
+
+<a name="note-1"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>1</u> Theodore Roosevelt.</p>
+<a name="note-2"><!--Note--></a>
+<p class="foot">
+<u>2</u> &quot;Propterea quod a cultu atque humanitute provinciae longissime absunt.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEW YORK TIMES CURRENT HISTORY OF THE EUROPEAN WAR, VOL. 1, JANUARY 9, 1915***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 16702-h.txt or 16702-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The New York Times Current History of the
+European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915, by Various
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915
+       What Americans Say to Europe
+
+
+Author: Various
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 16, 2005  [eBook #16702]
+
+Language: en
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEW YORK TIMES CURRENT HISTORY
+OF THE EUROPEAN WAR, VOL. 1, JANUARY 9, 1915***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Linda Cantoni, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 16702-h.htm or 16702-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/7/0/16702/16702-h/16702-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/7/0/16702/16702-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+The New York Times
+
+CURRENT HISTORY OF THE EUROPEAN WAR
+
+JANUARY 9, 1915.
+
+What Americans Say to Europe
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES W. ELIOT
+
+_(Photo (c) by Paul Thompson.)_
+
+_See Page 473_]
+
+[Illustration: JAMES M. BECK
+
+_See Page 413_]
+
+
+
+
+In the Supreme Court of Civilization
+
+Argued by James M. Beck.
+
+
+THE NEW YORK TIMES _submitted the evidence contained in the official
+"White Paper" of Great Britain, the "Orange Paper" of Russia, and the
+"Gray Paper" of Belgium to James M. Beck, late Assistant Attorney
+General of the United States and a leader of the New York bar, who has
+argued many of the most important cases before the Supreme Court. On
+this evidence Mr. Beck has argued in the following article the case of
+Dual Alliance vs. Triple Entente. It has been widely circulated in
+France and Great Britain._
+
+Let us suppose that in this year of dis-Grace, Nineteen Hundred and
+Fourteen, there had existed, as let us pray will one day exist, a
+Supreme Court of Civilization, before which the sovereign nations could
+litigate their differences without resort to the iniquitous and less
+effective appeal to the arbitrament of arms.
+
+Let us further suppose that each of the contending nations had a
+sufficient leaven of Christianity to have its grievances adjudged not by
+the ethics of the cannon or the rifle, but by the eternal criterion of
+justice.
+
+What would be the judgment of that august tribunal?
+
+Any discussion of the ethical merits of this great controversy must
+start with the assumption that there is an international morality.
+
+This fundamental axiom, upon which the entire basis of civilization
+necessarily rests, is challenged by a small class of intellectual
+perverts.
+
+Some hold that moral considerations must be subordinated either to
+military necessity or so-called manifest destiny. This is the Bernhardi
+doctrine.
+
+Others teach that war is a beneficent fatality and that all nations
+engaged in it are therefore equally justified. On this theory all of the
+now contending nations are but victims of an irresistible current of
+events, and the highest duty of the State is to prepare itself for the
+systematic extermination, when necessary or expedient, of its neighbors.
+
+Notwithstanding the clever platitudes under which both these doctrines
+are veiled, all morally sane minds are agreed that this war is a great
+crime against civilization, and the only open question is, which of the
+two contending groups of powers is morally responsible for that crime?
+
+Was Austria justified in declaring war against Servia?
+
+Was Germany justified in declaring war against Russia and France?
+
+Was England justified in declaring war against Germany?
+
+As the last of these questions is the most easily disposed of, it may be
+considered first.
+
+
+England's Justification.
+
+England's justification rests upon the solemn Treaty of 1839, whereby
+Prussia, France, England, Austria, and Russia "became the guarantors" of
+the "perpetual neutrality" of Belgium, as reaffirmed by Count Bismarck,
+then Chancellor of the North German Confederation, on July 22, 1870, and
+as even more recently reaffirmed in the striking fact disclosed in the
+Belgian "Gray Book."
+
+In the Spring of 1913 a debate was in progress in the Budget Committee
+of the Reichstag with reference to the Military Budget. In the course of
+the debate the German Secretary of State said:
+
+     "The neutrality of Belgium is determined by international
+     conventions, _and Germany is resolved to respect these
+     conventions_."
+
+To confirm this solemn assurance, the Minister of War added in the same
+debate:
+
+     "Belgium does not play any part in the justification of the
+     German scheme of military reorganization. The scheme is
+     justified by the position of matters in the East. _Germany
+     will not lose sight of the fact that Belgian neutrality is
+     guaranteed by international treaties._"
+
+A year later, on July 31, 1914, Herr von Below, the German Minister at
+Brussels, assured the Belgian Department of State that he knew of a
+declaration which the German Chancellor had made in 1911, to the effect
+"that Germany had no intention of violating our neutrality," and "that
+he was certain that the sentiments to which expression was given at that
+time _had not changed_." (See Belgian "Gray Book," Nos. 11 and 12.)
+
+Apart from these treaty stipulations, which are only declaration of
+Belgium's rights as sovereign nations, The Hague Conference, in which
+forty-four nations (including Germany) participated, reaffirmed as an
+axiom of international law the inherent right of a nation to the
+sanctity of its territory.
+
+It seems unnecessary to discuss the wanton disregard of these solemn
+obligations and protestations, when the present Chancellor of the German
+Empire, in his speech to the Reichstag and to the world on Aug. 4, 1914,
+frankly admitted that the action of the German military machine in
+invading Belgium was a wrong. He said:
+
+     "We are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no
+     law. Our troops have occupied Luxemburg and perhaps are
+     already on Belgian soil. _Gentlemen, that is contrary to the
+     dictates of international law._ It is true that the French
+     Government has declared at Brussels that France is willing to
+     respect the neutrality of Belgium, so long as her opponent
+     respects it. We knew, however, that France stood ready for
+     invasion. France could wait, but we could not wait. A French
+     movement upon our flank upon the lower Rhine might have been
+     disastrous. So we were compelled to override the just protest
+     of the Luxemburg and Belgian Governments. _The wrong--I speak
+     openly--that we are committing_ we will endeavor to make good
+     as soon as our military goal has been reached. Anybody who is
+     threatened as we are threatened, and is fighting for his
+     highest possessions, can only have one thought--how he is to
+     hack his way through."
+
+This defense is not even a plea of confession and avoidance. It is a
+plea of "Guilty" at the bar of the world. It has one merit, that it
+does not add to the crime the aggravation of hypocrisy. It virtually
+rests the case of Germany upon the gospel of Treitschke and Bernhardi,
+that each nation is justified in exerting its physical power to the
+utmost in defense of its selfish interests and without any regard to
+considerations of conventional morality. Might as between nations is the
+sole criterion of right. There is no novelty in this gospel. Its only
+surprising feature is its revival in the twentieth century. It was
+taught far more effectively by Machiavelli in his treatise, "The
+Prince," wherein he glorified the policy of Cesare Borgia in trampling
+the weaker States of Italy under foot by ruthless terrorism, unbridled
+ferocity, and the basest deception. Indeed, the wanton destruction of
+Belgium is simply Borgiaism amplified ten-thousandfold by the mechanical
+resources of modern war.
+
+
+This Answer Cannot Satisfy.
+
+Unless our boasted civilization is the thinnest veneering of barbarism;
+unless the law of the world is in fact only the ethics of the rifle and
+the conscience of the cannon; unless mankind after uncounted centuries
+has made no real advance in political morality beyond that of the cave
+dweller, then this answer of Germany cannot satisfy the "decent respect
+to the opinions of mankind." Germany's contention that a treaty of peace
+is "a scrap of paper," to be disregarded at will when required by the
+selfish interests of one contracting party, is the negation of all that
+civilization stands for.
+
+Belgium has been crucified in the face of the world. Its innocence of
+any offense, until it was attacked, is too clear for argument. Its
+voluntary immolation to preserve its solemn guarantee of neutrality will
+"plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against the deep damnation of its
+taking off." On that issue the Supreme Court could have no ground for
+doubt or hesitation. Its judgment would be speedy and inexorable.
+
+The remaining two issues, above referred to, are not so simple.
+Primarily and perhaps exclusively, the ethical question turns upon the
+issues raised by the communications which passed between the various
+Chancelleries of Europe in the last week of July, for it is the amazing
+feature of this greatest of all wars that it was precipitated by
+diplomats and rulers, and, assuming that all these statesmen sincerely
+desired a peaceful solution of the questions raised by the Austrian
+ultimatum, (which is by no means clear,) it was the result of
+ineffective diplomacy and clumsy diplomacy at that.
+
+I quite appreciate the distinction between the immediate causes of a war
+and the anterior and more fundamental causes; nevertheless, with the
+world in a state of Summer peace on July 23, 1914, an issue, gravely
+affecting the integrity of nations and the balance of power in Europe,
+is suddenly precipitated by the Austrian ultimatum, and thereafter and
+for the space of about a week a series of diplomatic communications
+passed between the Chancelleries of Europe, designed on their face to
+prevent a war and yet so ineffective that the war is precipitated and
+the fearful Rubicon crossed before the world knew, except imperfectly,
+the nature of the differences between the Governments involved. The
+ethical aspects of this great conflict must largely depend upon the
+record that has been made up by the official communications which can,
+therefore, be treated as documentary evidence in a litigated case.
+
+A substantial part of that record is already before the court of public
+opinion in the British and German "White Papers," the Russian "Orange
+Paper," and the Belgian "Gray Paper," and the purpose of this article is
+to discuss what judgment an impartial and dispassionate court would
+render upon the issues thus raised and the evidence thus submitted.
+
+Primarily such a court would be deeply impressed not only by what the
+record as thus made up discloses, _but also by the significant omissions
+of documents known to be in existence_.
+
+The official defense of England and Russia does not apparently show any
+failure on the part of either to submit all of the documents in their
+possession, _but the German "White Paper" on its face discloses the
+suppression of documents of vital importance, while Austria has as yet
+failed to submit any of the documentary evidence in its possession_.
+
+We know from the German "White Paper"--even if we did not conclude as a
+matter of irresistible inference--that many important communications
+passed in this crisis between Germany and Austria, and it is probable
+that some communications must also have passed between those two
+countries and Italy. Italy, despite its embarrassing position, owes to
+the world the duty of a full disclosure. What such disclosure would
+probably show is indicated by her deliberate conclusion that her allies
+had commenced an _aggressive_ war, which released her from any
+obligation under the Triple Alliance.
+
+The fact that communications passed between Berlin and Vienna, the text
+of which has never been disclosed, is not a matter of conjecture.
+Germany admits and asserts as part of her defense that she faithfully
+exercised her mediatory influence with Austria, but not only is such
+mediatory influence not disclosed by any practical results of such
+mediation, but the text of these vital communications is still kept in
+the secret archives of Berlin and Vienna.
+
+Thus in the official apology for Germany it is stated that, in spite of
+the refusal of Austria to accept the proposition of Sir Edward Grey to
+treat the Servian reply "as a basis for further conversations,"
+
+     "we [Germany] continued our mediatory efforts to the _utmost_
+     and advised Vienna to make any possible compromise consistent
+     with the dignity of the Monarchy."
+
+     [German "White Paper."]
+
+This would be more convincing if the German Foreign Office in giving
+other diplomatic documents had only added the _text_ of the advice which
+it thus gave Vienna.
+
+The same significant omission will be found when the same official
+defense states that on July 29 the German Government advised Austria "to
+begin the conversations with Mr. Sazonof." But here again _the text_ is
+not found among the documents which the German Foreign Office has given
+to the world. The communications, which passed between that office and
+its Ambassadors in St. Petersburg, Paris, and London, are given _in
+extenso_, but among the twenty-seven communications appended to the
+German official defense it is most significant that not a single
+communication is given of the many which passed from Berlin to Vienna
+and only two that passed from Vienna to Berlin.
+
+This cannot be an accident. Germany has seen fit to throw the veil of
+secrecy over the text of its communications to Vienna, although
+professing to give the purport of a few of them.
+
+Until Germany is willing to put the most important documents in its
+possession in evidence, it must not be surprised that the world,
+remembering Bismarck's garbling of the Ems dispatch, which precipitated
+the Franco-Prussian war, will be incredulous as to the sincerity of
+Germany's mediatory efforts.
+
+
+Austria's Case Against Servia.
+
+To discuss the justice of Austria's grievances against Servia would take
+us outside the documentary record and into the realm of disputed facts
+and would expand this discussion far beyond reasonable length.
+
+Let us therefore suppose _arguendo_ that our imaginary court would
+commence its consideration with the assumption that Austria had a just
+grievance against Servia, and that the murder of the Archduke on June
+28, 1914, while in fact committed by Austrian citizens of Servian
+sympathies on Austrian soil, had its inspiration and encouragement in
+the political activities either of the Servian Government or of
+political organizations of that country.
+
+The question for decision would then be not whether Austria had a just
+grievance against Servia, but whether having regard to the obligations
+which Austria, as well as every other country, owes to civilization, she
+proceeded in the right manner to redress her grievance.
+
+On June 28, 1914, the Austrian Crown Prince was murdered at Serajevo.
+For nearly a month there was no action by Austria, and no public
+statement whatever of its intentions. The world profoundly sympathized
+with Austria in its new trouble, and especially with its aged monarch,
+who, like King Lear, was "as full of grief as years and wretched in
+both."
+
+The Servian Government had formerly disclaimed any complicity with the
+assassination and had pledged itself to punish any Servian citizen
+implicated therein.
+
+From time to time, from June 28 to July 23, there came semi-inspired
+intimations from Vienna that that country intended to act with great
+self-restraint and in the most pacific manner. In his speech to the
+French Chamber of Deputies, Viviani says that Europe had in the interval
+preceding July 23 express assurances from Austria that its course would
+be moderate and conciliatory. Never was it even hinted that Germany and
+Austria were about to apply in a time of profound peace a match to the
+powder magazine of Europe.
+
+This is strikingly shown by the first letter in the English "White
+Paper" from Sir Edward Grey to Sir H. Rumbold, dated July 20, 1914. It
+is one of the most significant documents in the entire correspondence.
+At the time this letter was written it is altogether probable that
+Austria's arrogant and most unreasonable ultimatum had already been
+framed and approved in Vienna, and possibly in Berlin, and yet Sir
+Edward Grey, the Foreign Minister of a great and friendly country, had
+so little knowledge of Austria's policy that he
+
+     "asked the German Ambassador today (July 20) if he had any
+     news of what was going on in Vienna with regard to Servia."
+     The German Ambassador replied "that he had not, but Austria
+     was certainly going to take some step."
+
+Sir Edward Grey adds that he told the German Ambassador that he had
+learned that Count Berchtold, the Austrian Foreign Minister,
+
+     "in speaking to the Italian Ambassador in Vienna, had
+     deprecated the suggestion that the situation was grave, but
+     had said that it should be cleared up."
+
+The German Minister then replied that it would be desirable "if Russia
+could act as a mediator with regard to Servia," so that the first
+suggestion of Russia playing the part of the peacemaker came from the
+German Ambassador in London. Sir Edward Grey then adds that he told the
+German Ambassador that he
+
+     "assumed that the Austrian Government would not do anything
+     until they had first disclosed to the public their case
+     against Servia, founded presumably upon what they had
+     discovered at the trial,"
+
+and the German Ambassador assented to this assumption.
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 1.]
+
+Either the German Ambassador was then deceiving Sir Edward Grey, on the
+theory that the true function of an Ambassador is "to lie for his
+country," or the thunderbolt was being launched with such secrecy that
+even the German Ambassador in England did not know what was then in
+progress.
+
+The British Ambassador at Vienna reports to Sir Edward Grey:
+
+     "The delivery at Belgrade on the 23d July of the note to
+     Servia was preceded by a period of _absolute silence_ at the
+     Ballplatz."
+
+He proceeds to say that with the exception of the German Ambassador at
+Vienna--note the significance of the exception--not a single member of
+the Diplomatic Corps knew anything of the Austrian ultimatum and that
+the French Ambassador when he visited the Austrian Foreign Office on
+July 23 was not only kept in ignorance that the ultimatum had actually
+been issued, but was given the impression that its tone was moderate.
+Even the Italian Ambassador was not taken into Count Berchtold's
+confidence.
+
+[Dispatch from Sir M. de Bunsen to Sir Edward Grey, dated Sept. 1,
+1914.]
+
+No better proof of this sense of security need be adduced than that the
+French President and her Foreign Minister were thousands of miles from
+Paris, and the Russian Minister had, after the funeral of the Austrian
+Archduke, left Vienna for his annual holiday.
+
+The interesting and important question here suggests itself whether
+Germany had knowledge of and approved in advance the Austrian ultimatum.
+If it did, it was guilty of duplicity, for the German Ambassador at St.
+Petersburg gave to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs an express
+assurance that
+
+     "the German Government _had no knowledge of the text of the
+     Austrian note before it was handed in and has not exercised
+     any influence on its contents. It is a mistake to attribute to
+     Germany a threatening attitude_."
+
+[Russian "Orange Paper," No. 18.]
+
+This statement is inherently improbable. Austria was the weaker of the
+two allies and it was Germany's sabre that it was rattling in the face
+of Europe. Obviously Austria could not have proceeded to extreme
+measures, which it was recognized from the first would antagonize
+Russia, unless it had the support of Germany, and there is a
+probability, amounting to a moral certainty, that it would not have
+committed itself and Germany to the possibility of a European war
+without first consulting Germany.
+
+Moreover, we have the testimony of Sir M. de Bunsen, the English
+Ambassador in Vienna, who advised Sir Edward Grey that he had "private
+information that the German Ambassador (at Vienna) knew the text of the
+Austrian ultimatum to Servia before it was dispatched and telegraphed it
+to the German Emperor," and that the German Ambassador himself "indorses
+every line of it." [English "White Paper," No. 95.] As he does not
+disclose the source of his "private information," this testimony would
+not by itself be convincing, but when we examine Germany's official
+defense in the German "White Paper," _we find that the German Foreign
+Office admits that it was consulted by Austria previous to the ultimatum
+and not only approved of Austria's course but literally gave her a
+carte blanche to proceed_.
+
+This point seems so important in determining the sincerity of Germany's
+attitude and pacific protestations that we quote _in extenso_. After
+referring to the previous friction between Austria and Servia, the
+German "White Paper" says:
+
+"In view of these circumstances, Austria had to admit that it would not
+be consistent either with the dignity or self-preservation of the
+monarchy to look on longer at the operations on the other side of the
+border without taking action. _The Austro-Hungarian Government advised
+us of this view of the situation and asked our opinion in the matter. We
+were able to assure our ally most heartily of our agreement with her
+view of the situation and to assure her that any action that she might
+consider it necessary to take in order to put an end to the movement in
+Servia directed against the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
+would receive our approval._ We were fully aware in this connection that
+warlike moves on the part of Austria-Hungary against Servia would bring
+Russia into the question and might draw us into a war in accordance with
+our duties as an ally."
+
+Sir M. de Bunsen's credible testimony is further confirmed by the fact
+that the British Ambassador at Berlin, in his letter of July 22 to Sir
+Edward Grey, states that _on the preceding night_ (July 21) he had met
+the German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and an allusion was
+made to a possible action by Austria.
+
+     "His Excellency was evidently of opinion that this step on
+     Austria's part would have been made ere this. He insisted that
+     the question at issue was one for settlement between Servia
+     and Austria alone, and that there should be no interference
+     from outside in the discussions between those two countries."
+
+He adds that while he had regarded it as inadvisable that his country
+should approach Austria-Hungary in the matter, he had
+
+     "on several occasions in conversation with the Servian
+     Minister emphasized the extreme importance that
+     Austro-Servian relations should be put on a proper footing."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 2.]
+
+Here we have the first statement of Germany's position in the matter, a
+position which subsequent events showed to be entirely untenable, but to
+which Germany tenaciously adhered to the very end, and which did much to
+precipitate the war. Forgetful of the solidarity of European
+civilization and the fact that by policy and diplomatic intercourse
+continuing through many centuries a United European State exists, even
+though its organization be as yet inchoate, he took the ground that
+Austria should be permitted to proceed to aggressive measures against
+Servia without interference from any other power, even though, as was
+inevitable, the humiliation of Servia would destroy the status of the
+Balkan States and even threaten the European balance of power.
+
+No space need be taken in convincing any reasonable man that this
+Austrian ultimatum to Servia was brutal in its tone and unreasonable in
+its demands. It would be difficult to find in history a more offensive
+document, and its iniquity was enhanced by the short shriving time which
+it gave either Servia or Europe. Servia had forty-eight hours to answer
+whether it would compromise its sovereignty, and virtually admit its
+complicity in a crime which it had steadily disavowed. As the full text
+of the ultimatum first reached the Foreign Chancelleries nearly
+twenty-four hours after its service upon Servia, the other European
+nations had barely a day to consider what could be done to preserve the
+peace of Europe before that peace was fatally compromised.
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 5; Russian "Orange Paper," No. 3.]
+
+Further confirmation that the German Foreign Office did have advance
+knowledge of at least the substance of the ultimatum is shown by the
+fact that on the same day the ultimatum was issued the Chancellor of the
+German Empire instructed the German Ambassadors in Paris, London, and
+St. Petersburg to advise the English, French, and Russian Governments
+that
+
+     "the acts as well as _the demands_ of the Austro-Hungarian
+     Government cannot but be looked upon as justified."
+
+[German "White Paper," Annex 1B.]
+
+How could Germany thus indorse the "demands" if it did not know the
+substance of the ultimatum?
+
+The hour when these instructions were sent is not given, so that it does
+not follow that these significant instructions were necessarily prior to
+the service of the ultimatum at Belgrade at 6 P.M. Nevertheless, as the
+ultimatum did not reach the other capitals of Europe until the following
+day, as the diplomatic correspondence clearly shows, it seems improbable
+that the German Foreign Office would have issued this very carefully
+prepared and formal warning to the other powers on July the 23d unless
+it had not only knowledge of Austria's intention to serve the ultimatum
+but also at least of the substance thereof.
+
+While it may be that Germany, while indorsing in blank the policy of
+Austria, purposely refrained from examining the text of the
+communication, so that it could thereafter claim that it was not
+responsible for Austria's action--a policy which would not lessen the
+discreditable character of the whole business--yet the more reasonable
+assumption is that the simultaneous issuance of Austria's ultimatum at
+Belgrade and Germany's warning to the powers were the result of a
+concerted action and had a common purpose. No court or jury, reasoning
+along the ordinary inferences of human life, would question this
+conclusion for a moment.
+
+The communication for the German Foreign Office last referred to
+anticipates that Servia "will refuse to comply with these demands"--why,
+if they were justified?--and Germany suggests to France, England, and
+Russia that if, as a result of such non-compliance, Austria has
+"recourse to military measures," that "the choice of means must be left
+to it."
+
+The German Ambassadors in the three capitals were instructed
+
+     "to lay particular stress on the view that the above question
+     is one the settlement of which devolves solely upon
+     Austria-Hungary and Servia, and one which the powers should
+     earnestly strive to confine to the two countries concerned,"
+
+and he added that Germany strongly desired
+
+     "that the dispute be localized, since any intervention of
+     another power, on account of the various alliance obligations,
+     would bring consequences impossible to measure."
+
+This is one of the most significant documents in the whole
+correspondence. If Germany were as ignorant as her Ambassador at London
+affected to be of the Austrian policy and ultimatum, and if Germany was
+not then instigating and supporting Austria in its perilous course, why
+should the German Chancellor have served this threatening notice upon
+England, France, and Russia, that Austria must be left free to make war
+upon Servia, and that any attempt to intervene in behalf of the weaker
+nation would "bring consequences impossible to measure"?
+
+[German "White Paper," Annex 1B.]
+
+A few days later the Imperial Chancellor sent to the Confederated
+Governments of Germany a _confidential communication_ in which he
+recognized the possibility that Russia might feel it a duty "to take the
+part of Servia in her dispute with Austria-Hungary." Why, again, if
+Austria's case was so clearly justified? The Imperial Chancellor added
+that
+
+     "if Russia feels constrained to take sides with Servia in this
+     conflict, she certainly has a right to do it,"
+
+but added that if Russia did this it would in effect challenge the
+integrity of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and that Russia would
+therefore alone--
+
+     "bear the responsibility if a European war arises from the
+     Austro-Servian question, _which all the rest of the great
+     European powers wish to localize_."
+
+In this significant confidential communication the German Chancellor
+declares the strong interest which Germany had in the punishment of
+Servia by Austria. He says "_our closest interests therefore summon us
+to the side of Austria-Hungary_," and he adds that
+
+     "if contrary to hope, the trouble should spread, owing to the
+     intervention of Russia, then, true to our duty as an ally, we
+     should have to support the neighboring monarchy with the
+     entire might of the German Empire."
+
+[German "White Paper," Annex 2.]
+
+In reaching its conclusion our imaginary court would pay little
+attention to mere professions of a desire for peace. A nation, like an
+individual, can covertly stab the peace of another while saying, "Art
+thou in health, my brother?" and even the peace of civilization can be
+betrayed by a Judas kiss. Professions of peace belong to the cant of
+diplomacy and have always characterized the most bellicose of nations.
+
+No war in modern times has been begun without the aggressor pretending
+that his nation wished nothing but peace and invoking Divine aid for its
+murderous policy. To paraphrase the words of Lady Teazle on a noted
+occasion when Sir Joseph Surface talked much of "honor," it might be as
+well in such instances to leave the name of God out of the question.
+
+Let us, then, analyze the record as already made up; and for the sake of
+clearness the events which preceded the war will be considered
+chronologically.
+
+Immediately upon the receipt of the ultimatum in St. Petersburg on July
+24, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, in a formal communication
+to Austria-Hungary, suggested that the abrupt time limit "leaves to the
+powers a delay entirely insufficient to undertake any useful steps
+whatever for the straightening out of the complications that have
+arisen," and added:
+
+     "To prevent the incalculable consequences, equally disastrous
+     for all the powers, which can follow the method of action of
+     the Austro-Hungarian Government, it seems indispensable to us
+     that, above all, the delay given to Servia to reply should be
+     extended."
+
+Sazonof further suggested that time should be given for the powers to
+examine the results of the inquiry that the Austro-Hungarian Government
+had made in the matter of the Serajevo assassination, and stated that if
+the powers were convinced
+
+     "of the well-groundedness of certain of the Austrian demands
+     they would find themselves in a position to send to the
+     Servian Government consequential advice."
+
+He justly observes that
+
+     "a refusal to extend the terms of the ultimatum ... would be
+     in contradiction with the very bases of international
+     relations."
+
+[Russian "Orange Paper," No. 4.]
+
+Could any court question the justice of this contention? The peace of
+the world was at stake. Time only was asked to see what could be done to
+preserve that peace and satisfy Austria's grievances to the uttermost
+farthing.
+
+Concurrently with Sazonof's plea for a little time to preserve the peace
+of the world, Sir Edward Grey had seen the German Ambassador on July 24
+and had suggested to him that the only method of preventing the
+catastrophe was
+
+     "that the four powers, Germany, France, Italy, and ourselves,
+     (England,) should work together simultaneously at Vienna and
+     St. Petersburg."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 11.]
+
+Germany had only to intimate to Austria that "a decent respect to the
+opinions of mankind," as well as common courtesy to great and friendly
+nations, required that sufficient time be given not only to Servia, but
+to the other nations, to concert for the common good, especially as the
+period was one of Summer dullness and many of the leading rulers and
+statesmen were absent from their respective capitals.
+
+Under these circumstances was it not natural that Russia should announce
+on July 24
+
+     "that any action taken by Austria to humiliate Servia would
+     not leave Russia indifferent,"
+
+and that on the same day the Russian Charge d'Affaires at Vienna
+suggested to the Austrian Foreign Office
+
+     "that the Austrian note was drawn up in a form rendering it
+     impossible of acceptance as it stood, and that it was both
+     unusual and peremptory in its terms"?
+
+To which the only reply of the Austrian Foreign Minister was that their
+representative in Servia
+
+     "was under instructions to leave Belgrade unless Austrian
+     demands were accepted in their integrity by 4 P.M. tomorrow."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 7.]
+
+Austria's only concession then or subsequently to the cause of peace was
+the assurance that Austria would not _after its conquest_ of Servia
+demand any territory.
+
+The action of Germany on this day, July 24, is most significant. Its
+Ambassador in England communicated a note to Sir Edward Grey in which it
+justified Austro-Hungarian grievances and ultimatum by saying that
+
+     "under these circumstances the course of procedure and demands
+     of the Austro-Hungarian Government can only be regarded as
+     equitable and moderate."
+
+The note added:
+
+     "The Imperial Government [Germany] want to emphasize their
+     opinion that in the present case there is only question of a
+     matter to be settled exclusively between Austria-Hungary and
+     Servia, and that the great powers ought seriously to endeavor
+     to reserve it to those two immediately concerned."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 9.]
+
+On July 25, probably to the great surprise of both Germany and Austria,
+which had definitely calculated upon Servians non-compliance with the
+ultimatum, the latter country, under the conciliatory advice of Russia
+and England, made a reply in which, at some sacrifice of its
+self-respect as a sovereign State, it substantially accepted all but one
+of the demands of Austria, and as to that it did not, in terms, refuse
+it, but expressed its willingness to refer it either to arbitration or
+to a conference of the powers.
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 39.]
+
+No court would question for a moment the conclusion that the reply was a
+substantial acquiescence in the extreme Austrian demands, nor indeed did
+either Germany or Austria seriously contend that it was not. They
+contented themselves with impeaching the sincerity of the assurances,
+calling the concessions "shams," and of this it is enough to say that if
+Germany and Austria had accepted Servians reply as sufficient, and
+Servia had subsequently failed to fulfill its promises thus made in the
+utmost good faith, there would have been little sympathy for Servia, and
+no general war. Indeed, both Russia and England pledged their influence
+to compel Servia, if necessary, to meet fully any reasonable demand of
+Austria. The outstanding question, which Servia agreed to arbitrate or
+leave to the powers, was the participation of Austrian officials in the
+Servian courts. This did not present a difficult problem. Austria's
+professed desire for an impartial investigation could have been easily
+attained by having the neutral powers appoint a commission of jurists to
+make such investigation.
+
+On July 24 Sir Edward Grey also had asked the German Ambassador to use
+his good influences at Vienna to secure an extension of time. To this
+most reasonable request the answer and action of the German Government
+was disingenuous in the extreme. They agreed to "pass on" the
+suggestion, but the German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs added
+that as the Austrian Prime Minister was away from Vienna there would be
+delay and difficulty in getting the time limit extended, and
+
+     "he admitted quite freely that the Austro-Hungarian Government
+     _wished to give the Servians a lesson and that they meant to
+     take military action. He also admitted that the Servian
+     Government could not swallow certain of the Austro-Hungarian
+     demands_."
+
+He added that Germany did not want a general war and "he would do all in
+his power to prevent such a calamity."
+
+[English "White Paper," Nos. 11 and 18.]
+
+Immediately on the issuance of the ultimatum the Austrian Foreign
+Minister, Count Berchtold, had most inopportunely taken himself to
+Ischl, where he remained until after the expiration of the time limit.
+Access to him proved difficult, and the Russian Charge at Vienna, having
+lodged a pacific protest with the Acting Foreign Minister in order to
+take no chances, telegraphed it to Berchtold at Ischl. Nevertheless,
+Berchtold's apparently designed absence from the capital was Germany's
+excuse for its failure to get the time limit extended.
+
+If Germany made any communication to Austria in the interests of peace
+the text has yet to be disclosed to the world. A word from Berlin to
+Vienna would have given the additional time which, with sincerely
+pacific intentions, might have resulted in the preservation of peace.
+Germany, so far as the record discloses, never spoke that word.
+
+Contrast this attitude with that of Russia, whose Foreign Minister on
+the morning of July 25 offered
+
+     "to stand aside and leave the question in the hands of
+     England, France, Germany, and Italy."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 17.]
+
+As Russia was the member of the Triple Entente most interested in the
+fate of Servia, what proposal could have been more conciliatory or
+magnanimous?
+
+On July 25 Sir Edward Grey proposed that the four powers (including
+Germany) should unite
+
+     "in asking the Austrian and Russian Governments not to cross
+     the frontier and to give time for the four powers, acting at
+     Vienna and St. Petersburg, to try and arrange matters. If
+     Germany will adopt this view I feel strongly that France and
+     ourselves should act upon it. Italy would no doubt gladly
+     co-operate."
+
+[English "White Paper," Nos. 24 and 25.]
+
+To this reasonable request the Imperial German Chancellor replied:
+
+     "First and last, we take the ground that this question must be
+     localized _by the abstention of all the powers from
+     intervention in it_,"
+
+but added that Germany would, if an Austro-Russian dispute arose,
+
+     "co-operate with the other great powers in mediation between
+     Russia and Austria."
+
+[German "White Paper," Annex 13.]
+
+This distinction is very hard to grasp. It attempts to measure the
+difference between tweedledum and tweedledee. Russia's difference with
+Austria was over the attempt of the latter to crush Servia. Germany
+would not interfere in the latter, but would as an abstract proposition
+mediate between Russia and Austria. For all practical purposes the two
+things were indistinguishable.
+
+How she "co-operated" we shall presently see.
+
+All that Germany _did_ on July 25, so far as the record discloses, was
+to "pass on" England's and Russia's requests for more time, but
+subsequent events indicate that it was "passed on" without any
+indorsement, for is it credible that Austria would have ignored its
+ally's request for more time if it had ever been made?
+
+The Austrian Foreign Minister, having launched the ultimatum, absented
+himself from the capital, but the Russian Minister at Vienna, as already
+stated, succeeded in submitting this most reasonable request verbally to
+the Acting Foreign Minister, who simply said that he would submit it to
+Count Berchtold, _but that he could predict with assurance a categorical
+refusal_. Later on that day (July 25) Russia was definitely advised that
+no time extension would be granted.
+
+[Russian "Orange Paper," Nos. 11 and 12.]
+
+Was ever the peace of the world shattered upon so slight a pretext? A
+little time, a few days, even a few hours, might have sufficed to
+preserve the world from present horrors, but no time could be granted.
+A colossal snap judgment was to be taken by these pettifogging
+diplomats. A timely word from the German Chancellor would have saved the
+flower of the youth of Germany and Austria from perishing. It would be
+difficult to find in recorded history a greater discourtesy to a
+friendly power, for Austria was not at war with Russia.
+
+Defeated in their effort to get an extension of time, England, France,
+and Russia made further attempts to preserve peace by temporarily
+arresting military proceedings until efforts toward conciliation could
+be made. Sir Edward Grey proposed to Germany, France, Russia, and Italy
+that they should unite in asking Austria and Servia not to cross the
+frontier "until we had had time to try and arrange matters between
+them," but the German Ambassador read Sir Edward Grey a telegram that he
+had received from the German Foreign Office that "once she [Austria] had
+launched that note [the ultimatum] Austria could not draw back."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 25.]
+
+As we have seen, Germany never, so far as the record discloses, sought
+in any way to influence Austria to make this or any concession. Its
+attitude was shown by the declaration of its Ambassador at Paris to the
+French Minister of Foreign Affairs, which, while disclaiming that
+Germany had countenanced the Austrian ultimatum, yet added that Germany
+approved its point of view,
+
+     "and that certainly the arrow, once sent, Germany could not
+     allow herself to be guided except by her duty to her ally."
+
+This seemed to be the fatal fallacy of Germany, that its duties to
+civilization were so slight that it should support its ally, Austria,
+whether the latter were right or wrong. Such was its policy, and it
+carried it out with fatal consistency. To support its ally in actual war
+may be defensible, but to support it in times of peace in an iniquitous
+demand and a policy of gross discourtesy offends every sense of
+international morality.
+
+On the following day Russia proposed to Austria that they should enter
+into an exchange of private views, with the object of an alteration in
+common of some clauses of the Austrian note of July 23. _To this Austria
+never even replied._ The Russian Minister communicated this suggestion
+to the German Minister of Foreign Affairs and expressed the hope that he
+would "find it possible to advise Vienna to meet our proposal," but this
+did not accord with German policy, for on that day the German Ambassador
+in Paris called upon the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in
+reply to a similar suggestion that Germany should suggest to Vienna to
+meet Servia in the same conciliatory spirit which Servia had shown, the
+Ambassador answered that that "was not possible in view of the
+resolution taken not to interfere in the Austro-Servian conflict."
+
+On the same day England asked France, Italy, and Germany to meet in
+London for an immediate conference to preserve the peace of Europe, and
+to this fruitful suggestion, which might have saved the peace of Europe,
+the German Chancellor replied with the pitiful quibble that "it is
+impossible to bring our ally before a European court in its difference
+with Servia," although it affected to accept "in principle" the policy
+of mediation.
+
+Germany's acceptance "in principle" of a policy which she in practice
+thwarted suggests the law-abiding tendencies of that Maine statesman who
+was "for the Maine prohibition liquor law, but against its enforcement."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 46.]
+
+Germany's refusal to have Servia's case submitted to the powers even for
+their consideration is the more striking when it is recalled that the
+German Ambassador at London quoted to Sir Edward Grey the German
+Secretary of State as saying
+
+     "that there were some things in the Austrian note that Servia
+     could hardly be expected to accept,"
+
+thus recognizing that Austria's ultimatum was, at least in part, unjust.
+Sir Edward Grey then called the German Ambassador's attention to the
+fact that if Austria refused the conciliatory reply of Servia and
+marched into that country
+
+     "it meant that she was determined to crush Servia at all
+     costs, being reckless of the consequences that might be
+     involved."
+
+He added that the Servian reply
+
+     "should at least be treated as a basis for discussion and
+     pause,"
+
+and asked that the German Government should urge this at Vienna, but the
+German Secretary of State on July 27 replied that such a conference "was
+not practicable," and that it "would practically amount to a court of
+arbitration," and could not, in his opinion, be called together "except
+at the request of Austria and Russia."
+
+[English "White Paper," Nos. 43 and 46.]
+
+That this was a mere evasion is perfectly plain. Germany already knew
+that Austria would not ask for such a conference, for Austria had
+already refused Russia's request for an extension of time and had
+actually commenced its military operations. Germany's attitude is best
+indicated by the letter of the Russian Minister in Germany to the
+Russian Foreign Office in which he states that on July 27 he called at
+the German Foreign Office and asked it
+
+     "to urge upon Vienna in a more pressing fashion to take up
+     this line of conciliation. Jagow replied that he could not
+     advise Austria to yield."
+
+[Russian "Orange Paper," No. 38.]
+
+Why not? Russia had advised Servia to yield, and Servia had conceded
+nearly every claim. Why could not the German Foreign Office advise
+Vienna to meet conciliation by conciliation, if its desire for peace
+were sincere? All that Russia and England desired was that a little time
+and consideration should be given, without prejudice to the rights or
+claims of Austria, before the peace of the world was hopelessly
+shattered.
+
+Before this interview took place the French Ambassador had called at the
+German Foreign Office on a similar errand and urged the English
+suggestion that action should at once be taken by England, Germany,
+Russia, and France at St. Petersburg and Vienna, to the effect that
+Austria and Servia
+
+     "should abstain from any act which might aggravate the
+     situation at the present hour."
+
+By this was meant that there should be, pending further parleys, no
+invasion of Servia by Austria and none of Austria by Russia. _To this
+the German Foreign Minister opposed a categorical refusal._
+
+On the same day the Russian Ambassador at Vienna had "a long and earnest
+conversation" with the Austrian Under Secretary of State for Foreign
+Affairs. He expressed the earnest hope that
+
+     "something would be done before Servia was actually invaded.
+     Baron Machio replied that this would now be difficult, as a
+     skirmish had already taken place on the Danube, in which the
+     Servians had been aggressors."
+
+The Russian Ambassador then said that his country would do all it could
+to keep the Servians quiet,
+
+     "and even to fall back before an Austrian advance in order to
+     gain time."
+
+He urged that the Austrian Ambassador at St. Petersburg should be
+furnished with full powers to continue discussions with the Russian
+Minister for Foreign Affairs,
+
+     "who was very willing to advise Servia to yield all that could
+     be fairly asked of her as an independent power."
+
+The only reply to this reasonable suggestion was that it would be
+submitted to the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 56.]
+
+On the same day the German Ambassador at Paris called upon the French
+Foreign Office and strongly insisted on the "_exclusion of all
+possibility of mediation or of conference_," and yet contemporaneously
+the Imperial German Chancellor was advising London that he had
+
+     "started the efforts toward mediation in Vienna, immediately
+     in the way desired by Sir Edward Grey, and had further
+     communicated to the Austrian Foreign Minister the wish of the
+     Russian Foreign Minister for a direct talk in Vienna."
+
+What hypocrisy! In the formal German defense, the official apologist for
+that country, after stating his conviction
+
+     "that an act of mediation could not take into consideration
+     the Austro-Servian conflict, which was purely an
+     Austro-Hungarian affair,"
+
+claimed that Germany had transmitted Sir Edward Grey's further
+suggestion to Vienna, in which Austria-Hungary was urged
+
+     "either to agree to accept the Servian answer as sufficient or
+     to look upon it as a basis for further conversations";
+
+but the Austro-Hungarian Government--playing the role of the wicked
+partner of the combination--"in full appreciation of our mediatory
+activity," (so says the German "White Paper" with sardonic humor,)
+replied to this proposition that, coming as it did after the opening of
+hostilities, "_it was too late_."
+
+Does any reasonable man question for a moment that, if Germany had done
+something more than merely "transmit" these wise and pacific
+suggestions, Austria would have complied with the suggestions of its
+powerful ally or that Austria would have suspended its military
+operations if Germany had given any intimation of such a wish?
+
+On the following day, July 28, the door was further closed on any
+possibility of compromise when the Austrian Minister for Foreign Affairs
+
+     "said, quietly but firmly, _that no discussion could be
+     accepted on the basis of the Servian note_; that war would be
+     declared today, and that the well-known pacific character of
+     the Emperor, as well as, he might add, his own, might be
+     accepted as a guarantee that the war was both just and
+     inevitable; that this was a matter that must be settled
+     directly between the two parties immediately concerned."
+
+To this arrogant and unreasonable contention that Europe must accept the
+guarantee of the Austrian Foreign Minister as to the righteousness of
+Austria's quarrel the British Ambassador suggested "the larger aspect of
+the question," namely, the peace of Europe, and to this "larger aspect,"
+which should have given any reasonable official some ground for pause,
+the Austrian Foreign Minister replied that he
+
+     "had it also in mind, but thought that Russia ought not to
+     oppose operations like those impending, which did not aim at
+     territorial aggrandizement, and which could no longer be
+     postponed."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 62.]
+
+The private conversations between Russia and Austria having thus failed,
+Russia returned to the proposition of a European conference to preserve
+its peace. Its Ambassador in Vienna on July 28 had a conference with
+Berchtold and pointed to the dangers to the peace of Europe and the
+desirability of good relations between Austria-Hungary and Russia.
+
+To this Count Berchtold replied that he understood perfectly well the
+seriousness of the situation and the advantages of a frank explanation
+with the Cabinet at St. Petersburg.
+
+     "He told me that, on the other hand, the Austro-Hungarian
+     Government, which had only reluctantly decided upon the
+     energetic measures which it had taken against Servia, _could
+     now neither withdraw nor enter upon any discussion of the
+     terms of the Austro-Hungarian note."_
+
+[Russian "Orange Paper," No. 45.]
+
+On the same day, July 28, the German Imperial Chancellor sent for the
+English Ambassador and excused his failure to accept the proposal of
+conference of the neutral powers, on the ground that he did not think it
+would be effective,
+
+     "because such a conference would in his opinion have the
+     appearance of an 'Areopagus' consisting of two powers of each
+     group sitting in judgment upon the two remaining powers."
+
+After engaging in this pitiful and insincere quibble, and when reminded
+of Servia's conciliatory reply, amounting to a virtual surrender,
+
+     "his Excellency said that he did not wish to discuss the
+     Servian note, but that Austria's standpoint, and in this he
+     agreed, was that her quarrel with Servia was a purely Austrian
+     concern, _with which Russia had nothing to do_."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 71.]
+
+At this point the rules of the countries intervened in the dispute. The
+Kaiser, having returned from Norway, telegraphed the Czar, under date of
+July 28, that he was
+
+     "exerting all my influence to endeavor to make Austria-Hungary
+     come to an open and satisfying understanding with Russia,"
+
+and invoked the Czar's aid.
+
+[German "White Paper," Annex 20.]
+
+If the Kaiser were sincere, and he may have been, _his attitude was not
+that of his Foreign Office_. Upon the face of the record we have only
+his own assurance that he was doing everything to preserve peace, but
+the steps that he took or the communications he made to influence
+Austria _are not found in the formal defense which the German Government
+has given to the world_. The Kaiser can only convince the world of his
+innocence of the crime of his Potsdam camarilla by giving the world _the
+text_ of any advice he gave the Austrian officials. He has produced his
+telegrams to the Czar. _Where are those he presumably sent to Francis
+Joseph or Count Berchtold? Where are the instructions he gave his own
+Ambassadors or Foreign Minister?_
+
+It is significant that on the same day Sazonof telegraphed to Count
+Benckendorff:
+
+     "My conversations with the German Ambassador confirm my
+     impression that Germany is rather favorable to the
+     uncompromising attitude adopted by Austria,"
+
+and he adds, and history will vindicate him in the conclusion, that
+
+     "the Berlin Cabinet, which might have been able to arrest the
+     whole development of this crisis, seems to exercise no action
+     on its ally."
+
+[Russian "Orange Paper," No. 43.]
+
+On July 29 Sir Edward Goschen telegraphed Sir Edward Grey that he had
+that night seen the German Chancellor, who had "just returned from
+Potsdam," where he had presumably seen the Kaiser. The German Chancellor
+then showed clearly how the wind was blowing in making the suggestion to
+Sir Edward Goschen that if England would remain neutral, Germany would
+agree to guarantee that she would not take any French territory. When
+asked about the French colonies, no assurance was given.
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 85.]
+
+Later in the day the German Chancellor again saw the English Ambassador,
+and expressed regret
+
+     "that events had marched too rapidly, and that it was
+     therefore too late to act upon your [Sir Edward Grey's]
+     suggestion that the Servian reply might form the basis of
+     discussion."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 75.]
+
+On the same day the Ambassador for Germany at St. Petersburg called upon
+Sazonof and expressed himself in favor of further explanations between
+Vienna and St. Petersburg, to which Sazonof assented. [Russian "Orange
+Paper," No. 49.] On the same day Sir Edward Grey asked the German
+Government
+
+     "_to suggest any form of procedure_ under which the idea of
+     mediation between Austria and Russia, already accepted by the
+     German Government in principle, _could be applied_."
+
+To which the German Foreign Office replied that it could not act for
+fear that if they made to their ally any suggestion that looked like
+pressure it might "_cause them [Austria] to precipitate matter and
+present a fait accompli_." [See letter of Sir Edward Goschen to Sir
+Edward Grey, July 29--English "White Paper," No. 70.]
+
+This was the last and worst of the quibbles put forth to gain time while
+Austria was making progress toward Belgrade. It assumes that Austria
+might not only fail to respect the wish in a matter of common concern of
+its more powerful ally, but that it might act in disregard of Germany's
+wish. This strains human credulity to the breaking point. Did the German
+Secretary of State keep a straight face when he uttered this sardonic
+pleasantry? It may be the duty of a diplomat to lie on occasion, but is
+it ever necessary to utter such a stupid falsehood? The German Secretary
+of State sardonically added in the same conversation that he was not
+sure that the effort for peace had not hastened the declaration of war,
+as though the declaration of war against Servia had not been planned and
+expected from the first.
+
+As a final effort to meet quibbles, the British Ambassador at Berlin
+then suggested that after Austria had satisfied her military prestige,
+the moment might then be favorable for four disinterested powers to
+discuss the situation and come forward with suggestions for preventing
+graver complications.
+
+To this proposal the German Secretary of State seemingly acquiesced,
+but, as usual, _nothing whatever was done_. [English "White Paper," No.
+76.] It is true that on July 29 Sir Edward Grey was assured by the
+German Ambassador that the German Foreign Office was
+
+     "endeavoring to make Vienna explain in a satisfactory form at
+     St. Petersburg the scope and extension of Austrian proceedings
+     in Servia,"
+
+but again the communications which the German Foreign Office sent to
+Vienna on this point _have never yet been disclosed to the world_.
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 84.]
+
+In this same conference Sir Edward Grey
+
+     "urged that the _German Government should suggest any method_
+     by which the influence of the four powers could be used
+     together to prevent war between Austria and Russia. France
+     agreed, Italy agreed. The whole idea of mediation or mediating
+     influence was ready to be put into operation _by any method
+     that Germany could suggest_ if mine were not acceptable. In
+     fact, mediation was ready to come into operation by any method
+     that Germany thought possible, if only Germany would 'press
+     the button' in the interests of peace."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 84.]
+
+The difficulty was, however, that Germany never "pressed the button,"
+although obviously it would have been easy for her to do so, as the
+stronger and more influential member of the Double Alliance.
+
+On the same day the Austrian Government left a memorandum with Sir
+Edward Grey to the effect that Count Mensdorff said that the war with
+Servia must proceed.
+
+On the night of July 29 the British Ambassador at Berlin was informed
+that the German Foreign Office "_had not had time to send an answer
+yet_" to the proposal that Germany suggest the form of mediation, but
+that the question had been referred to the Austro-Hungarian Government
+with a request as to "what would satisfy them."
+
+[English "White Paper," No. 107.]
+
+On the following day the German Ambassador informed Sir Edward Grey that
+the German Government would endeavor to influence Austria, after taking
+Belgrade and Servian territory in the region of the frontier, to promise
+not to advance further, while the powers endeavored to arrange that
+Servia should give satisfaction sufficient to pacify Austria, but if
+Germany ever exercised any such pressure upon Vienna, _no evidence of it
+has ever been given to the world_. Certainly it was not very effective,
+and for the reasons mentioned it is impossible to conclude that the
+advice of Germany, if in good faith, would not have been followed by its
+weaker ally.
+
+From all that appears in the record, Austria made no reply to this most
+conciliatory suggestion of England, but, in the meantime, the
+irrepressible Kaiser made the crisis more acute by cabling to the Czar
+that the mobilization of Russia to meet the mobilization of Austria was
+affecting his position of mediator, to which the Czar made a
+conciliatory reply, stating that Russia's mobilization was only for a
+defense against Austria.
+
+The Czar, to put at rest any anxiety of the Kaiser as to Russia's
+intentions with respect to Germany, added:
+
+     "I thank you cordially for your mediation which permits the
+     hope that everything may yet end peaceably. It is technically
+     impossible to discontinue our military preparations which have
+     been made necessary by the Austrian mobilization. It is far
+     from us to want war. _As long as the negotiations between
+     Austria and Servia continue, my troops will undertake no
+     provocative action. I give you my solemn word thereon._ I
+     confide with all my faith in the grace of God, and I hope for
+     the success of your mediation in Vienna for the welfare of our
+     countries and the peace of Europe."
+
+What more could Russia do? If Austria continued to mobilize, why not
+Russia?
+
+On this day, July 30, the German Ambassador had two interviews at St.
+Petersburg with Sazonof, and it was then that Sazonof drew up the
+following formula as a basis for peace:
+
+     "If Austria, recognizing that her conflict with Servia has
+     assumed character of question of European interest, declares
+     herself ready to eliminate from her ultimatum the points which
+     violate principle of sovereignty of Servia, _Russia engages to
+     stop all military preparations_."
+
+[Russian "Orange Paper," No. 60.]
+
+At this stage King George telegraphed Prince Henry of Prussia that
+
+     "the English Government was doing its utmost, suggesting to
+     Russia and France to suspend further military preparations, if
+     Austria will consent to be satisfied with the occupation of
+     Belgrade and neighboring Servian territory as a hostage for
+     satisfactory settlement of her demands, other countries
+     meanwhile suspending their war preparation."
+
+The King adds a hope that the Kaiser
+
+     "will use his great influence to induce Austria to accept
+     this proposal, thus proving that Germany and England are
+     working together to prevent what would be an international
+     catastrophe."
+
+[Second German "White Paper."]
+
+This last proposition, however, was never accepted or declined, for the
+impetuous Kaiser gave his twelve-hour ultimatum to Russia to demobilize,
+and this was an arrogant demand which no self-respecting power, much
+less so great a one as Russia, could possibly accept.
+
+While this demand was in progress Sir Edward Grey was making his last
+attempt to preserve peace by asking Germany to sound Vienna, as he would
+sound St. Petersburg, whether it would be possible for the four
+disinterested powers to offer to Austria that they would
+
+     "undertake to see that she obtained full satisfaction of her
+     demands on Servia, provided they did not embarrass Servian
+     sovereignty and the integrity of Servian territory."
+
+Sir Edward Grey went so far as to tell the German Ambassador that if
+this was not satisfactory, and if Germany would make any reasonable
+proposals to preserve peace and Russia and France rejected it, that
+
+     "his Majesty's Government would have nothing to do with the
+     consequences,"
+
+which obviously meant either neutrality or actual intervention in behalf
+of Germany and Austria.
+
+On the same day the British Ambassador at Berlin besought the German
+Foreign Office to
+
+     "put pressure on the authorities at Vienna to do something in
+     the general interest to reassure Russia and to show themselves
+     disposed to continue discussions on a friendly basis."
+
+And Sir Edward Goschen reports that the German Foreign Minister replied
+that last night he had
+
+     "begged Austria to reply to your last proposal, and that he
+     had received a reply to the effect that the Austrian Minister
+     for Foreign Affairs would take the wishes of the Emperor this
+     morning in the matter."
+
+_Again the text of the letter in which Germany "begged" Austria to be
+conciliatory is not found in the record._
+
+The excuse of Germany that the mobilization of Russia compelled it to
+mobilize does not justify the war. Mobilization does not necessarily
+mean aggression, but simply preparation. If Russia had the right to
+mobilize because Austria mobilized, Germany equally had the right to
+mobilize when Russia mobilized, but it does not follow that either of
+the three nations could justify a war to compel the other parties to
+demobilize. Mobilization is only a preparation against eventualities. It
+is the right of the sovereign State and by no code of ethics a _casus
+belli_. The demand of Germany that Russia could not arm to defend
+itself, when Austria was preparing for a possible attack on Russia, has
+few, if any, parallels in history for bullying effrontery. It treated
+Russia as an inferior, almost a vassal, State.
+
+It must be observed that, while Germany insisted that Russia should
+demobilize, the Kaiser offered no reciprocal promise. On his theory
+Germany and Austria were to be left free to complete their preparations,
+but Russia was to tie her own hands and leave herself "naked to her
+enemies." This is shown by the last telegrams which passed between the
+Czar and Kaiser. The Czar telegraphed:
+
+     "I have received your telegram. I comprehend that you are
+     forced to mobilize, but I should like to have from you the
+     same guaranty which I have given you, viz., that these
+     measures do not mean war, and that we shall continue to
+     negotiate for the welfare of our two countries and the
+     universal peace which is so dear to our hearts. With the aid
+     of God it must be possible to our long-tried friendship to
+     prevent the shedding of blood. I expect with full confidence
+     your urgent reply."
+
+To this the Kaiser replied:
+
+     "I thank you for your telegram. I have shown yesterday to your
+     Government the way through which alone war may yet be averted.
+     Although I asked for a reply by today noon, no telegram from
+     my Ambassador has reached me with the reply of your
+     Government. I therefore have been forced to mobilize my army.
+     An immediate, clear, and unmistakable reply of your Government
+     is the sole way to avoid endless misery. Until I receive this
+     reply I am unable, to my great grief, to enter upon the
+     subject of your telegram. I must ask most earnestly that you,
+     without delay, order your troops to commit, under no
+     circumstances, the slightest violation of our frontiers."
+
+This impetuous step of Germany to compel its great neighbor to desist
+from military preparations to defend itself came most inopportunely, for
+on Aug. 1 the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador _for the first time_ declared
+to the Russian Government its willingness to discuss the terms of the
+Austrian ultimatum to Servia, and it was then suggested that the form of
+the ultimatum and the questions arising thereon should be discussed in
+London. (Dispatch from British Ambassador at Vienna to Sir Edward Grey,
+dated Sept. 1, 1914.) Sir Edward Grey at once advised the English
+Ambassador in Berlin of the fact, and urged that it was still possible
+to maintain peace
+
+     "if only a little respite in time can be gained before any
+     great power begins war,"
+
+     [English "White Paper," No. 131.]
+
+but the Kaiser, having issued the arrogant ultimatum to Russia to
+demobilize in twelve hours, had gone too far for retreat, and, spurred
+on by the arrogant Potsdam military party, he "let slip the dogs of
+war." After the fatal Rubicon had been crossed and the die was cast the
+Czar telegraphed King George:
+
+"In this solemn hour I wish to assure you once more I have done all in
+my power to avert war."
+
+Such will be the verdict of history.
+
+
+The Judgment.
+
+These are _the facts_ as shown by the record, and upon them, in my
+judgment, an impartial court would not hesitate to pass the following
+judgment:
+
+1--_That Germany and Austria in a time of profound peace secretly
+concerted together to impose their will upon Europe and upon Servia in a
+matter affecting the balance of power in Europe. Whether in so doing
+they intended to precipitate a European war to determine the mastery of
+Europe is not satisfactorily established, although their whole course of
+conduct suggests this as a possibility. They made war almost inevitable
+by (a) issuing an ultimatum that was grossly unreasonable and
+disproportionate to any grievance that Austria had and (b) in giving to
+Servia, and Europe, insufficient time to consider the rights and
+obligations of all interested nations._
+
+2--_That Germany had at all times the power to compel Austria to
+preserve a reasonable and conciliatory course, but at no time
+effectively exerted that influence. On the contrary, she certainly
+abetted, and possibly instigated, Austria in its unreasonable course._
+
+3--_That England, France, Italy, and Russia at all times sincerely
+worked for peace, and for this purpose not only overlooked the original
+misconduct of Austria but made every reasonable concession in the hope
+of preserving peace._
+
+4--_That Austria, having mobilized its army, Russia was reasonably
+justified in mobilizing its forces. Such act of mobilization was the
+right of any sovereign State, and as long as the Russian armies did not
+cross the border or take any aggressive action no other nation had any
+just right to complain, each having the same right to make similar
+preparations._
+
+5--_That Germany, in abruptly declaring war against Russia for failure
+to demobilize when the other powers had offered to make any reasonable
+concession and peace parleys were still in progress, precipitated the
+war._
+
+6--_That Belgium as a sovereign State has as an inherent right the power
+to determine when and under what conditions an alien can cross her
+frontiers. This right exists independently of treaties, but is, in the
+case of Belgium, reinforced by the Treaty of 1839 and The Hague
+Convention, whereby the leading European nations (including Germany)
+guarantee its "perpetual neutrality." The invasion of Belgium by Germany
+was in violation of these rights, and England only respected its own
+solemn covenant when, in defense of that neutrality, it declared war
+against Germany._
+
+
+In Conclusion.
+
+The writer of this article has reached these conclusions with
+reluctance, as he has a feeling of deep affection for the German people
+and equal admiration for their ideals and matchless progress. Even more
+he admires the magnificent courage with which the German Nation, beset
+on every hand by powerful antagonists, is now defending its prestige as
+a nation. The whole-hearted devotion of this great nation to its flag is
+worthy of the best traditions of the Teutonic race. Nevertheless, this
+cannot alter the ethical truth, which stands apart from any
+considerations of nationality; nor can it affect the conclusion that the
+German Nation has been plunged into this abyss by its scheming statesmen
+and its self-centred and highly neurotic Kaiser, who in the twentieth
+century sincerely believes that he is the proxy of Almighty God on
+earth, and therefore infallible.
+
+In visiting its condemnation, the Supreme Court of Civilization should
+therefore distinguish between the military caste, headed by the Kaiser
+and the Crown Prince, which precipitated this great calamity, and the
+German people.
+
+The very secrecy of the plot against the peace of the world and the
+failure to disclose to the German people the diplomatic communications
+hereinbefore quoted, strongly suggest that this detestable war is not
+merely a crime against civilization, _but also against the deceived and
+misled German people_. They have a vision and are essentially
+progressive and peace-loving in their national characteristics, while
+the ideals of their military caste are those of the Dark Ages.
+
+One day the German people will know the full truth and then there will
+be a dreadful reckoning for those who have plunged a noble and
+peace-loving nation into this fathomless chasm of misfortune.
+
+    "Though the mills of God grind slowly,
+      Yet they grind exceeding small,
+    Though with patience He stands waiting,
+      With exactness grinds He all."
+
+
+
+
+Critics Dispute Mr. Beck
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+It is regrettable that President Wilson's admirable policy of strict
+neutrality is not more sincerely and carefully observed by the press and
+public of this country.
+
+We are a cosmopolitan nation. Citizens of the five great warring
+countries and their descendants, to a very great extent, constitute our
+population. Partiality of any kind tends to destroy the elemental ties
+which bind us together, to disrupt our Union, and to make us a house
+divided against itself. James M. Beck's article in last Sunday's TIMES
+is of the kind which, serving no good purpose, helps to loosen, if not
+sever, our most vital domestic ties. While not for an instant doubting
+Mr. Beck's sincerity, we must take issue with his inadvertently
+ill-timed expression of opinion.
+
+The article in question is based on the following statement: "Any
+discussion of the ethical merits of this great controversy must start
+with the assumption that there is such a thing as international
+morality." How does Mr. Beck define "international morality"? How can he
+assume that to exist which each of the contending nations by their
+diverse actions prove to be non-extant? How can he claim that there is
+an "international morality" of accepted form when each nation claims
+that its interpretation must be accepted by the others?
+
+Mr. Beck's allegation that the question "Was England justified in
+declaring war against Germany?" is more easily disposed of than the
+questions "Was Austria justified in declaring war against Servia?" and
+"Was Germany justified in declaring war against Russia and France?"
+proves two things--first, that his interest lies primarily in the
+vindication of England; second, that he disregards the fundamental
+causes and recognizes only the precipitating causes of the war.
+
+The precipitating cause of the war between England and Germany is
+verbosely if inadequately covered by his article. We must admit that a
+treaty was broken by Germany, yet we contend that this broken agreement
+was a pretext for a war fomented and impelled by basic economic causes.
+At the outset, let us distinguish between a contract and a treaty. A
+contract is an agreement between individuals contemplating enforcement
+by a court of law; punishment by money damages in the great majority of
+cases, by a specific performance in a very few. A treaty is an agreement
+between nations contemplating enforcement by a court of international
+public opinion; punishment by money indemnity in the great majority of
+cases, by specific performance (i.e., force of arms) in a very few.
+
+
+Germany's Existence Threatened.
+
+Germany contends that her breach of treaty obligation is punishable by
+the payment of money indemnity to the aggrieved party. This she has
+offered to do in the case of Belgium, as she has already done in the
+case of Luxemburg. Germany's existence was so seriously threatened that
+her action seems justifiable, and there remains a sole moral obligation
+to compensate any neutral country injured by her.
+
+The mere fact that Belgium had made an unfortunate alliance with England
+is deplorable in that Belgium has suffered terribly; but this suffering
+is not attributable to Germany. When Japan violated Chinese neutrality,
+China protested. Though she was entitled to a money indemnity, there is
+no valid reason under the sun why the United States as a guarantor of
+the integrity of China should declare war against Japan. England's
+justification, in so far as there can be any justification for adding to
+the toll of death, is the same as that of Germany, the preservation of
+national sovereignty.
+
+Further: "It seems unnecessary to discuss the wanton disregard of these
+solemn obligations." There can be nothing wanton in a struggle for
+existence, and that this European war is such a struggle is the only
+possible explanation of its magnitude, ferocity, and vast possible
+consequences. Then, too, though deplorable, treaty obligations are not
+solemn, as Italy has proved to the complete satisfaction of so many.
+Italy's contention that this is an aggressive war on the part of Germany
+and Austria is as untenable as the German contention that it is an
+aggressive war on the part of England. For this war was not an
+aggressive war on the part of any nation, but an unavoidable war caused
+by the simultaneous bursting of the long-gathering economic storm
+clouds.
+
+Again: "The ethical aspects of this great conflict must largely depend
+upon the record that has been made up by the official communications."
+This is similar to a contention that the ethical rights in a case in
+court must depend upon the astuteness of counsel in summing up to the
+jury. "A court would be deeply impressed ... by the significant
+omissions of documents known to be in existence." A court of law, as our
+former Assistant Attorney General of the United States surely knows,
+compels no one to give testimony that tends to incriminate, and,
+furthermore, does not construe failure to testify on the grounds that it
+will tend to incriminate against the defendant. In the law the defendant
+is entitled to every reasonable doubt. It is also conceivable that a
+reasonable time for the defense to present its case would be granted
+before passing judgment.
+
+Passing on: "To discuss the justice of Austria's grievances against
+Servia would take us ... into the realm of disputed facts." This seems a
+delectable bit of humor. We respectfully submit that Mr. Beck's other
+assertions might also be considered as "in the realm of disputed facts."
+Mr. Beck admits that Austria had a just grievance against Servia, though
+he questions her method of redress. Though we conceive that in the
+unfortunate European tangle Austria relied on German support in the
+event of international conflict, we submit that reliance on Russian
+support was a bigger factor in encouraging little Servia to defy her big
+neighbor than the remoter help that Germany would furnish Austria in the
+event of the conflict spreading.
+
+Austria, in the exercise of her right to engage in a punitive expedition
+against Servia, guaranteed that she would do nothing to generalize the
+conflict by her assurances to Russia and to the world that there would
+be no annexation of Servian territory or annihilation of the Servian
+Kingdom. Whether these assurances were genuine or not is impossible of
+determination. We have no right to constitute ourselves arbiters of
+their sincerity.
+
+
+No European Solidarity.
+
+Mr. Beck speaks of "the solidarity of European civilization and the fact
+that by policy and diplomatic intercourse ... a United European State
+exists, even though its organization be as yet inchoate." This
+solidarity is conspicuous only by its utter non-existence. Whatever may
+have been achieved by policy and diplomatic intercourse has been marred
+and rendered useless by the lines of demarkation of the spheres of
+influence of the great powers of Europe and by the racial and
+temperamental incongruities of Europe's population.
+
+We read: "Servia had forty-eight hours to answer; ... the other European
+nations had barely a day to consider what could be done to preserve the
+peace of Europe. Why should an Austro-Servian war compromise the peace
+of Europe?" Was it not because of the tangled web of international
+diplomacy, the Triple Entente as well as the Triple Alliance?
+
+Referring to a German warning in regard to Austria's demands on Servia,
+"the German Foreign Office anticipates that Servia 'will refuse to
+comply with these demands'--why, if they were justified?" We grieve at
+the shattered ideal of Mr. Beck, who, in the face of the international
+calamity which has befallen the world, still can believe that all
+justifiable demands are complied with.
+
+Again, quoting German "White Paper," Annex 1B, Germany desired "that
+the dispute be localized, since any intervention of another power, on
+account of the various alliance obligations, would bring consequences
+impossible to measure." The explanation of this statement is not--an
+aggressor threatens his adversary, but, rather, a prudent man begs
+opposing factions to keep cool.
+
+Great space is devoted in the article in question to Germany's
+unwillingness to place the Austro-Servian controversy in the hands of
+France, England, Germany, and Italy. As Germany disavows all interest in
+the controversy, if she speaks truly, it was not within her power to
+dictate to her ally in a matter which she could in nowise control except
+by force of arms. Furthermore, had she had the power, how could she be
+expected to exert pressure on her ally to leave a vital controversy to a
+court of four, two of whom were bound by alliances with Russia,
+Austria's real antagonist, and a third, (Italy,) as subsequent events
+have shown, Austria's natural, geographical, and hereditary enemy? At
+best, had each power held to its treaty obligations, there would have
+been a deadlock.
+
+Further: "The Russian Minister ... called at the German Foreign Office
+and asked it 'to urge upon Vienna ... to take up this line of
+conciliation. Jagow replied that he could not advise Austria to yield.'"
+Elsewhere in the article a statement is made that the Austro-Servian and
+Austro-Russian questions "for all practical purposes ... were
+indistinguishable." This inconsistency of having Servia in the light of
+a principal and then again in the light of an agent is the greatest
+stumbling block to a clear analysis of the precipitating cause of the
+war. The logical explanation of Servia's position is that of Russia's
+agent. Hence Germany could not be expected to exert the same pressure on
+an allied principal that Russia could exert on her agent.
+
+It is true that Germany engaged in many blundering diplomatic quibbles
+in the final stages of preparation for the war; but it is also true that
+England quibbled, though with greater diplomatic finesse; for instance,
+"Sir Edward Grey went so far as to tell the German Ambassador that ...
+if Germany would make any reasonable proposals to preserve peace, and
+Russia and France rejected it, that 'his Majesty's Government would have
+nothing to do with the consequences.'" Here it is apparent to every one
+that the word "reasonable" begs the questions.
+
+
+Slav and Teuton.
+
+The German people were encouraged to relish the idea of a war against
+Russia once that war became likely, for sooner or later it seemed
+inevitable that Slav and Teuton would clash, and Germany felt confident
+that at the present time she outmatched her enemy. The Russians, too,
+were encouraged to desire the Slav provinces of Austria, which racially
+are a part of the Russian domain. The English people were made to relish
+this opportunity to strike their great commercial competitor, especially
+when they could do so with little likelihood of unfavorable criticisms.
+Finally, the impressionable French people were stirred to thoughts of
+revenge and recovery of their lost provinces.
+
+Sympathy with any country in this most disgraceful yet most inevitable
+of wars brands the sympathizer as a party to the material and lustful
+purposes of at least one of the combatants. There is no ethical
+justification of this war from any standpoint. There is no justification
+of this war from any standpoint. There is only an explanation of the war
+from an economic standpoint. All these specious arguments on the
+precipitating causes of the war can be but for the display of brilliant
+forensic oratory and matchless diction. Let us thrust aside in these
+dark moments of peril and horror all subterfuge.
+
+England, overburdened with taxation, was on the verge of civil war.
+Russia, whose masses were overridden roughshod by a bureaucracy
+weighting down the peasants with onerous national burdens, expected
+sooner or later the cataclysmic upheaval with which the Nihilistic
+societies have long been threatening its tyrannical Government. France,
+seriously financially embarrassed because of crop impoverishment and
+bad foreign investments in Brazil, Russia, and the Balkans, was subject
+to continued internal political upheavals, with ever-changing Ministries
+and a growing Socialist Party.
+
+Austria, "the ramshackle empire," was in danger of disintegrating from a
+variety of causes, not the least of which was the infusibility of its
+racially different elements. Germany, in a blind race for commercial
+supremacy, suffered from industrial overproduction, thus creating an
+unhealthy financial condition which fortified the Socialist Party to an
+extent which threatened her imperialistic form of government itself.
+
+So these monarchies whose days were numbered, because of dissatisfaction
+at the waste and extravagance of a world gone mad with national excesses
+committed in the name of civilization, in reality the price of our
+modernization, in a final desperate effort to rally their waning
+fortunes stampeded their awakening masses into a ruinous interracial war
+in order to stave off the torch and the guillotine.
+
+GEORGE E. BERNHEIMER.
+
+New York, Oct. 30, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Russia to Blame
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Allow me to submit the following in answer to the article of James M.
+Beck, entitled "Case of the Double Alliance vs. the Triple Entente,"
+published in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Oct. 25, 1914:
+
+The case of "Russian Mobilization vs. German Mediation." Q.--Upon whom
+was the duty to yield?
+
+Mr. Beck has spent considerable time and effort to prove, at least by
+inference, that Germany must have been informed beforehand of the
+Austrian ultimatum to Servia. Personally, I am convinced that the
+ultimatum in question was sent with the full knowledge and consent of
+Germany; and, whether this is true or not, I maintain that it was
+Austria's duty to inform her ally before taking a step which was likely
+to endanger the peace of Europe.
+
+The concession of this point takes me immediately to the ultimatum
+itself and to the question, "Was the tenor of the ultimatum justified?"
+Mr. Beck, in his judgment, says: "The ultimatum is grossly unreasonable
+and disappropriate to any grievance that Austria had." Perhaps Mr. Beck
+is right, but I have good reasons to think that the tenor of the
+ultimatum was fully justified, in view of Servia's former conduct.
+
+Austria was dealing here with a Government the real spirits of which had
+come into power by the commission of one of the most dastardly crimes of
+modern times. A crime which, at the time of its commission, sent a shock
+of horror through the entire civilized world, to wit, "the outrageous
+murder of the former King and Queen of Servia," outrageous because it
+was perpetrated by the so-called aristocracy of Servia. The
+long-continued agitation carried on by Servia against Austria, at the
+instigation of Russia, which finally culminated in another no less
+outrageous assassination, that of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his
+consort, to my idea fully justified Austria in making demands which
+under ordinary circumstances might have been termed "unreasonable."
+
+The question whether Austria was justified in going to war against
+Servia is a debatable one, but I respectfully refer to the fact that our
+own country, the United States, was only very recently on the verge of
+precipitating war with a "much weaker" nation than ours, on account of
+the latter's refusal to salute the American flag. Neither did we stop on
+that occasion with the ultimatum, but we followed it up with dispatching
+a fleet of warships, the landing of troops, and the seizure of Vera
+Cruz.
+
+From the time Austria's ultimatum was sent all the great powers seemed
+to have professed a great eagerness for the preservation of peace. Mr.
+Beck asserts that Germany was not sincere in its desire for peace and
+could have avoided the war if it had seriously tried to exert its
+influence over Austria. This finding is based on the inference drawn
+from the fact that Germany failed to achieve any results.
+
+To determine whether Mr. Beck is justified in finding as he does, it is
+necessary, first of all, to examine the exact status of the powers at
+the time the ultimatum was sent. We find that Austria had a just
+grievance against Servia, for which it was seeking redress. An issue was
+therefore raised between Austria and Servia. Germany, although Austria's
+ally, immediately defined its attitude by declaring emphatically that
+"the question at issue was one for settlement between Servia and Austria
+alone."
+
+
+Why Did Russia Mobilize?
+
+I beg to ask Mr. Beck to answer the following question: By what
+right--moral, legal, or equitable--did Russia make Servia's cause its
+own? Did Russia have any alliance with Servia? I further ask: What
+privity existed between Austria, Servia, and Russia?
+
+Suppose Mr. Beck can justify the action of Russia, although a "rank
+outsider," in taking Servia's part, how can he possibly justify the
+positively unreasonable and, under the circumstances, most dangerous
+step of "actual mobilization" on the part of Russia?
+
+Mr. Beck has tried to justify the mobilization by quoting the Russian
+excuse "that Russia's mobilization was only for a defense against
+Austria." On close examination what does this amount to? It resolves
+itself into a situation somewhat like this: A sends an ultimatum to B
+seeking redress for a wrong committed by B upon A, whereupon C mobilizes
+"for defense against A." I leave it to the average American of ordinary
+intelligence to find a reason for C's mobilization "for defense against
+A." Mr. Beck might as well try to justify a mobilization on the part of
+Japan if the United States was preparing to invade Mexico for the
+purpose of redressing an insult to the American flag. Does Mr. Beck
+realize the seriousness of actual mobilization by Russia at that
+critical moment? Not one of the other powers dared to take this one step
+which among nations is regarded as tantamount to a declaration of war.
+
+And what did the Kaiser do at this moment? He did the only thing he
+could do, and, I dare say, the only thing our American Nation could have
+done under the same circumstances. He wired the Czar and stated: "I am
+willing to bring my influences to bear upon Austria, provided you agree
+to cease mobilization." Was this demand unreasonable? What else could
+Germany have done, I ask, with the Russian bear standing on the border
+with the sword already drawn? This moment was the crucial and decisive
+one in the prologue to this awful world drama.
+
+The only question therefore and the all-important one to be submitted to
+the Court of Civilization, is, Whose duty was it to yield? Was it
+Russia's, with the sword already drawn against a country which had not
+attacked it, not even threatened it, or was it Germany's, with the sword
+in the sheath?
+
+In his "conclusion," Mr. Beck speaks of Germany as "beset on every hand
+by powerful antagonists." Does he really mean to deprive the German
+Emperor of the right to demand as a condition precedent to mediation on
+his part the discontinuance of mobilization by Russia?
+
+Mr. Beck in his "judgment" under Paragraph 4 says "that Austria, having
+mobilized its army, Russia was reasonably justified in mobilizing its
+forces." The use of the qualifying word "reasonably" seems to indicate
+that even Mr. Beck is not quite certain that Russia was in fact
+justified in mobilizing its forces.
+
+Is it reasonable, just, and fair of Mr. Beck to expect Germany, "beset
+on every hand by powerful antagonists," to permit Russia to continue
+mobilizing its 18,000,000 soldiers and have Germany believe that Russia
+was sincere in its "peaceful intentions" in the face of actual
+mobilization? At this moment the German Kaiser made a very reasonable
+demand upon Russia to cease mobilization, and I ask every fair-minded
+American, whether lawyer or layman, "whose duty it was to yield" at this
+moment. The answer to this question will settle the much-disputed point
+as to the actual cause of the war.
+
+In conclusion, I beg to ask Mr. Beck: Why expect so much of Germany and
+nothing of Russia, when Germany had not merely professed her peaceful
+intentions, but actually maintained peace for over forty years, during
+which period not a foot of territory had been acquired by her through
+conquest? This is a fact.
+
+Coming into a court of law supported by such a reputation, does Mr. Beck
+really believe that the decision of the court would have been in favor
+of Russia? Does Mr. Beck really believe that the decision would have
+been against Germany, whose war lord was begging the Czar almost on his
+knees to avoid the awful calamity by the discontinuance of mobilization?
+
+Picture the United States about to invade Mexico to redress an insult to
+the American flag. Picture England as the ally of the United States, and
+Japan supporting Mexico, without any alliance existing between the two
+latter countries. To make this example conform to the actual facts under
+discussion, we must, of course, assume that both Japan and England are
+situated in the North American Continent, and across the border from the
+United States and England. Japan, with an army of 18,000,000 soldiers,
+(assumed for the purpose of argument,) mobilizes her army, professedly
+for defense against the United States. Could any fair-minded American
+possibly expect England to intercede with her ally, the United States,
+without first demanding the demobilization of Japan? Whose duty was it
+to yield?
+
+The actual fact is that Germany even then did not declare war against
+Russia until Russian soldiers had actually crossed not the Austrian but
+the German border.
+
+I may add that in writing the above I am prompted only by the very
+natural desire, viz., to impress upon the jury composed of the American
+people the one fact which should be given the most careful consideration
+in order to enable it to arrive at a just verdict in the case submitted,
+and this fact is "the mobilization of Russia."
+
+FRANK SEGGEBRUCH.
+
+New York, Oct. 29, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+In Defense of Austria
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Referring to your editorial, "The Evidence Examined," in your Sunday
+edition, I wish to protest emphatically against your assertion that a
+"Court of Civilization" must inevitably come to the conclusion that
+Germany precipitated the war. There are still millions of civilized
+people who see these things quite differently.
+
+Mr. Beck makes out a case from the viewpoint of the accusing party--of
+course, nobody will doubt the legal abilities of Mr. Beck--but before
+the Supreme Court of Civilization there is also a law: audiatur et
+altera pars. Mr. Beck, as he presents the case to the court, has not
+mentioned very important points which, for the decision of the Supreme
+Court, would be most vital ones.
+
+At first the breach of Belgian neutrality, admitted and regretted by the
+German Government, has nothing to do with the question--who precipitated
+the war? It constituted only an action of the war itself. On the other
+hand, you call in your editorial the Austrian ultimatum a savage one
+and take it for granted that this ultimatum started the stone rolling
+and brought finally the general clash in Europe about. This presumption,
+when presented to the court, will have to be thoroughly proved, because
+there are many people, fair and just, as you consider yourself, who are
+convinced of the ample justification of this ultimatum.
+
+It is hardly describable how many criminal acts have been committed by
+Servians against the very existence of the Dual Monarchy for the last
+six years, under the eyes of the Servian Government and approved by it,
+by intriguing against Austria's right to cultivate her own territory,
+Bosnia, spreading secret societies all over the empire, &c.
+
+The awful crime, the assassination of the heir to the throne, was only
+the finish of a long chain of like acts. These facts, which immediately
+lead up to the ultimatum, ought to be considered in the first place by
+judging Austria's justification for sending this ultimatum to Servia. A
+just Judge in the Court of Civilization will, I am convinced, carefully
+study the ante-history and in all probability arrive at the conclusion
+that the ultimatum was amply justified and Servia fully deserved the
+severest punishment possible.
+
+Mr. Beck presents to the court the Russian interference with this
+intended punishment and forgets to tell the Judge that Russia had not
+the least right to this interference. No foreign power had.
+
+Therefore, Austria was entirely within her right to decline any
+negotiations with Russia about this punishment before its completion.
+Nevertheless, the German Government brought these negotiations about,
+and, while these negotiations proceeded satisfactorily, Russia
+mobilized, mobilized all along her western frontier against Austria and
+Germany, notwithstanding the fact that she had promised not to do so and
+officials in Petrograd had pledged their words to the contrary.
+
+Russia knew there could be no such thing as a war with Austria alone, as
+well as Germany knew that a war with Russia meant a war with France. If
+the laws of morality rule in the Court of Civilization, they should
+above all be applied to the conduct of Servia and Russia. Austria was in
+a state of self-defense, when she decided not to bear any longer
+Servia's treacherous and murderous attacks against her existence; this
+is entirely within the boundaries of the laws of morality. Russia,
+however, without the slightest right, moral or legal, attacked Austria
+from the back by interfering with Austria's own affairs.
+
+Therefore I wish to point out that a careful student of the papers, by
+considering the ante-history of the war, which, as you will admit, is
+very essential, may come to a quite different conclusion and Mr. Beck as
+State's attorney will have a hard stand against the counsel of the
+defendant.
+
+EDWARD PICK.
+
+New York, Oct. 27, 1914.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Defense of the Dual Alliance--A Reply
+
+By Dr. Edmund von Mach.
+
+     Instructor of Fine Arts, Harvard, 1899-1903; Instructor in
+     History of Art, Wellesley College, 1899-1902; Lecturer in
+     History of Art, Bradford Academy, Cambridge, Mass. Author of
+     many books on Greek and Roman sculpture and the history of
+     painting. Served in the German Army, 1889-91.
+
+
+Hon. James M. Beck has eloquently argued the case of the Allies against
+Germany and Austria-Hungary, and submitted his findings with confident
+assurance of their acceptance by the Supreme Court of Civilization.
+Carried away by his zeal he has at times used terms not warranted by the
+evidence, such as "the irrepressible Kaiser," "stupid falsehood,"
+"duplicity," and the like, but since the court can be trusted to
+disregard such expressions no further attention will be paid to them.
+
+To a certain extent this article is not a reply but a continuation of
+Mr. Beck's argument, for, wherever our personal sympathies may lie, we
+are all equally interested in discovering the truth. In the final
+settlement of peace American public opinion may, nay, will, have a
+prominent voice. If it is exerted on the strength of a true
+understanding of European events, it will contribute to the
+establishment of a lasting peace.
+
+As to the evidence submitted Mr. Beck seems to err in believing that
+Governments are accustomed to publish in their various white, gray, or
+orange papers "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
+This is nowhere done, for there are many bits of information which come
+to a Government through its diplomatic connections which it would be
+indelicate, discourteous, or unwise to give to the public. The official
+documents on American foreign relations and all white, gray, or orange
+papers are "edited." They are understood to be so by Congress,
+Parliament, the Reichstag, the Duma, &c., and no charge of dishonesty
+can be maintained against the respective Governments on that score.
+
+If the Chancellor says that Germany was using her good offices in
+Vienna, this is as valuable a bit of evidence as the reprint of a
+dispatch in the "White Paper," unless we wish to impugn his veracity,
+and in that case the copy of a dispatch would be valueless, for he might
+have forged it. The entire argument, therefore, against Germany and
+Austria, based on what Mr. Beck calls the "suppression of vitally
+important documents," is void, unless you will apply it equally to Great
+Britain and the other countries.
+
+In Sir Edward Grey's "White Paper" Mr. Beck has missed no important
+documents because he looked at England's well-prepared case through
+sympathetic eyes, and it did not occur to him to ask, "Where are all the
+documents bearing on Italian neutrality?" Does he believe that England
+was so little interested in the question whether she would have to fight
+two or three foes, and whether her way to Egypt and India would be safe
+or threatened? There are many dispatches to and from Rome included in
+the "White Paper," but not a mention of Italy's position.
+
+The first paper contains a letter to the British Ambassador in Berlin
+concerning the Austro-Servian relations. Is it not probable that Sir
+Edward Grey's attention was called to this question by his Ambassador in
+Vienna? Where is his letter? Or, if Sir Edward thought of it himself,
+why did he not mention his conversation also to Sir M. de Bunsen in
+Vienna? Where is this note? Are we to assume that Sir M. de Bunsen made
+his first report on July 23, although Sir Edward Goschen in Berlin had
+an interesting report to make a day earlier?
+
+We can thus go through the whole British "White Paper" and discover the
+omission of many interesting documents.
+
+No. 38 is a letter from Sir Rennell Rodd in Rome, dated on July 23 and
+received on July 27. He had no doubt sent also a telegram. What did it
+contain, and why was it not published under the date of its arrival
+instead of the letter which had been delayed in transit?
+
+
+Where Is No. 28?
+
+In No. 29 Sir Edward Grey refers in a telegram to Sir R. Rodd to what "I
+had said to the German Ambassador." Such a reference could have a
+meaning for Sir R. Rodd only if he had been informed of this
+conversation. There is no dispatch printed in the "White Paper"
+containing this information. Possibly it was so entwined with other
+instructions, which Sir Edward Grey did not care to have known, that it
+could not be published. Was it perhaps sent to the printer first as No.
+28, and removed at the last moment when it was too late to change the
+subsequent numbers? Or, if this assumption is wrong, what was printed
+originally as No. 28? Where is No. 28? There are other omissions, and
+one especially noteworthy one between Nos. 80 and 106 which will be
+discussed later.
+
+Viewed in this light, the English "White Paper" loses much of the value
+of a complete record, which it has had in the eyes of many. There is
+absolutely no reason to doubt the accuracy of those dispatches which
+have been printed, but it becomes incumbent upon the searcher after the
+truth to inquire whether the existence of unprinted (in the case of the
+German "White Paper" Mr. Beck uses the term "suppressed") papers may not
+at times alter the interpretation which should be given to those that
+are printed.
+
+Since we have no published records anywhere concerning the advice given
+to Italy by the Allies, and the gradual steps leading up to Italy's
+decision to remain neutral; nor any hint as to the day when her decision
+was communicated to England and the other powers, it would be futile to
+speculate on this subject. Since, however, the Queen of Italy and the
+wife of the Commander in Chief of the Russian forces are sisters, and
+since it was in the interest of the Allies to keep Italy neutral, it is
+not unreasonable to assume that an exchange of opinion took place
+between Italy and the Allies concerning the conditions under which Italy
+would remain neutral.
+
+If the actual opening of hostilities could be so managed that Germany
+could be called the aggressor, then Italy probably declared that she
+would not enter the war. This is a very important phase of the case, and
+the omission from Sir Edward Grey's "White Paper" of all dispatches
+dealing with Italian neutrality is much to be regretted.
+
+Since we are dealing with the Italian dispatches here, it may be
+advisable to consider at once all the communications which are published
+as having passed between Sir Edward Grey and the British Ambassador, Sir
+Rennell Rodd, in Rome. They are numbered 19, (perhaps 28,) 29, 35, 36,
+38, 49, 57, 63, 64, 80, 81, 86, 92, 100, and 106, of which the important
+numbers are 38, 57, 64, 80, and 86.
+
+On July 23 Sir Edward Grey was informed that "the gravity of the
+situation lay in the conviction of the Austro-Hungarian Government that
+it was absolutely necessary for their prestige, after the many
+disillusions which the turn of events in the Balkans has occasioned, to
+score a definite success." (No. 38.)
+
+Austria, in other words, believed that to let the murder of her
+heir-apparent pass unpunished would have meant a deathblow to her
+prestige, and consequently, as any one familiar with her conditions will
+agree, to her existence. Russia, on the other hand, on July 25 said (see
+No. 17, report from Sir G. Buchanan) that she could not "allow (note the
+word) Austria to crush Servia and become the predominant power in the
+Balkans, and if she feels secure of the support of France, she will face
+all the risks of war."
+
+These two dispatches to Sir Edward Grey tell the whole story in a
+nutshell. Austria believed, rightly or wrongly, that it was a question
+of life or death for her, while Russia claimed the right of preventing
+Austria from becoming the predominate power in the Balkans, and actually
+threatened war. Russia did not claim to be concerned with the justice of
+Austria's demands on Servia.
+
+No such definite word of Russia's intention was sent to Germany, for on
+July 26 Sir M. de Bunsen reported Germany's confident belief that
+"Russia will keep quiet during the chastisement of Servia." (No. 32.)
+
+On the next day Sir Rennell Rodd reports from Rome (No. 57) that the
+Minister of Foreign Affairs believes that "if Servia will even now
+accept it (the Austrian note) Austria will be satisfied" and refrain
+from a punitive war. He, moreover, believes--and this is very
+important--that Servia may be induced to accept the note in its entirety
+on the advice of the four powers invited to the conference, and this
+would enable her to say that she had yielded to Europe and not to
+Austria-Hungary alone. Since Italy was to be one of the four powers, the
+Minister's belief was doubtless based on accurate information. There is
+then as late as July 27 no claim made by Servia that Austria's demands
+are unreasonable. She only hates to yield to Austria alone. Austria, in
+the meanwhile, (No. 57,) repeats her assurance that she demands no
+territorial sacrifices from Servia.
+
+On the next day, July 28, Sir Rennell Rodd reports (No. 64) that "Servia
+might still accept the whole Austrian note, if some explanation were
+given regarding mode in which Austrian agents would require to
+intervene." Austria, on her part, had explained that "the co-operation
+of the Austrian agents in Servia was to be only in investigation, not in
+judicial or administrative measures. Servia was said to have willfully
+misinterpreted this." (No. 64.)
+
+From these reports it appears that the differences between Austria and
+Servia were on the way to a solution. Austria claimed that her demands
+were just, and Servia did not deny this. Austria further claimed that
+her prestige, her very existence, demanded the prompt compliance with
+her requests by Servia. She explained in a satisfactory way the one
+point on which Servia had taken exceptions, and Servia was on the point
+of complying, and would have complied, if the powers had been willing to
+let her do so. Such a conclusion of the incident would have strengthened
+Austria's prestige and assured the punishment of the murderers of
+Serajevo.
+
+
+Russia's Remark About Austria.
+
+The reason why Servia was not allowed to submit was Russia's remark,
+quoted above, that she would not "allow" Austria to become the
+predominant power in the Balkans. It was, therefore, Russia's task to
+prevent Servia from accepting Austria's note. Since war was her
+alternative, baldly stated to England from the first, she had to do
+three things--first, to secure as many allies as possible; secondly, to
+weaken her enemies, preferably by detaching from them Italy, and,
+thirdly, to get as much of a start in her mobilization as possible.
+
+The treaties between Russia, France, and Great Britain, unlike those
+between Germany, Austria, and Italy, have never been published. Whatever
+their wording may be, Russia was at first apparently not absolutely sure
+of the support of France, (No. 17,) and France, it would seem, was
+unwilling to tempt fate without the help of England. That England should
+be willing to join such a combination for such a cause seemed so
+preposterous to Germany that she did not believe it. Without England no
+France, without France no war, for alone Russia could not measure
+herself against Austria. Austria would not have attacked her of her own
+free will, but if Russia had attacked Austria, the whole world knew from
+the published treaties that Germany was bound to come to the assistance
+of her ally. It would have been two against one, and the two could have
+waited until Russia had finished her cumbersome mobilization. For even
+if she had her whole army of many million men on the frontier, Austria
+and Germany together were strong enough to stem her advance.
+
+Russia's only chance, therefore, when Servia was on the point of
+yielding, and Austria had almost re-established her prestige, was to
+secure the help of France, but this meant also the promise of England.
+
+The demands made on England by Russia, some of which are quoted in the
+"White Paper," are too well known to deserve repetition. This was the
+chief thing that counted, to get England's promise. The next was to
+detach Italy from her allies, (but of this there are no documents
+available,) and the third to gain time for her mobilization. All the
+other suggestions and counter-suggestions which fill the English "White
+Paper" are insignificant, as soon as the fundamental positions of
+Austria and Russia are understood.
+
+Germany has claimed that England promised her support to Russia and
+France on July 30, or in the night of July 29, and, to prove it, has
+published the letter from the Belgian Minister in St. Petersburg to his
+Minister of Foreign Affairs, printed in translation in THE NEW YORK
+TIMES on Oct. 7. This letter, which has not been officially denied by
+the Allies, states that the promise of England's support gave the
+Russian war party the upper hand and resulted in the order of complete
+mobilization.
+
+
+English "White Paper's" Testimony.
+
+Strangely enough, and doubtless by an oversight, the English "White
+Paper" contains two dispatches (Nos. 80 and 106) which seem to confirm
+the accuracy of M. de l'Escaille's statement, viz., that England
+promised the Russian-French combination her support.
+
+On July 29 Sir Rennell Rodd wrote to Sir Edward Grey (No. 80) that the
+Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs had told him "there seemed to be a
+difficulty in making Germany believe that Russia was in earnest. As
+Germany, however, was really anxious for good relations with ourselves,
+if she believed that Great Britain would act with Russia and France, he
+thought it would have a great effect."
+
+In a later dispatch of the same day (No. 86) he deprecates Russia's
+partial mobilization, which he fears has spoiled the chances of
+Germany's exerting any pressure on Austria.
+
+But on the next day, July 30, these remarkable words occur: "He [the
+Italian Minister] had reason to believe that Germany was now disposed to
+give more conciliatory advice to Austria, as she seemed convinced that
+we should act with France and Russia, and was most anxious to avoid
+issue with us." (No. 106.)
+
+Readers of the "White Paper" will look in vain for an explanation of
+such a change of heart on Germany's part. What does "now" mean in the
+last letter? And why does Germany seem "convinced" that England will act
+with Russia--if not that she has heard of the promise mentioned by M. de
+l'Escaille, as given early on July 30 or late the 29th? The dates agree,
+and unless Sir Edward Grey publishes further papers to explain the
+change that had taken place between July 29 and July 30 one seems forced
+to accept this explanation.
+
+What is Germany's attitude? Does she rush into war? Not at all, for she
+is "most anxious to avoid issue" with England. (No. 106.) Germany knew
+that Russia had begun to mobilize. Every day, every hour counted; for
+against the masses of Russia she had only her greater speed to match.
+She knew that England had gone over to Russia, although she was probably
+hoping that the alliance between the Saxon and the Slav was not yet
+irrefragable. Still, the prospects were dark. But in spite of this the
+efforts were renewed to see what could be done in Vienna.
+
+The famous exchange of telegrams between royalty began in the evening of
+July 29; and here it is wise to halt for a moment. On July 30 the Czar
+telegraphed to the Emperor in reply to the Emperor's expression of
+regret that Russia should be mobilizing, as follows: "The military
+measures in force now were decreed five days ago." That is, according to
+the Czar, the Russian mobilization had begun on July 25. On July 27,
+however, the Russian Minister of War, M. Suchomlinow, had declared to
+the German Military Attache "on his word of honor" that no mobilization
+order had been issued. July 25, however, it will be remembered, was the
+day on which Sir G. Buchanan had reported from St. Petersburg that
+Russia will "face all risks of war" if she can feel sure of the support
+of France.
+
+On July 31 Russia mobilized her entire army, which led to Germany's
+ultimatum that Russia demobilize within twelve hours. No reply was
+received to the request, and orders for the mobilization of the German
+Army were issued at 5:15 P.M., Aug. 1, after the German Ambassador in
+St. Petersburg had been instructed to declare that, owing to the
+continued mobilization of the Russian Army, a state of war existed
+between the two countries.
+
+
+Kaiser Tried to Keep Peace.
+
+In order to understand this step one should read the book "La France
+Victorieuse dans la Guerre de Demain," ("France Victorious in the Next
+War,") by Col. Arthur Boucher, published in 1911. Col. Boucher has
+stated the case baldly and so simply that every one can understand it.
+In substance his argument is this: "Alone France has no chance, but
+together with Russia she will win against Germany. Suppose the three
+countries are beginning mobilization on the same day. Germany finishes
+first, France second, and Russia last. Germany must leave some of her
+troops on her eastern frontier, the rest she throws against France. All
+France has to do is to hold them for a few days. [Col. Boucher mentions
+the exact number of days. This book is not at hand, and the writer
+prefers not to quote from memory.] Then Russia comes into play, more
+German troops will be needed in the East, the French proceed to an
+attack on their weakened enemy, and La France sera victorieuse."
+
+Everything hinges on just a couple of days or so. A couple of days! And
+how much of a start had Russia? She had begun on July 25; on July 27
+definite news of the Russian mobilization was reported in Berlin,
+although the Minister of War denied it "on his honor." On July 30
+England was understood to have promised her support to Russia, and the
+Czar acknowledged that Russia had been mobilizing for the past five
+days. Five days! And Col. Boucher, expressing the opinion of military
+experts, had counted on victory on a much smaller margin!
+
+Do the Judges of the Supreme Court of Civilization realize the almost
+super-human efforts in the interest of peace made by the German Emperor?
+Russia has a start of five days, and on July 31 a start of six days. Can
+we not hear all the military leaders imploring the Emperor not to
+hesitate any longer? But in the interest of peace the Emperor delays. He
+has kept the peace for Germany through the almost thirty years of his
+reign. He prays to his God, in Whom he has placed his trust through all
+his upright life, with a fervor which has often brought him ridicule.
+Also, he still believes in England, and hopes through her efforts to be
+able to keep the peace. He waits another day. A start of seven days for
+Russia! The odds against Germany have grown tremendously. At last he
+orders mobilization. For a longer delay he would not have been able to
+answer to his country. As it is, there are many people who blame him
+severely for having waited so long.
+
+But William II. was right, for when the world will begin to realize the
+agonies through which he must have passed during these days of waiting,
+and the sacrifices he made in his effort to preserve peace, it will
+judge Germany rightly, and call the Emperor the great prince of peace
+that he is.
+
+But, it has been said, why did he not avoid war, either by forcing
+Austria to yield to Russia, or, if she refused, by withdrawing from her?
+In common with the whole of Germany, he probably felt that Austria's
+position was right. Servia herself, as has been seen above, did not
+claim that she was unjustly treated, whatever outsiders thought of
+Austria's demands; and Austria was fully justified by past events in
+believing that it was with her a question of life and death. Should
+Germany sacrifice her faithful friend under such circumstances, and for
+what? For the arrogance of Russia, who would not "allow" her to
+re-establish her prestige in a righteous cause? The word "righteous" is
+used advisedly, because in the early stages of the controversy nobody,
+not even Russia nor Servia herself, denied the justice of Austria's
+demands. The writer is informed that even the liberal English press
+found no fault with the course taken by Austria, although it commented
+adversely on the language used in the note.
+
+What would have been the result of peace bought by Germany at such a
+cost? It would have alienated her only faithful friend without laying
+the foundations for a lasting friendship with her opponents. This at
+least was Germany's honest belief. She may have been wrong. History more
+probably will call her right. To desert Austria might have postponed the
+war, but when it would have come Germany would have stood alone, and,
+worse, she would have lost her self-respect.
+
+This claim may sound strange in the ears of those who have just
+witnessed and will never forget the suffering of that beautiful little
+country, Belgium. They hold that, since Germany invaded Belgium, it is
+Germany who broke a treaty and who is to blame.
+
+Mr. Beck considers this to be so self-evident that he deems it
+unnecessary to advance any proof. He quotes the Chancellor's speech,
+and, moving for a quick verdict, declares his motion of guilty carried.
+The matter, however, is not quite so simple for the man who is seeking
+for the whole truth. Let us look at the facts.
+
+Belgium was a neutral country, just as any country has the right to
+declare itself neutral, with this difference: that in 1839 she had
+promised to five powers--Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria, and
+Prussia--that she would remain perpetually neutral. These five powers in
+their turn had promised to guarantee her neutrality. She was, however, a
+sovereign State, and as such had the undoubted right to cease being
+neutral whenever she chose by abrogating the Treaty of 1839. If the
+other high contracting parties did not agree with her, it was their
+right to try to coerce Belgium to keep to her pledges, although this
+would undoubtedly have been an infringement of her sovereignty.
+
+The Treaty of 1839 contains the word "perpetual," but so does the treaty
+between France and Germany, in which Alsace and Lorraine are ceded by
+France to be perpetually an integral part of the German Empire. Does
+this mean that France, if the Allies should win, could not retake these
+provinces? Nobody probably will believe this.
+
+The Treaty of 1839 was a treaty just like the Treaty of 1871, with this
+difference, that the latter treaty was concluded between two powers, and
+the earlier one between five powers on one side and Belgium and Holland
+on the other. This gave certain rights to all the signatory powers, any
+one of whom had the right to feel itself sufficiently aggrieved to go to
+war if any other power disregarded the treaty.
+
+
+Rights of Neutrals.
+
+There was once another neutral State, the city and district of Cracow,
+also established by a treaty to which Great Britain was a signatory.
+Three of the signers considered the conditions developing in Cracow to
+be so threatening that they abolished Cracow as an independent State.
+Great Britain sent a polite note of protest, and dropped the matter.
+
+Since that time, however, two Hague Conferences have been held and
+certain rules agreed upon concerning the rights and duties of neutrals.
+The Belgian status of inviolability rests on these rules, called
+conventions, rather than on the Treaty of 1839. During the
+Franco-Prussian War of 1870 Mr. Gladstone very clearly stated that he
+did not consider the Treaty of 1839 enforceable. Great Britain,
+therefore, made two new treaties, one with France and one with Prussia
+(quoted and discussed in Boston Evening Transcript, Oct. 14, 1914) in
+which she promised to defend Belgian neutrality, by the side of either
+France or Prussia, against that one of them who should infringe the
+neutrality.
+
+These treaties were to terminate one year after peace had been
+concluded between the contestants. A treaty, like the one of 1839,
+however, which was considered unenforceable in 1870, can hardly be
+claimed to have gained new rights in 1914. In calm moments nobody will
+claim that a greater sanctity attaches to it than to the treaty in which
+Alsace and Lorraine are ceded forever to Germany.
+
+No, it is The Hague Conventions to which we must look. The first
+convention (1899) contained no rules forbidding belligerents from
+entering neutral territory. In the second conference it was thought
+desirable to formulate such rules, because it was felt that in war
+belligerents are at liberty to do what is not expressly forbidden. At
+the request of France, therefore, a new set of rules was suggested, to
+which Great Britain and Belgium offered valuable amendments. The rules
+were finally accepted, and are today parts of international law. They
+read; "Article I. The territory of neutral powers is inviolable. Article
+II. Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or convoys of either
+munitions of war or supplies across the territory of a neutral power."
+
+These articles, together with the whole convention called "Rights and
+duties of neutral powers and persons in case of war on land," have been
+ratified and therefore accepted as law by the United States of America,
+Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia and other minor
+powers. Great Britain experienced a change of heart, and, although her
+own delegates had moved these articles, she refused to ratify them, when
+she ratified most of the other conventions on Nov. 27, 1909. (A table
+showing the ratifications of conventions has been published by The World
+Peace Foundation, Boston.)
+
+
+The Case of Belgium.
+
+Since Great Britain did not accept these articles as law, she was not
+bound by them, for the principle of The Hague Conferences is that a
+nation is bound only by those laws which it accepts. The remarkable
+fact, therefore, appears that the only one of the big nations which had
+refused to accept these articles, and which, therefore, might have moved
+her troops across a neutral country and have claimed that she could do
+so with a clear conscience because she broke no law which was binding on
+her, was Great Britain. And the world now sees the spectacle of Great
+Britain claiming to have gone to war because another power did what she
+herself could have done, according to her own interpretation, with
+impunity. Japan has broken the international law by infringing the
+neutrality of China, but Great Britain can claim that she did not break
+a law by doing exactly what Japan did.
+
+It is not asserted here that the citizens of Great Britain are not
+absolutely sincere in their belief of the causes which have allied them
+with the Russians and the Japanese, and the Indians and the Zouaves, and
+the negroes and the French and the Belgians against Germany. Their
+Government, however, should have known that the presumption of
+insincerity exists when one charges against others a crime which one
+would have felt at liberty to commit one's self. Yet, more, the British
+Government knew better than anybody else that Germany had not even
+committed this crime; for, according to all laws of justice, no person
+or nation can claim the inviolability of a neutral when he has committed
+"hostile acts against a belligerent, or acts in favor of a belligerent."
+(Article XVII. of The Hague Conference of 1907.)
+
+The question, therefore, arises, "Did Belgium commit acts in favor of
+one of Germany's opponents, if not actually hostile acts against
+Germany?" In order to understand Germany's charge that Belgium had
+committed such acts, attention must be directed to one of the most
+unfortunate stipulations of the Treaty of 1839, which compelled Belgium
+to maintain several fortresses. This meant that a small neutral people,
+sandwiched in between two great powers, had to keep itself informed on
+military affairs. Instead of being able to foster a peaceful state of
+mind, which is the surest guarantee of neutrality, the Belgians were
+forced to think military thoughts.
+
+[Illustration: ANDREW CARNEGIE
+
+_(Photo (c) by Underwood & Underwood.)_
+
+_See Page 415_]
+
+[Illustration: JACOB H. SCHIFF
+
+_(Photo by American Press Assn.)_
+
+_See Page 459_]
+
+In the eighties and early nineties they suspected France of designs on
+their integrity. Since then a change in the popular feeling has taken
+place and in recent years the instruction of the Belgian artillery, for
+instance, was intrusted to French officers in active service. These
+officers were constantly at home and very properly concerned with
+solving military problems such as a future war with Germany might
+present. What was more natural than that these same officers, when they
+were detached for a few months or years to Liege or Namur or Huy, taught
+their Belgian charges to prepare against a German attack, and to look
+upon the French as their friends and the Germans as their enemies? If
+conditions had been different, and German officers had been in charge of
+Belgian fortresses, the Belgian guns in practice would always have been
+trained on imaginary French invaders.
+
+
+French Officers in Belgian Forts.
+
+If this is understood it will be seen that in the case of war the actual
+neutrality of the Belgian garrisons would naturally be determined by the
+position taken by that nation whose officers had been in charge of the
+Belgian fortresses. And this might be entirely independent of the
+professed wishes of the Belgian people or their Government. If French
+officers in active service remained in the several fortresses, or even
+only in one after the beginning of hostilities, and if the French
+campaign plans contemplated an attack through Belgium, then Belgium had
+committed an "act in favor of France" by not forcing the French officers
+to leave, and had forfeited the rights and privileges granted by The
+Hague Convention of 1907 to a neutral State.
+
+Did French officers remain in Liege or in any other Belgian fortress
+after hostilities had begun, and did France plan to go through Belgium?
+Germany has officially made both claims. The first can easily be
+substantiated by the Supreme Court of Civilization by an investigation
+of the prisoners of war taken in Belgium. Until an impartial
+investigation becomes possible no further proof than the claim made by
+the German Government can be produced.
+
+The second charge is contained in No. 157 of the English "White Paper"
+in these words of instruction from the German Foreign Secretary to the
+German Ambassador in London: "Please impress upon Sir Edward Grey that
+German Army could not be exposed to French attack across Belgium, which
+was planned according to absolutely unimpeachable information."
+
+Sir Edward Grey has attacked Germany for invading Belgium, but has
+nowhere denied that Germany had the unimpeachable evidence she said she
+had, and which of course nullified any previous assurance from France.
+
+It is not known whether Sir Edward Grey was shown this evidence or not,
+but if the preservation of Belgian neutrality was Great Britain's chief
+concern, why did she not offer to negotiate treaties with Germany and
+France as she had done in 1870? It will be remembered that then she
+bound herself to join with either of the contestants in defending
+Belgian neutrality against the attacks of the other.
+
+As the case stands today, on the evidence of Sir Edward Grey's own
+"White Paper" and speeches, Great Britain is making war on Germany
+because:
+
+1. She broke the Treaty of 1839, although her own Gladstone had declared
+this treaty to be without force, and although the status of neutral
+States had been removed by The Hague Convention from the uncertainty of
+treaties to the security of international law.
+
+2. Great Britain makes war against Germany because Germany has broken
+Articles I. and II. of Chapter 1 of The Hague Convention referring to
+neutrals, although Great Britain herself has refused to recognize these
+articles as binding upon her own conduct.
+
+3. She makes war on Germany although she has never denied the
+correctness of Germany's assertion that she had unimpeachable proof of
+France's intentions of going through Belgium, which, together with the
+sojourn of French officers in Belgium, constitutes the offense which,
+according to The Hague Convention, deprives a so-called neutral State of
+the privileges granted in Articles I. and II.
+
+It is impossible to say here exactly what these proofs are which Germany
+possesses, and which for military reasons she has not yet been able to
+divulge. She has published some of them, namely, the proof of the
+continued presence of French officers on Belgian soil, and has given the
+names and numbers of the several army corps which France had planned to
+push through Belgium.
+
+The case then stands as follows:
+
+1. Was the inviolability of Belgium guaranteed by Articles I. and II. of
+The Hague Convention? Yes.
+
+2. Had Germany ratified these articles? Yes.
+
+3. Had Great Britain ratified these articles? No.
+
+4. Would Belgium have forfeited the right of having her country held
+inviolable if she had committed "acts in favor of France," even if these
+acts were not actually hostile acts? Yes, according to Article XVII. of
+The Hague Convention.
+
+5. Did Belgium commit "acts in favor of France," and was Germany,
+therefore, justified in disregarding the inviolability of her territory?
+
+
+The Main Question.
+
+This is the important question, and the answer must be left to the
+Supreme Court of Civilization. The weight of the evidence would seem to
+point to a justification of Germany. Yet no friend of Germany can find
+fault with those who would wish to defer a verdict until such a time
+when Germany can present her complete proof to the world, and this may
+be when the war is over.
+
+Throughout this argument the famous passage of the Chancellor's speech
+in the Reichstag has been disregarded. It reads:
+
+     Our troops have occupied Luxemburg and perhaps are already on
+     Belgian soil. Gentlemen, that is contrary to the dictates of
+     international law. It is true that the French Government has
+     declared at Brussels that France is willing to respect the
+     neutrality of Belgium so long as her opponents respect it. We
+     knew, however, that France stood ready for invasion. The
+     wrong--I speak openly--that we are committing we will endeavor
+     to make good.
+
+This has been understood to mean that the Chancellor acknowledged that
+Germany was breaking the Treaty of 1839 without warrant, and that
+Germany, therefore, deserved the contempt of the world. May it not bear
+another interpretation? Thus:
+
+The Chancellor, like Gladstone in 1870, did not consider the 1839 Treaty
+enforceable, but saw the guarantee for Belgium in The Hague Convention.
+He did not wish to offend Belgium by announcing to the world that she
+had lost her rights as a neutral because of her acts favorable to
+France, for when he spoke he was still of the opinion that she would
+accept the German offer which guaranteed to her both her independence
+and integrity.
+
+And just as Servia would have accepted Austria's note if Russia had
+permitted her, so Belgium would not have resisted the German demand if
+it had not been for England.
+
+This can be proved by the British "White Paper," Nos. 153 and 155. In
+the former the King of the Belgians appeals "to the diplomatic
+intervention of your Majesty's Government to safeguard the integrity of
+Belgium," being apparently of the impression that Germany wished to
+annex parts, if not the whole, of his country. The London reply advises
+the Belgians "to resist by any means in their power, and that his
+Majesty's Government will support them in offering such resistance, and
+that his Majesty's Government in this event are prepared to join Russia
+and France, if desired, in offering to the Belgian Government at once
+common action for the purpose of resisting use of force by Germany
+against them, and a guarantee to maintain their independence and
+integrity in future years."
+
+Has Mr. Beck really not noticed in this promise the omission of the word
+neutrality? By the Treaty of 1839 Belgium enjoyed not only independence
+and integrity, but also perpetual neutrality. Does Great Britain offer
+to fight Germany for the enforcement of the Treaty of 1839? No! Because
+hereafter the word neutrality is dropped from her guarantee, and since
+she alone of all the great powers has not ratified the articles of The
+Hague Convention concerning neutrals she alone will be able to disregard
+the inviolability of Belgian soil, even though Belgium kept strictly
+neutral in a future war.
+
+And what, finally, does she guarantee her? Independence and integrity!
+That is exactly the same that Germany had promised her. For this Belgium
+had to be dragged through the horrors of war, and the good name of
+Germany as that of an honest nation had to be dragged through the mire,
+and hatred and murder had to be started, that Belgium might get on the
+battlefield, from the insufficient support of Russia and France and
+England, what Germany had freely offered her--independence and
+integrity.
+
+Casual readers would not miss the word neutrality from Sir Edward Grey's
+guarantee, because they do not differentiate between the words
+integrity, independence, and neutrality. Great Britain and her ally
+Japan, marching through China into Kiao-Chau, may be said to have
+violated China's neutrality, but not her independence, nor, so long as
+they refrain from annexing any Chinese territory, her integrity.
+
+
+Fixing the Blame.
+
+Nobody familiar with the careful work of Sir Edward Grey can for one
+moment believe that Sir Edward inadvertently dropped the word, just as
+little as J. Ramsay Macdonald and other British leaders believe that he
+inadvertently dropped one of the two remaining words, integrity and
+independence, when he told Parliament of Germany's guarantee, and why
+Great Britain should not accept it, but go to war.
+
+When the blame for the horrors committed in Belgium are assessed these
+facts must be remembered:
+
+1. Belgium was by treaty bound to maintain fortresses.
+
+2. France tempted her to commit "acts friendly" to herself, by which
+Belgium forfeited her rights to the protection of The Hague articles
+governing the rights and duties of neutrals.
+
+3. England urged her to take up arms, when she had only asked to have
+her integrity guaranteed by diplomatic intervention. (Nos. 153, 155.)
+
+4. Germany promised her independence and integrity and peace, while
+England, quietly dropping her guarantee of neutrality "in future years,"
+promised her independence and integrity and war.
+
+5. And Sir Edward Grey was able to sway Parliament, according to one of
+the leaders of Parliament himself, only because he misrepresented
+Germany's guarantee, and, having dropped, in his note to Belgium, the
+word "neutrality," dropped yet another of the two remaining words,
+integrity and independence.
+
+This is the case as it appears on the evidence contained in the various
+"White Papers." Austria was attending properly to her own affairs;
+Servia was willing to yield; Russia, however, was determined to
+humiliate Austria or to go to war. Germany proved a loyal friend to her
+ally, Austria; she trusted in the British professions of friendship to
+the last, and sacrificed seven valuable days in the interest of peace.
+France was willing to do "what might be required by her interests,"
+while Great Britain yielded to Russia and France, promising them their
+support without which France, and therefore Russia, would not have
+decided on war.
+
+As to Belgium, Germany told Sir Edward Grey that she had unimpeachable
+evidence that France was planning to go through Belgium, and she
+published her evidence concerning the French officers who remained in
+Belgium. Although Belgium had thus lost any rights attaching to her
+state of neutrality, Germany promised to respect her integrity and
+independence, and to pay for any damage done. She preferred, however, to
+listen to Great Britain, who promised exactly the same except pay for
+any damage done.
+
+Unlike Mr. Beck, who in the same article pleads his case as the counsel
+for the Allies and casts his verdict as the Supreme Court of
+Civilization, the present writer prefers to leave the judgment to his
+readers as a whole, and further still, to the whole American
+people--yea, to all the peoples of the world. Nor is he in a hurry, for
+he is willing to wait and have the Judges weigh the evidence and call
+for more, if they consider insufficient what has already been submitted.
+
+Snap judgments are ever unsatisfactory. They have often to be reversed.
+The present case, however, is too important to warrant a hasty decision.
+The final judgment, if it is based on truth, will very strongly
+influence the nature of the peace, which will either establish good-will
+and stable conditions in the world, or lead to another and even more
+complete breakdown of civilization.
+
+
+
+
+What Gladstone Said About Belgium
+
+By George Louis Beer.
+
+     Historian; winner of the first Loubat Prize, 1913, for his
+     book on the origins of the British Colonial system.
+
+
+In the course of his solemn speech of Aug. 8, 1914, in the House of
+Commons Sir Edward Grey quoted some remarks made by Gladstone in 1870 on
+the extent of the obligation incurred by the signatory powers to the
+Quintuple Treaty of 1839 guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium. Shorn
+from their context as they were, these sentences are by no means
+illuminating, and it cannot be said that their citation in this form by
+Sir Edward Grey was a very felicitous one. During the paper polemics of
+the past months these detached words of Gladstone have been freely used
+by Germany's defenders and apologists to maintain that Great Britain of
+1870 would not have deemed the events of 1914 a casus belli, and that
+its entrance into the present war on account of the violation of
+Belgium's neutrality was merely a pretext. During the course of this
+controversy Gladstone's attitude has in various ways been grossly
+misrepresented, Dr. von Mach of Harvard even stating in the columns of
+THE NEW YORK TIMES that Gladstone had declared the Treaty of 1839 "to be
+without force." But, apart from such patent distortions, Gladstone's
+real position is apparently not clearly defined in the mind of the
+general public, which is merely seeking for the unadulterated truth,
+regardless of its effect upon the case of any one of the belligerents.
+
+Shortly after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 the
+Prussian Ambassador in London informed Gladstone, then Prime Minister,
+that some time prior to the existing war France had asked Prussia to
+consent to the former country's absorption of Belgium, and that there
+was in the possession of the Prussian Government the draft of a treaty
+to this effect in the handwriting of M. Benedetti, then French
+Ambassador at Berlin. This communication was obviously made, as Lord
+Morley tells us, with the object of prompting Gladstone to be the agent
+in making the evil news public and thus of prejudicing France in the
+judgment of Europe. Gladstone thought this "no part of his duty," and
+very shortly thereafter, at the direct instance of Bismarck, this draft
+treaty of 1866-7 was communicated by Baron Krause of the Prussian
+Embassy in London to Delane, the editor of The Times. On July 25, 1870,
+it was published in the columns of that paper and aroused considerable
+anxiety in England.
+
+It immediately became imperative upon the British Government to take
+some action. As Gladstone wrote to Bright, the publication of this
+treaty
+
+     has thrown upon us the necessity of doing something fresh to
+     secure Belgium, or else of saying that under no circumstances
+     would we take any step to secure her from absorption. This
+     publication has wholly altered the feeling of the House of
+     Commons, and no Government could at this moment venture to
+     give utterance to such an intention about Belgium. But neither
+     do we think it would be right, even if it were safe, to
+     announce that we would in any case stand by with folded arms
+     and see actions done which would amount to a total extinction
+     of the public right in Europe.
+
+
+The Special Identical Treaties.
+
+A simple declaration of Great Britain's intention to defend the
+neutrality of Belgium by arms in case it were infringed seemed to
+Gladstone not to meet the special requirements of the case as revealed
+by the proposed Treaty of 1866-7 between Prussia and France. His main
+object was to prevent the actual execution of such an agreement, by
+means of which the two belligerent powers would settle their quarrels
+and satisfy their ambitions at the expense of helpless Belgium. Hence,
+on July 30, the British Government opened negotiations with France and
+Prussia and within a fortnight had concluded separate but identical
+treaties with each of these powers. According to these treaties, in case
+the neutrality of Belgium were violated by either France or Germany,
+Great Britain agreed to co-operate with the other in its defense. The
+preamble of these treaties states that the contracting powers
+
+     being desirous at the present time of recording in a solemn
+     act their fixed determination to maintain the independence and
+     neutrality of Belgium,
+
+as provided in the Treaty of 1839, have concluded this separate treaty,
+which,
+
+     without impairing or invalidating the conditions of the said
+     Quintuple Treaty, shall be subsidiary and accessory to it.
+
+Article III. further provided that these Treaties of 1870 were to expire
+twelve months after the conclusion of the existing war, and that
+thereafter the independence and neutrality of Belgium would "continue to
+rest, as heretofore," on the Treaty of 1839.
+
+These documents tell a plain tale, which is amply confirmed by the
+proceedings in Parliament in connection with this matter. On Aug. 5,
+1870, while the negotiations leading to the above-mentioned treaties
+were still pending, questions were raised in the House of Commons about
+the recently published abortive Treaty of 1866-7 between Prussia and
+France. In reply Gladstone stated that
+
+     the Treaty of 1839 is that under which the relations of the
+     contracting powers with Belgium are at present regulated;
+
+and that, while he could not explain the intentions of the Government
+"in a matter of this very grave character in answer to a question," he
+hoped to be able to communicate some further information in an authentic
+manner. Three days later, as these treaties with France and Prussia had
+been virtually concluded, Gladstone was able to satisfy the anxiety of
+the House and outlined their terms. He explicitly stated that, after
+their expiration,
+
+     the respective parties, being parties to the Treaty of 1839,
+     shall fall back upon the obligations they took upon themselves
+     under that treaty.
+
+After Gladstone had finished speaking the leader of the opposition,
+Disraeli, took the floor and pointed out that, as a general proposition,
+
+     when there is a treaty guarantee so explicit as that expressed
+     in the Treaty of 1839, I think the wisdom of founding on that
+     another treaty which involves us in engagements may be open to
+     doubt.
+
+But he accepted Gladstone's statement
+
+     as the declaration of the Cabinet, that they are resolved to
+     maintain the neutrality and independence of Belgium, I accept
+     it as a wise and spirited policy, and a policy, in my opinion,
+     not the less wise because it is spirited.
+
+Gladstone then replied, saying that the reason the Government had not
+made a general declaration of its intentions regarding Belgium was that
+much danger might arise from such a declaration and that inadvertently
+they might have given utterance to words
+
+     that might be held to import obligations almost unlimited and
+     almost irrespectively of circumstances.
+
+We had made up our minds, he continued, that we had a duty to perform,
+and we thought a specific declaration of what we thought the obligations
+of this country better than any general declaration. Referring to the
+two treaties in process of ratification, he concluded:
+
+     We thought that by contracting a joint engagement we might
+     remove the difficulty and prevent Belgium from being
+     sacrificed.
+
+The policy of the Government continued, however, to be criticised,
+mainly on the ground that the Treaty of 1839 amply covered the case. On
+Aug. 10 Gladstone defended his policy in the House of Commons in a
+speech pitched on a high moral plane, in which he dilated upon Belgium's
+historic past and splendid present and on Great Britain's duty to this
+little nation irrespective of all questions of its own self-interest.
+With genuine fervor, he exclaimed:
+
+     If, in order to satisfy a greedy appetite for aggrandisement,
+     coming whence it may, Belgium were absorbed, the day that
+     witnessed that absorption would hear the knell of public right
+     and public law in Europe.... We have an interest in the
+     independence of Belgium which is wider than that which we may
+     have in the literal operation of the guarantee. It is found in
+     answer to the question whether under the circumstance of the
+     case this country, endowed as it is with influence and power,
+     would quietly stand by and witness the perpetration of the
+     direst crime that ever stained the pages of history, and thus
+     become participators in the sin.
+
+
+What Gladstone Had in Mind.
+
+What Gladstone had in mind was the scheme of 1866-7, by which France was
+to absorb Belgium, with Prussia's consent and aid. He distinctly stated
+that the Treaties of 1870 were devised to meet the new state of affairs
+disclosed by the publication of this incomplete treaty. It was in order
+to prevent the revival of such a conspiracy that Gladstone made separate
+and identical treaties in 1870 with France and Prussia. They were a
+practical device to secure an effectual enforcement of the Treaty of
+1839 under unforeseen and difficult circumstances. The agreement of 1870
+was, as Gladstone said, a cumulative treaty added to that of 1839, and
+the latter treaty
+
+     loses nothing of its force, even during the existence of this
+     present treaty.
+
+During the course of this speech defending the Government's action
+against those critics who claimed that the Treaty of 1839 adequately met
+the situation, Gladstone made some general remarks about the extent of
+the obligation incurred by the signatories to the Treaty of 1839:
+
+     It is not necessary, nor would time permit me, to enter into
+     the complicated question of the nature of the obligations of
+     that treaty, but I am not able to subscribe to the doctrine of
+     those who have held in this House what plainly amounts to an
+     assertion that the simple fact of the existence of a guarantee
+     is binding on every party to it, irrespectively altogether of
+     the particular position in which it may find itself at the
+     time when the occasion for acting on the guarantee arises.
+
+It is, of course, impossible to state precisely what were those
+unuttered thoughts that passed through Gladstone's mind as he spoke
+these characteristically cautious words, but what in general they were
+can be satisfactorily gleaned from a letter that he had written six days
+before this to John Bright:
+
+     That we should simply declare _we_ will defend the neutrality
+     of Belgium by arms in case it should be attacked. Now, the
+     sole or single-handed defense of Belgium would be an
+     enterprise which we incline to think quixotic; if these two
+     great military powers [France and Prussia] combined against
+     it--that combination is the only serious danger; and this it
+     is which by our proposed engagements we should, I hope, render
+     improbable to the very last degree. I add for myself this
+     confession of faith: If the Belgian people desire, on their
+     own account, to join France or any other country, I for one
+     will be no party to taking up arms to prevent it. But that the
+     Belgians, whether they would or not, should go "plump" down
+     the maw of another country to satisfy dynastic greed is
+     another matter. The accomplishment of such a crime as this
+     implies would come near to an extinction of public right in
+     Europe, and I do not think we could look on while the
+     sacrifice of freedom and independence was in course of
+     consummation.
+
+
+
+
+Fight to the Bitter End
+
+AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW CARNEGIE.
+
+     Retired ironmaster and philanthropist; builder of the Peace
+     Temple at The Hague; founder of the Carnegie Institution at
+     Washington; founder and patron of a chain of libraries in the
+     United States and Great Britain, and benefactor of many
+     societies and institutions.
+
+By Edward Marshall.
+
+
+Here is the report of a truly remarkable statement by Mr. Carnegie. He
+is the world's most notable peace advocate, and in this interview he
+voices the reflections suggested to him by the great European war.
+
+They are unusual, and make this interview especially worthy of a place
+upon the pages of the Christmas issue of THE TIMES, although it
+principally deals with war, and Christmas is the festival of peace.
+
+"Has war ever settled anything which might not have been settled better
+by arbitration?" I asked Mr. Carnegie.
+
+"No; never," he replied. "No truer inference was ever made than may be
+found in Milton's query, penned three centuries ago and never answered:
+'What can war but wars breed?'
+
+"War can breed only war. Of course, peace inevitably must follow war,
+but, truly, no peace ever was born of war. We all revere the memory of
+him who voiced the warning: 'In time of peace prepare for war'; but, as
+a matter of fact, we all know that when one nation prepares for war
+others inevitably must follow its dangerous lead.
+
+"Hence, and hence only, the huge armaments which have oppressed the
+world, making its most peaceful years a spectacle of sadness--a
+spectacle of men preparing and prepared to fight with one another.
+Sooner or later men prepared to fight will fight; huge armaments and
+armies mean huge battles; huge battles mean huge tragedies.
+
+"This never has been otherwise, and never can be. Peace can come only
+when mankind abandons warful preparation. And so I seem to have replied
+to your inquiry with an answer with a tail to it; and the tail is more
+important than the answer, for the answer merely says that war never
+settled anything which might not have been settled better by
+arbitration, while the tail proclaims the folly of a world prepared for
+war."
+
+
+How to Prevent War.
+
+"Armament must mean the use of armament, and that is war. If we are to
+prevent war we must prevent preparation for war, just as if we are to
+prevent burglary we must prevent preparation for burglary by prohibiting
+the carrying of the instruments of burglary. The only cure for war" [Mr.
+Carnegie in speaking italicized the word "cure"] "is war which defeats
+some one; but two men who are unarmed are certain not to shoot at one
+another. Here, as in medicine, prevention is much better than cure.
+
+"Plainly it must be through such prevention, not through such a cure as
+victory sometimes is supposed to represent, that warfare can be stopped.
+Warfare means some one's defeat, of course, and that implies his
+temporary incapacity for further war, but it goes without saying that
+all conquered nations must be embittered by their defeat.
+
+"Few nations ever have fought wars in which the majority of at least
+their fighting men did not believe the side they fought for to be in the
+right. Defeat by force of arms, therefore, always has meant the general
+conviction throughout conquered nations that injustice has been done."
+
+
+Nations Like Individuals.
+
+"In such circumstances nations must be like individuals under similar
+conditions. The individual believing himself to have been in the right,
+yet finding himself beaten in his efforts to maintain it, will not
+accept the situation philosophically; he will be angry and rebellious;
+he will nurse what he believes to be his wrong.
+
+"To nurse a wrong, whether it be real or fancied, is to help it grow in
+the imagination, and that must mean at least the wish to find some
+future means of righting it, either by strategy or increased strength.
+
+"There are two things which humanity does not forget--one is an injury,
+and, no matter how strongly some may argue against the truth of this
+contention, the other is a kindness.
+
+"In the long run both will be repaid. And nations, like individuals,
+prefer the coin which pays the latter debt. Military force never has
+accomplished kindness. Kindness means industrial armies decked with the
+garlands of peace; military armies, armed and epauletted, must mean
+minds obsessed with the spirit of revenge or conquest, hands clenched to
+strike, hearts eager to invade.
+
+"Every military implement is designed to cut or crush, to wound and
+kill. Nations at peace help one another with humanity's normal
+tenderness of heart at times of pestilence, of famine, of disaster.
+Nations at war exert their every ounce of strength to force upon their
+adversaries hunger, destruction, and death. Starvation of the enemy
+becomes a detail of what is considered good military strategy in war
+time, just as world-embracing charity has become a characteristic of
+all civilization during times of peace. Must we not admit flotillas
+carrying grain to famine-stricken peoples to be more admirable than
+fleets which carry death to lands in which prosperity might reign if
+undisturbed by war?"
+
+"But do you not admit that wars sometimes have helped the forces of
+civilization in their conquest against barbarism?"
+
+"War has not been the chief force of civilization against barbarism,"
+Mr. Carnegie replied with emphasis. Then he continued more thoughtfully:
+
+"That is one way of saying it. Another is, no effort of the forces of
+civilization against barbarism is war in the true sense of the word.
+
+"Such an armed effort is a part of the force pushing barbarism backward,
+and therefore, in the last analysis, tends toward kindness and peace;
+while, in the sense in which we use the word, war means the
+retrogression of civilization into barbarism. It is usually born of
+greed--greed for territory or for power.
+
+"Such war as that of which we all are thinking in these days is war
+between civilized men. One civilized man cannot improve another
+civilized man by killing him, although it is not inconceivable that a
+civilized man may do humanity a service by destroying human savages, for
+with the savages he must destroy their savagery.
+
+"But a war in civilized Europe destroys no savagery; it breeds it, so
+that it and its spawn may defile future generations.
+
+"There has been much balderdash in talk about unselfish motives as the
+origin of warfare. It is safe to say that 99 per cent of all the
+slaughter wrought by civilization under the cloak of a desire to better
+bad conditions really has been evil. It is impossible to conceive of
+general betterment through general slaughter. There have been few
+altruistic wars."
+
+"But how about our Spanish war?" I asked. "Surely it was not greed which
+sent our men and ships to Cuba."
+
+"No," said Mr. Carnegie, "that was not war, but world-police work.
+
+"Our skirmish with Spain was a most unusual international episode. We
+harmed none of the people of the land wherein we fought, but taught them
+what we could of wise self-government and gave them independence. To
+battle for the liberation of the slave is worthy work, and this of ours
+was such a battle.
+
+"Our Spanish war was not the outgrowth of our rivalry with any one or
+any one's with us; it was the manifestation of our high sense of
+responsibility as strong and healthy human beings for the welfare of the
+weak and oppressed."
+
+
+That Was Police Work.
+
+"It did not make toward militarism on this continent, but the reverse;
+in a few months it established permanent peace where peace had been a
+stranger. It was police work on the highest plane, substituting order
+for disorder."
+
+"But did it not emphasize the need for the maintenance, even here, of a
+competent and efficient naval and military force?" I asked.
+
+Mr. Carnegie shook his head emphatically.
+
+"That is the old, old argument cropping up again," said he, "the
+argument that a provocative is a preventive. For us to maintain a great
+army for the purpose of preventing war thereby would be as sensible as
+for each of us to be afraid to walk about except with a lightning rod
+down his back, since men have been struck by lightning. No nation wants
+to fight us. We have friends throughout the world.
+
+"Millions now resident in military nations are hoping that some day they
+may be able to become citizens of our beloved republic, principally
+because it now is not, nor is it every likely to be, military. Humanity
+loves peace. Here peace abides, and, if we follow reason, will remain
+unbroken.
+
+"Note the advantages of our own position. Imagine what the task would be
+of landing seventy thousand hostile soldiers on our shores! First they
+would need to cross three thousand miles of the Atlantic or five
+thousand miles of the Pacific.
+
+"And what if they should come? My plan of operation would be to bid them
+welcome as our visitors, considering them as men, not soldiers; to take
+them to our great interior, say, as far west as Chicago, and there to
+say to them:
+
+"'Here we shall leave you. Make yourselves at home, if that thought
+pleases you; fight us if it does not. If you think you can conquer us,
+try it.'
+
+"They would make themselves at home and, learning the advantages of
+staying with us, would become applicants for our citizenship, rather
+than our opponents in warfare.
+
+"And if they tried to fight us, what would happen to them? Our nation is
+unique in an important respect. Its individuals are the best armed in
+the world. Not only, for example, are its farmers armed, but they can
+shoot, which is far more than can be said of those of Britain or of any
+other nation.
+
+"The Governments of Europe cannot afford to give their citizenry arms,
+and, as for the European citizenry, it not only cannot afford to
+purchase arms, but cannot afford even to pay the license fees which
+Government demands of those possessing arms with the right to use them.
+
+"But ours? Most Americans can afford to and do own guns with which to
+shoot, and, furthermore, most Americans, when they shoot, can hit the
+things at which they shoot.
+
+"Combine this powerful protective influence with the fact that thousands
+of any army coming to invade us would not want to fight when once they
+got here, but would want to settle here and enjoy peace, and we find
+that we thus are protected as no nation in the world ever has been
+protected or can be.
+
+"Imagine the effect upon the European fighting man's psychology if he
+found that an army transport had conveyed him to a land where one man's
+privilege is every man's right! Learning this, it is not a joke to say,
+but is a statement of the probable fact, that the invading soldiery
+would not want to fire its first volleys, but would want to file its
+first papers. They would not ask for cartridges, but for citizenship.
+
+"America is protected by a force incomparable, which I may call its
+peaceful militia, and the man who, above all other men, I most should
+wish to see appointed to its command would be Gen. Leonard Wood were it
+not for the fact that there would be some danger that in such an
+eventuation his professional training would carry him beyond the rule of
+reason.
+
+"That is likely to be the most serious trouble with the trained soldier.
+The doctor wants to dose, the parson to preach, and the soldier to
+fight. Professional habit may make any of us dangerous.
+
+"But if it came to fighting I do not consider it within the bounds of
+possibility that we could lose. I once asked Gen. Sherman how the troops
+which he commanded during the civil war compared for efficiency with
+European troops. His answer was:
+
+"'The world never has seen the army that I would be afraid to trust my
+boys with, man for man.'"
+
+
+Would Surprise the Enemy.
+
+"That thought of welcoming an invading army appeals strongly to me. The
+hostile General would be amazed by the ease with which he got his forces
+in, but he would be more startled by the difficulty he would find if he
+tried to get them out. If they once learned the advantages of our
+liberties they would find it hard not to get away, but to go away. I
+restrain my temper with difficulty when I contemplate the foolishness of
+the people who discuss with gravity the possibility of a successful
+invasion of these United States by a foreign foe. The thought always
+arises when I hear these cries from our army and naval officers for a
+greater armament: 'Are these men cowards?' I don't believe it. It is
+their profession which makes them alarmists.
+
+"Not only are the physical difficulties which would hamper an invasion
+practically insuperable, but the reception enemies would get, if any of
+them landed, would be wholly without parallel in the world's history.
+
+"If our liberties really were threatened, every man, and very nearly
+every woman, in our vast population would rise to their defense as never
+any people yet has risen to any national defense. Americans, young and
+old, en masse, would sweep to the protection of what they know, and what
+the world knows, would be the cause of right and human liberty.
+
+"I, myself, should wish to be invited to advance and meet invading
+forces if they came. I would approach them without any weapons on my
+person. I would not shoot at them. I would make a speech to them.
+
+"'Gentlemen,' I would say, 'here's the chance of your life to win life's
+chief prize. Now you are peasant soldiers. You have the opportunity to
+become citizen kings. We are all kings here. Here the least of you can
+take a rank much higher than that of any General in your army. He can
+become a sovereign in a republic.'
+
+"I think they would hurrah for me, not harm me, after they had heard my
+speech.
+
+"Striving for peace, we shall become so powerful that if war comes we
+shall be invincible. Peace, not war, makes riches; the rich nation is
+the powerful nation.
+
+"Perhaps I was as much a peace man in my youth as I am now, but when I
+was asked, during the civil war, to organize a corps of telegraph
+operators and railroad conductors and engineers and take them to
+Washington, I considered it the greatest of all privileges to obey the
+order.
+
+"I was the last man to get on the last train leaving Burkes Station,
+after Bull Run, and, now, if the country ever should be invaded, I would
+be, I hope, one of the first to rush to meet the enemy--but I think my
+haste would be to convert, not to kill, him.
+
+"The man who has done well in business, however, learns to abhor all
+waste, and I must admit that it does pain me to see hundreds of millions
+of our dollars spent on battleships which will but rust away, and
+thousands of our able men vegetating on them or in an army.
+
+"The men who urge this vast waste of our money and men mean well, no
+doubt, but they do not know the nation of which they have the good
+fortune to be citizens--they do not realize how very potent a force we
+have become in the wide world, nor the fact that one of the great
+reasons why we have become a force lies in the circumstance that our
+national development has not been hampered by the vast expense of
+militarism."
+
+Mr. Carnegie paused.
+
+Some weeks ago, in an interview granted me for publication in THE NEW
+YORK TIMES, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia
+University, predicted that the present war would find its final outcome
+in the establishment of the United States of Europe. I asked Mr.
+Carnegie to express his view upon this subject.
+
+"Nothing else could occur which would be of such immense advantage to
+Europe," he replied.
+
+"United we stand, and divided they fall. If the territory now occupied
+by the homogeneous and co-operative federation known as the United
+States of America were occupied instead by a large number of small,
+independent competitive nations, that is, if each section of our
+territory which now is a State were an independent country, America
+would be constantly in turmoil.
+
+"Europe has been set back a century because she substituted the present
+war of nations for the promotion of a federation plan. The latter would
+have meant peace and prosperity, the former means ruin.
+
+"If in Europe this year such a federation as Dr. Butler regards as a
+future probability had been a present actuality, 1914 would have left a
+record very different from that which it is making.
+
+"For instance, it would have been as difficult for the State of Germany
+to fight the State of Russia, or the State of France, or that of
+England, or all of them, and to trample neutral Belgium, as it now
+would be, here, for the State of Pennsylvania to declare war on the
+States of New York and Connecticut and to wreck New Jersey as she sent
+her troops to the invasion.
+
+"Originally we had thirteen States, and thirteen only, but there was
+other territory here, and the attractive force of the successful union
+of the thirteen States brought the other territory in as it was
+organized.
+
+"Thus we started right. Europe had begun before men had become so wise,
+and, having begun wrong, has found herself, through the centuries,
+unable to correct old errors."
+
+
+A Federation of Europe.
+
+"Certainly I hope that out of the great crime of this vast war some good
+will come. The greatest good which could come would be a general
+European federation. I do not believe that this will come at once; but
+the world will be infinitely the better if it comes at length--if the
+natural law of mutual attraction for mutual advantage draws these
+nations now at war into a union which shall make such wars impossible in
+future, as wars between our States, here, are impossible.
+
+"But before this can come peace must come, and before peace can come one
+or the other of the nations now at war must at least ask for an
+armistice.
+
+"If I were in the place of that great General, Lord Kitchener, and
+should receive the news that such a request had been made by the
+commander of the opposing forces, I should say: 'No armistice!
+Surrender!'
+
+"But, then, if the surrender should be made, I should say, in effect:
+
+"'Gentlemen, we have made up our minds that these terrible explosions
+must mark the end of war between our civilized nations. Our sacrifices
+in this war have been too great to permit us to be satisfied with less
+than this.
+
+"'If we now cannot feel assured of such a federation of nations as will
+result in the settlement of all future disputes by peaceful arbitration
+at The Hague, then we shall keep on fighting till the day comes when we
+can achieve that end.
+
+"'Upon the other side of the Atlantic,' I should continue if I were Lord
+Kitchener and should be confronted by such a situation, 'we see in the
+United States of America an example which must satisfy us that world
+peace now can be maintained.
+
+"'There,' I should go on, 'thirteen States were banded into union in
+1776. Their total population was less than the present population of
+their largest city and their area has spread until it links two oceans
+and offers homes in forty-eight States to one hundred millions, and the
+population still increases rapidly. An experiment of world significance
+was tried, and is a success, for the aggregated nation has grown and now
+is growing in power more rapidly than any other nation on the surface of
+the earth.'"
+
+
+Would Mean World Peace.
+
+"'It is plain to me and should be plain to all of us,' I should
+continue, if I were Lord Kitchener, so placed, 'that we in Europe have
+but to follow this example which America has set for us in order to
+achieve an ultimate result as notably desirable. When we have
+accomplished it world peace will be enthroned and all the peoples of the
+earth will be able safely to go about the pleasant and progressive
+business of their lives without apprehension of their neighbors.
+Humanity, thus freed of its most dreadful burden, will be able to leap
+forward toward the realization of its ultimate possibilities of
+progress.'"
+
+"And do you really think there is the immediate possibility of an
+effective European league for permanent peace and general disarmament?"
+I asked Mr. Carnegie.
+
+"Naturally my mind has dwelt much on this problem," he replied. "The
+culmination of the European situation in the present war is very
+dreadful, but no good ever came out of crying over spilled milk.
+However, it seems safe to conclude that a majority of the people of the
+civilized world will presently decide that a step forward must be taken.
+
+"Everywhere in Europe, when the present conflict ends, this fact will be
+emphasized by shell-wrecked, fire-blackened buildings; by the vacant
+chairs of sons and fathers who have fallen victims; by innumerable
+graves and by a general impoverishment, the inevitable result of war's
+great waste, which will touch and punish every man, every woman, every
+child.
+
+"In the face of such an emphasis no denial of the facts will be among
+the possibilities, and I scarcely think that any even will be attempted.
+If the federation Dr. Butler has predicted does not come about at once,
+it will be admitted almost universally that future disputes occurring
+between the Governments of Europe shall be settled, not by force of
+fighting men, but by arbitration at The Hague.
+
+"And now a serious question obtrudes itself. Must there not be a
+carefully considered and cautiously worked out understanding, which may
+be considered the preliminary of peace? Later on the foremost men of
+every nation can meet in conference to consider with an earnestness
+hitherto unknown the great problems which will be involved in the
+permanent abolition of war and establishment of peace; but for this the
+way must be prepared.
+
+"Here, again, I think The Hague Tribunal is the proper body to assemble
+for the purpose of devising means for the accomplishment of the great
+end, which must be such legislation as will accomplish, at the end of
+this war, the ending of all war among the nations.
+
+"An important duty of the conference would be some arrangement for a
+union of the forces of the nations now at war, charged with and
+qualified to perform the duty of maintaining peace pending the
+completion of the final comprehensive plan."
+
+
+For One Purpose Only.
+
+"It is possible and even probable that as a part of the accomplishment
+of this it may be found to be desirable and even necessary to organize
+and provide for the maintenance of a joint naval and military body of
+strength sufficient to enforce world peace during the period necessary
+for the preparation of a plan to be submitted to all powers. But if this
+force is to be established, it must be done with the clear understanding
+that it is designed for one thing only, the maintenance of peace, and
+must not be used at any time for any other service.
+
+"In the selection of the commanding officer to be intrusted with this
+task, it will be conceded that the victors in this war, or those who
+have a notable advantage at the time of the beginning of the armistice,
+shall have the right of his appointment.
+
+"No protest ever will arise from the mass of the people of Europe
+against the abolishment of militarism. Even the people of Germany, as a
+whole, have not found militarism attractive. It has been the influence
+of the military aristocracy of Germany, the most powerful caste in the
+world, which not only has encouraged the national tendency, but has
+forced the Emperor, as I believe, to action against his will and
+judgment.
+
+"But a change was notable in Germany before the war began, and will be
+far more notable after it has ended. The socialistic movement waxes
+strong throughout the nation, and the proceedings of the Reichstag show
+us that the nation is marching steadily, though perhaps slowly, toward a
+real democracy.
+
+"I believe the first election to follow peace will result in a demand by
+the Reichstag that it, alone, shall be given power to declare war. It
+will be argued, and it is evident that it then will be amply provable,
+that it is the people who suffer most through war, and that, therefore,
+their representatives should utterly control it.
+
+"That itself would be a most important step toward peace, and I feel
+certain that it is among the probabilities.
+
+"As things stand in Germany, although the Reichstag has its powerful
+influence in regard to war expenditure and might accomplish important
+results by refusing to vote amounts demanded, the fact remains that
+until it has been given the power of making or withholding declaration
+of war the most important results cannot be accomplished."
+
+"In Fried's volume," I suggested to Mr. Carnegie, "you are credited with
+saying that Emperor William, himself and by himself, might establish
+peace. Granting that that might have been the fact before this war
+began, is it your opinion that he, or any other one man, could now
+control the situation to that extent?"
+
+"Assuming that the Germans should come out victorious," Mr. Carnegie
+replied, "the Emperor would become a stronger power than ever toward the
+maintenance of peace among the nations. At one time I believed him to be
+the anointed of God for this purpose, and did not fail to tell him so.
+
+"Even if his forces should be defeated in this present carnage, I am
+sure he would be welcomed by the conference I have suggested as the
+proposer of the great world peace, thus fulfilling the glorious destiny
+for which at one time I considered that he had been chosen from on
+high."
+
+I asked Mr. Carnegie what part he thought this country, the United
+States, should play in the great movement which he has in mind and
+thoroughly believes is even now upon its way.
+
+"The United States," he answered, "although, happily, not a party to the
+world crime which is now in progress, seems entitled to preference as
+the one to call the nations of the world to the consideration of the
+greatest of all blessings--universal, lasting peace."
+
+
+
+
+Woman and War
+
+"SHOT. TELL HIS MOTHER."
+
+By W.E.P. French, Captain, U.S. Army.
+
+
+What have I done to you, Brothers,--War-Lord and Land-Lord and Priest,--
+That my son should rot on the blood-smeared earth where the raven and
+     buzzard feast?
+He was my baby, my man-child, that soldier with shell-torn breast,
+Who was slain for your power and profit--aye, murdered at your behest.
+I bore him, my boy and my manling, while the long months ebbed away;
+He was part of me, part of my body, which nourished him day by day.
+He was mine when the birth-pang tore me, mine when he lay on my heart,
+When the sweet mouth mumbled my bosom and the milk-teeth made it smart,
+Babyhood, boyhood, and manhood, and a glad mother proud of her son--
+See the carrion birds, too gorged to fly! Ah! Brothers, what have you
+     done?
+
+You prate of duty and honor, of a patriot's glorious death,
+Of love of country, heroic deeds--nay, for shame's sake, spare your
+     breath!
+Pray, what have you done for your country? Whose was the blood that was
+     shed
+In the hellish warfare that served your ends? My boy was shot in your
+     stead.
+
+And for what were our children butchered, men makers of cruel law?
+By the Christ, I am glad no woman made the Christless code of war!
+Shirks and schemers, why don't you answer? Is the foul truth hard to
+     tell?
+Then a mother will tell it for you, of a deed that shames fiends in
+     hell:--
+Our boys were killed that some faction or scoundrel might win mad race
+For goals of stained gold, shamed honors, and the sly self-seeker's
+     place;
+That money's hold on our country might be tightened and made more sure;
+That the rich could inherit earth's fullness and their loot be quite
+     secure;
+That the world-mart be wider opened to the product mulct from toil;
+That the labor and land of our neighbors should become your war-won
+     spoil;
+That the eyes of an outraged people might be turned from your graft and
+     greed
+In the misruled, plundered home-land by lure of war's ghastly deed;
+And that priests of the warring nations could pray to the selfsame God
+For His blessing on battle and murder and corpse-strewn, blood-soaked
+     sod.
+Oh, fools! if God were a woman, think you She would let kin slay
+For gold-lust and craft of gamesters, or cripple that trade might pay?
+
+This quarrel was not the fighters':--the cheated, red pawns in your
+     game:--
+You stay-at-homes garnered the plunder, but the pawns,--wounds, death,
+     and "Fame"!
+You paid them a beggarly pittance, your substitute prey-of-the-sword,
+But, ye canny beasts of prey, they paid, in life and limb, for your
+     hoard.
+And, behold! you have other victims: a widow sobs by my side,
+Who clasps to her breast a girl-child. Men, she was my slain son's
+     bride!
+
+I can smell the stench of the shambles, where the mangled bodies lie;
+I can hear the moans of the wounded; I can see the brave lads die;
+And across the heaped, red trenches and the tortured, bleeding rows
+I cry out a mother's pity to all mothers of dear, dead "foes."
+In love and a common sorrow, I weep with them o'er our dead,
+And invoke my sister woman for a curse on each scheming head.
+
+Nay, why should we mothers curse you? Lo! flesh of our flesh are ye;
+But, by soul of Mary who bore the Christ-man murdered at Calvary,
+Into our own shall the mothers come, and the glad day speed apace
+When the law of peace shall be the law of the women that bear the race;
+When a man shall stand by his mother, for the worldwide common good,
+And not bring her tears and heart-break nor make mock of her motherhood.
+
+
+
+
+The Way to Peace
+
+AN INTERVIEW WITH JACOB H. SCHIFF.
+
+     One of the leading American financiers and noted
+     philanthropist; founder of Jewish Theological Seminary and of
+     Semitic Museum at Harvard University; a native of Germany and
+     member of the firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., bankers.
+
+By Edward Marshall.
+
+
+American as I am in every fibre, and in accord as I feel with every
+interest of the country of my adoption, I cannot find myself in
+agreement with what appears to be, to a considerable extent, American
+opinion as to the origin and responsibility for the deplorable conflict
+in which almost all of Europe has become involved.
+
+For many reasons my personal sympathies are with Germany. I cannot feel
+convinced that she has been the real aggressor; I believe that war was
+forced upon her, almost as if by prearrangement among the nations with
+whom she now contends; I cannot but believe that they had become jealous
+and envious of her rapid and unprecedented peaceful development and had
+concluded that the moment had arrived when all was favorable for a union
+against her.
+
+Although I left Germany half a century ago, I would think as little of
+arraying myself against her, the country of my birth, in this the moment
+of her struggle for existence, as of arraying myself against my parents.
+
+But while I steadfastly believe this war to have been forced upon
+Germany against her will, I also believe that circumstances which were
+stronger than the Governments of England and France, her present
+enemies, were necessary to overcome an equally definite reluctance upon
+their part.
+
+In other words, I cannot wholly blame the English Government, or the
+French Government, any more than I can wholly blame the German
+Government.
+
+Let us see how the great tragedy came about. It is safe to pass rapidly
+over the Servian-Bosnian-Herzegovinian-Austro-Hungarian complication
+which served as the immediate precipitant of hostilities. It has been
+detailed repeatedly in THE TIMES and other American publications.
+
+It had reached a point at which the Austro-Hungarian Government felt
+compelled to take extreme measures by means of which to safeguard the
+integrity of the empire.
+
+The firm but fatal ultimatum to Servia followed, the reply to which,
+suffice it to say, was unsatisfactory to Austria, who could not accept
+the suggestion of an investigation into the circumstances attending the
+assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand through a commission or court on
+which she was not represented.
+
+
+Like Maine Case.
+
+The situation really was analogous to that which existed between the
+United States and Spain when the Maine was blown up in Havana Harbor. In
+order to fix the responsibility for this dastardly affair we then
+similarly demanded an investigation by Spain, to be carried out with the
+assistance of representatives of this Government. Spain, too, then
+offered to conduct an investigation, but she peremptorily declined to
+allow us to take part in it.
+
+This attitude on her part quickly brought about our declaration of war
+against her. It is important that Americans should realize the
+similarity in the two situations and the likeness of the Austrian action
+of 1914 to that which our own Government took in 1898.
+
+As soon as Austria had rejected as unsatisfactory Servia's reply to her
+ultimatum she prepared to undertake a punitive armed expedition against
+Servia, and Russia at once declared that she would rank herself as
+Servia's protector.
+
+Indeed, without any further parley, and to give effect to this threat,
+Russia immediately mobilized her army. Since then it has been averred
+that this mobilization had been in progress for several weeks previous
+to Servia's rejection of the Austrian ultimatum.
+
+This made it obligatory upon Germany to go to Austria's aid, under the
+provisions of their treaty of alliance, although she was well aware that
+such an action would bring France into the conflict under the terms of
+her alliance with Russia. Indeed, an unsatisfactory reply had been
+received from France as to the latter's intentions, but Germany
+endeavored to secure at least an assurance of England's neutrality. This
+proved to be impossible.
+
+How the German Government could indulge for a moment in the hope that in
+a war with Russia and France on the one side and Germany and Austria on
+the other, England could be induced to remain neutral passes
+comprehension, but that it did believe this seems a certainty.
+
+The English Government, no doubt, correctly felt that without the aid of
+its immense resources, and particularly without the operations of its
+great navy against Germany and Austria, the latter nations would find it
+not so very difficult a task to dispose of both Russia and France.
+
+English statesmen very promptly must have become alive to the
+probability that a Germany which had subdued Russia and France, and thus
+had made itself master of the Continent, would be unlikely long to
+tolerate a continuance of England's world leadership.
+
+So, even if the neutrality of Belgium had not been violated, other
+reasons would have been found by England for joining France and Russia
+in the war against Germany, for England would not risk, without any
+effort to protect them, the loss of her continued domination of the
+high seas and her undisputed possession of her vast colonial empire.
+
+
+Germany Fighting for Life.
+
+I am not defending the violation of Belgian neutrality. This,
+undeniably, was a most unjustifiable action, in spite of German claims
+that she was forced into it by the necessities of the situation. But I
+am explaining that, even had it not occurred, still England would have
+gone to war.
+
+That was the situation.
+
+Germany is now fighting for her very existence, and I, who am not
+without knowledge of German conditions, am convinced that never has
+there been a war more wholly that of a whole people than is this present
+conflict, as far as Germany is concerned.
+
+Any one who has been in even superficial touch with German public
+opinion and individual feeling in any part of the empire, since the war
+began, must know that there is hardly a man, woman, or child throughout
+the empire who would hesitate if called upon to sacrifice possessions or
+life in order to insure victory to the Fatherland. Seventy million
+people who are animated by unanimous sentiment of this sort cannot be
+crushed, probably not subdued.
+
+And England is confronted by the certainty that her world leadership is
+the stake for which she is fighting; that her defeat would mean the end
+of the vast dominance which she has exercised throughout the world,
+since the time of the Armada, through the power of her great navy.
+
+Is it not apparent, therefore, that these nations, if left to
+themselves, inevitably must continue the war until one side or the
+other, or both, shall become exhausted--an eventuation which may be
+postponed not for mere months but for years?
+
+In our own civil war Grant for almost two years stood within a hundred
+or a hundred and fifty miles of Richmond, the heart of the Confederacy,
+and was not able to sufficiently subdue Lee's forces to enable him to
+get possession of the city until the complete exhaustion of the
+Confederacy's resources in men and money had been accomplished.
+
+[Illustration: VISCOUNT JAMES BRYCE
+
+_(Photo from George G. Bain.)_
+
+_See Page 477_]
+
+[Illustration: DR. BERNHARD DERNBURG
+
+_(Photo by Campbell Studios.)_
+
+_See Page 487_]
+
+[Illustration: DAVID STARR JORDAN
+
+_See Page 502_]
+
+[Illustration: JOHN GRIER HIBBEN
+
+_(Photo by McManus.)_
+
+_See Page 503_]
+
+While that situation may not offer a true parallel in all respects to
+that in which we find the belligerent forces in the present European
+war, it nevertheless may be taken as a precedent proving that frontal
+encounters of powerful opponents generally do not yield final results
+until actual exhaustion compels one side or the other to abandon hope.
+
+Such an exhaustion hardly can be expected within measurable time on the
+part of either one or the other of the combatants in the existing
+European conflict, and this means the probable continuation for a long
+period of the merciless slaughter which has marked the last few months.
+We hold up our hands in horror at the stories of human sacrifices in the
+early ages when, after all, these were, perhaps, less brutal and less
+appalling than the wholesale slaughter of the flower of these warring
+peoples of which we now read almost daily.
+
+As I see the situation there really are only three contestants in the
+war--England, Russia, and Germany. France, Belgium, and Austria are
+important auxiliaries, but they are playing to a certain extent
+secondary roles.
+
+England's real object is the utter defeat of Germany--nothing more nor
+less than that--and if this is accomplished England will have control of
+Europe. It must be remembered that the English Government and English
+people frequently have asserted that they would not be satisfied with
+mere defeat of Germany's armed forces, but that her power must be
+permanently paralyzed.
+
+If England should accomplish this, with Germany, its army and its navy,
+thus wholly out of the way, no one would be left for England to fear in
+future upon the high seas.
+
+That might be the chief significance of England's complete victory, and
+its complete significance would be that every nation in the world would
+have to do the British bidding, for should any one refuse she could
+completely destroy its commerce and shut off its overseas supplies.
+
+In the cases of most nations overseas supplies include material vital
+to the continuance of life and happiness; to every nation, in these days
+of a developed and habitual foreign trade, overseas supplies are
+actually essential, even when they do not necessarily include meats and
+wheat and other foodstuffs.
+
+The effect upon the United States of such an English victory would be
+most disastrous.
+
+The alliance between England and Japan is likely to be permanent. That
+is something which Americans cannot afford to forget for a moment.
+
+England needs Japan in the Far East, especially as an ally in case of
+need, which at some time is certain to arrive, against Russia; and Japan
+for many reasons needs the strength of English backing, without which
+her financial and political situation soon would become most dangerous,
+if not collapse.
+
+Such a permanent alliance would have this consequence upon us, that
+without even the probability of difficulties with either England or
+Japan--and, personally, I do not believe that such a probability need be
+feared--we nevertheless year after year would be compelled to
+increasingly prepare for what may be defined as the disagreeable
+possibility of the eventuation of a disagreeable possibility.
+
+Certainly we should be under the necessity of notably and, therefore,
+very expensively, increasing our naval armament; we should be under the
+necessity of large expenditures for coast defense.
+
+Corollary military cost would be enormous and burdensome. The
+preparation which would be imposed on us as a necessity by such a
+permanent alliance would be sufficiently extensive and expensive to
+burden our people heavily and handicap our national progress.
+
+It might involve, perhaps, even a greater hardship in our case than
+militarism has involved in Germany. It is improbable that the average
+American realizes the part which absence of such burdens has played in
+our national development so far; it would be difficult for the average
+American who has not studied the whole subject carefully to estimate
+accurately the part which the imposition of such a burden would be sure
+to play in our future.
+
+We have been measurably a free people. If we were under the necessity of
+supporting vast military and naval establishments we should be that no
+longer, no matter how completely we adhered to our democratic political
+system and ideals. It is not Kings, but what they do, which burdens
+countries, and the most burdensome, act of any King is to load his
+country up with non-productive, threatening, and expensive war
+machinery.
+
+
+The Real Peril.
+
+I fear that the American people as a whole have visualized only
+slightly, if at all, the real peril involved in this contingency; but I
+cannot feel otherwise than sure that soon they must awake to the great
+danger that militarism and navalism may be imposed upon them through no
+fault of their own.
+
+American impulses trend away from armament toward peaceful development
+along industrial lines, but even now political leaders in Washington
+begin to see what may be coming. The propositions which already have
+been made for considerable increases in our naval and military forces
+may be regarded as only the forerunners of what is to be expected later.
+
+My sympathies and interests, in other words my patriotic sentiments, are
+definitely American. I must repeat that I am of German origin, and that
+as regards the present struggle I am pro-German, yet it would be
+impossible for me to say that I am anti-English, although I am
+anti-Russian for reasons that are obvious.
+
+I already have expressed the belief that the complete humiliation of
+England would be disastrous to us. Now, it seems to me that if Germany
+should be completely successful, if she should be able to wear out the
+Allies, break down France, hold Russia in check, and cripple or even
+invade England, (which many German leaders actually believe can be done,
+incredible as it may seem to us,) Germany would acquire a position such
+as never has been held by any nation since the beginning of history. Not
+even the power of the Roman Empire would approach it.
+
+The advance which has marked the development of every means of
+communication, transportation, manufacturing, &c., since Rome's day
+would give Germany, in the case of such an eventuation, a power which
+would have been inconceivable to the most ambitious Roman Emperor. It
+would make her a menace not only to her immediate neighbors, but to the
+entire globe.
+
+Could she be trusted with such power? Notwithstanding my personal
+sympathies, which I have taken pains to clearly outline, I must admit
+that I cannot think so. The German character is not only self-reliant,
+which is admirable, but it readily becomes domineering, particularly
+when in the ascendency.
+
+In the role of a world conqueror Germany would become a world
+dictator--would indulge in a domination which would be almost unbearable
+to every other nation. Particularly would this be the case in respect to
+her relations with the United States, a nation with which she always has
+had and always must have intimate trade and commercial relations.
+
+Should Germany make England impotent and France powerless we should
+become more or less dependent upon German good-will, and it is highly
+probable, indeed I regard it as a certainty, that before long, in such
+an event, the Monroe Doctrine would cease to exercise any important
+influence on world events. It would become a thing of the past--a "scrap
+of paper."
+
+You see that while I am not neutral to the extreme, while I fervently
+hope and pray that Germany may not be wrecked and that she may emerge
+from the war with full ability to maintain her own, I cannot believe
+that it would be good for her or good for the world in general if she
+found herself absolutely and incontrovertibly victorious at the end of
+the great struggle. In other words, I wish Germany to be victorious, but
+I do not wish her to be too victorious.
+
+This brings us definitely to the question as to what can be done to stop
+this war. Its continuance is infinitely costly of men and treasure; its
+prosecution to the bitter end would mean complete disaster for one
+contestant and only less complete destruction for the other, and it
+would give to the victor, no matter what his sufferings and losses might
+have been, a power dangerous to the entire world.
+
+How shall it end? We do not want its end to mean a new European map.
+Anything of the sort would include the seed of another European war, to
+be fought out later and at even greater probable cost, with all the
+world-disturbance implied in such an eventuation.
+
+What the United States should desire and does desire is an understanding
+between these nations, of just what they are fighting for, which I
+almost believe they no longer know themselves, and a conference between
+them now, a pause to think, which at least may help toward stimulating
+each side to make concessions, before the ultimate of damage has been
+done.
+
+Such a conference might be called even without any interval in warfare
+and induced without definite outside intervention from ourselves or any
+one else. I believe it not to be beyond the bounds of possibility that
+if this course could be brought about importantly enough, a way out of
+this brutal struggle and carnage might be discovered even now, and I
+know I am not alone in this belief.
+
+The situation is unprecedented. No congress such as in former times more
+than once has settled wars and brought about peace by the give-and-take
+process could be of avail in the existing circumstances. Something far
+higher than such a conference is needed. This peace must not be
+temporary. It must mark not the ending of this war alone but the ending
+of all war.
+
+Some means must be devised and generally agreed to which, after the
+re-establishment of peace, will do away with jealousies among European
+nations, so that the continual increase of armament on land and sea no
+longer will be necessary, and humanity will be freed from its tremendous
+burden.
+
+It is not at present possible to point out any concrete means by which
+these things may be accomplished, but it is not impossible that, when
+reason shall be returned to the Governments now at war, they themselves
+may suggest to one another plans and ways and means how this may be
+effectuated.
+
+Toward this end America may help tremendously, and herein lies, it seems
+to me, the greatest opportunity ever offered by events to the American
+press.
+
+Let the newspapers of America stop futile philosophizing upon the merits
+and demerits of each case, let them measurably cease their comment upon
+what each side has accomplished or failed to accomplish during the
+tragic four months which have traced their bloody mark on history.
+
+Let them begin to stimulate public opinion in favor of a rational
+adjustment of the points at issue--such an adjustment as will leave each
+contestant unhumiliated and intact, such an adjustment as will avoid, as
+far as may be possible, the complete defeat of any one, such an
+adjustment as will do what can be done toward righting wrongs already
+wrought, and such an adjustment as will let the world return as soon as
+may be to the paths of peace, productiveness, prosperity, and happiness.
+
+In suggesting that America should regard this effort as an obligation I
+am assuming for this country no rights which are not properly hers. We,
+a nation of a hundred million people, laboring constantly for peace and
+human progress, have a right to make our voice heard, and if we raise it
+properly it will find listeners among those who can help toward the
+accomplishment of what we seek. But if we would make it heard we must be
+earnest, be honest, and be ceaseless in the reiteration of our demand.
+
+Have we not the right to insist that the interests of neutral nations,
+of whom, with our South American cousins, (for the better intercourse
+with whom we have just spent several hundred millions upon the
+construction of the Panama Canal,) we form so large a percentage, shall
+before long be given some consideration by the nations whose great
+quarrel is harming us incalculably?
+
+
+Americans Should Speak Out.
+
+The interruption of our economic development already has become marked
+and the war's baneful influence upon moral conditions in our midst shows
+itself through constantly increasing unemployment and, as a logical
+consequence of that, the rapid filling of our eleemosynary and penal
+institutions. May we not reasonably demand that this shall speedily be
+brought to an end?
+
+It probably is true that under the rules of the game the President of
+the United States cannot offer his good offices again to the
+belligerents without first being invited by one or the other side to do
+this, but the people of the United States have a voice even more
+powerful than his; if that of the people of South America should be
+joined with it, and if the combined sound should be made unquestionably
+apparent to the warring nations, it could not pass unheeded.
+
+Public opinion in the United States should firmly seek to impress upon
+the warring nations the conviction that nothing can secure a lasting
+peace except assurance of conditions under which not mighty armies
+and tremendous navies are held to be the factors through which
+trade expansion and the conquest of the markets of the world are
+to be obtained, but that this can be accomplished better and more
+lastingly through rigid adherence to the qualities and methods which
+generally make for success in commercial or any other peaceful
+competition--fairness, thorough efficiency, and hard work.
+
+The concentrated power of the American press and people would be
+tremendous. I am sure that, in this instance, it is possible to
+concentrate it for righteousness and the future good of all humanity.
+
+
+
+
+Prof. Mather on Mr. Schiff
+
+     Professor of Art at Princeton University; editorial writer for
+     The New York Evening Post and Assistant Editor of The Nation,
+     1901-06.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+It seems to me that the Belgian previous question ought to be moved with
+all candid pro-Germans. Mr. Schiff is plainly candid, so I have framed
+an open letter to elicit his opinion:
+
+[_An Open Letter to Jacob H. Schiff._]
+
+Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, New York.
+
+My Dear Sir: The universal esteem which you enjoy in the country of your
+adoption lends great weight to any utterance of yours on public matters.
+Your interview on the war in THE TIMES of Nov. 22 will everywhere have
+influence for its gravity and fineness of feeling. It is with
+compunction that I call your attention to the fact that your statement
+is ambiguous on precisely those issues of the conflict which your
+fellow-citizens have nearest at heart.
+
+Your general position may be described as a desire for prompt peace and
+restoration of the former balance of power. More specifically you wish
+"Germany to be victorious, but not too victorious." If this be merely an
+instinctive expression of the residual German in you, an expression made
+with no practical implications of any sort, no American will do
+otherwise than respect such a sentiment. But if you deliberately desire
+a moderate victory for Germany, with all that such moderate victory
+practically implies, it behooves your fellow-citizens to judge your
+views in the light of what these really call for.
+
+An ever so slightly victorious Germany would presumably retain Belgium,
+in whole or in part. Does such a conquest have your moral assent?
+
+Or suppose the rather improbable event of a Germany driven out of
+Belgium, but otherwise slightly victorious. In such case not a pfennig
+of indemnity would come to Belgium. Do you believe that no indemnity is
+morally due Belgium?
+
+Knowing your reputation as a man and philanthropist, I can hardly
+believe that your desire for a "not too victorious" Germany includes its
+logical implication of a subjugated or uncompensated Belgium. But if
+this be so, candor expects an avowal. Until you have made yourself clear
+on the issue that most concerns your fellow-citizens they will remain in
+doubt as to your whole moral attitude on the war. Does your pacificism
+contemplate a German Belgium? I feel sure you will admit that no fairer
+question could be set to any one who comments on the sequels of the war.
+I am, most respectfully yours,
+
+FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jr.
+
+Princeton University, Oct. 23, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+The Eliot-Schiff Letters
+
+     _On Nov. 22_ THE NEW YORK TIMES _printed this interview with
+     Jacob H. Schiff on the European war reproduced above. Two days
+     later Dr. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard, who
+     is an old friend of Mr. Schiff, wrote him a letter of comment
+     on THE TIMES interview. This letter resulted in considerable
+     correspondence between the two. At the time this
+     correspondence was penned there was not the least thought in
+     the mind of either of the writers of giving the letters to the
+     public. It was simply an interchange of ideas between men who
+     had long known each other. When they were convinced, however,
+     that publication might serve a useful purpose in shaping
+     public opinion, both Mr. Schiff and Dr. Eliot cordially
+     assented to their being printed._
+
+
+Dr. Eliot to Mr. Schiff.
+
+CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 24, 1914.
+
+Dear Mr. Schiff: It was a great relief to me to read just now your
+interview in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Nov. 22, for I have been afraid that
+your judgment and mine, concerning the desirable outcome of this
+horrible war, were very different. I now find that at many points they
+coincide.
+
+One of my strongest hopes is that one result of the war may be the
+acceptance by the leading nations of the world of the precept or
+law--there shall be no world empire for any single nation. If I
+understand you correctly, you hold the same opinion. You wish neither
+Germany nor England to possess world empire. You also look forward, as I
+do, to some contract or agreement among the leading nations which shall
+prevent competitive armaments. I entirely agree with you that it is in
+the highest degree undesirable that this war should be prolonged to the
+exhaustion of either side.
+
+When, however, I come to your discussion of the means by which a good
+result toward European order and peace may be brought out of the present
+convulsion I do not find clear guidance to present action on your part
+or mine, or on the part of our Government and people. Was it your
+thought that a congress of the peoples of North and South America should
+now be convened to bring to bear American opinion on the actual
+combatants while the war is going on? Or is it your thought that the
+American nations wait until there is a lull or pause in the indecisive
+fighting?
+
+So far as I can judge from the very imperfect information which reaches
+us from Germany, the confidence of the German Emperor and people in
+their "invincible" army is not much abated, although it clearly ought to
+be. It is obvious that American opinion has some weight in Germany; but
+has it not enough weight to induce Germany to abandon her intense desire
+for Belgium and Holland and extensive colonial possessions? To my
+thinking, without the abandonment of that desire and ambition on the
+part of Germany, there can be no lasting peace in Europe and no
+reduction of armaments. Sincerely yours,
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Jacob H. Schiff, Esq.
+
+
+Mr. Schiff to Dr. Eliot.
+
+NEW YORK, Nov. 25, 1914.
+
+My Dear Dr. Eliot:
+
+I am just in receipt of your thoughtful letter of yesterday, which it
+has given me genuine pleasure to receive. While it is true that I have
+not found myself in accord with many of the views to which you have
+given public expression concerning the responsibility for this
+deplorable conflict and the unfortunate conditions it has created, I
+never doubted that as to its desirable outcome we would find ourselves
+in accord, and I am very glad to have this confirmed by you, though as
+to this our views could not have diverged.
+
+As to the means by which a desirable result toward European order and
+peace may be brought about out of the chaos which has become created, it
+is, I confess, difficult to give guidance at present. What needs first,
+in my opinion, to be done is to bring forth a healthy and insistent
+public opinion here for an early peace without either side becoming
+first exhausted, and it was my purpose in the interview I have given to
+set the American people thinking concerning this. I have no idea that I
+shall have immediate success; but if men like you and others follow in
+the same line, I am sure American public opinion can before long be made
+to express itself emphatically and insistently in favor of an early
+peace. Without this it is not unlikely that this horrible slaughter and
+destruction may continue for a very, very long time.
+
+Yours most faithfully,
+
+JACOB H. SCHIFF.
+
+President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot, Cambridge, Mass.
+
+
+Dr. Eliot to Mr. Schiff.
+
+CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 28, 1914.
+
+Dear Mr. Schiff:
+
+I think, just as you do, that the thing which most needs to be done is
+to induce Germany to modify its present opinion that the nation must
+fight for its very life to its last mark and the last drop of its blood.
+Now, every private letter that I have received from Germany, and every
+printed circular, pamphlet, or book on the war which has come to me from
+German sources insists on the view that, for Germany, it is a question
+between world empire or utter downfall. There is no sense or reason in
+this view, but the German philosophers, historians, and statesmen are
+all maintaining it at this moment.
+
+England, France, and Russia have no such expectations or desires as
+regards the fate of Germany. What they propose to do is to put a stop to
+Germany's plan of attaining world empire by militarism. Have you any
+means of getting into the minds of some of the present rulers of Germany
+the idea that no such alternative as life or death is presented to
+Germany in this war, and that the people need only abandon their
+world-empire ambitions while securing safety in the heart of Europe and
+a chance to develop all that is good in German civilization? Sincerely
+yours,
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Jacob H. Schiff, Esq.
+
+
+Mr. Schiff to Dr. Eliot.
+
+The Greenbrier,
+WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W. Va.,
+Dec. 1, 1914.
+
+Dear Dr. Eliot:
+
+I have received today your letter of the 28th ult., and I hasten to
+reply to it, for I know of nought that is of more importance than the
+discussion between earnest men of what might be done to bring to
+cessation this horrible and senseless war.
+
+I believe you are mistaken--though in this I am stating nothing,
+absolutely, but my personal opinion--that Germany would not listen to
+the suggestion for a restoration of peace until it has either come into
+a position to dictate the terms or until it is utterly crushed. Indeed,
+I rather feel, and I have indications that such is the case, that
+England is unwilling to stop short of crushing Germany, and it is now
+using all the influence it can bring to bear in this country to prevent
+public opinion being aroused in favor of the stoppage of hostilities and
+re-establishment of peace.
+
+The same mail which brought your letter this morning brought me also a
+letter from a leading semi-military man, whom I know by name, but not
+personally. It is so fine and timely that I venture to inclose a copy
+for your perusal. Why would not you, and perhaps Dr. Andrew D. White,
+who--is it not a coincidence--has likewise written me today on the
+subject of my recent TIMES interview, be the very men to carry out the
+suggestion made by my correspondent?
+
+Perhaps no other two men in the entire country are so greatly looked up
+to by its people for guidance as you--in the first instance--and Dr.
+White. You could surely bestow no greater gift upon the entire civilized
+world than if now, in the evening of a life which has been of such great
+value to mankind, you would call around you a number of leading, earnest
+Americans with the view of discussing and framing plans through which
+American public opinion could be crystallized and aroused to the point
+where it will insistently demand that these warring nations come
+together and, with the experience they have made to their great cost,
+make at least an attempt to find a way out. I cannot but believe that
+the Governments of England, France, and Germany--if not Russia--will
+have to listen, if the American people speak with no uncertain voice.
+Do it, and you will deserve and receive the blessing of this and of
+coming generations! Yours most faithfully,
+
+JACOB H. SCHIFF.
+
+
+Dr. Eliot to Mr. Schiff.
+
+CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 8, 1914.
+
+Dear Mr. Schiff:
+
+I thank you for your letter of Dec. 1 and its interesting inclosure.
+
+Although every thoughtful person must earnestly desire that the waste
+and destruction of this greatest of wars should be stopped as soon as
+possible, there is an overpowering feeling that the war should go on
+until all the combatants, including Germany, have been brought to see
+that the Governmental regime and the state of the public mind in Germany
+which have made this war possible are not consistent with the security
+and well-being of Europe in the future.
+
+Personally, I feel strongly that the war ought to go on so long as
+Germany persists in its policies of world empire, dynastic rule,
+autocratic bureaucracy, and the use of force in international dealings.
+If the war stops before Germany sees that those policies cannot prevail
+in twentieth-century Europe, the horrible wrongs and evils which we are
+now witnessing will recur; and all the nations will have to continue the
+destructive process of competitive armaments. If peace should be made
+now, before the Allies have arrived at attacking Germany on her own
+soil, there would result only a truce of moderate length, and then a
+renewal of the present horrors.
+
+I cannot but think that Europe now has a chance to make a choice between
+the German ideal of the State and the Anglo-American ideal. These two
+ideals are very different; and the present conflict shows that they
+cannot coexist longer in modern Europe.
+
+In regard to the suggestion which your correspondent made to you that a
+conference of private persons should now be called in the hope of
+arriving at an agreed-upon appeal to the combatants to desist from
+fighting and consider terms of settlement, I cannot but feel (1) that
+such a conference would have no assured status; (2) that the combatants
+would not listen; and (3) that the effort would, therefore, be untimely
+now, though perhaps useful later.
+
+One idea might possibly bring about peace, if it fructified in the mind
+of the German Emperor--the idea, namely, that the chance of Germany's
+obtaining dominating power in either Europe or the world having already
+gone, the wise thing for him to do is to save United Germany within her
+natural boundaries for secure development as a highly civilized strong
+nation in the heart of Europe. Surplus population can always emigrate
+happily in the future as in the past.
+
+The security of Germany would rest, however, on an international
+agreement to be maintained by an international force; whereas, the
+example which Germany has just given of the reckless violation of
+international agreements is extremely discouraging in regard to the
+possibility of securing the peace of Europe in the future.
+
+Although this war has already made quite impossible the domination of
+Germany in Europe or in the world, the leaders of Germany do not yet see
+or apprehend that impossibility. Hence, many earnest peace-seekers have
+to confess that they do not see any means whatever available for
+promoting peace in Europe now, or even procuring a short truce.
+
+I wish I could believe with you that the Governments of England, France,
+Germany, and Russia would listen to the voice of the American people.
+They all seem to desire the good opinion and moral support of America;
+but I see no signs that they would take American advice or imitate
+American example. President Wilson seems to think that this country will
+be accepted as a kind of umpire in this formidable contest; but surely
+we have no right to any such position. Our example in avoiding
+aggression on other nations, and in declining to enter the contest for
+world power, ought to have some effect in abating European ambitions in
+that direction; but our exhortations to peace and good-will will, I
+fear, have little influence. There is still a real contest on between
+democracy and oligarchical methods.
+
+You see, my dear Mr. Schiff, that I regard this war as the result of
+long-continuing causes which have been gathering force for more than
+fifty years. In Germany all the forces of education, finance, commercial
+development, a pagan philosophy, and Government have been preparing this
+war since 1860. To stop it now, before these forces have been
+overwhelmingly defeated, and before the whole German people is convinced
+that they are defeated, would be to leave humanity exposed to the
+certain recurrence of the fearful convulsions we are now witnessing.
+
+If anybody can show me any signs that the leaders of Germany are
+convinced that there is to be no world empire for Germany or any other
+nation, and no despotic Government in Europe, I shall be ready to take
+part in any effectual advocacy of peace. Sincerely yours.
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Jacob H. Schiff, Esq.
+
+
+Mr. Schiff to Dr. Eliot.
+
+NEW YORK, Dec. 5, 1914.
+
+President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot, Cambridge, Mass.
+
+Dear Dr. Eliot:
+
+Your letter of Dec. 3 reached me this morning, and has given me much
+food for thought.
+
+I wish I could follow you in the position you have taken, for I like
+nothing better than to sit at the feet of a master like you and be
+instructed. But, much as I have tried, even before our recent
+correspondence was begun, to get at your viewpoint as from time to time
+published, I have not been able to convince myself that you occupy a
+correct position. Please accept this as expressed in all modesty, for I
+know were you not thoroughly convinced of the justice of the position
+you have taken from the start you would not be so determined in holding
+to it.
+
+I am perfectly frank to say that I am amazed and chagrined when you say
+that you feel strongly that the war ought to go on until the Allies
+have arrived at attacking Germany on her own soil, which, if this is at
+all likely to come, may take many months yet, and will mean sacrifice of
+human life on both sides more appalling than anything we have seen yet
+since the war began. So you are willing that, with all the human life
+that has already perished, practically the entire flower of the warring
+nations shall become exterminated before even an effort be made to see
+whether these nations cannot be brought to reason, cannot be made to
+stop and to consider whether, with the experience of the past four
+months before them, it would not be better to even now make an effort to
+find a way in which the causes that have led to this deplorable conflict
+can be once and forever eradicated?
+
+That it will be possible to find at this time any method or basis
+through the adoption of which the world would become entirely immune
+against war I do not believe, even by the establishment of the
+international police force such as you and others appear to have in
+mind.
+
+The perpetual cessation of all war between the civilized nations of the
+world can, as I see it, only be brought about in two ways, both Utopian
+and likely impracticable, for many years to come. War could be made only
+to cease entirely if all the nations of Europe could be organized into a
+United States of Europe and if free trade were established throughout
+the world. In the first instance, the extreme nationalism, which has
+become so rampant during the past fifty years and which has been more or
+less at the bottom of every war, would then cease to exist and prevail,
+and in the second event, namely, if free trade became established
+throughout the world the necessity for territorial expansion and
+aggression would no longer be needed, for, with the entire world open on
+equal terms to the commerce and industry of every nation, territorial
+possession would not be much of a consideration to any peoples.
+
+You continually lay stress upon the danger of the domination of Germany
+in Europe and in the world. I believe I have already made myself quite
+clear in my recent NEW YORK TIMES interview, which has called forth this
+correspondence between us, that neither would I wish to have Germany
+come into a position where it might dominate Europe, and more or less
+the world, nor do I believe that the German Nation, except perhaps a
+handful of extremists, has any such desires.
+
+I believe I have also made myself quite clear in the interview to which
+I have referred that my feelings are not anti-English, for I shall never
+forget that liberal government and all forms of liberalism have had
+their origin, ever since the Magna Charta, in that great nation whom we
+so often love to call our cousins. But, with all of this, can you ignore
+the fact that England even today, without the further power and prestige
+victory in the present conflict would give her, practically dominates
+the high seas, that she treats the ocean as her own and enforces her
+dictates upon the waters even to our very shores? That this is true the
+past four months have amply proved. I am not one of those who fear that
+the United States, as far as can now be foreseen, will get into any
+armed conflict with Great Britain or with Japan, her permanent ally, but
+I can well understand that many in our country are of a different
+opinion, and it takes no prophet to foresee that, with England coming
+out of this war victorious and her and Japan's power on the high seas
+increased, the demand from a large section of our people for the
+acquisition and possession of the United States of an increased powerful
+navy and for the erection of vast coast defenses, both on the Atlantic
+and Pacific shores, will become so insistent that it cannot be
+withstood. What this will mean to the American people in lavish
+expenditures and in increased taxation I need not here further go into.
+
+Yes, my dear and revered friend, I can see nought but darkness if a way
+cannot be soon found out of the present deplorable situation as it
+exists in Europe.
+
+But even if the Allies are victorious it will mean, as I am convinced,
+the beginning of the descent of England as the world's leader and the
+hastened ascendency of Russia, who, not today or tomorrow, but in times
+to come, is sure to crowd out England from the world's leadership. A
+Russia that will have become democratic in its government, be it as a
+republic or under a truly constitutional monarchy; a Russia in which
+education will be as free as it is in our own country; a Russia in which
+the people can move about and make homes in the vast territory she
+possesses wherever they can find most happiness and prosperity; a Russia
+with its vast natural resources of every kind fully developed, is bound
+to be the greatest and most powerful nation on the earth.
+
+But I am going too far into the future and I must return to the sad and
+deplorable present. I only wanted to show how England's alliance with
+this present-day Russia and its despotic, autocratic, and inhuman
+Government may, if the Allies shall be victorious, prove possibly in the
+nearer future, but certainly in the long run, England's Nemesis.
+
+Before closing I want to correct the impression you appear to have
+received that I have meant to suggest a conference of private persons
+for the purpose of agreeing upon an appeal by them to the nations of
+Europe to desist from fighting and consider terms of settlement. I know
+this would be entirely impracticable and useless, but what I meant to
+convey to you was my conviction that if you and men like you, of whom I
+confess there are but too few, were to make the endeavor to rouse public
+opinion in the United States to a point where it should insistently
+demand that this terrific carnage of blood and destruction cease, it
+would not be long before these warring Governments would take notice of
+such sentiments on the part of the American people; and what should be
+done at once is the stoppage of the furnishing of munitions of war to
+any of the belligerents, as is unfortunately done to so great an extent
+at present from this country.
+
+We freely and abundantly give to the Red Cross and the many other relief
+societies, but we do this, even if indirectly, out of the very profits
+we derive from the war material we sell to the belligerents, and with
+which the wounds the Red Cross and other relief societies endeavor to
+assuage are inflicted. Yours most faithfully,
+
+JACOB H. SCHIFF.
+
+
+Dr. Eliot to Mr. Schiff.
+
+CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 8, 1914.
+
+Dear Mr. Schiff:
+
+Your letter of Dec. 5 tells me what the difference is between you and me
+in respect to the outcome of the war--I am much more hopeful or sanguine
+of the world's getting good out of it than you are. Since you do not
+hope to get any good to speak of out of it, you want to stop it as soon
+as possible. You look forward to future war from time to time between
+the nations of Europe and to the maintenance of competitive armaments.
+You think that the lust of dominion must continue to be felt and
+gratified, now by one nation and now by another; that Great Britain can
+gratify it now, but that she will be overpowered by Russia by and by.
+
+I am unwilling to accept these conditions for Europe, or for the world,
+without urging the freer nations to make extraordinary efforts to reach
+a better solution of the European international problem which, unsolved,
+has led down to this horrible pit of general war.
+
+I have just finished another letter to THE NEW YORK TIMES, which will
+probably be in print by the time you get back to New York, so I will not
+trouble you with any exposition of the grounds of my hopefulness. It is
+because I am hopeful that I want to see this war fought out until
+Germany is persuaded that she cannot dominate Europe, or, indeed, make
+her will prevail anywhere by force of arms. When that change of mind has
+been effected I hope that Germany will become a member of a federation
+firm enough and powerful enough to prevent any single nation from
+aiming at world empire, or even pouncing on a smaller neighbor.
+
+There is another point on which I seem to differ from you: I do not
+believe that any single nation has now, or can ever hereafter have, the
+leadership of the world, whereas you look forward to the existence of
+such leadership or domination in the hands of a single great power. Are
+there not many signs already, both in the East and in the West, that the
+time has past for world empire? Very sincerely and cordially yours,
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Jacob H. Schiff, Esq.
+
+
+Mr. Schiff to Dr. Eliot.
+
+NEW YORK, Dec. 14, 1914.
+
+Dear Dr. Eliot:
+
+I have delayed replying to your valued letter of the 8th inst. until
+after the appearance of your further letter to THE NEW YORK TIMES, to
+which you had made reference, and, like everything emanating from you,
+the contents of your last TIMES letter have evoked my deepest interest.
+
+Had our recent correspondence not already become more extended than you
+likely had intended it to become when you first wrote me on the subject
+of my TIMES interview of some weeks ago, I should go into your latest
+arguments at greater length. As it is, I shall only reiterate that I
+find myself unable to follow you in your belief and hope, that world
+empire and world leadership, as this now exists, is likely to cease as a
+consequence of the present war, much as we all may desire this.
+
+England has taken up arms to retain her world dominion and leadership;
+and to gain it, Germany is fighting. How can you, then, expect that
+England, if victorious, would be willing to surrender her control of the
+oceans and the dominion over the trade of the world she possesses in
+consequence, and where is there, then, room for the hope you express
+that world leadership may become a thing of the past with the
+termination of the present conflict?
+
+I repeat, with all my attachment for my native land and its people, I
+have no inimical feeling toward England, have warm sentiments for
+France, and the greatest compassion for brave, stricken Belgium.
+
+Thus, "with malice toward none," and with the highest respect for your
+expressed views, I am still of the opinion that there can be no greater
+service rendered to mankind than to make the effort, either through the
+force of public opinion of the two Americas, or otherwise, to bring
+these warring Governments together at an early moment, even if this can
+only be done without stopping their conflict, so that they may make the
+endeavor, whether--with their costly experience of the last five months,
+with the probability that they now know better what need be done to make
+the extreme armaments on land and sea as unnecessary as they are
+undesirable in the future--a basis cannot be found upon which
+disarmament can be effectively and permanently brought about.
+
+This, at some time, they will have come to, in any event, and must there
+first more human lives be sacrificed into the hundreds and hundreds of
+thousands, and still greater havoc be wrought, before passions can be
+made to cease and reason be made to return?
+
+If, as you seem to think, the war need go on until one country is beaten
+into a condition where it must accept the terms the victor chooses to
+impose, because it can no longer help itself to do else, the peace thus
+obtained will only be the harbinger of another war in the near or
+distant future, bloodier probably than the present sanguinary conflict,
+and through no compact which might be entered into will it be possible
+to actually prevent this.
+
+Twenty centuries ago Christianity came into the world with its lofty
+message of "peace on earth and good-will to men," and now, after two
+thousand years, and at the near approach of the season when Christianity
+celebrates the birth of its founder, it is insisted that the merciless
+slaughter of man by man we have been witnessing these last months must
+be permitted to be continued into the infinite. Most faithfully yours,
+
+JACOB H. SCHIFF.
+
+President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot, Cambridge, Mass.
+
+
+
+
+LA CATHEDRALE.
+
+From Figaro.
+
+By EDMOND ROSTAND.
+
+
+    Ils n'ont fait que la rendre un peu plus immortelle.
+    L'Oeuvre ne perit pas, que mutile un gredin.
+    Demande a Phidias et demande a Rodin
+    Si, devant ses morceaux, on ne dit plus: "C'est Elle!"
+
+    La Forteresse meurt quand on la demantele.
+    Mais le Temple, brise, vit plus noble; et soudain
+    Les yeux, se souvenant du toit avec dedain,
+    Preferent voir le ciel dans la pierre en dentelle.
+
+    Rendons grace--attendu qu'il nous manquait encor
+    D'avoir ce qu'ont les Grecs sur la colline d'or;
+    Le Symbole du Beau consacre par l'insulte!--
+
+    Rendons grace aux pointeurs du stupide canon,
+    Puisque de leur adresse allemande il resulte
+    Une Honte pour eux, pour nous un Parthenon!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE CATHEDRAL.
+
+A Free Translation of Rostand's Sonnet.
+
+By FRANCES C. FAY.
+
+    "Deathless" is graven deeper on thy brow;
+    Ghouls have no power to end thy endless sway.
+    The Greek of old, the Frenchman of today,
+    Before thy riven shrine are bending now.
+
+    A wounded fortress straightway lieth prone,
+    Not so the Temple dies; its roof may fall,
+    The sky its covering vault, an azure pall,
+    Doth droop to crown its wealth of lacework stone.
+
+    Praise to you, Vandal guns of dull intent!
+    We lacked till now our Beauty's monument
+    Twice hallowed o'er by insult's brutal hand,
+
+    As Pallas owns on Athens' golden hill,
+    We have it now, thanks to your far-flung brand!
+    Your shame--our gain, misguided German skill!
+
+
+
+
+Probable Causes and Outcome of the War
+
+By Charles W. Eliot.
+
+     President Emeritus of Harvard University; Officer Legion
+     d'Honneur (France); Imperial Order of the Rising Sun, first
+     class (Japan); Royal Prussian Order of the Crown, first class;
+     Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy; Member of the General
+     Education Board, and an original investigator for the cause of
+     international peace.
+
+     _Following Is Reproduced a Series of Five Letters to_ THE NEW
+     YORK TIMES _from Dr. Eliot, Together with the Comments Thereon
+     by Eminent Critics._
+
+
+DR. ELIOT'S FIRST LETTER.
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+The American people without distinction of party are highly content with
+the action of their National Administration on all the grave problems
+presented to the Government by the sudden outbreak of long-prepared war
+in Europe--a war which already involves five great States and two small
+ones. They heartily approve of the action of the Administration on
+mediation, neutrality, aid to Americans in Europe, discouragement of
+speculation in foods, and, with the exception of extreme protectionists,
+admission to American registery of foreign-built ships; although the
+legislation on the last subject, which has already passed Congress, is
+manifestly inadequate.
+
+Our people cannot see that the war will necessarily be short, and they
+cannot imagine how it can last long. They realize that history gives no
+example of such a general interruption of trade and all other
+international intercourse as has already taken place, or of such a
+stoppage of the production and distribution of the necessaries of life
+as this war threatens. They shudder at the floods of human woe which are
+about to overwhelm Europe.
+
+Hence, thinking Americans cannot help reflecting on the causes of this
+monstrous outbreak of primitive savagery--part of them come down from
+the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and part developed in the
+nineteenth--and wondering what good for mankind, if any, can possibly
+come out of the present cataclysm.
+
+The whole people of the United States, without regard to racial origin,
+are of one mind in hoping that mankind may gain out of this prodigious
+physical combat, which uses for purposes of destruction and death all
+the new forces of nineteenth-century applied science, some new liberties
+and new securities in the pursuit of happiness; but at this moment they
+can cherish only a remote hope of such an issue. The military force
+which Austria-Hungary and Germany are now using on a prodigious scale,
+and with long-studied skill, can only be met by similar military force,
+and this resisting force is summoned more slowly than that of
+Austria-Hungary and Germany, although the ultimate battalions will be
+heavier. In this portentous physical contest the American people have no
+part; their geographical position, their historical development, and
+their political ideals combine to make them for the present mere
+spectators, although their interests--commercial, industrial, and
+political--are deeply involved. For the moment, the best thing our
+Government can do is to utilize all existing neutrality rights, and, if
+possible, to strengthen or develop those rights, for out of this war
+ought to come more neutral States in Europe and greater security for
+neutralized territory.
+
+
+The Need for Discussion.
+
+The chances of getting some gains for mankind out of this gigantic
+struggle will be somewhat increased if the American people, and all
+other neutral peoples, arrive through public discussion at some clear
+understanding of the causes and the possible and desirable issues of the
+war, and the sooner this public discussion begins, and the more
+thoroughly it is pursued, the sounder will probably be the tendencies of
+public sentiment outside of the contending nations and the conclusions
+which the peace negotiations will ultimately reach.
+
+When one begins, however, to reflect on the probable causes of the
+sudden lapse of the most civilized parts of Europe into worse than
+primitive savagery, he comes at once on two old and widespread evils in
+Europe from which America has been exempt for at least 150 years. The
+first is secret diplomacy with power to make issues and determine
+events, and the second is autocratic national Executives who can swing
+the whole physical force of the nation to this side or that without
+consulting the people or their representatives.
+
+The actual catastrophe proves that secret negotiations like those
+habitually conducted on behalf of the "concert of Europe," and alliances
+between selected nations, the terms of which are secret, or at any rate
+not publicly stated, cannot avert in the long run outrageous war, but
+can only produce postponements of war, or short truces. Free
+institutions, like those of the United States, take the public into
+confidence, because all important movements of the Government must rest
+on popular desires, needs, and volitions. Autocratic institutions have
+no such necessity for publicity. This Government secrecy as to motives,
+plans, and purposes must often be maintained by disregarding truth, fair
+dealing, and honorable obligations, in order that, when the appeal to
+force comes, one Government may secure the advantage of taking the other
+by surprise. Duplicity during peace and the breaking of treaties during
+war come to be regarded as obvious military necessities.
+
+The second great evil under which certain large nations of
+Europe--notably Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary--have long suffered
+and still suffer is the permanent national Executive, independent of
+popular control through representative bodies, holding strong views
+about rights of birth and religious sanctions of its authority, and
+really controlling the national forces through some small council and a
+strong bureaucracy. So long as Executives of this sort endure, so long
+will civilization be liable to such explosions as have taken place this
+August, though not always on so vast a scale.
+
+Americans now see these things more clearly than European lovers of
+liberty, because Americans are detached from the actual conflicts by the
+Atlantic, and because Americans have had no real contact with the feudal
+or the imperial system for nearly 300 years. Pilgrim and Puritan,
+Covenanter and Quaker, Lutheran and Catholic alike left the feudal
+system and autocratic government behind them when they crossed the
+Atlantic. Americans, therefore, cannot help hoping that two results of
+the present war will be: (1) The abolition of secret diplomacy and
+secret understandings, and the substitution therefor of treaties
+publicly discussed and sanctioned, and (2) the creation of national
+Executives--Emperors, Sultans, Kings, or Presidents--which cannot use
+the national forces in fight until a thoroughly informed national
+assembly, acting with deliberation, has agreed to that use.
+
+
+Opposite Tendencies.
+
+The American student of history since the middle of the seventeenth
+century sees clearly two strong though apparently opposite tendencies in
+Europe: First, the tendency to the creation and maintenance of small
+States such as those which the Peace of Westphalia (1648) recognized and
+for two centuries secured in a fairly independent existence, and,
+secondly, a tendency from the middle of the nineteenth century toward
+larger national units, created by combining several kindred States
+under one executive. This second tendency was illustrated strongly in
+the case of both Germany and Italy, although the Prussian domination in
+Germany has no parallel in Italy. Somewhat earlier in the nineteenth
+century the doctrine of the neutralization of the territories of small
+States was established as firmly as solemn treaties could do it. The
+larger national units had a more or less federative quality, the
+components yielding some of their functions to a central power, but
+retaining numerous independent functions. This tendency to limited
+unification is one which Americans easily understand and appreciate. We
+believe in the federative principle, and must therefore hope that out of
+the present European horror will come a new development of that
+principle, and new security for small States which are capable of
+guaranteeing to their citizens "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
+happiness"--a security which no citizen of any European country seems
+today to possess.
+
+Some of the underlying causes of the horrible catastrophe the American
+people are now watching from afar are commercial and economic. Imperial
+Germany's desire for colonies in other continents--such as Great Britain
+and France secured earlier as a result of keen commercial ambitions--is
+intense. Prussia's seizure of Schleswig in 1864-5 had the commercial
+motive; and it is with visions of ports on the North Sea that Germany
+justifies her present occupation of Belgium. The Russians have for
+generations desired to extend their national territory southward to the
+Aegean and the Bosphorus, and eastward to good harbors on the Pacific.
+Later they pushed into Mongolia and Manchuria, but were resisted
+successfully by Japan. Austria-Hungary has long been seeking ports on
+the Adriatic, and lately seized without warrant Herzegovina and Bosnia
+to promote her approach toward the Aegean, and is now trying to seize
+Servia with the same ends in view. With similar motives Italy lately
+descended on Tripoli, without any excuse except this intense desire for
+colonies--profitable or unprofitable. On the other hand, the American
+people, looking to the future as well as to the past, object to
+acquisitions of new territory by force of arms; and since the twentieth
+century opened they have twice illustrated in their own practice--first
+in Cuba, and then in Mexico--this democratic objection. They believe
+that extensions of national territory should be brought about only with
+the indubitable consent of the majority of the people most nearly
+concerned. They also believe that commerce should always be a means of
+promoting good-will, and not ill-will, among men, and that all
+legitimate and useful extensions of the commerce of a manufacturing and
+commercial nation may be procured through the policy of the "open
+door"--which means nothing more than that all nations should be allowed
+to compete on equal terms for the trade of any foreign people, whether
+backward or advanced in civilization. No American Administration has
+accepted a "concession" of land in China. They also believe that
+peaceable extensions of territory and trade will afford adequate relief
+from the economic pressure on a population too large for the territory
+it occupies, and that there is no need of forcible seizure of territory
+to secure relief. It is inevitable, therefore, that the American people
+should hope that one outcome of the present war should be--no
+enlargement of a national territory by force or without the free consent
+of the population to be annexed, and no colonization except by peaceable
+commercial and industrial methods.
+
+
+Aggressive Force a Failure.
+
+One of the most interesting and far-reaching effects of the present
+outbreak of savagery is likely to be the conviction it carries to the
+minds of thinking people that the whole process of competitive
+armaments, the enlistment of the entire male population in national
+armies, and the incessant planning of campaigns against neighbors, is
+not a trustworthy method for preserving peace. It now appears that the
+military preparations of the last fifty years in Europe have resulted
+in the most terrific war of all time, and that a fierce ultimate
+outbreak is the only probable result of the system. For the future of
+civilization this is a lesson of high value. It teaches that if modern
+civilization is to be preserved, national Executives--whether imperial
+or republican--must not have at their disposal immense armaments and
+drilled armies held ready in the leash; that armaments must be limited,
+an international Supreme Court established, national armies changed to
+the Swiss form, and an international force adequate to deal with any
+nation that may suddenly become lawless agreed upon by treaty and held
+always in readiness. The occasional use of force will continue to be
+necessary even in the civilized world; but it must be made not an
+aggressive but a protective force and used as such--just as protective
+force has to be used sometimes in families, schools, cities, and
+Commonwealths.
+
+At present Americans do not close their eyes to the plain fact that the
+brute force which Germany and Austria-Hungary are now using can only be
+overcome by brute force of the same sort in larger measure. It is only
+when negotiations for peace begin that the great lesson of the futility
+of huge preparations for fighting to preserve peace can be given effect.
+Is it too much to expect that the whole civilized world will take to
+heart the lessons of this terrible catastrophe and co-operate to prevent
+the recurrence of such losses and woes? Should Germany and
+Austria-Hungary succeed in their present undertakings, the whole
+civilized world would be obliged to bear continuously, and to an
+ever-increasing amount, the burdens of great armaments, and would live
+in constant fear of sudden invasion, now here, now there--a terrible
+fear, against which neither treaties nor professions of peaceable
+intentions would offer the least security.
+
+It must be admitted, however, that the whole military organization,
+which has long been compulsory on the nations of Continental Europe, is
+inconsistent in the highest degree with American ideals of individual
+liberty and social progress. Democracies can fight with ardor, and
+sometimes with success, when the whole people is moved by a common
+sentiment or passion; but the structure and discipline of a modern army
+like that of Germany, Austria-Hungary, or Russia, has a despotic or
+autocratic quality which is inconsistent with the fundamental principles
+of democratic society. To make war in countries like France, Great
+Britain, and the United States requires the widespread, simultaneous
+stirring of the passions of the people on behalf of their own ideals.
+This stirring requires publicity before and after the declaration of war
+and public discussion; and the delays which discussion causes are
+securities for peace. Out of the present struggle should come a check on
+militarism--a strong revulsion against the use of force as means of
+settling international disputes.
+
+
+America Cannot Be Indifferent.
+
+It must also be admitted that it is impossible for the American people
+to sympathize with the tone of the imperial and royal addresses which,
+in summoning the people to war, use such phrases as "My monarchy," "My
+loyal people," "My loyal subjects"; for there is implied in such phrases
+a dynastic or personal ownership of peoples which shocks the average
+American. Americans inevitably think that the right way for a ruler to
+begin an exhortation to the people he rules is President Wilson's way:
+"My fellow-countrymen."
+
+It follows from the very existence of these American instincts and hopes
+that, although the people of the United States mean to maintain
+faithfully a legal neutrality, they are not, and can not be, neutral or
+indifferent as to the ultimate outcome of this titanic struggle. It
+already seems to them that England, France, and Russia are fighting for
+freedom and civilization. It does not follow that thinking Americans
+will forget the immense services which Germany has rendered to
+civilization during the last hundred years, or desire that her power to
+serve letters, science, art, and education should be in the least
+abridged in the outcome of this war upon which she has entered so
+rashly and selfishly and in so barbarous a spirit. Most educated
+Americans hope and believe that by defeating the German barbarousness
+the Allies will only promote the noble German civilization.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN W. BURGESS
+
+_(Photo by Alman & Co.)_
+
+_See Page 507_]
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM M. SLOANE
+
+_(Photo by Pach.)_
+
+_See Page 515_]
+
+The presence of Russia in the combination against Germany and
+Austria-Hungary seems to the average American an abnormal phenomenon;
+because Russia is itself a military monarchy with marked territorial
+ambitions; and its civilization is at a more elementary stage than that
+of France or England; but he resists present apprehension on this score
+by recalling that Russia submitted to the "Concert of Europe" when her
+victorious armies were within seventeen miles of Constantinople, that
+she emancipated her serfs, proposed The Hague Conferences, initiated the
+"Duma," and has lately offered--perhaps as war measures only--autonomy
+to her Poles and equal rights of citizenship to her Jews. He also
+cannot help believing that a nation which has produced such a literature
+as Russia has produced during the last fifty years must hold within its
+multitudinous population a large minority which is seething with high
+aspirations and a fine idealism.
+
+For the clarification of the public mind on the issue involved, it is
+important that the limits of American neutrality should be discussed and
+understood. The action of the Government must be neutral in the best
+sense; but American sympathies and hopes cannot possibly be neutral, for
+the whole history and present state of American liberty forbids. For the
+present, thinking Americans can only try to appreciate the scope and
+real issues of this formidable convulsion, and so be ready to seize
+every opportunity that may present itself to further the cause of human
+freedom, and of peace at last.
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Asticou, Me., Sept. 1, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Appreciation from Lord Bryce
+
+     Late Ambassador at Washington from Great Britain; Chief
+     Secretary for Ireland, 1905-6; author of "The American
+     Commonwealth," and of studies in history and biography.
+
+
+It has been a great pleasure to see from your published letter, which
+has just reached us, that you so clearly understand the motive and
+feelings with which Great Britain has entered on the present war.
+Neither commercial rivalry nor any fancied jealousy of Germany's
+greatness has led us into it, and to the German people our people bear
+no ill-will whatever. Along with many others I have worked steadily
+during long years for the maintenance of friendship with Germany,
+admiring the splendid gifts of the German race, and recognizing their
+enormous services to science, philosophy, and literature. We had hoped,
+as some thoughtful statesmen in Germany had also hoped, that by a
+cordial feeling between Germany and Britain the peace of Europe might be
+secured and something done to bring about permanently better relations
+between Germany and her two great neighbors with whom we found ourselves
+on friendly terms; and we had confidently looked to the United States to
+join with us in this task. But the action of the German Government in
+violating the neutrality of Belgium when France had assured us that she
+would respect it, the invasion of a small State whose neutrality and
+independence she and England had joined in guaranteeing, evoked in this
+country an almost unanimous sentiment that the faith of treaties and the
+safety of small States must be protected. There has been no war for more
+than a century--perhaps two centuries--into which the nation has entered
+with so general a belief that its action is justified. We rejoice to be
+assured that this is the general feeling of the people of the United
+States, whose opinion we naturally value more than we do that of any
+other people.
+
+Most persons in this country, including all those who work for peace,
+agree with you in deploring the vast armaments which European States
+have been piling up, and will hope with you that after this war they may
+be reduced--and safely reduced--to slender dimensions. Their existence
+is a constant menace to peace. They foster that spirit of militarism
+which has brought these horrors on the world; for they create in the
+great countries of the Continent a large and powerful military and naval
+caste which lives for war, talks and writes incessantly of war, and
+glorifies war as a thing good in itself.
+
+It is (as you say) to the peoples that we must henceforth look to
+safeguard international concord. They bear the miseries of war, they
+ought to have the power to arrest the action of those who are hurrying
+them into it.
+
+To get rid of secret diplomacy is more difficult in Europe than in
+America, whose relations with foreign States are fewer and simpler, but
+what you say upon that subject also will find a sympathetic echo here
+among the friends of freedom and of peace. I am always sincerely yours,
+
+JAMES BRYCE.
+
+Forest Row, Sussex, Sept. 17, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+A Reply by Dr. Francke
+
+     Professor of the History of German Culture at Harvard
+     University and Curator of the Germanic Museum; author of works
+     on German literature.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+In his letter of Sept. 1 President Eliot expresses the opinion that in
+the present war "England, France, and Russia are fighting for freedom
+and civilization." And he adds:
+
+     It does not follow that thinking Americans will forget the
+     immense services which Germany has rendered to civilization
+     during the last hundred years, or desire that her power to
+     serve letters, science, art, and education should be in the
+     least abridged in the outcome of this war, upon which she has
+     entered so rashly and selfishly and in so barbarous a spirit.
+     Most educated Americans hope and believe that by defeating the
+     German barbarousness the Allies will only promote the noble
+     German civilization.
+
+In other words, German military and political power is to be crushed in
+order to set free the German genius for science, literature, and art. It
+is interesting to contrast with such views as these the following words
+of Goethe, uttered in 1813:
+
+     I have often felt a bitter grief at the thought of the German
+     people, which is so noble individually and so wretched as a
+     whole. A comparison of the German people with other nations
+     gives us painful feelings, which I try to overcome by all
+     possible means; and in science and art I have found the wings
+     which lift me above them. But the comfort which they afford
+     is, after all, only a miserable comfort, and does not make up
+     for the proud consciousness of belonging to a nation strong,
+     respected, and feared. However, I am comforted by the thought
+     of Germany's future. Yes, the German people has a future. The
+     destiny of the Germans is not yet fulfilled. The time, the
+     right time, no human eye can foresee, nor can human power
+     hasten it on. To us individuals, meanwhile, is it given, to
+     every one according to his talents, his inclinations, and his
+     position, to increase, to strengthen, and to spread national
+     culture. In order that in this respect, at least, Germany may
+     be ahead of other nations and that the national spirit,
+     instead of being stifled and discouraged, may be kept alive
+     and hopeful and ready to rise in all its might when the day of
+     glory dawns.
+
+If I am not mistaken, these words of Germany's greatest poet express
+accurately what the German people during the last hundred years has been
+striving for--national culture and national pre-eminence in every field
+of human activity. To advocate the reduction of Germany to a land of
+isolated scientists, poets, artists, and educators is tantamount to a
+call for the destruction of the German Nation.
+
+KUNO FRANCKE.
+
+Harvard University, Sept. 5, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+DR. ELIOT'S SECOND LETTER
+
+The Stout and Warlike Breed
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+There is nothing new in the obsession of the principal European nations
+that, in order to be great and successful in the world as it is, they
+must possess military power available for instant aggression on weak
+nations, as well as for effective defense against strong ones.
+
+When Sir Francis Bacon wrote his essay on "The True Greatness of
+Kingdoms and Estates" he remarked that forts, arsenals, goodly races of
+horses, armaments, and the like would all be useless "except the breed
+and disposition of the people be stout and warlike." He denied that
+money is the sinews of war, giving preference to the sinews of men's
+arms, and quoted Solon's remark to Croesus, "Sir, if any other come that
+hath better iron than you, he will be master of all this gold"--a truly
+Bismarckian proposition. Indeed, Sir Francis Bacon says explicitly "that
+the principal point of greatness in any State is to have a race of
+military men."
+
+Goethe, reflecting on the wretchedness of the German people as a whole,
+found no comfort in the German genius for science, literature, and art,
+or only a miserable comfort which "does not make up for the proud
+consciousness of belonging to a nation strong, respected, and feared."
+Because Germany in his time was weak in the military sense, he could
+write: "I have often felt a bitter grief at the thought of the German
+people, which is so noble individually, and so wretched as a whole"; and
+he longed for the day when the national spirit, kept alive and hopeful,
+should be "ready to rise in all its might when the day of glory dawns."
+
+"The day of glory" was to be the day of military power. Carlyle said of
+Germany and France in November, 1870, "that noble, patient, deep, pious,
+and solid Germany should be at length welded into a nation, and become
+Queen of the Continent, instead of vaporing, vainglorious,
+gesticulating, quarrelsome, restless, and oversensitive France, seems to
+me that hopefulest public fact that has occurred in my time." How did
+Germany attain to this position of "Queen of the Continent"? By creating
+and maintaining, with utmost intelligence and skill, the strongest army
+in Europe--an army which within six years had been used successfully
+against Denmark, Austria, and France. Germany became "Queen" by virtue
+of her military power.
+
+In the same paper Carlyle said of the French Revolution, of which he was
+himself the great portrayer: "I often call that a celestial infernal
+phenomenon, the most memorable in our world for a thousand years; on the
+whole, a transcendent revolt against the devil and his works, (since
+shams are all and sundry of the devil, and poisonous and unendurable to
+man.)" Now, the French Revolution was an extraordinary outbreak of
+passionate feeling and physical violence on the part of the French
+Nation, both at home and abroad; and it led on to the Napoleonic wars,
+which were tremendous physical struggles for mastery in Europe.
+
+In a recent public statement two leading philosophical writers of modern
+Germany, Profs. Eucken and Haeckel, denounce the "brutal national
+egoism" of England, which they say "recognizes no rights on the part of
+others, and, unconcerned about morality or unmorality, pursues only its
+own advantage"; and they attribute to England the purpose to hinder at
+any cost the further growth of German greatness. But what are the
+elements of that German greatness which England is determined to arrest
+by joining France and Russia in war against Germany and Austria-Hungary?
+The three elements of recent German greatness are the extension of her
+territory; contiguous territories in Europe and in other continents
+colonial possessions; the enlargement of German commerce and wealth, and
+to these ends the firm establishment of her military supremacy in
+Europe. These are the ideas on the true greatness of nations which have
+prevailed in the ruling oligarchy of Germany for at least sixty years,
+and now seem to have been accepted, or acquiesced in, by the whole
+German people. In this view, the foundation of national greatness is
+fighting power.
+
+This conception of national greatness has prevailed at many different
+epochs--Macedonian, Roman, Saracen, Spanish, English, and French--and,
+indeed, has appeared from time to time in almost all the nations and
+tribes of the earth; but the civilized world is now looking for better
+foundations of national greatness than force and fighting.
+
+The partial successes of democracy in Europe have much increased the
+evils of war. Sir Francis Bacon looked for a fighting class; under the
+feudal system when a Baron went to war he took with him his vassals, or
+that portion of them that could be spared from the fields at home.
+Universal conscription is a modern invention, the horrors of which, as
+now exhibited in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and France, much exceed those
+of earlier martial methods. There has never been such an interruption of
+agricultural and industrial production, or such a rending of family ties
+in consequence of war as is now taking place in the greater part of
+Europe. Moreover, mankind has never before had the use of such
+destructive implements as the machine gun, the torpedo, and the dynamite
+bomb. The progress of science has much increased the potential
+destructiveness of warfare.
+
+Thinking people in all the civilized countries are asking themselves
+what the fundamental trouble with civilization is, and where to look for
+means of escape from the present intolerable conditions. Christianity in
+nineteen centuries has afforded no relief. The so-called mitigations of
+war are comparatively trivial. The recent Balkan wars were as ferocious
+as those of Alexander. The German aviators drop aimless bombs at night
+into cities occupied chiefly by non-combatants. The North Sea is strewn
+with floating mines which may destroy fishing, freight, or passenger
+vessels of any nation, neutral or belligerent, which have business on
+that sea. The ruthless destruction of the Louvain Library by German
+soldiers reminds people who have read history that the destroyers of the
+Alexandria Library have ever since been called fanatics and barbarians.
+The German Army tries to compel unfortified Belgian cities and towns to
+pay huge ransoms to save themselves from destruction--a method which the
+Barbary States, indeed, were accustomed to use against their Christian
+neighbors, but which has long been held to be a method appropriate only
+for brigands and pirates--Greek, Sicilian, Syrian, or Chinese.
+
+
+What Is Wrong with Civilization?
+
+How can it be that the Government of a civilized State commits, or
+permits in its agents, such barbarities? The fundamental reason seems to
+be that most of the European nations still believe that national
+greatness depends on the possession and brutal use of force, and is to
+be maintained and magnified only by military and naval power.
+
+In North America there are two large communities--heretofore inspired
+chiefly by ideals of English origin--which have never maintained
+conscripted armies, and have never fortified against each other their
+long frontier--Canada and the United States. Both may fairly be called
+great peoples even now; and both give ample promise for the future.
+Neither of these peoples lacks the "stout and warlike" quality of which
+Sir Francis Bacon spoke; both have often exhibited it. The United States
+suffered for four years from a civil war, characterized by determined
+fighting, in indecisive battles, in which the losses, in proportion to
+the number of men engaged, were often much heavier than any thus far
+reported from the present battlefields in Belgium and France. There
+being then no lack of martial spirit in these two peoples, it is an
+instructive phenomenon that power to conquer is not their ideal of
+national greatness. Much the same thing may be said of some other
+self-governing constituents of the British Empire, such as Australia,
+New Zealand, and South Africa. They, too, have a better ideal of
+national greatness than that of military supremacy.
+
+What are the real ambitions and hopes of the people of the United States
+and the people of Canada in regard to their own future? Their
+expectations of greatness certainly are not based on any conception of
+invincible military force, or desire for the physical means of enforcing
+their own will on their neighbors. They both believe in the free
+commonwealth, administered justly, and with the purpose of securing for
+each individual all the freedom he can exercise without injury to his
+neighbors and the collective well-being. They desire for themselves,
+each for itself, a strong Government, equipped to perform its functions
+with dignity, certainty, and efficiency; but they wish to have that
+Government under the control of the deliberate public opinion of free
+citizens, and not under the control of any Praetorian Guard, Oligarchic
+Council, or General Staff, and they insist that the civil authority
+should always control such military and police forces as it may be
+necessary to maintain for protective purposes.
+
+
+True National Greatness.
+
+They believe that the chief object of government should be the promotion
+of the public welfare by legislative and administrative means; that the
+processes of government should be open and visible, and their results be
+incessantly published for approval or disapproval. They believe that a
+nation becomes great through industrial productiveness and the resulting
+internal and external commerce, through the gradual increase of comfort
+and general well-being in the population, and through the advancement of
+science, letters, and art. They believe that education, free intercourse
+with other nations, and religious enthusiasm and toleration are means of
+national greatness, and that in the development and use of these means
+force has no place. They attribute national greatness in others, as well
+as in themselves, not to the possession of military force, but to the
+advance of the people in freedom, industry, righteousness, and
+good-will.
+
+They believe that the ideals of fighting power and domination should be
+replaced by the ideals of peaceful competition in production and trade,
+of generous rivalry in education, scientific discovery, and the fine
+arts, of co-operation for mutual benefit among nations different in
+size, natural abilities, and material resources, and of federation among
+nations associated geographically or historically, or united in the
+pursuit of some common ends and in the cherishing of like hopes and
+aspirations. They think that the peace of the world can be best promoted
+by solemn public compacts between peoples--not Princes or
+Cabinets--compacts made to be kept, strengthened by mutual services and
+good offices, and watched over by a permanent International Judicial
+Tribunal authorized to call on the affiliated nations for whatever force
+may be necessary to induce obedience to its decrees.
+
+Will not the civilized world learn from this horrible European war--the
+legitimate result of the policies of Bismarck and his associates and
+disciples--that these democratic ideals constitute the rational
+substitute for the imperialistic ideal of fighting force as the
+foundation of national greatness? The new ideals will still need the
+protection and support, both within and without each nation, of a
+restrained public force, acting under law, national and international,
+just as a sane mind needs as its agent a sound and strong body. Health
+and vigor will continue to be the safeguards of morality, justice, and
+mercy.
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Asticou, Me., Sept. 14, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+DR. ELIOT'S THIRD LETTER.
+
+Why Is America Anti-German?
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+The numerous pamphlets which German writers are now distributing in the
+United States, and the many letters about the European war which
+Americans are now receiving from German and German-American friends, are
+convincing thoughtful people in this country that American public
+opinion has some weight with the German Government and people, or, at
+least, some interest for them; but that the reasons which determine
+American sympathy with the Allies, rather than with Germany and
+Austria-Hungary, are not understood in Germany, and are not always
+appreciated by persons of German birth who have lived long in the United
+States.
+
+It would be a serious mistake to suppose that Americans feel any
+hostility or jealousy toward Germany, or fail to recognize the immense
+obligations under which she has placed all the rest of the world,
+although they now feel that the German Nation has been going wrong in
+theoretical and practical politics for more than a hundred years, and is
+today reaping the consequences of her own wrong-thinking and
+wrong-doing.
+
+There are many important matters concerning which American sympathy is
+strongly with Germany: (1) The unification of Germany, which Bismarck
+and his co-workers accomplished, naturally commended itself to
+Americans, whose own country is a firm federation of many more or less
+different States, containing more or less different peoples; while most
+Americans did not approve Bismarck's methods and means, they cordially
+approved his accomplishment of German unification; (2) Americans have
+felt unqualified admiration for the commercial and financial growth of
+Germany during the past forty years, believing it to be primarily the
+fruit of well-directed industry and enterprise; (3) all educated
+Americans feel strong gratitude to the German Nation for its
+extraordinary achievements in letters, science, and education within the
+last hundred years. Jealousy of Germany in these matters is absolutely
+foreign to American thought, and that any external power or influence
+should undertake to restrict or impair German progress in these respects
+would seem to all Americans intolerable, and, indeed incredible; (4) all
+Americans who have had any experience in Governmental or educational
+administration recognize the fact, that German administration--both in
+peace and in war--is the most efficient in the world, and for that
+efficiency they feel nothing but respect and admiration, unless the
+efficiency requires an inexpedient suppression or restriction of
+individual liberty; (5) Americans sympathize with a unanimous popular
+sentiment in favor of a war which the people believe to be essential to
+the greatness, and even the safety, of their country--a sentiment which
+prompts to family and property sacrifices very distressing at the
+moment, and irremediable in the future; and they believe that the German
+people today are inspired by just such an overwhelming sentiment.
+
+How is it, then, that, with all these strong American feelings tending
+to make them sympathize with the German people in good times or bad, in
+peace or in war, the whole weight of American opinion is on the side of
+the Allies in the present war? The reasons are to be found, of course,
+in the political and social history of the American people, and in its
+Governmental philosophy and practice today. These reasons have come out
+of the past, and are intrenched in all the present ideals and practices
+of the American Commonwealth. They inevitably lead Americans to object
+strongly and irrevocably to certain German national practices of great
+moment, practices which are outgrowths of Prussian theories, and
+experiences that have come to prevail in Germany during the past hundred
+years. In the hope that American public opinion about the European war
+may be a little better understood abroad it seems worth while to
+enumerate those German practices which do not conform to American
+standards in the conduct of public affairs:
+
+(a) Americans object to the committal of a nation to grave measures of
+foreign policy by a permanent Executive--Czar, Kaiser, or King--advised
+in secret by professional diplomatists who consider themselves the
+personal representatives of their respective sovereigns. The American
+people have no permanent Executive, and the profession of diplomacy
+hardly exists among them. In the conduct of their national affairs they
+utterly distrust secrecy, and are accustomed to demand and secure the
+utmost publicity.
+
+(b) They object to placing in any ruler's hands the power to order
+mobilization or declare war in advance of deliberate consultation with a
+representative assembly, and of co-operative action thereby. The fact
+that German mobilization was ordered three days in advance of the
+meeting of the Reichstag confounds all American ideas and practices
+about the rights of the people and the proper limits of Executive
+authority.
+
+(c) The secrecy of European diplomatic intercourse and of international
+understandings and terms of alliance in Europe is in the view of
+ordinary Americans not only inexpedient, but dangerous and
+unjustifiable. Under the Constitution of the United States no treaty
+negotiated by the President and his Cabinet is valid until it has been
+publicly discussed and ratified by the Senate. During this discussion
+the people can make their voice heard through the press, the telegraph,
+and the telephone.
+
+(d) The reliance on military force as the foundation of true national
+greatness seems to thinking Americans erroneous, and in the long run
+degrading to a Christian nation. They conceive that the United States
+may fairly be called a great nation; but that its greatness is due to
+intellectual and moral forces acting through adequate material forces
+and expressed in education, public health and order, agriculture,
+manufacturing, and commerce, and the resulting general well-being of the
+people. It has never in all its history organized what could be called a
+standing or a conscripted army; and, until twenty years ago, its navy
+was very small, considering the length of its sea coasts. There is
+nothing in the history of the American people to make them believe that
+the true greatness of nations depends on military power.
+
+
+Object to Extension by Force.
+
+(e) They object to the extension of national territory by force,
+contrary to the wishes of the population concerned. This objection is
+the inevitable result of democratic institutions; and the American
+people have been faithful to this democratic opinion under circumstances
+of considerable difficulty--as, for example, in withdrawing from Cuba,
+the rich island which had been occupied by American troops during the
+short war with Spain, (1898,) and in the refusing to intervene by force
+in Mexico for the protection of American investors, when that contiguous
+country was distracted by factional fighting. This objection applies to
+long-past acts of the German Government an well as to its proceedings in
+the present war--as, for example, to the taking of Schleswig-Holstein
+and Alsace-Lorraine, as well as to the projected occupation of Belgium.
+
+(f) Americans object strenuously to the violation of treaties between
+nations on the allegation of military necessity or for any other reason
+whatever. They believe that the progress of civilization will depend in
+future on the general acceptance of the sanctity of contracts or solemn
+agreements between nations and on the development by common consent of
+international law. The neutralization treaties, the arbitration
+treaties, The Hague Conferences, and some of the serious attempts at
+mediation, although none of them go far enough, and many of them have
+been rudely violated on occasion, illustrate a strong tendency in the
+civilized parts of the world to prevent international wars by means of
+agreements deliberately made in time of peace. The United States has
+proposed and made more of these agreements than any other power, has
+adhered to them, and profited by them. Under one such agreement, made
+nearly a hundred years ago, Canada and the United States have avoided
+forts and armaments against each other, although they have had serious
+differences of opinion and clashes of interests, and the frontier is
+3,000 miles long and for the most part without natural barriers.
+Cherishing the hope that the peace of Europe and the rights of its
+peoples may be secured through solemn compacts, (which should include
+the establishment of a permanent international judicial tribunal,
+supported by an international force,) Americans see, in the treatment by
+the German Government of the Belgian neutralization treaty as nothing
+but a piece of paper which might be torn up on the ground of military
+necessity, evidence of the adoption by Germany of a retrograde policy of
+the most alarming sort. That single act on the part of Germany--the
+violation of the neutral territory of Belgium--would have determined
+American opinion in favor of the Allies, if it had stood alone by
+itself--the reason being that American hopes for the peace and order of
+the world are based on the sanctity of treaties.
+
+(g) American public opinion, however, has been greatly shocked in other
+ways by the German conduct of the war. The American common people see no
+justification for the dropping of bombs, to which no specific aim can be
+given, into cities and towns chiefly inhabited by non-combatants, the
+burning or blowing up of large portions of unfortified towns and cities,
+the destruction of precious monuments and treasuries of art, the
+strewing of floating mines through the North Sea, the exacting of
+ransoms from cities and towns under threat of destroying them, and the
+holding of unarmed citizens as hostages for the peaceable behavior of a
+large population under threat of summary execution of the hostages in
+case of any disorder. All these seem to Americans unnecessary,
+inexpedient, and unjustifiable methods of warfare, sure to breed hatred
+and contempt toward the nation that uses them, and therefore to make it
+difficult for future generations to maintain peace and order in Europe.
+They cannot help imagining the losses civilization would suffer if the
+Russians should ever carry into Western Europe the kind of war which the
+Germans are now waging in Belgium and France. They have supposed that
+war was to be waged in this century only against public, armed forces
+and their supplies and shelters.
+
+These opinions and prepossessions on the part of the American people
+have obviously grown out of the ideals which the early English colonists
+carried with them to the American wilderness in the seventeenth century,
+out of the long fighting and public discussion which preceded the
+adoption of the Constitution of the United States in the eighteenth
+century, and out of the peculiar experiences of the free Commonwealths
+which make up the United States, as they have spread across the almost
+uninhabited continent during the past 125 years.
+
+The experience and the situation of modern Germany have been utterly
+different. Germany was divided for centuries into discordant parts, had
+ambitious and martial neighbors, and often felt the weight of their
+attacks. Out of war came accessions of territory for Prussia, and at
+last German unity. The reliance of intelligent and patriotic Germany on
+military force as the basis of national greatness is a natural result of
+its experiences. Americans, however, believe that this reliance is
+unsound both theoretically and practically. The wars in Europe since
+1870-71, the many threatenings of war, and the present catastrophe seem
+to Americans to demonstrate that no amount of military preparedness on
+the part of the nations of Europe can possibly keep the peace of the
+Continent, or indeed prevent frequent explosions of destructive warfare.
+They think, too, that preparation for war on the part of Germany better
+than any of her neighbors can make will not keep her at peace or protect
+her from invasion, even if this better preparation include advantages of
+detail which have been successfully kept secret. All the nations which
+surround Germany are capable of developing a strong fighting spirit; and
+all the countries of Europe, except England and Russia, possess the
+means of quickly assembling and getting into action great bodies of men.
+In other words, all the European States are capable of developing a
+passionate patriotism, and all possess the railroads, roads,
+conveyances, telegraphs, and telephones which make rapid mobilization
+possible. No perfection of military forces, and no amount of previous
+study of feasible campaigns against neighbors, can give peaceful
+security to Germany in the present condition of the great European
+States. In the actual development of weapons and munitions, and of the
+art of quick intrenching, the attacking force in battle on land is at a
+great disadvantage in comparison with the force on the defensive. That
+means indecisive battles and ultimately an indecisive war, unless each
+party is resolved to push the war to the utter exhaustion and
+humiliation of the other--a long process which involves incalculable
+losses and wastes and endless miseries. Americans have always before
+them the memory of their four years' civil war, which, although
+resolutely prosecuted on both sides, could not be brought to a close
+until the resources of the Southern States in men and material were
+exhausted. In that dreadful process the whole capital of the Southern
+States was wiped out.
+
+
+But One Possible Issue.
+
+Now that the sudden attack on Paris has failed, and adequate time has
+been secured to summon the slower-moving forces of Russia and England,
+and these two resolute and persistent peoples have decided to use all
+their spiritual and material forces in co-operation with France against
+Germany, thoughtful Americans can see but one possible issue of the
+struggle, whether it be long or short, namely, the defeat of Germany and
+Austria-Hungary in their present undertakings, and the abandonment by
+both peoples of the doctrine that their salvation depends on militarism
+and the maintenance of autocratic Executives intrusted with the power
+and the means to make sudden war. They believe that no human being
+should ever be trusted with such power. The alternative is, of course,
+genuine constitutional government, with the military power subject to
+the civil power.
+
+The American people grieve over the fruitless sacrifices of life,
+property, and the natural human joys which the German people are making
+to a wrong and impossible ideal of national power and welfare. The
+sacrifices which Germany is imposing on the Allies are fearfully heavy,
+but there is reason to hope that these will not be fruitless, for out of
+them may come great gains for liberty and peace in Europe.
+
+All experienced readers on this side of the Atlantic are well aware that
+nine-tenths of all the reports they get about the war come from English
+and French sources, and this knowledge makes them careful not to form
+judgments about details until the events and deeds tell their own story.
+They cannot even tell to which side victory inclines in a long,
+far-extended battle until recognizable changes in the positions of the
+combatants show what the successes or failures must have been. The
+English and French win some advantage so far as the formation of public
+opinion in this country is concerned, because those two Governments send
+hither official reports on current events more frequently than the
+German Government does, and with more corroborative details. The amount
+of secrecy with which the campaign is surrounded on both sides is,
+however, a new and unwelcome experience for both the English and the
+American public.
+
+
+German Ignorance of Events.
+
+The pamphlets by German publicists and men of letters which are now
+coming to this country, and the various similar publications written
+here, seem to indicate that the German public is still kept by its
+Government in ignorance about the real antecedents of the war and about
+many of the incidents and aspects of the portentous combat. These
+documents seem to Americans to contain a large amount of misinformation
+about the attack of Austria-Hungary on Servia, the diplomatic
+negotiations and the correspondence between the sovereigns which
+immediately preceded the war, and the state of mind of the Belgian and
+English peoples. American believers in the good sense and good feeling
+of the common people naturally imagine, when an awful calamity befalls a
+nation, that the people cannot have been warned of its approach, else
+they would have avoided it. In this case they fear that the Emperor, the
+Chancellery, and the General Staff have themselves been misinformed in
+important respects, have made serious miscalculations which they are
+proposing to conceal as long as possible, and are not taking the common
+people into their confidence. American sympathies are with the German
+people in their sufferings and losses, but not with their rulers, or
+with the military class, or with the professors and men of letters who
+have been teaching for more than a generation that might makes right.
+That short phrase contains the fundamental fallacy which for fifty years
+has been poisoning the springs of German thought and German policy on
+public affairs.
+
+Dread of the Muscovite does not seem to Americans a reasonable
+explanation of the present actions of Germany and Austria-Hungary,
+except so far as irrational panic can be said to be an explanation.
+Against possible, though not probable, Russian aggression, a firm
+defensive alliance of all Western Europe would be a much better
+protection than the single might of Germany. It were easy to imagine
+also two new "buffer" States--a reconstructed Poland and a Balkan
+Confederation. As to French "revenge," it is the inevitable and
+praiseworthy consequence of Germany's treatment of France in 1870-71.
+The great success of Germany in expanding her commerce during the last
+thirty years makes it hard for Americans to understand the hot
+indignation of the Germans against the British because of whatever
+ineffective opposition Great Britain may have offered to that expansion.
+No amount of commercial selfishness on the part of insular England can
+justify Germany in attempting to seize supreme power in Europe and
+thence, perhaps, in the world.
+
+Finally, Americans hope and expect that there will be no such fatal
+issue of the present struggle as the destruction or ruin of the German
+Nation. On the contrary, they believe that Germany will be freer,
+happier, and greater than ever when once she has got rid of the
+monstrous Bismarck policies and the Emperor's archaic conception of his
+function, and has enjoyed twenty years of real peace. Your obedient
+servant,
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Asticou, Me., Sept. 28, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Dr. Dernburg's Reply to the Third Letter
+
+     Late German Secretary of State for the Colonies; lived for
+     several years in the United States as member of the banking
+     firm of Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co., New York.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Prof. Eliot is conferring a great favor on the exponents of the German
+side in the present struggle in explaining to them what he thinks of the
+so-called anti-German feeling in the United States. I am sure his views
+will be read also in Germany with a great deal of attention, although he
+will certainly not remain unchallenged in nearly all essential points.
+The compliment that Prof. Eliot pays to the German people as a whole
+must be specially appreciated, the more so as it comes from a scientist
+whose great authority is equally recognized on both sides of the
+Atlantic.
+
+The anti-German feeling, according to Prof. Eliot, takes its source from
+the American objection to the committal of a nation to grave mistakes by
+a permanent Executive. But then, with the exception of France, all the
+warring nations have permanent Executives, professional diplomatists;
+all their affairs are conducted in secret, and all their rulers have the
+power, including the President of France, to embroil their nations in
+war. The German Emperor is in this respect certainly more restricted
+than the other heads of State, and I have not read that the declaration
+of war has been expressly sanctioned by the English Parliament, and
+certainly the mobilization of the English fleet that took place in July,
+and the mobilization of the Russian Army that took place at the same
+time, have not even been brought to the knowledge of the respective
+Parliaments. When, therefore, the same conditions prevail in all the
+warring States, how can they be made the reason for such an anti-German
+feeling?
+
+The same objection holds good with the American antipathy against the
+power of rulers to order mobilization or declare war in advance without
+consultation of Parliament, to which I have only to say that the English
+fleet was mobilized without consulting the English Parliament, while in
+Germany the Bundesrat, the representatives of the Federal States, as
+well as of the Federal Diets, has been duly consulted. I may add that
+also the party leaders of the Reichstag, which could not be convoked
+earlier than two days after the declaration of the war, have been
+continuously informed and consulted.
+
+Against the next paragraph, where Prof. Eliot complains of the secrecy
+of European diplomacy and of international treaties and understandings,
+the same objection must be made. The state described here as particular
+to Germany prevails in all European countries, and neither the treaty of
+the Russian-French alliance, nor the arrangements of the Triple Entente
+have ever been submitted to the French or British Parliaments. As
+regards the American attitude toward armaments, I purposely refrain from
+adducing the American example into my argument, much as I could show
+that with a very large part of the American Nation the idea of defending
+the American coast against any invader and the maintenance of a strong
+Pan-American policy, if need be by arms, is just as fixed a tenet as the
+German idea that the Fatherland should be held safe from invasion or
+destruction by the will and the strength of its people. England has
+always held the same, if not through her army so through her navy, and
+so did the rest of Europe; and there is no argument to be gotten from
+that for an anti-German feeling.
+
+
+No Seizure of Schleswig-Holstein.
+
+Americans object to the extension of territory by force. Germany has
+never done that, even if one goes back as far as Prof. Eliot wishes to
+go. Mr. Eliot is absolutely mistaken as to the history of the
+incorporation of Schleswig-Holstein into Prussia. Schleswig-Holstein was
+a Dual-Dukedom that never belonged to Denmark, but having as its Duke
+the King of Denmark as long as he belonged to the elder line of the
+House of Oldenburg. This elder line was extinct when King Christian
+VIII. died without male issue. His successor wanted to incorporate the
+two German Dukedoms into Denmark. Then the people stood up and expressed
+the desire to remain with the German Federation, to which it had always
+belonged, and there it is now, of its own free will. The natural
+dividing line between Denmark and Germany, however, is the River Eider.
+There are about 30,000 Danes south of the Eider, who have been absorbed
+against their will, a thing that can never be avoided, and that has
+sometimes given Prussia a little trouble.
+
+
+Alsace-Lorraine Originally German.
+
+As to Alsace-Lorraine, the facts are known to be that it had belonged to
+Germany until it had been taken, against the will of the people, by
+France under Louis XIV., and it was returned to Germany as a matter of
+right, more than three-quarters of the population being of German
+descent and speaking the German language.
+
+But let me ask in return, Mr. Eliot, when did ever in her political
+career England consult the will of the people when she took a country?
+Can he say that, when England tore the treaty of Majuba Hill, like a
+"scrap of paper," and made war on the Boers? Did she consult the people
+of Cyprus in 1878? Does he know of any plebiscite in India? Has she
+consulted the Persians, or has France consulted the people of Morocco,
+or of Indo-China, Italy the people of Tripoli? Since Germany has not
+acted here in any other way forty years ago than all the other nations,
+why does Dr. Eliot consider the American people justified in taking
+anti-German views for reasons of such an old date, while he forgives the
+nations of the party he favors for much more recent infringement of his
+rule?
+
+"Americans object to the violation of treaties." So do the Germans. We
+have always kept our treaties, and mean to do so in the future. The fact
+with Belgium is that her neutrality was very one-sided; that, as can be
+proved, as early as the 25th of June, Liege was full of French soldiers,
+that Belgian fortifications were all directed against Germany, and that
+for years past it was the Belgian press that outdid the French press in
+attacks against Germany. But I can give Mr. Eliot here some authority
+that he has so far not challenged. When Sir Edward Grey presented the
+English case in the House of Commons on the 3d of August he declared
+that the British attitude was laid down by the British Government in
+1870, and he verbally cited Mr. Gladstone's speech, in which he said he
+could not subscribe to the assertion that the simple fact of the
+existence of a guarantee was binding on every party, irrespective
+altogether of the particular position in which it may find itself at the
+time when the occasion for acting on the guarantee arises. He called
+that assertion a "stringent and impracticable" view of the guarantee and
+the whole treaty a "complicated question." So Mr. Gladstone, and with
+him Sir Edward Grey, has held the Belgian neutrality treaty not binding
+on every party, when it was against the interest which the particular
+situation dictated, when the war broke out. It was the interest of Great
+Britain to maintain the treaty, and that is why she acted. It was
+against German interest to maintain the treaty, and that is why she
+broke it. That is the British and not the German theory, and I could
+very well rest my case here. My theory is with the German Chancellor,
+that I greatly regret the necessity of violating the Belgian neutrality,
+after Belgium had chosen to repel the German overtures for a free
+passage.
+
+It is quite certain that the breach of the Belgian neutrality by Germany
+was used in Great Britain as a powerful instrument to influence the
+public sentiment. Every war must be borne by national unity, and it is
+the duty of the nation's leaders to secure such unity by all practicable
+means. But has it been forgotten that the attitude of Sir Edward Grey
+caused such excellent men as Lord Morley, John Burns, and Sir John
+Trevelyan to leave the Cabinet, where they were looked upon as the best
+and most liberal members of the ruling combination? Bernard Shaw says of
+Great Britain that she has never been at a loss for an effective moral
+attitude. Such an attitude is a powerful weapon in diplomatical and
+actual warfare, and it must be resorted to, if the necessity arises. But
+that cannot blind us to the fact that the British Government allowed the
+political interest to be the paramount consideration in this Belgian
+neutrality matter. The German interest for not acting on the guarantee
+was just as strong as the English to act for it.
+
+The proof is found in the English "White Paper." I cite the famous
+reprint of THE TIMES, (Dispatch No. 148 of Aug. 2 to Paris.) Here Sir
+Edward Grey says: "We were considering ... whether we should declare
+violation of Belgian neutrality to be a casus belli."
+
+
+"Treaties Must Not Be Overrated."
+
+I am an ardent believer in all international arrangements to prevent
+difficulties and wars between nations, and I rejoice with the American
+people in the signal success this policy is now having in this country.
+But international treaties must not be overrated. There are questions
+which cannot be settled by them. It is too difficult to explain just the
+nature of such situations as arose in Europe, so I may be permitted for
+once to ask this question: Does Prof. Eliot believe that the majority of
+the American people think that the unwritten Monroe Doctrine could be
+made the subject of arbitration, whether it had a right to exist or to
+be enforced? I must emphatically say, No, it could not. It can be as
+little arbitrated upon as a matter of religion or of personal morals.
+
+Mr. Eliot thinks a happy result of the war would be that American
+institutions should prevail in Germany thereafter. Why should Germany
+only become a representative republic? Does he not demand the same
+regarding Russia, England, Italy, Austria, and Japan? And if not, why
+not?
+
+From all this I fail to see the point in the reasons given by Prof.
+Eliot why fair-minded Americans should side with the Allies because the
+objections made against German procedure, down to the breach of the
+Belgian neutrality, must be made against all other European States.
+British history is just teeming with examples of broken treaties and
+torn "scraps of paper." The chasing of German diplomatic representatives
+out of neutral Egypt is a case in point.
+
+I must insist that whatever anti-German feeling there is is not fully
+explained by Prof. Eliot, and his article cannot be made a code by which
+German behavior could be regulated in the future. Prof. Eliot is a
+scholar; business interests do not come very near him. So he is
+especially concerned with the ethical aspect of the matter. He believes
+the Germans think that "might is right." This is very unjust. Our
+history proves that we have never acted on this principle. We have never
+got or attempted to get a world empire such as England has won, all of
+which, with a very few exceptions, by might, by war, and by conquest.
+The German writers who have expounded this doctrine have only shown how
+the large world empires of England and France were welded together, what
+means have been adopted for that purpose, and against what sort of
+political doctrines we must beware.
+
+
+Our Sympathy for the Under Dog.
+
+As Dr. Eliot makes his remarks for the benefit of his German confreres,
+may I be permitted to say to them what I consider the reason for the
+American attitude? There is, in the first place, the ethical side.
+Americans have a very strong sense of generosity, and are, as a rule,
+very good sports. They think Belgium a small nation, brutally attacked
+by a much bigger fellow; they feel that the little man stands up bravely
+and gamely, and fights for all he is worth. Such a situation will always
+command American sympathy and antagonism against the stronger. Then
+there is the business side. Americans feel that this war is endangering
+their political and commercial interests, so they are naturally angry
+against the people who, they believe, have brought the war about.
+
+As Germany has not had an opportunity to make herself heard as amply as
+her adversaries, they think that it was Germany which set the world
+afire, and that is what they resent, and in which they were justified,
+if it were true. But the question of the hour is not the question of the
+past, but of the present and of the future, and the people on this side
+who will give Germany fair play because it is just in them will examine
+the situation in the light of their interests. Then they will find that
+Belgium had been in league with the Allies long before the conflagration
+broke out, only to be left to its own resources when the critical hour
+arose. They will further find that it is not Germany but England and her
+allies that are throttling commerce, maiming cables, stopping mails,
+and breaking neutrality and other treaties to further their aims; that,
+finally, today England has established a world rule on the sea to which
+even America must submit. They will then soon come to the conclusion
+that, no matter what happened in the past, the peace of the world can
+only be assured by a good understanding between Germany and the United
+States as a sort of counterbalance against the unmeasured aggrandizement
+of English sea power. Then the feeling toward Germany will be
+considerably better, and I may add that even now it is not so very bad
+after all.
+
+I make these remarks with due respect to Prof. Eliot and his views, and
+with great reluctance for being compelled to enter the field against a
+personality whose undoubted superiority I wish to be the first to
+acknowledge.
+
+BERNHARD DERNBURG.
+
+New York, Oct. 4, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Dr. Jordan's Reply to Dr. Dernburg
+
+     Daniel Jordan is Assistant Professor of Roman Languages and
+     Literature at Columbia University.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+President Eliot is as fair a judge of the present European situation as
+can be found anywhere, and is well qualified to explain the almost
+unanimous attitude of thoughtful Americans in regard to Germany. Dr.
+Dernburg, on the other hand, has been officially sent from Germany to
+expound the German official version; both his point of view and his
+treatment of facts are essentially un-American.
+
+He says: "Americans object to the extension of territory by force.
+Germany has never done that." Apparently he believes that the Poles
+asked Prussia to become her subjects. The facts are that they have
+fought and begged for autonomy for nearly 150 years, and that at the
+present time high German officials are members of the Anti-Polish
+League.
+
+Dr. Dernburg, when he comes to Schleswig-Holstein, states that 30,000
+Danes south of the Eider River (this is in Holstein) have been absorbed
+against their will, "a thing that can never be avoided, and that has
+sometimes given Prussia a little trouble." But what about the Danes
+north of the Eider River? Schleswig and Holstein are really two
+provinces. Holstein is German, but the northern part of Schleswig, north
+of Fiensburg, is inhabited by Danes who are longing to join Denmark and
+who number about 200,000. Article 5 of the Treaty of Prague, signed on
+Aug. 23, 1866, after Sadowa, between Prussia and Austria, states that
+the inhabitants of Northern Schleswig shall be given a chance to join
+Denmark, "if they should so express the desire by a free vote." Prussia
+has not respected this solemn promise any more than former promises
+concerning Schleswig. The frequently renewed protests of the annexed
+Danes have remained unanswered. The best proof that Prussia's title to
+Danish Schleswig was not considered as very substantial is that in
+October, 1878, Prussia finally obtained from Austria the annulment of
+Article 5 of the Treaty of Prague, which dealt with the taking of a
+plebiscite in Danish Schleswig.
+
+To decide the fate of a province without consulting the inhabitants
+seems perfectly natural to German Kultur, but to Americans it is not;
+the days of slavery have gone, and wherever slavery still exists it is
+time to make a change.
+
+As to Alsace-Lorraine, says Dr. Dernburg, "the facts are known that it
+had belonged to Germany until it was taken by Louis XIV., against the
+will of the people, and that it was returned to Germany as a matter of
+right." Such an argument is mediaeval, and it might just as well be
+argued that Germany should now belong to France, because Germany was
+once conquered, civilized, and organized by inhabitants of France, led
+by their Frankish King. And it is not sure that in 1648 Alsace was not
+glad to become French, because Louis XIV., by the Treaty of Westphalia,
+then granted perfect religious freedom to the Alsatians, who unlike
+their neighbors, lived ever since without fear of religious
+persecutions. Lorraine itself was not annexed by Louis XIV., nor by
+force, as it was peacefully united to France at the death of Stanislas,
+father of the Queen of France, Marie-Lesinzka. As for the inhabitants of
+Metz, they were considered long ago as French. Metz was annexed to
+France in 1552, with the full consent of the then allies of the French
+King, Henri II., the German Princes, who recognized by the Treaty of
+Cateau-Cambresis, (1559,) that Metz, Toul, and Verdun were French
+cities, and could not be considered as a part of the German
+Confederation. So there were at one time German Princes who accepted
+the dogma of the consent of the governed!
+
+Attacking the record of England in order to defend the record of
+Germany, as Dr. Dernburg does, is no justification for the necessary
+German aggression of today. Even granting that the English record is
+poor, which is a matter open to discussion, two wrongs would not make
+things right.
+
+Dr. Dernburg also compares the policy of aggrandizement of Germany in
+Schleswig, Alsace, &c., with that of other countries in Morocco,
+Tripoli, &c. Even school children know that two things which are
+entirely unlike must not be compared. Northern Africa had too long been
+a den of pirates and brigands, and Latin Europe has rendered an immense
+service to the world in establishing order there. Algeria has been
+conquered in the same way as Morocco is now being conquered, and her
+natives enjoy more genuine liberty than they ever did before; they are
+even willing to fight as volunteers for the country they consider now as
+their own. Neither Danish Schleswig nor Alsace-Lorraine, which were as
+civilized as any other European country when they were last annexed, can
+be compared to Morocco any more than to the Philippines. So this
+comparison made by Dr. Dernburg also falls to pieces.
+
+The case of the German point of view is not entirely without hope. In
+THE TIMES of Oct. 5 Dr. Dernburg approves the annexation of Holstein
+because the Germans of Holstein wanted to belong to Germany. This is a
+sound conclusion, and Dr. Dernburg will doubtless acknowledge
+later--better late than never--that the Alsatians and the Danish of
+Schleswig should have had their say, just like the Germans of Holstein.
+It cannot be possible that to him the wish of the inhabitants of a
+province is the voice of God when it suits Germany and the voice of the
+devil when it suits somebody else.
+
+DANIEL JORDAN.
+
+Columbia University, Nov. 6, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Dr. Irene Sargent's Reply to Dr. Dernburg
+
+     Professor of the History of Fine Arts, Syracuse University.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Contradicting Dr. Eliot, Dr. Bernhard Dernburg says:
+
+     Schleswig-Holstein was a dual Dukedom that never belonged to
+     Denmark; but, having as its Duke the King of Denmark, as long
+     as he belonged to the elder line of the house of Oldenburg ...
+     Frederick VII. wanted to incorporate the two German Dukedoms
+     into Denmark.... Then the people stood up and expressed the
+     desire to remain with the German Federation.
+
+Such an assertion is a summary, inaccurate, and unfair manner of dealing
+with perhaps the most complex series of diplomatic, legal, and racial
+questions that arose in the nineteenth century. It would appear from the
+best evidence that Schleswig was indissolubly united with the Crown of
+Denmark. To maintain this principle Christian VIII. in 1846 issued
+letters patent declaring that the royal line of succession (female) was
+in full force, as far as Schleswig was concerned. As to Holstein, the
+King stated that he was prevented from giving an equally clear decision,
+and the reason of his hesitation lay in the assumption that the law of
+the Salic Saxons excluding women from the throne would naturally prevail
+in Holstein, where the Germans, their customs, and their language were
+dominant. Two years later, Prussia sought to restore her prestige, lost
+in the Revolution of 1848, by sending troops into the Duchies in order
+to enforce the principle that this territory constituted two independent
+and indivisible States, the government of which was hereditary in the
+male line alone. The Prussian troops were afterward withdrawn by the
+hesitating Frederic William, and there followed a succession of
+protocols, constitutions, and compacts until the time of Bismarck, who,
+in his "Reflections," Volume II., Page 10, in writing of the Duchies,
+acknowledges:
+
+"From the beginning I kept annexation steadily before my eyes."
+
+The master of statecraft conquered. But did the people "stand up and
+express their desire to remain with the German Federation," as Dr.
+Dernburg asserts?
+
+If his assertion be true, why were the Danish "optants" subjected to
+domiciliary visits, perquisitions, arrest, and expulsion? And why--only
+to mention one instance of espionage--did the Prussian police confiscate
+the issue of a Danish newspaper published in Schleswig because it
+contained a reference to that Duchy under its historic name of South
+Jutland?
+
+The truth stands that the whole Schleswig-Holstein question is one that
+involves the modern principle of "nationality," and, as such, enters of
+necessity into the present European crisis. It is broadly understood by
+Dr. Eliot and willfully misapprehended by his critic.
+
+Passing on to consider Alsace-Lorraine, Dr. Dernburg declares that "it
+had belonged to Germany until it was taken, against the will of the
+people, under Louis XIV."
+
+In this statement, as in the treatment of the previous question, facts
+are mutilated and wrong impressions are given. Alsace, it is well known,
+was included within the confines of ancient Gaul, its original
+population was Celtic, and it passed, late in the fifth Christian
+century, under the rule of the Franks, one of whose chieftains, Clovis,
+became the founder of the first French monarchy. In dealing with its
+later history Dr. Dernburg confuses the Holy Roman (Germanic) Empire
+with Germany, considered in its modern sense. He appears to forget that
+the reign of Louis XIV. was an age of absolutism and not of plebiscites.
+
+He also ignores that the most strenuous efforts on the part of Germany
+to strangle the French nationality and language in the imperial
+territory (Alsace-Lorraine) have proved useless, although they have been
+exerted constantly for almost a half century.
+
+IRENE SARGENT.
+
+Professor of the History of Fine Arts.
+
+Syracuse University, Nov. 3, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+DR. ELIOT'S FOURTH LETTER.
+
+Germany and World Empire
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Each one of the principal combatants in Europe seems to be anxious to
+prove that it is not responsible for this cruelest, most extensive, and
+most destructive of all wars. Each Government involved has published the
+correspondence between its Chief Executive and other Chief Executives,
+and between its Chancellery or Foreign Office and the equivalent bodies
+in the other nations that have gone to war, and has been at pains to
+give a wide circulation to these documents. To be sure, none of these
+Government publications seems to be absolutely complete. There seems to
+be in all of them suppressions or omissions which only the future
+historian will be able to report--perhaps after many years. They reveal,
+however, the dilapidated state of the Concert of Europe in July, 1914,
+and the flurry in the European Chancelleries which the ultimatum sent by
+Austria-Hungary to Servia produced. They also testify to the existence
+of a new and influential public opinion, about war and peace, to which
+nations that go to war think it desirable to appeal for justification or
+moral support.
+
+These publications have been read with intense interest by impartial
+observers in all parts of the world, and have in many cases determined
+the direction of the readers' sympathy and good will; and yet none of
+them discloses or deals with the real sources of the unprecedented
+calamity. They relate chiefly to the question who struck the match, and
+not to the questions who provided the magazine that exploded, and why
+did he provide it. Grave responsibility, of course, attaches to the
+person who gives the order to mobilize a national army or to invade a
+neighbor's territory; but the real source of the resulting horrors is
+not in such an order, but in the Governmental institutions, political
+philosophy, and long-nurtured passions and purposes of the nation or
+nations concerned.
+
+
+German Desire for World Empire.
+
+The prime source of the present immense disaster in Europe is the desire
+on the part of Germany for world empire, a desire which one European
+nation after another has made its supreme motive, and none that has once
+adopted it has ever completely eradicated. Germany arrived late at this
+desire, being prevented until 1870 from indulging it, because of her
+lack of unity, or rather because of being divided since the Thirty
+Years' War into a large number of separate, more or less independent,
+States. When this disease, which has attacked one nation after another
+through all historic times, struck Germany it exhibited in her case a
+remarkable malignity, moving her to expansion in Europe by force of
+arms, and to the seizure of areas for colonization in many parts of the
+world. Prussia, indeed, had long believed in making her way in Europe by
+fighting, and had repeatedly acted on that belief. Shortly before the
+achievement of German unity by Bismarck she had obtained by war in 1864
+and 1866 important accessions of territory and leadership in all
+Germany.
+
+With this desire for world empire went the belief that it was only to
+be obtained by force of arms. Therefore, united Germany has labored with
+utmost intelligence and energy to prepare the most powerful army in the
+world, and to equip it for instant action in the most perfect manner
+which science and eager invasion could contrive. To develop this supreme
+military machine universal conscription--an outgrowth of the conception
+of the citizens' army of France during the Revolution--was necessary; so
+that every young man in Germany physically competent to bear arms might
+receive the training of a soldier, whether he wished it or not, and
+remain at the call of the Government for military duty during all his
+years of competency, even if he were the only son of a widow, or a
+widower with little children, or the sole support of a family or other
+dependents. In order to the completeness of this military ideal the army
+became the nation and the nation became the army to a degree which had
+never before been realized in either the savage or the civilized world.
+This army could be summoned and put in play by the Chief Executive of
+the German Nation with no preliminaries except the consent of the
+hereditary heads of the several States which united to form the empire
+in 1870-71 under the domination of Prussia, the Prussian King, become
+German Emperor, being Commander in Chief of the German Army. At the word
+of the Emperor this army can be summoned, collected, clothed, equipped
+and armed, and set in motion toward any frontier in a day. The German
+Army was thus made the largest in proportion to population, the best
+equipped, and the most mobile in the world. The German General Staff
+studied incessantly and thoroughly plans for campaigns against all the
+other principal States of Europe, and promptly utilized--secretly,
+whenever secrecy was possible--all promising inventions in explosives,
+ordnance, munitions, transportation, and sanitation. At the opening of
+1914 the General Staff believed that the German Army was ready for war
+on the instant, and that it possessed some significant advantages in
+fighting--such as better implements and better discipline--over the
+armies of the neighboring nations. The army could do its part toward the
+attainment of world empire. It would prove invincible.
+
+
+A Great German Navy.
+
+The intense desire for colonies, and for the spread of German commerce
+throughout the world, instigated the creation of a great German navy,
+and started the race with England in navy building. The increase of
+German wealth, and the rapid development of manufactures and commercial
+sea power after 1870-71, made it possible for the empire to devote
+immense sums of money to the quick construction of a powerful navy, in
+which the experience and skill of all other shipbuilding nations would
+be appropriated and improved on. In thus pushing her colonization and
+sea-power policy Germany encountered the wide domination of Great
+Britain on the oceans; and this encounter bred jealousy, suspicion, and
+distrust on both sides. That Germany should have been belated in the
+quest for foreign possessions was annoying; but that England and France
+should have acquired early ample and rich territories on other
+continents, and then should resist or obstruct Germany when she aspired
+to make up for lost time, was intensely exasperating. Hence chronic
+resentments, and--when the day came--probably war. In respect to its
+navy, however, Germany was not ready for war at the opening of 1914;
+and, therefore, she did not mean to get into war with Great Britain in
+that year. Indeed, she believed--on incorrect information--that England
+could not go to war in the Summer of 1914. Neither the Government nor
+the educated class in Germany comprehends the peculiar features of party
+government as it exists in England, France, and the United States; and,
+therefore, the German leaders were surprised and grievously disappointed
+at the sudden popular determination of Great Britain and Ireland to lay
+aside party strife and take strenuous part in the general European
+conflict.
+
+The complete preparation of the German Army for sudden war, the
+authority to make war always ready in the hands of the German Emperor,
+and the thorough studies of the German Staff into the most advantageous
+plans of campaign against every neighbor, conspired to develop a new
+doctrine of "military necessity" as the all-sufficient excuse for
+disregarding and violating the contracts or agreements into which
+Prussia or the new Germany had entered with other nations. To gain
+quickly a military advantage in attacking a neighbor came to be regarded
+as proper ground for violating any or all international treaties and
+agreements, no matter how solemn and comprehensive, how old or how new.
+The demonstration of the insignificance or worthlessness of
+international agreements in German thought and practice was given in the
+first days of the war by the invasion of Belgium, and has been continued
+ever since by violation on the part of Germany of numerous agreements
+concerning the conduct of war into which Germany entered with many other
+nations at the Second Hague Conference.
+
+
+Sanctity of National Contracts.
+
+This German view of the worthlessness of international agreements was
+not a cause of the present war, because it was not fully evident to
+Europe, although familiar and of long standing in Germany; but it is a
+potent reason for the continuance of the war by the Allies until Germany
+is defeated; because it is plain to all the nations of the world, except
+Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey at the moment, that the hopes of
+mankind for the gradual development of international order and peace
+rest on the sanctity of contracts between nations, and on the
+development of adequate sanctions in the administration of international
+law. The new doctrine of military necessity affronts all law and is
+completely and hopelessly barbarous.
+
+World empire now, as always, is to be won by force--that is, by conquest
+and holding possession. So Assyria, Israel, Macedonia, Athens, Rome,
+Islam, England, and France have successively believed and tried to
+accomplish in practice. United Germany has for forty years been putting
+into practice, at home and abroad, the doctrine of force as the source
+of all personal and national greatness and all worthy human
+achievements. In the support of this doctrine, educated Germany has
+developed and accepted the religion of valor and the dogma that might
+makes right. In so doing it has rejected with scorn the Christian
+teachings concerning humility and meekness, justice and mercy,
+brotherhood and love. The objects of its adoration have become Strength,
+Courage, and ruthless Will-power; let the weak perish and help them to
+perish; let the gentle, meek, and humble submit to the harsh and proud;
+let the shiftless and incapable die; the world is for the strong, and
+the strongest shall be ruler. This is a religion capable of inspiring
+its followers with zeal and sustained enthusiasm in promoting the
+national welfare at whatever cost to the individual of life, liberty, or
+happiness, and also of lending a religious sanction to the extremes of
+cruelty, greed, and hate. It were incredible that educated people who
+have been brought up within earshot of Christian ethics and within sight
+of gentle men and women should all be content with the religion-of-valor
+plan. Accordingly, the finer German spirits have invented a supplement
+to that Stone Age religion. They have set up for worship a mystical
+conception of the State as a majestic and beneficent entity which
+embraces all the noble activities of the nation and guides it to its
+best achievements. To this ideal State every German owes duty,
+obedience, and complete devotion. The trouble with this supplement to
+the religion of valor is that it dwells too much on submission,
+self-sacrifice, and discipline, and not enough on individual liberty and
+self-control in liberty. Accordingly, when the valiant men got control
+of the Government and carried the nation into a ferocious war, they
+swept away with them all the devotees of this romantic and spiritual
+State. The modern German is always a controlled, directed, and drilled
+person, who aspires to control and discipline his inferiors; and in his
+view pretty much all mankind are his inferiors. He is not a freeman in
+the French, English, or American sense; and he prefers not to be.
+
+
+What German Domination Would Mean.
+
+The present war is the inevitable result of lust of empire, autocratic
+government, sudden wealth, and the religion of valor. What German
+domination would mean to any that should resist it the experience of
+Belgium and Northern France during the past three months aptly
+demonstrates. The civilized world can now see where the new German
+morality--be efficient, be virile, be hard, be bloody, be rulers--would
+land it. To maintain that the power which has adopted in practice that
+new morality, and in accordance with its precepts promised Austria its
+support against Servia and invaded Belgium and France in hot haste, is
+not the responsible author of the European war, is to throw away memory,
+reason, and common sense in judging the human agencies in current
+events.
+
+The real cause of the war is this gradually developed barbaric state of
+the German mind and will. All other causes--such as the assassination of
+the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, the sympathy of Russia with
+the Balkan States, the French desire for the recovery of
+Alsace-Lorraine, and Great Britain's jealousy of German
+aggrandizement--are secondary and incidental causes, contributory,
+indeed, but not primary and fundamental. If any one ask who brought the
+ruling class in Germany to this barbaric frame of mind, the answer must
+be Bismarck, Moltke, Treitschke, Nietzsche, Bernhardi, the German
+Emperor, their like, their disciples, and the military caste.
+
+
+Germany Never Dreaded Russia.
+
+Many German apologists for the war attribute it to German fear of
+Russia. They say that, although Germany committed the first actual
+aggression by invading Belgium and Luxemburg on the way to attack France
+with the utmost speed and fierceness, the war is really a war of
+defense against Russia, which might desirably pass over, after France
+has been crushed, into a war against Great Britain, that perfidious and
+insolent obstacle to Germany's world empire. The answer to this
+explanation is that, as a matter of fact, Germany has never dreaded, or
+even respected, the military strength of Russia, and that the recent
+wars and threatenings of war by Germany have not been directed against
+Russia, but against Denmark, Austria, France, and England. In her
+colonization enterprises it is not Russia that Germany has encountered,
+but England, France, and the United States. The friendly advances made
+within the last twenty years by Germany to Turkey were not intended
+primarily to strengthen Germany against Russia, but Germany against
+Great Britain through access by land to British India. In short,
+Germany's policies, at home and abroad, during the last forty years have
+been inspired not by fear of Russia, or of any other invader, but by its
+own aggressive ambition for world empire. In the present war it thinks
+it has staked its all on "empire or downfall."
+
+
+Germany Should Be Defeated.
+
+Those nations which value public liberty and believe that the primary
+object of Government is to promote the general welfare by measures and
+policies founded on justice, good-will, and respect for the freedom of
+the individual cannot but hope that Germany will be completely defeated
+in its present undertakings; but they do not believe that Germany is
+compelled to choose between a life of domination in Europe and the world
+and national death. They wish that all her humane culture and her genius
+for patient and exact research may survive this hideous war and guide
+another Germany to great achievements for humanity.
+
+If the causes of the present immense catastrophe have been have
+correctly stated, the desirable outcomes of the war are, no world empire
+for any race or nation, no more "subjects," no Executives, either
+permanent or temporary, with power to throw their fellow-countrymen
+into war, no secret diplomacy justifying the use for a profit of all the
+lies, concealments, deceptions, and ambuscades which are an inevitable
+part of war and assuming to commit nations on international questions,
+and no conscription armies that can be launched in war by Executives
+without consulting independent representative assemblies. There should
+come out from this supreme convulsion, a federated Europe, or a league
+of the freer nations, which should secure the smaller States against
+attack, prevent the larger from attempting domination, make sure that
+treaties and other international contracts shall be public and be
+respected until modified by mutual consent, and provide a safe basis for
+the limitation and reduction of armaments on land and sea, no basis to
+be considered safe which could fail to secure the liberties of each and
+all the federated States against the attacks of any outsider or
+faithless member. No one can see at present how such a consummation is
+to be brought about, but any one can see already that this consummation
+is the only one which can satisfy the lovers of liberty under law, and
+the believers in the progress of mankind through loving service each to
+all and all to each.
+
+Extreme pacificists shrink from fighting evil with evil, hell with
+hell, and advise submission to outrage, or at least taking the risk of
+being forced into resigned submission. The believers in the religion of
+valor, on the other hand, proclaim that war is a good thing in itself,
+that it develops the best human virtues, invigorates a nation become
+flaccid through ease and luxury, and puts in command the strong,
+dominating spirit of a valid nation or race. What is the just mean
+between these two extremes? Is it not that war is always a hideous and
+hateful evil, but that a nation may sometimes find it to be the least of
+two evils between which it has to choose? The justifiable and indeed
+necessary war is the war against the ravager and destroyer, the enemy of
+liberty, the claimant of world empire. More and more the thinkers of the
+world see, and the common people more and more believe instinctively,
+that the cause of righteous liberty is the cause of civilization. In the
+conference which will one day meet to settle the terms of peace, and
+therefore the future conditions of life in Europe, the example of the
+American Republic in regard to armaments and war, the publicity of
+treaties, and public liberty, security and prosperity may reasonably
+have some influence.
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 14, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+DR. ELIOT'S FIFTH LETTER.
+
+A Hopeful Road to Lasting Peace
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+The great war has now been going on long enough to enable mankind to
+form approximately correct views about its vast extent and scale of
+operations, its sudden interference with commerce and all other helpful
+international intercourse, its unprecedented wrecking of family
+happiness and continuity, its wiping out, as it proceeds, of the
+accumulated savings of many former generations in structures, objects of
+art, and industrial capital, and the huge burdens it is likely to impose
+on twentieth century Europe. From all these points of view, it is
+evidently the most horrible calamity that has ever befallen the human
+race and the most crucial trial to which civilization has been exposed.
+It is, and is to be, the gigantic struggle of these times between the
+forces which make for liberty and righteousness and those which make
+for the subjection of the individual man, the exaltation of the State,
+and the enthronement of physical force directed by a ruthless collective
+will. It threatens a sweeping betrayal of the best hopes of mankind.
+
+Each of the nations involved, horrified at the immensity of the
+disaster, maintains that it is not responsible for the war; and each
+Government has issued a statement to prove that some other Government is
+responsible for the outbreak. This discussion, however, relates almost
+entirely to actions by monarchs and Cabinets between July 23 and Aug.
+4--a short period of hurried messages between the Chancelleries of
+Europe--actions which only prove that the monarchs and Ministers for
+Foreign Affairs could not, or at least did not, prevent the
+long-prepared general war from breaking out. The assassination of the
+Archduke and Duchess of Hohenberg on the 28th of June was in no proper
+sense a cause of the war, except as it was one of the consequences of
+the persistent aggressions of Austria-Hungary against her southeastern
+neighbors. Neither was Russian mobilization in four military districts
+on July 29 a cause of the war; for that was only an external
+manifestation of the Russian state of mind toward the Balkan peoples, a
+state of mind well known to all publicists ever since the Treaty of
+Berlin in 1878. No more was the invasion of Belgium by the German Army
+on Aug. 4 a true cause of the war, or even the cause, as distinguished
+from the occasion, of Great Britain's becoming involved in it. By that
+action Germany was only taking the first step in carrying out a
+long-cherished purpose and in executing a judicious plan of campaign
+prepared for many years in advance. The artificial panic in Germany
+about its exposed position between two powerful enemies, France and
+Russia, was not a genuine cause of the war; for the General Staff knew
+they had crushed France once, and were confident they could do it again
+in a month. As to Russia, it was, in their view, a huge nation, but
+very clumsy and dull in war.
+
+The real causes of the war are all of many years' standing; and all the
+nations now involved in the fearful catastrophe have contributed to the
+development of one or more of these effective causes. The fundamental
+causes are: (1) The maintenance of monarchical Governments, each
+sanctioned and supported by the national religion, and each furnished
+with a Cabinet selected by the monarch--Governments which can make war
+without any previous consultation of the peoples through their elected
+representatives; (2) the constant maintenance of conscript armies,
+through which the entire able-bodied male population is trained in youth
+for service in the army or navy, and remains subject to the instant call
+of the Government till late in life, the officering of these permanent
+armies involving the creation of a large military class likely to become
+powerful in political, industrial, and social administration; (3) the
+creation of a strong, permanent bureaucracy within each nation for the
+management of both foreign and domestic affairs, much of whose work is
+kept secret from the public at large; and, finally, (4) the habitual use
+of military and naval forces to acquire new territories, contiguous or
+detached, without regard to the wishes of the people annexed or
+controlled. This last cause of the war is the most potent of the four,
+since it is strong in itself, and is apt to include one or more of the
+other three. It is the gratification of the lust for world empire.
+
+Of all the nations taking part in the present war, Great Britain is the
+only one which does not maintain a conscript army; but, on the other
+hand, Great Britain is the earliest modern claimant of world empire by
+force, with the single exception of Spain, which long since abandoned
+that quest. Every one of these nations except little Servia has yielded
+to the lust for empire. Every one has permitted its monarch or its
+Cabinet to carry on secret negotiations liable at any time to commit the
+nation to war, or to fail in maintaining the peace of Europe or of the
+Near East. In the crowded diplomatic events of last July, no phenomenon
+is more striking than the exhibition of the power which the British
+people confide to the hands of their Foreign Secretary. In the interests
+of public liberty and public welfare no official should possess such
+powers as Sir Edward Grey used admirably--though in vain--last July. In
+all three of the empires engaged in the war there has long existed a
+large military caste which exerts a strong influence on the Government
+and its policies, and on the daily life of the people.
+
+These being the real causes of the terrific convulsion now going on in
+Europe, it cannot be questioned that the nation in which these complex
+causes have taken strongest and most complete effect during the last
+fifty years is Germany. Her form of government has been imperialistic
+and autocratic in the highest degree. She has developed with great
+intelligence and assiduity the most formidable conscript army in the
+world, and the most influential and insolent military caste. Three times
+since 1864 she has waged war in Europe, and each time she has added to
+her territory without regard to the wishes of the annexed population.
+For twenty-five years she has exhibited a keen desire to obtain colonial
+possessions; and since 1896 she has been aggressive in this field. In
+her schools and universities the children and youth have been taught for
+generations that Germany is surrounded by hostile peoples, that her
+expansion in Europe and in other continents is resisted by jealous
+powers which started earlier in the race for foreign possessions, and
+that the salvation of Germany has depended from the first, and will
+depend till the last, on the efficiency of her army and navy and the
+warlike spirit of her people. This instruction, given year after year by
+teachers, publicists, and rulers, was first generally accepted in
+Prussia, but now seems to be accepted by the entire empire as unified in
+1871.
+
+The attention of the civilized world was first called to this state of
+the German mind and will by the triumphant policies of Bismarck; but
+during the reign of the present Emperor the external aggressiveness of
+Germany and her passion for world empire have grown to much more
+formidable proportions. Although the German Emperor has sometimes played
+the part of a peacemaker, he has habitually acted the war lord in both
+speech and bearing, and has supported the military caste whenever it has
+been assailed. He is by inheritance, conviction, and practice a
+Divine-right sovereign whose throne rests on an "invincible" army, an
+army conterminous with the nation. In the present tremendous struggle he
+carries his subjects with him in a rushing torrent of self-sacrificing
+patriotism. Mass fanaticism and infectious enthusiasm seem to have
+deprived the leading class in Germany, for the moment, of all power to
+see, reason, and judge correctly--no new phenomenon in the world, but
+instructive in this case because it points to the grave defect in German
+education--the lack of liberty and, therefore, practice in self-control.
+
+The twentieth century educated German is, however, by no means given
+over completely to material and physical aggrandizement and the worship
+of might. He cherishes a partly new conception of the State as a
+collective entity whose function is to develop and multiply, not the
+free, healthy, and happy individual man and woman, but higher and more
+effective types of humanity, made superior by a strenuous discipline
+which takes much account of the strong and ambitious, and little of the
+weak or meek. He rejects the ethics of the Beatitudes as unsound, but
+accepts the religion of valor, which exalts strength, courage,
+endurance, and the ready sacrifice by the individual of liberty,
+happiness, and life itself for Germany's honor and greatness. A nation
+of 60,000,000 holding these philosophical and religious views, and
+proposing to act on them in winning by force the empire of the world,
+threatens civilization with more formidable irruptions of a destroying
+host than any that history has recorded. The rush of the German Army
+into Belgium, France, and Russia and its consequences to those lands
+have taught the rest of Europe to dread German domination, and--it is to
+be hoped--to make it impossible.
+
+The real cause of the present convulsion is, then, the state of mind or
+temper of Germany, including her conception of national greatness, her
+theory of the State, and her intelligent and skillful use of all the
+forces of nineteenth century applied science for the destructive
+purposes of war. It is, therefore, apparent that Europe can escape from
+the domination of Germany only by defeating her in her present
+undertakings; and that this defeat can be brought about only by using
+against her the same effective agencies of destruction and the same
+martial spirit on which Germany itself relies. Horrible as are the
+murderous and devastating effects of this war, there can be no lasting
+peace until Europe as a whole is ready to make some serious and
+far-reaching decisions in regard to Governmental structures and powers.
+In all probability the sufferings and losses of this widespread war must
+go further and cut deeper before Europe can be brought to the decisions
+which alone can give securities for lasting peace against Germany on the
+one hand and Russia on the other, or to either of these nations, or can
+give security for the future to any of the smaller nations of
+Continental Europe. There can, indeed, be no security for future peace
+in Europe until every European nation recognizes the fact that there is
+to be no such thing in the world as one dominating nation--no such thing
+as world empire for any single nation--Great Britain, Germany, Russia,
+Japan, or China. There can be no sense of security against sudden
+invasion in Europe so long as all the able-bodied men are trained to be
+soldiers and the best possible armies are kept constantly ready for
+instant use. There can be no secure peace in Europe until a federation
+of the European States is established, capable of making public
+contracts intended to be kept, and backed by an overwhelming
+international force subject to the orders of an international tribunal.
+The present convulsion demonstrates the impotence toward permanent
+peace of secret negotiations, of unpublished agreements, of treaties and
+covenants that can be broken on grounds of military necessity, of
+international law if without sanctions, of pious wishes, of economic and
+biological predictions, and of public opinion unless expressed through a
+firm international agreement, behind which stands an international
+force. When that international force has been firmly established it will
+be time to consider what proportionate reductions in national armaments
+can be prudently recommended. Until that glorious day dawns, no patriot
+and no lover of his kind can wisely advocate either peace in Europe or
+any reduction of armaments.
+
+The hate-breeding and worse than brutal cruelties and devastations of
+the war, with their inevitable moral and physical degradations, ought to
+shock mankind into attempting a great step forward. Europe and America
+should undertake to exterminate the real causes of the catastrophe. In
+studying that problem the coming European conference can profit by the
+experience of the three prosperous and valid countries in which public
+liberty and the principle of federation have been most successfully
+developed--Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States.
+Switzerland is a democratic federation which unites in a firm federal
+bond three different racial stocks speaking three unlike languages, and
+divided locally and irregularly between the Catholic Church and the
+Protestant. The so-called British Empire tends strongly to become a
+federation; and the methods of Government both in Great Britain itself
+and in its affiliated Commonwealths are becoming more and more
+democratic in substance. The war has brought this fact out in high
+relief. As to the United States, it is a strong federation of
+forty-eight heterogeneous States which has been proving for a hundred
+years that freedom and democracy are safer and happier for mankind than
+subjection to any sort of autocracy, and affords far the best training
+for national character and national efficiency. Republican France has
+not yet had time to give this demonstration, being incumbered with many
+survivals of the Bourbon and Napoleonic regimes, and being forced to
+maintain a conscript army.
+
+It is an encouraging fact that every one of the political or
+Governmental changes needed is already illustrated in the practice of
+one or more of the civilized nations. To exaggerate the necessary
+changes is to postpone or prevent a satisfactory outcome from the
+present calculated destructions and wrongs and the accompanying moral
+and religious chaos. Ardent proposals to remake the map of Europe,
+reconstruct European society, substitute republics for empires, and
+abolish armaments are in fact obstructing the road toward peace and
+good-will among men. That road is hard at best.
+
+The immediate duty of the United States is presumably to prepare, on the
+basis of its present army and navy, to furnish an effective quota of the
+international force, servant of an international tribunal, which will
+make the ultimate issue of this most abominable of wars not a truce, but
+a durable peace.
+
+In the meantime the American peoples cry with one voice to the German
+people, like Ezekiel to the House of Israel: "Turn ye, turn ye from your
+evil ways; for why will ye die?"
+
+CHARLES W. ELIOT.
+
+Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 8, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+THE LORD OF HOSTS.
+
+By JOSEPH B. GILDER.
+
+
+"He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh."
+
+    The warring hosts that gather
+      To ravage, burn, and slay,
+    Turn first to that dread Father
+      To whom the nations pray:
+
+    "O God, our hearts Thou knowest,
+      Our minds Thou readest clear;
+    Where we go, there Thou goest--
+      With Thee we have no fear.
+
+    "The folk that harm and hate us--
+      Thy enemies, O Lord--
+    Thou knowest how they bait us:
+      Make brittle their strong sword!
+
+    "Against the foe that goaded
+      We heed Thy call to fight:
+    Our guns are primed and loaded,
+      Our swords, how keen and bright!
+
+    "Make strong our hearts to serve Thee,
+      Uphold our lifted hands;
+    Let no petition swerve Thee
+      To succor alien bands.
+
+    "So shall we burn and slaughter,
+      Spread desolation wide,
+    If still, by land and water,
+      Thou fightest on our side."
+
+    The Lord of Hosts had listened--
+      Had heard the rivals' prayer,
+    Upraised where bayonets glistened
+      And banners dyed the air;
+
+    And as His people waited
+      An answer to their cry,
+    Two bolts with lightning freighted
+      Flashed from the angry sky.
+
+    To left, to right they darted,
+      Impartially they fell:
+    The hosts in terror started
+      As they envisaged hell.
+
+    For wide their ranks were riven,
+      Night blotted out the sky,
+    As prostrate, dazed or driven,
+      They caught their God's reply.
+
+    Then, as the blinding levin's
+      Twin bolts were buried deep,
+    Who dwelleth in the heavens
+      Was heard to laugh--and weep!
+
+
+
+
+A War of Dishonor
+
+By David Starr Jordan.
+
+     Late President of Leland Stanford Junior University, now its
+     Chancellor; Chief Director of the World Peace Foundation since
+     1910.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+In this war what of right and what of wrong? Not much of right, perhaps,
+and very much of wrong. But there are degrees in wrong, and sometimes,
+by comparison, wrong becomes almost right.
+
+The armed peace, the peace of guns and dreadnoughts and sabre rattlers,
+has come to its predestined end. Its armaments were made for war. Its
+war makers and war traders, the Pan-Germanists in the lead, have done
+their worst for the last nine years. They have been foiled time after
+time, but they have their way at last. Their last and most fatal weapon
+was the ultimatum. If Servia had not given them their chance they would
+have found their pretext somewhere else. When a nation or a continent
+prepares for war it will get it soon or later. To prepare for war is to
+breed a host of men who have no other business, and another host who
+find their profits in blood.
+
+When the war began it had very little meaning. It was the third Balkan
+war, brought on, as the others were, by intrigues of rival despotisms.
+The peoples of Europe do not hate each other. The springs of war come
+from a few men impelled by greed and glory. Diplomacy in Europe has been
+for years the cover for robbery in Asia or Africa. Of all the nations
+concerned not one had any wish to fight, and Belgium alone could fight
+with clean hands.
+
+And this fact gave the war its meaning. The invasion of Belgium changed
+the whole face of affairs. As by a lightning flash the issue was made
+plain: the issue of the sacredness of law; the rule of the soldier or
+the rule of the citizen; the rule of fear or the rule of law. Germany
+stands for army rule. This was made clear when, a year ago, she passed
+under the yoke at Zabern. However devious her diplomacy in the past,
+Britain stands today for the rule of law. The British soldier is the
+servant of the British people, not their master.
+
+The highest conception of human relations is embodied in the word law.
+Law is the framework of civilization. Law is the condition of security,
+happiness, and progress. War is the denial of all law. It makes scrap
+paper of all the solemn agreements men and nations have established for
+their mutual good.
+
+The rape of Belgium made scrap paper of international law. The sowing of
+mines in the fairways of commerce made scrap paper of the rights of
+neutral nations. The torture of the Belgian people made scrap paper of
+the rights of non-combatants.
+
+War may be never righteous, but it is sometimes honorable. In honorable
+war armies fight against armies, never against private citizens. If
+armies give no needless provocation, they will receive none. The sacking
+of Malines, Aerschot, Dinant--these are not acts of honorable war. The
+wreck of Louvain, historic Louvain, the venerable centre for 500 years
+of Catholic erudition, at the hands of blood-drunk soldiers was an act
+of dishonorable war. It marks a stain on the record of Germany which the
+ages will not efface.
+
+"A needed example," say the apologists for this crime. The Duke of Alva
+gave the same "needed example" to these same people in his day. For
+centuries the words "Spanish blood" struck terror into peoples' hearts
+throughout the Netherlands. For centuries to come the word Prussian will
+take its hated place.
+
+The good people of Germany do not burn universities. Neither do they
+make war for war's sake. They are helpless in the hands of a monster of
+their own creation. The affair at Zabern a year ago testifies to their
+complete subjugation. All the virtues are left to them, save only the
+love of freedom. This the mailed fist has taken away.
+
+The Germany of today is an anachronism. Her scientific ideals are of the
+twentieth century. Her political ideals hark back to the sixteenth. Her
+rulers have made her the most superb fighting machine in a world which
+is soul-weary of fighting. For a nation in shining armor the civilized
+World has no place. It will not worship them, it will not obey them. It
+will not respect those who either worship or obey. It finds no people
+good enough to rule other people against their will.
+
+A great nation which its own people do not control is a nation without a
+Government. It is a derelict on the international sea. It is a danger to
+its neighbors, a greater danger to itself. Of all the many issues, good
+or bad, which may come from this war, none is more important than this,
+that the German people should take possession of Germany.
+
+DAVID STARR JORDAN.
+
+Berkeley, Cal., Sept. 19, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Might or Right
+
+By John Grier Hibben.
+
+     President of Princeton University; author of works on logic
+     and philosophy.
+
+
+_The address printed below was delivered by President Hibben at the
+opening of the Laymen's Efficiency Convention in New York City, Oct. 16,
+1914._
+
+We are all of us sadly conscious of our failure to realize in any
+adequate measure the standards of right conduct which we set for
+ourselves. Attainment falls far short of purpose and desire. Through
+want of courage, or it may be of inclination, or of sheer inertia, we
+fail to obey perfectly the law of duty which we recognize as
+imperatively binding upon us. There is, however, a more subtle kind of
+failure as regards our moral endeavor and achievement which is due to
+the unconscious shifting of these standards of right and wrong
+themselves. It is not merely that we fail to do that which we know to be
+right, but at times the very idea of right itself is strangely altered.
+The good insensibly assimilates to itself certain elements of evil which
+we allow and accept without full realization of the significance of this
+moral alchemy to which the most fundamental of our ideas are often times
+subjected. The idea of right no longer stands in its integrity, but is
+compromised and even neutralized by conflicting thoughts and sentiments.
+The things which at one time held first place in our estimate of life
+become secondary. Our attitude toward men, and manners, and affairs
+experiences a radical change. This in most cases takes place
+unconsciously, or if conscious of it, we refrain from confessing it even
+to ourselves.
+
+There are some, however, who are both frank enough and bold enough to
+announce their belief in the radical doctrine which demands a complete
+transformation of essential values. For them, good is evil and evil
+good, and they seem not ashamed to avow it. The conspicuous German
+philosopher of later years, Nietzsche, with a naive simplicity insists
+that the great need of our modern civilization is that which he
+designates as "the transvaluation of all values." By this he means the
+complete transformation of certain ideas of supreme value into their
+direct opposites. He declares, for instance, that the central virtues of
+Christianity, such as those of self-sacrifice, pity, mercy, indicate an
+inherent weakness of the human race, and that the strong man dissipates
+his energies through the offices of kindness and helpfulness. Thus the
+law which commands us to bear one another's burdens must be regarded as
+obsolete. Every man should be strong enough to bear his own burdens. If
+not, he is a drag to the onward progress of humanity, and to assist him
+is to do evil and not good. If you help the weak, you so far forth
+assist in perpetuating an inferior type of manhood.
+
+
+Nietzsche's "Moralic Acid."
+
+From this point of view, the definition of religion given in the Old
+Testament should be revised, "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly
+before thy God." In doing justice we must first be just to self; in
+loving mercy it must not be at the expense of our own interests and
+advantage, and we must not walk so humbly before our God as to give to
+the world the appearance of weakness or lack of independence. As
+Nietzsche insists, "The man who loves his neighbor as himself must have
+an exceedingly poor opinion of himself." If the race is to be perfected,
+everything and every person must be sacrificed in order to produce and
+preserve the strong man at all hazards. There is a kind of "moralic
+acid," as Nietzsche styles it, which is corroding the strength of
+humanity in our modern day. We have discoursed too much of character,
+too little of power; too much of self-sacrifice and too little of
+self-assertion; too much of right, too little of might. Conscience not
+only interferes with success, but also prevents the evolution of a
+superior type of man, that superman who is not constrained by duty nor
+limited by law, living his life "beyond good and evil."
+
+The serious question which presents itself to our minds at this time is
+whether our modern world has not been unconsciously incorporating these
+ideas into its living beliefs--that is, those beliefs which reveal
+themselves in actual living and doing, in daily purpose, in the
+adaptation of means to ends, in the deeds which the world honors, and in
+the achievements which it crowns with glory. There are many persons who
+would not have the frankness of Nietzsche to say that might makes right,
+and that a moral sense is the great obstacle to progress, and that in
+"vigorous eras noble civilizations see something contemptible in
+sympathy, in brotherly love, in the lack of self-assertion and
+self-reliance." Our modern world may not explicitly subscribe to such
+doctrines in their extreme and exaggerated expression, but nevertheless
+may be unconsciously influenced by them. Our real opinions, however, are
+to be tested by our sense of values as revealed by the things which we
+crave, which we set our hearts upon, which we strive early and late to
+gain, and sacrifice all else in order to secure. Have we not offered our
+prayers to the God of might rather than the God of righteousness, to the
+God of power rather than the God of justice, the God of mercy and of
+love?
+
+The time has come, in my opinion, for us to take account of the things
+which we really believe, and of the God Whom we really worship. If we
+have been following false gods, let us honestly endeavor to re-establish
+fundamental and essential values, to discover anew what is of supreme
+worth and set our faces resolutely toward its realization. The need of
+our modern world today is the same as that of the ancient world at the
+time of the coming of Christ. His message to the world as indicated by
+His teaching, and His life was an arraignment of the ancient regime as
+regards three crucial points.
+
+
+The Brotherhood of Man.
+
+First, the religious and moral beliefs of that age had become purely
+formal. There was the letter of conviction, but not the spirit of it.
+The creed, the ritual, the ceremony were there, but the life had
+departed. And so today our beliefs have lost vitality to a large extent
+because we have been content to indulge in formulas oft repeated, which
+have ceased to have significance for our thoughts or for our feelings.
+We have allowed ourselves to be betrayed by words which are mere sounds
+without substance. We have verbalized our beliefs, and have
+depotentialed them of vital significance. Take, for instance, the
+phrases, "The fatherhood of God" and "The brotherhood of man." They have
+been so often upon our lips as to become trite; their real meaning has
+disappeared. It is easy to repeat the words, and to be satisfied with
+the repetition, and nevertheless remain wholly insensible to their
+profound import, and under no compulsion whatsoever to obey their
+sublime command. We assent to the formula: but it does not become a
+determining factor in our purposes and plans. There is perhaps no age in
+the history of the world which has so emphasized the idea of the
+brotherhood of man as our own, and never in all history has there been
+such a denial of this idea as by the present European war. If the
+brotherhood of man had been the living, dominant idea of our
+civilization, could this present tragedy of the nations have occurred?
+If the world had believed profoundly in the idea of God, would we now be
+daily reading of the ghastly scenes where human life is no longer
+sacred, where love gives place to hate, where the constructive forces of
+the world are superseded by the destructive, and all the passions of
+man's brute inheritance are given full play and scope?
+
+Second--In the teachings of Christ there was a remarkable expansion of
+the idea of God. Instead of the tribal God worshipped as the God of
+Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, He substituted the idea of God, as the
+God of all peoples and all races, the God of the Jew and Gentile, of the
+Greek and barbarian, of the bond and the free. It was the great apostle
+of the Gentiles who at the centre of Greek civilization announced this
+fundamental conception of Christianity to the old world:
+
+     God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on
+     all the face of the earth.
+
+This was the sublime idea of the God of a united humanity. The God of
+the tribe had given place to the God of the whole world. That conception
+was very foreign to the popular religious notions current at the time
+of Christ, and it seems still further away from our ideas of the present
+day. It is a very narrow and circumscribed view of God to regard Him as
+concerned merely for our little insular affairs, to regard Him simply as
+a God of the individual or of the home, or even one's nation. He
+transcends all these limitations of particular interests and particular
+needs. He is not merely our God but the God of all mankind. The children
+of Israel called Him the God of battle, the God of hosts, that is, the
+one who would give victory to them in their battles, and who would prove
+the leader of their hosts. But Christ came to the world in God's name to
+universalize this narrow tribal idea of God, proclaiming peace on earth
+and good will to men. It was the dawn of a new era, the Christian era.
+That light which shone upon the old world is darkened by the cloud
+hanging low over Europe at the present time. We cannot think, however,
+that it is permanently extinguished. To that light the nations of the
+earth must again return.
+
+
+The Area of Moral Obligation.
+
+Third--Christ gave to the world of His day an enlarged idea of the area
+of moral obligation. He insisted most stoutly upon the expansion of the
+scope of individual responsibility. This freeing of the idea of duty
+from the limitations of race prejudice is a natural corollary to the
+idea of the universality of God's relation to the world. Corresponding
+to the tribal view of God there is always an accompanying idea of the
+restricted obligation of the individual. To care for one's own family or
+one's own clan or tribe and present a hostile front to the rest of
+mankind has always been the characteristic feature of primitive
+morality. It was peculiarly the teaching of Christ which brought to the
+world the idea that the area of moral obligation is co-extensive with
+the world itself. There are no racial or national lines which can limit
+the extent of our responsibility. The world today needs to learn this
+lesson anew, and it is evident that it must acquire this knowledge
+through bitter and desperate experiences. We must interpret in this
+large sense the great moral dictum of the German philosopher, Kant, that
+every one in a particular circumstance should act as he would wish all
+men to act if similarly circumstanced and conditioned. This is the
+complete universalizing of our moral obligations--stripping our sense of
+duty of everything that is particular and local and isolated. The
+natural tendency of human nature is to particularize our relations to
+God and bound our relations to our fellow-men; to narrow our relations
+to God so as to embrace only our direst needs, and to circumscribe our
+relations to man so as to include in the field of responsibility only
+those who are our kin or our own kind. The time has certainly come for
+us to take larger views of the world, of man, and of God.
+
+After the great calamity of this present war is passed there must
+necessarily follow a period of reconstruction. It will not be merely the
+reconstruction of national resources and international relations, but
+it must be also a reconstruction of our fundamental conceptions of man
+and of the relation of man to man the world over, and of the relation
+also of man to God. We must ask anew the question, Who is our neighbor?
+In this great moral enterprise you will naturally play a large and
+significant part, for you belong to the class of men who are expected to
+have strong and decided opinions in the face of a great world crisis,
+and are capable of leading others toward the goal of a regenerated
+humanity. To know the right and to maintain it, to fight against the
+wrong, to impart courage to the timid, strength to the weak, and hope to
+the faint-hearted; to forget self in the service of others and extend a
+human sympathy to the ends of the earth, this is your vocation. It is
+the call of the world, it is the voice of one calling to you out of a
+distant past across the nineteen Christian centuries; it is the "spirit
+of the years to come," summoning you to establish the Kingdom of God
+upon earth.
+
+
+
+
+JEANNE D'ARC--1914.
+
+By ALMA DURANT NICOLSON.
+
+
+    Rise from the buried ages, O thou Maid,
+    Rise from thy glorious ashes, unafraid,
+    And wheresoe'er thy Brothers need thee most,
+    Arise again, to lead thy tireless host.
+    France calls thee as she called in days gone by!
+    She calls thy spirit where her soldiers die;
+    She knows thy courage and thy sacrifice,
+    And wills today to pay the selfsame price,
+    All-confident that when the work is done,
+    She shall behold her Honor saved and Victory won.
+
+    God calls thee, Maid, from out the Past--
+    The Past of France where thy strange lot was cast--
+    And bid'st thee fling about this fearful hour
+    Thy dauntless Faith, that was thy magic Power.
+    And Freedom calls, with all-impelling voice,
+    She calls the Sons of France, and leaves no choice,
+    No waver and no alternating will;
+    Where Freedom calls, all other calls are still,
+    All-confident that when her work is done
+    Ye shall behold your Country saved and Victory won.
+
+
+
+
+The Kaiser and Belgium
+
+By John W. Burgess.
+
+     Dean of the Faculties of Political Science, Philosophy, Pure
+     Science, and the fine Arts at Columbia University; Roosevelt
+     Professor of American History and Institutions at Friedrich
+     Wilhelms University, Berlin, 1906-7; Visiting American
+     Professor to Austrian Universities, 1914-15; Decorated, Order
+     of Prussian Crown by the German Emperor and Order of the
+     Albrechts by the King of Saxony.
+
+
+FIRST ARTICLE.
+
+It is often said by historians that no truly great man is every really
+understood by the generation, and in the age, for which he labors. Many
+instances of the truth of this statement can be easily cited. Two of the
+most flagrant have come within the range of my own personal experience.
+The first was the character of Abraham Lincoln as depicted by the
+British press of 1860-64 and as conceived by the British public opinion
+of that era. Mr. Henry Adams, son and private secretary of Mr. Charles
+Francis Adams, our Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain during that
+critical era in our history, writes, in that fascinating book of his
+entitled "The Education of Henry Adams,"
+
+     that "London was altogether beside itself on one point, in
+     especial; it created a nightmare of its own, and gave it the
+     shape of Abraham Lincoln. Behind this it placed another demon,
+     if possible more devilish, and called it Mr. Seward. In regard
+     to these two men English society seemed demented. Defense was
+     useless: explanation was vain. One could only let the passion
+     exhaust itself. One's best friends were as unreasonable as
+     enemies, for the belief in poor Mr. Lincoln's brutality and
+     Seward's ferocity became a dogma of popular faith."
+
+Adams relates further that the last time he saw Thackeray at Christmas
+of 1863 they spoke of their mutual friend Mrs. Frank Hampton of South
+Carolina, whom Thackeray had portrayed as Ethel Newcome, and who had
+recently passed away from life. Thackeray had read in the British papers
+that her parents had been prevented by the Federal soldiers from passing
+through the lines to see her on her deathbed. Adams writes that
+
+     in speaking of it Thackeray's voice trembled and his eyes
+     filled with tears. The coarse cruelty of Lincoln and his
+     hirelings was notorious. He never doubted that the Federals
+     made a business of harrowing the tenderest feelings of
+     women--particularly of women--in order to punish their
+     opponents. On quite insufficient evidence he burst into
+     reproach. Had he (Adams) carried in his pocket the proofs that
+     the reproach was unjust he would have gained nothing by
+     showing them. At that moment Thackeray, and all London society
+     with him, needed the nervous relief of expressing emotions;
+     for if Mr. Lincoln was not what they said he was, what were
+     they?
+
+Mr. Lincoln sent over our most skillful politician, Thurlow Weed, and
+our most able constitutional lawyer, William M. Evarts, and later our
+most brilliant orator, Henry Ward Beecher, followed, for the purpose of
+bringing the British people to their senses and correcting British
+opinion, but all to little purpose. Gettysburg and Vicksburg did far
+more toward modifying that opinion than the persuasiveness of Weed, the
+logic of Evarts, or the eloquence of Beecher, and it took Chattanooga,
+the March to the Sea, and Appomattox to dispel the illusion entirely.
+
+Today we are laboring under a no less singular illusion than were the
+English in 1862. The conception prevailing in England and in this
+country concerning the physical, mental, and moral make-up of the German
+Emperor is the monumental caricature of biographical literature. I have
+had the privilege of his personal acquaintance now for nearly ten years.
+I have been brought into contact with him in many different ways and
+under many varying conditions, at Court and State functions, at
+university ceremonies and celebrations, at his table, and by his
+fireside surrounded by his family, when in the midst of his officials,
+his men of science, and his personal friends, and, more instructive than
+all, alone in the imperial home in Berlin and at Potsdam and in the
+castle and forest at Wilhelmshoehe. With all this experience, with all
+this opportunity for observation at close range, I am hardly able to
+recognize a single characteristic usually attributed to him by the
+British and American press of today.
+
+In the first place, the Emperor is an impressive man physically. He is
+not a giant in stature, but a man of medium size, great strength and
+endurance, and of agile and graceful movement. He looks every inch a
+leader of men. His fine gray-blue eyes are peculiarly fascinating. I saw
+him once seated beside his uncle, King Edward VII., and the contrast was
+very striking, and greatly in his favor.
+
+In the second place, the Emperor is an exceedingly intelligent and
+highly cultivated man. His mental processes are swift, but they go also
+very deep. He is a searching inquirer, and questions and listens more
+than he talks. His fund of knowledge is immense and sometimes
+astonishing. He manifests interest in everything, even to the smallest
+detail, which can have any bearing upon human improvement. I remember a
+half hour's conversation with him once over a cupping glass, which he
+had gotten from an excavation in the Roman ruin called the Saalburg,
+near Homburg. He always appeared to me most deeply concerned with the
+arts of peace. I have never heard him speak much of war, and then always
+with abhorrence, nor much of military matters, but improved agriculture,
+invention, and manufacture, and especially commerce and education in all
+their ramifications, were the chief subjects of his thought and
+conversation. I have had the privilege of association with many highly
+intelligent and profoundly learned men, but I have never acquired as
+much knowledge, in the same time, from any man whom I have ever met, as
+from the German Emperor. And yet, with all this real superiority of mind
+and education, his deference to the opinions of others is remarkable.
+Arrogance is one of the qualities most often attributed to him, but he
+is the only ruler I ever saw in whom there appeared to be absolutely no
+arrogance. He meets you as man meets man and makes you feel that you are
+required to yield to nothing but the better reason.
+
+
+A Man of Warm Affections.
+
+In the third place, the Emperor impressed me as a man of heart, of warm
+affections, and of great consideration for the feelings and well-being
+of others. He can not, at least does not, conceal his reverence for, and
+devotion to, the Empress, or his love for his children, or his
+attachment to his friends. He always speaks of Queen Victoria and of the
+Empress Friedrich with the greatest veneration, and once when speaking
+to me of an old American friend who had turned upon him he said that it
+was difficult for him to give up an old friend, right or wrong, and
+impossible when he believed him to be in the right. His manifest respect
+and affection for his old and tried officials, such as Lucanus and zu
+Eulenburg and von Studt and Beseler and Althoff, give strong evidence of
+the warmth and depth of his nature. His consideration for Americans,
+especially, has always been remarkable. It was at his suggestion that
+the exchange of educators between the universities of Germany and of the
+United States was established, and it has been his custom to be present
+at the opening lecture of each new incumbent of these positions at
+the University of Berlin, and to greet him and welcome him to his work.
+He is also the first to extend to these foreign educators hospitality
+and social attention. To any one who has experienced his hearty welcome
+to his land and his home the assertion that he is arrogant and
+autocratic is so far away from truth as to be ludicrous. Again I must
+say that I have never met a ruler, in monarchy or republic, in whom
+genuine democratic geniality was a so predominant characteristic.
+
+[Illustration: FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS
+
+_(Photo by the Misses Selby.)_
+
+_See Page 526_]
+
+[Illustration: RUDOLF EUCKEN
+
+_See Page 534_]
+
+But the characteristic of the Emperor which struck me most forcibly is
+his profound sense of duty and his readiness for self-sacrifice for the
+welfare of his country. This is a general German trait. It is the most
+admirable side of German nature. And the Emperor is, in this respect
+especially, their Princeps. I remember sitting beside him one day, when
+one of the ladies of his household asked me if I were acquainted with a
+certain wealthy ultra-fashionable New York social leader. I replied, by
+name only. She pressed me to know why not more nearly, why not
+personally. And to this, I replied that I was not of her class; that I
+could not amuse her, and that I did not approve of the frivolous and
+demoralizing example and influence of one so favorably circumstanced for
+doing good. The Emperor had heard the conversation, and he promptly
+said: "You know in Germany we do not rate and classify people by their
+material possessions, but by the importance of the service they render
+to country, culture, and civilization." One of his sons once told me
+that from his earliest childhood his father had instilled into his mind
+the lesson that devotion to duty and readiness for sacrifice were the
+cardinal virtues of a German, especially of a Hohenzollern. His days are
+periods of constant labor and severe discipline. He rises early, lives
+abstemiously and works until far into the night. There is no day laborer
+in his entire empire who gives so many hours per diem to his work. His
+nature is manifestly deeply religious and, in every sentence he speaks,
+evidence of his consciousness that the policeman's club cannot take the
+place of religious and moral principle is revealed. His frequent appeal
+for Divine aid in the discharge of his duties is prompted by the
+conviction that the heavier the duty the more need there is of that aid.
+
+
+His Passion for German Greatness.
+
+He undoubtedly has an intense desire, almost a passion, for the
+prosperity and greatness of his country, but his conception of that
+prosperity and greatness is more spiritual and cultural than material
+and commercial. More than once have I heard him say that he desired to
+see Germany a wealthy country, but only as the result of honest and
+properly requited toil, and that wealth acquired by force or fraud was
+more a curse than a blessing, and was destined to go as it had come. His
+conception of the greatness of Germany is as a great intellectual and
+moral power rather than anything else. Its physical power he values
+chiefly as the creator and maintainer of the conditions necessary to the
+production and influence of this higher power. I have often heard him
+express this thought.
+
+And in spite of this terrible war, the responsibility for which is by so
+many erroneously laid at his door, I firmly believe him to be a man of
+peace. I am absolutely sure that he has entered upon this war only under
+the firm conviction that Great Britain, France, and Russia have
+conspired to destroy Germany as a world power, and that he is simply
+defending, as he said in his memorable speech to the Reichstag, the
+place which God had given the Germans to dwell on. For seven years I
+myself have witnessed the growth of this conviction in his mind and that
+of the whole German Nation as the evidences of it have multiplied from
+year to year until at last the fatal hour at Serajevo struck. I firmly
+believe that there is no soul in this wide world upon whom the burden
+and grief of this great catastrophe so heavily rest as upon the German
+Emperor. I have heard him declare with the greatest earnestness and
+solemnity that he considered war a dire calamity; that Germany would
+never during his reign wage an offensive war, and that he hoped God
+would spare him from the necessity of ever having to conduct a defensive
+war. For years he has been conscious that British diplomacy was seeking
+to isolate and crush Germany by an alliance of Latin, Slav, and Mongol
+under British direction, and he sought in every way to avert it. He
+visited England himself frequently. He sent his Ministers of State over
+to cultivate the acquaintance and friendship of the British Ministers,
+but rarely would the British King go himself to Germany or send his
+Ministers to return these visits. More than once have I heard him say
+that he was most earnestly desirous of close friendship between Germany,
+Great Britain, and the United States, and had done, was doing, and would
+continue to do, all in his power to promote it; but that while the
+Americans were cordially meeting Germany half way, the British were
+cold, suspicious, and repellent.
+
+I know that the two things which are giving him the deepest pain in this
+world catastrophe, excepting only the sufferings of his own kindred and
+people, are the enmity of Great Britain and the misunderstanding of his
+character, feelings, and purposes in America. To remedy the first we
+here can do nothing, but to dispel the second is our bounden duty; and I
+devoutly hope that other evidence may prove sufficient to do this to the
+satisfaction of the minds of my countrymen than was necessary to
+convince the British Nation that the great-hearted Abraham Lincoln was
+not a brute nor the urbane William H. Seward a demon of ferocity.
+
+
+
+
+Reply to Prof. Burgess
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+The Burgess Kaiser is a truly admirable person. Every right-minded man
+will be only too glad to believe all that Prof. Burgess affirms of him.
+To be sure, there is a lurking sense that the professor "doth protest
+too much." But let that go. In the present topsy-turvy state of the
+world it is refreshing to hear of a man who loves his wife and children
+in the good, old way. But just now the world is not interested in the
+private, personal, peculiarly German characteristics of the Kaiser. We
+outsiders must take him as he is known to the international world. We of
+course trust that he is an able, cultivated, attractive gentleman. There
+are many such in the world. But this gentleman happens to be the head of
+one of the great nations. Our interest in him centres in his relations
+to his neighbor nations.
+
+An English friend of mine was appointed to duty in a tribe of savages in
+Africa. I dislike to call them savages after the testimony of my friend.
+But they were just plain, naked folk, living in primitive simplicity in
+their native land. The chief of this little tribe was, as my friend
+asserts, a superior man, and, in spite of his undress, a good deal of a
+gentleman. In physique he was superb. A sculptor's heart would have
+leaped for joy at sight of him. My friend said to see him teaching his
+young son to throw a spear was a sort of physical music. He himself
+could throw a spear to an incredible distance with the precision of a
+rifle shot. He ruled his little kingdom with surprising wisdom and
+fairness. He was welcomed everywhere among his people as the friend and
+counselor. His family relations were unimpeachable. The same was true
+throughout the tribe. He was devoutly pious. In short, he was a Burgess
+Kaiser in the small. But he was the war lord of all that region. He was
+fiercely jealous of all the neighboring tribes. He kept his own people
+armed and drilled to the top of efficiency, ready for attack or
+defense. He was noted for his hatred and contempt for his people except
+his own. His forays were marked by savage cruelty. His military
+necessities stopped at nothing.
+
+Need it be said that the surrounding tribes were in nowise interested in
+this chief's physique or domestic virtues, or in his fidelity to his own
+people? It is safe to affirm that the British Government did not ask
+whether he had the body of a Michael Angelo's David or of a baboon from
+the jungle. It did not ask whether he was good to his wife and children.
+Most animals are. It did not care how devoted he was to his fetich. The
+sole question was, What sort of public citizen is he? How does he stand
+related to surrounding peoples? On what terms does he propose to live
+with them? That precisely is what we want to know about the Kaiser.
+
+Fortunately, we do not have to ask Prof. Burgess, or any group of
+savants, or the German people. The Kaiser's record is known and read of
+all men.
+
+JAMES H. ECOB,
+
+American Institute of Social Service.
+
+New York, Oct. 21, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+PROF. BURGESS'S SECOND ARTICLE.
+
+The Guarantee of Belgian Neutrality
+
+
+So much has been said about Belgian neutrality, so much assumed, and it
+has been such a stumbling block in the way of any real and comprehensive
+understanding of the causes and purposes of the great European
+catastrophe, that it may be well to examine the basis of it and endeavor
+to get an exact idea of the scope and obligation.
+
+Of course, we are considering here the question of guaranteed
+neutrality, not the ordinary neutrality enjoyed by all States not at
+war, when some States are at war; the difference between ordinary
+neutrality and guaranteed neutrality being that no State is under any
+obligation to defend the ordinary neutrality of any other State against
+infringement by a belligerent, and no belligerent is under any special
+obligation to observe it. Guaranteed neutrality is, therefore, purely a
+question of specific agreement between States.
+
+On the 19th day of April, 1839, Belgium and Holland, which from 1815 to
+1830 had formed the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, signed a treaty
+of separation from, and independence of, each other. It is in this
+treaty that the original pledge of Belgian neutrality is to be found.
+The clause of the treaty reads: "Belgium in the limits above described
+shall form an independent neutral State and shall be bound to observe
+the same neutrality toward all other States." On the same day and at the
+same place, (London,) a treaty, known in the history of diplomacy as the
+Quintuple Treaty, was signed by Great Britain, France, Prussia, Austria,
+and Russia, approving and adopting the treaty between Belgium and
+Holland. A little later, May 11, the German Confederation, of which both
+Austria and Prussia were members, also ratified this treaty.
+
+In the year 1866 the German Confederation was dissolved by the war
+between Austria and Prussia, occasioned by the Schleswig-Holstein
+question. In 1867 the North German Union was formed, of which Prussia
+was the leading State, while Austria and the German States south of the
+River Main were left out of it altogether. Did these changes render the
+guarantees of the Treaty of 1839 obsolete and thereby abrogate them, or
+at least weaken them and make them an uncertain reliance? The test of
+this came in the year 1870, at the beginning of hostilities between
+France and the North German Union. Great Britain, the power most
+interested in the maintenance of Belgian neutrality, seems to have had
+considerable apprehension about it. Mr. Gladstone, then Prime Minister,
+said in the House of Commons: "I am not able to subscribe to the
+doctrine of those who have held in this House what plainly amounts to an
+assertion that the simple fact of the existence of a guarantee is
+binding on every party to it, irrespective altogether of the particular
+position in which it may find itself when the occasion for acting on the
+guarantee arises."
+
+
+A One-Year Treaty.
+
+Proceeding upon this view, the British Government then sought and
+procured from the French Government and from the Government of the North
+German Union separate but identical treaties guaranteeing with the
+British Government the neutrality of Belgium during the period of the
+war between France and the North German Union, the so-called
+Franco-Prussian war, which had just broken out, and for one year from
+the date of its termination. In these treaties it is also to be remarked
+that Great Britain limited the possible operation of her military force
+in maintaining the neutrality of Belgium to the territory of the State
+of Belgium.
+
+These treaties expired in the year 1872, and the present German Empire
+has never signed any treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium.
+Moreover, between 1872 and 1914 Belgium became what is now termed a
+world power; that is, it reached a population of nearly 9,000,000
+people, it had a well-organized, well-equipped army of over 200,000 men
+and powerful fortifications for its own defense; it had acquired and was
+holding colonies covering 1,000,000 square miles of territory, inhabited
+by 15,000,000 men, and it had active commerce, mediated by its own
+marine, with many, if not all, parts of the world. Now, these things are
+not at all compatible in principle with a specially guaranteed
+neutrality of the State which possesses them. The State which possesses
+them has grown out of its swaddling clothes, has arrived at the age and
+condition of maturity and self-protection, and has passed the age when
+specially guaranteed neutrality is natural.
+
+From all these considerations, I think it extremely doubtful whether, on
+the first day of August, 1914, Belgium should have been considered as
+possessing any other kind of neutrality than the ordinary neutrality
+enjoyed by all States not at war, when some States are at war. In fact,
+it remains to be seen whether Belgium itself had not forfeited the
+privilege of this ordinary neutrality before a single German soldier had
+placed foot on Belgian soil. A few days ago I received a letter from one
+of the most prominent professors in the University of Berlin, who is
+also in close contact with the Prussian Ministry of Education, a man in
+whose veracity I place perfect confidence, having known him well for ten
+years. He writes: "Our violation of the neutrality of Belgium was
+prompted in part by the fact that we had convincing proof that there
+were French soldiers already in Belgium and that Belgium had agreed to
+allow the French Army to pass over its soil in case of a war between
+France and us." Moreover, in the British "White Paper" itself, No. 122,
+is to be found a dispatch from the British Ambassador in Berlin, Sir E.
+Goschen, to Sir Edward Grey, containing these words: "It appears from
+what he [the German Secretary of Foreign Affairs] said that the German
+Government consider that certain hostile acts have already been
+committed by Belgium. As an instance of this, he alleged that a
+consignment of corn for Germany had been placed under an embargo
+already." The date of this dispatch is July 31, days before the Germans
+entered Belgium.
+
+But placing these two things entirely aside, as well as the new
+evidence, said to have just been found in the archives at Brussels, that
+Belgium had by her agreements with Great Britain forfeited every claim
+to even ordinary neutrality in case of a war between Germany and Great
+Britain, I find in the British "White Paper" itself, No. 123, not only
+ample justification, but absolute necessity, from a military point of
+view, for a German army advancing against France, not only to pass
+through Belgium, but to occupy Belgium. This number of the "White Paper"
+is a communication dated Aug. 1 from Sir Edward Grey to Sir E. Goschen,
+British Ambassador in Berlin. In it Sir Edward Grey informed Sir E.
+Goschen that the German Ambassador in London asked him "whether, if
+Germany gave a promise not to violate Belgian neutrality, we, Great
+Britain, would remain neutral," and that he [Grey] replied that he
+"could not say that," that he did not think Great Britain "could give a
+promise of neutrality on that condition alone"; further, Sir Edward Grey
+says: "The Ambassador pressed me as to whether I could not formulate
+conditions on which we would remain neutral. He even suggested that the
+integrity of France and her colonies might be guaranteed. I said that I
+felt obliged to refuse definitely any promise to remain neutral on
+similar terms, and I could only say that we must keep our hands free."
+
+
+The Necessary Invasions.
+
+After this Sir Edward Grey declared in Parliament, according to
+newspaper reports, that Great Britain stood, as to Belgian neutrality,
+on the same ground as in 1870. With all due respect, I cannot so
+understand it. In 1870 Great Britain remained neutral in a war between
+the North German Union and France, and, with the North German Union,
+guaranteed Belgium against invasion by France, and, with France,
+guaranteed Belgium against invasion by the North German Union. On Aug.
+1, 1914, the German Empire asked Great Britain to do virtually the same
+thing, and Great Britain refused. It is, therefore, Germany who stood in
+1914 on the same ground, with regard to Belgium neutrality, as she did
+in 1870, and it is Great Britain who shifted her position and virtually
+gave notice that she herself would become a belligerent. It was this
+notice served by Sir Edward Grey on the German Ambassador in London on
+Aug. 1, 1914, which made the occupation of Belgium an absolute military
+necessity to the safety of the German armies advancing against France.
+Otherwise they would, so far as the wit of man could divine, have left
+their right flank exposed to the advance of a British army through
+Belgium, and there certainly was no German commander so absolutely
+bereft of all military knowledge or instinct as to have committed so
+patent an error.
+
+Belgium has Great Britain to thank for every drop of blood shed by her
+people, and every franc of damage inflicted within her territory during
+this war. With a million of German soldiers on her eastern border
+demanding unhindered passage through one end of her territory, under the
+pledge of guarding her independence and integrity and reimbursing every
+franc of damage, and no British force nearer than Dover, across the
+Channel, it was one of the most inconsiderate, reckless, and selfish
+acts ever committed by a great power when Sir Edward Grey directed, as
+is stated in No. 155 of the British "White Paper," the British Envoy in
+Brussels to inform the "Belgian Government that if pressure is applied
+to them by Germany to induce them to depart from neutrality, his
+Majesty's Government expects that they will resist by any means in their
+power."
+
+It is plain enough that Great Britain was not thinking so much of
+protecting Belgium as of Belgium protecting her, until she could prepare
+to attack Germany in concert with Russia and France. She was willing to
+let Belgium, yea almost to command Belgium, to take the fearful risk of
+complete destruction in order that she might gain a little time in
+perfecting the co-operation of Russia and France with herself for the
+crushing of Germany, and in order to hold the public opinion of neutral
+powers, especially of the United States of America, in leash under the
+chivalrous issue of protecting a weaker country, which she has done
+little or nothing to protect, but which she could have effectively
+protected by simply remaining neutral herself.
+
+We Americans have been greatly confused in mind in regard to the issues
+of this war. We have confounded causes and occasions and purposes and
+incidents until it has become almost impossible for any considerable
+number of us to form a sound and correct judgment in regard to it. But
+we shall emerge from that nebulous condition. We are beginning to see
+more clearly now, and it would not surprise me greatly if the means used
+for producing our confusion would some day come back, if not to plague
+the consciences, at least to foil the purposes of their inventors.
+
+
+
+
+Reply to Prof. Burgess
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Prof. Burgess's amazing communication on Belgian neutrality omits an
+essential piece of evidence. Granting, for the sake of argument, that
+the German Empire might repudiate all treaty obligations of the earlier
+German confederations, (very odd law, this;) granting also the still
+more novel plea that Belgium had outgrown the need, and the privilege of
+neutralization, Germany had agreed to treat all neutral powers under the
+following provisions of The Hague Conventions of 1907 concerning the
+rights and duties of neutral powers:
+
+     1. The territory of neutral powers is inviolable.
+
+     2. Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or either
+     munitions of war or supplies across the territory of a neutral
+     power.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     5. A neutral power must not allow any of the acts referred to
+     in Articles 2 to 4 to occur on its territory.
+
+This pledge the German Empire had solemnly made only seven years ago. It
+would seem that Prof. Burgess may accept the distinction ably made by
+Prof. Muensterberg between "pledges of national honor" and mere "routine
+agreements," placing Hague treaties in the latter category.
+
+The allegation that France and England secretly did unneutral acts in
+Belgium is as yet without proof of any sort, and must be interpreted by
+the commonsense consideration that a neutral Belgium was a defensive
+bulwark for France and England. To have tampered with her neutrality
+would have been motiveless folly. How much more decent and moral than
+Prof. Burgess's meticulous weighing of national reincorporation as a
+means of evading national obligations is Chancellor Hollweg's robust
+plea of national necessity! Prof. Burgess's whole moral and mental
+attitude in this case seems to be that of a corporation lawyer getting a
+trust out of a hole under the Statute of Limitations or by some
+reorganizing dodge.
+
+FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jr.
+
+Princeton, N.J., Nov. 4, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+America's Peril in Judging Germany
+
+By William M. Sloane.
+
+     Late Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University;
+     ex-President National Institute of Arts and Letters and of the
+     American Historical Association; was secretary of George
+     Bancroft, the historian, in Berlin, 1873-5; author of works on
+     French History.
+
+
+The American public has been carefully trained to avoid entanglement
+with foreign affairs. This European war was so unexpected, so entirely
+unforeseen, that we were at first bewildered, and then exasperated, by
+our unreadiness to meet our own emergencies.
+
+In our effort to fix responsibility we then became partisan to the verge
+of moral participation and had to be called to our senses by the wise
+proclamation and warning of our Chief Magistrate.
+
+Western Europe is a nearer neighbor than either Central or Eastern, and
+what stern censors permit us to know is nicely calculated to arouse our
+prejudice on one side or the other. Believing that, owing to cable
+cutting and neutrality restrictions of wireless, as yet the plain truth
+is not available, we ask for a suspension of judgment on both sides in
+order that our Government may enjoy the undivided support of all
+American citizens in its desire to secure a minimum of disturbance to
+the normal course of our commercial, industrial, and agricultural life
+by convulsions that are not of our making.
+
+Fairness to ourselves means justice in the formation and expression of
+opinion about not one or two but all the participants in a struggle for
+European ascendency, with which we have nothing to do except as
+overwhelming victory for either side might bring on a struggle for world
+ascendency, with which, unhappily, we might have much to do. To
+contemplate such a terrible event should sober us; the best preparation
+for it is absolute neutrality in thought, speech, and conduct.
+
+Our own history since independence is an unbroken record of expansion
+and imperialism. Our contiguous territories have been acquired by
+compulsion, whether of war, of purchase, of occupation, or of exchange.
+We have taken advantage of others' dire necessity in the case of Great
+Britain, France, Spain, Russia, and Mexico.
+
+To rectify our frontier we compelled the Gladsden Purchase within the
+writer's lifetime. As to our non-contiguous possessions, we hold them by
+the right of conquest or revolution, salving our consciences with such
+cash indemnity as we ourselves have chosen to pay, and even now we are
+considering what we choose to pay, not what a disinterested court might
+consider adequate, for the good-will of the United States of Colombia, a
+good-will desired solely and entirely for an additional safeguard to the
+Panama Canal and a prop to the policy or doctrine substituted by the
+present Administration for the moribund Monroe Doctrine.
+
+In no single instance of virtual annexation or protectorate have we
+consulted by popular vote either the desires of those inhabiting the
+respective territories annexed or The Hague Tribunal. In every case we
+have had one single plea and one only--self-interest.
+
+The entire American continent south of our frontier we have closed to
+all European settlement, thereby maintaining for more than a century in
+a magnificent territory an imperfect civilization which makes a sorry
+use of natural resources which could vastly improve the condition of all
+mankind if properly used.
+
+This is the light in which European nations see us; our identity in
+this policy from the dawn of our national existence onward they consider
+a proof of our national character. It differs in no respect from their
+own policies except in one.
+
+But for them this exception is basic. We are a composite folk and they
+are homogeneous, their blend being approximately complete. They have one
+language, one tradition, one set of institutions and laws; a unity of
+literature, habits, and method in life. Some European States are
+composite, but each component part claims and cultivates its own style
+and its own principles; each announces itself as a nationality with a
+life to be maintained and a destiny to be wrought out somehow, either in
+peace or in conflict.
+
+With perhaps a single exception, they have an overflow of population,
+due to natural generation, for the comfort and happiness of which they
+seek either an expansion of territory or an improvement in the
+productivity of their home lands; for those who must emigrate they
+passionately desire the perpetuation of their nationality, with all it
+implies.
+
+In these respects they do not differ from us, except that perhaps we are
+more determined and imperious. We cannot think politically in any other
+terms than those of democratic government, either direct or
+representative.
+
+At the present hour we are engaged in the very dubious experiment of
+direct popular legislation and administration. We are trying to change
+our Government radically, discarding its representative form for that of
+delegation. The remotest cause of this is the desire to amalgamate all
+our elements into homogeneity. So far this policy has resulted in a
+demand, not for equality of political and civil rights, but for its
+overthrow, substituting laws intended to create social and economic
+equality by means of class legislation.
+
+These facts are not to the edification of other civilized States, and
+subject us to harsh and contemptuous criticism.
+
+It is likewise very interesting that apparently the American people
+believe in a monarchical democracy. One of our typical first citizens
+has recently expressed his antipathy to the phrases "My monarchy," "My
+loyal people," "My loyal subjects," used by one of the German monarchs
+in summoning the nation to war, as implying a dynastic or personal
+ownership of men.
+
+
+Averse from Militarism.
+
+The American masses dislike the sound of supreme war lord, but gladly
+admit their own Chief Magistrate to be Commander in Chief of the army
+and navy. To our ears the three German words are offensive, and well
+they may be, for in the treacherous literal translation they are willful
+perversion; but the much stronger English words are a delight to our
+democracy.
+
+The phrases of monarchy are constantly used in Great Britain by its King
+and its Emperor, but give no offense to his "loyal subjects," even the
+most radical, who delight in them, as apparently do our people of
+British origin. Why do they give such deep offense when employed by the
+German Government through its King and Emperor? The social
+stratification of Germany is not as marked as that of Great Britain; its
+aristocracy is far less powerful; and Edward VII. proved that an adroit
+and willful English monarch could involve his "loyal people" deeper in
+harmful, secret alliances than William II., whose alliances and policies
+were and are unconcealed.
+
+One of our greatest historians has earned a brilliant reputation in the
+conclusive proof that oceans are the world's highways, while its
+continents are its barriers. To the term "militarism" we attach an
+opprobrious meaning; militarism is the more infamous in exact proportion
+to its efficiency. We have been at little pains to define it, and as to
+certain of its aspects are curiously complacent.
+
+The basic principle of our own nationality has long been the very vague
+Monroe Doctrine, by the assertion of which we have prevented the
+establishment on our nearest and remotest frontiers of strong military
+powers, which might in certain events compel us to maintain a powerful
+and numerous standing army, or even introduce the compulsory military
+service of all voters, (women, of course, excepted.)
+
+Yet we propose to fight if necessary in order to prevent fighting, and
+to this end maintain the second strongest and, for its size, the most
+efficient fleet in the world. This is our militarism; that of Great
+Britain has been to maintain a fleet double our own or any other in
+size, for it is her basic principle to maintain an unquestioned
+supremacy on the highways of commerce. To this we have meekly assented,
+while other nations absorb our carrying trade and our flag waves over a
+fleet of perhaps a dozen respectable oceangoing trading and passenger
+ships. It is under her rather patronizing protection that we fight our
+foreign wars and by pressure from her that we manage the Panama Canal
+with nice and honorable attention to her interpretation of a treaty
+capable of quite a different one. Whether or not this be "militarism" of
+the utmost efficiency by sea is not difficult to decide. But we have
+never styled it infamous.
+
+While I am writing, Germans, whose basic principle is the most efficient
+"militarism" by land, are publishing all abroad that the "militarism" of
+France must be forever stamped out, so that they may dwell at peace in
+the lands which are their home.
+
+Within a generation France has accumulated a colonial empire second only
+to that of Great Britain, while she has incessantly demanded the
+reintegration of German lands, and especially a German city which she
+arbitrarily annexed and held by "militarism" for about five generations.
+The "militarism" of a republic and a democracy which retains the
+essential features of Napoleonic administration has been quite as
+efficient as that of a monarchical democracy like Great Britain, and may
+easily prove more efficient than that of a monarchy like Germany.
+
+Why should it be more infamous or barbarous in one case than the other?
+And with what is this efficient military democracy allied in the
+closest ties?
+
+With Russia, an Oriental despotism which by the aid of French money has
+developed a "militarism" by land so portentous in numbers, dimension,
+and efficiency that its movements are comparable to those of Attila's
+Huns. Escaped Russians in Western lands are denouncing German
+"militarism" as the incubus of the world.
+
+Which of the two should Americans regard as the greater danger?
+
+
+Menaces to Our Neutrality.
+
+It has wrung our hearts to consider the violation of Belgian neutrality,
+for which both France and eventually even Great Britain have long been
+prepared, but the latter has with little or no protest arranged with the
+"bear that walks like a man" to disregard contemptuously the neutrality
+of Persia in arranging spheres of influence, exactly as Japan, another
+ally, is contemptuously disregarding the neutrality of China, the new
+"republic" we were in such haste to recognize that we had to use the
+cable. And what about Korea? It is a Japanese province in contravention
+of the most solemn guarantees of its integrity.
+
+Leaving aside for the moment certain considerations like these, and they
+might easily be indefinitely amplified, which should compel Americans to
+unbiased consideration for others and preclude a dangerous partiality,
+let us ask ourselves how in the event of mediation we could be an
+impartial pacificator, behaving as we have hitherto done. The attitude
+of our Government has been strictly neutral, neutral to the verge of
+utter self-abnegation; and, as some regard it, timidity.
+
+But rock-fast as any democratic magistrate may be, public opinion must
+and does influence him. Rightly or wrongly his agents would be even more
+completely dominated, and rightly or wrongly they would be suspect in
+view of our terrific partisanship on both sides since the commencement
+of hostilities.
+
+The efficiency of Government organs in "producing the goods," the
+terrific power of organization on one side and mass on the other, have
+been considered a menace to world equilibrium.
+
+Whichever way the decision falls, the scrutiny of Europe will be turned
+to us. Unless observation and instinct be utterly at fault, we have for
+more than a decade been, after Germany, the worst-hated nation of all
+that are foremost.
+
+It is pre-eminently our affair to mind our own business, as others have
+minded theirs. Without cessation of noise and fury in America this is
+impossible.
+
+Indeed, our emotional storms have already furnished proof of how we are
+incapacitated from either enforcing our rights as neutrals or seizing by
+the forelock the opportunity afforded to us as neutrals and from
+enjoying the unquestioned privileges of neutrality.
+
+It is not altogether edifying to think that the close of the European
+struggle, be it long or short, will probably find our ocean commerce
+substantially where it was at the beginning, and that conflicts which
+were not of our making will have been fought out before we are able to
+secure our share of the world markets. Apparently the leaders in
+commerce, industry, and trade, like the lawmakers and administrators,
+are paralyzed by the imperative necessity of aiding panicstricken
+tourists and panicstricken stay-at-homes. Apparently, too, our people
+are suffering more in purse and general comfort than the actual
+combatant nations.
+
+Clamorous for American sympathy and cash, we have on our shores
+embassies from the belligerents, pleading their respective virtues and
+sorrows.
+
+Why, after all, should our chiefest concern be with them? Surely we may
+be good Samaritans without a total disregard of our own interests and a
+blindness to opportunity verging on impotency. There is no immorality in
+the proper play of self-interest. It is the conflict of interests which
+creates morality. But the spectators, even the maddest baseball "fans,"
+do not play the game nor train for it. It is high time we ceased wasting
+our energies in emotions and vain babble.
+
+At this writing the first line of defense against the Oriental deluge is
+endangered. The Slav individually and in his primitive culture is
+altogether charming. He is a son of the soil, picturesque in life and
+creative; he is minstrel and poet, seer. But so far he is the carrier of
+a low civilization, the prophet, priest, and king of autocracy and
+absolutism. Never has there been a time in history when the higher
+civilization was not in a savage struggle for existence. It is almost
+the first time in three centuries that the highest civilizations were in
+alliance with the lowest; not since the pugnacious Western powers of
+Europe sued for favor at the Sublime Porte.
+
+
+In Peril of the Whirlwind.
+
+This ought to be a very sobering spectacle, but it seems to arouse the
+delighted enthusiasm of an American majority. For such an aberration
+there is but a single and efficient remedy: absorption in our own
+affairs, the discriminating study of efficient methods to prevent our
+being caught up by a whirlwind, even the outer edges of which may snatch
+us into the vortex.
+
+To change the metaphor, we revel in the pleasant propulsion of the
+maelstrom's rim, unaware that every instant brings us closer to dangers,
+escape from which would demand herculean effort. Irresponsible emotions
+are, like those of the novel and the stage, when intensified to excess
+utterly incompatible with action. And just such a paralysis seems for
+six long weeks to have lamed the highest powers of America.
+
+The proportionate increase in population among the European powers is
+overwhelmingly in favor of the Slavs. Their rate of increase by natural
+generation is nearly three times that of even the Germans, with the
+result that by the introduction of enforced military service into
+Eastern Europe, (excepting Hungary and perhaps Rumania,) the military
+balance of power has been completely changed.
+
+The wars among the Balkan States, including Turkey, have put on foot
+armies of a dimension hitherto undreamed of among the South Slavs, and
+the army of Russia is probably two and a half times larger than it
+could have been thirty-five years ago.
+
+The method by which Eastern Europe has succeeded in financing itself is
+rather mysterious. We know, of course, that the original Franco-Russian
+Alliance was based on reciprocal interests, and that large sums of
+French money flowed into Russia, which partly developed the natural
+resources of Russia and were partly in the shape of loans that in all
+likelihood were used for war material.
+
+
+Slavs in Germany.
+
+The conflict between the Slavs and the Teutons all along the line on
+which they border has therefore been in two ways intensified. In the
+first place, just in proportion as Germany has become an industrial
+State, the field work has been intrusted to immigrant Slavs, some of
+whom come only for the season and return, but a very large number of
+them--estimated at the present moment at close to a million--have
+substantially settled within the borders of the German Empire. That is
+to say, there is a constant injection of 1-1/2 per cent. of Slavic blood
+into the territories of the German Empire.
+
+Suppose now that Russia should succeed in establishing the protectorate
+over all Slavs which she desires, and at the same time should press back
+the Germans on that border line, something very closely approximating a
+new migration of peoples in Europe will take place.
+
+As far as I know the German feeling, expressed both privately and
+publicly, officially and unofficially, they have hoped to maintain their
+complete consanguinity, if not homogeneity, within the lands they regard
+as their home; and their preparations for war, their increase of their
+military strength, have been made, professedly at least, solely in the
+interest of defense. Americans can simply not realize--it is impossible
+for them to realize--the difference in the degree of civilization and
+culture on either side of a purely artificial boundary line.
+
+Very fortunately it has entered the minds of several people lately to
+write to the newspapers about the unhappy confusion that comes from the
+use of words in a meaning which at home they do not connote at all.
+Take, for example, the whole question of militarism. As we see it, it is
+a matter altogether of degree. For defense against what the German
+considers the most terrible danger that he personally has to confront,
+it has been necessary from time to time to change both the size and the
+composition of his forces, whether offensive or defensive, and they
+therefore have introduced compulsory military service, an idea which has
+always been very offensive to Anglo-Saxons, but which in cases of dire
+necessity they have been compelled to utilize themselves, as, for
+example, during our own civil war, the abandonment of voluntary
+enlistment and the introduction of the draft.
+
+Now, the compulsory military service of the German means that every man
+is for a period of his life drafted and trained as a soldier. Forty
+years ago there were a great many men who escaped by reason of one or
+another provision of the law. That number was steadily diminished until
+within eighteen months, when finally it was proclaimed that every German
+who could endure the severity of that training must undergo it, and that
+was due to the fact that the military balance of power of which I spoke
+had been so completely changed by the re-armament of Russia and by the
+formation of the South Slav armies in the Balkan Peninsula.
+
+As a parallel we might imagine, not one troublesome neighbor, but four.
+We might imagine a tremendous military power developed in Canada, and we
+might imagine a hostile military power on the Atlantic side and another
+one on the Pacific side, in which case we would beyond a question have
+to expand our inchoate militarism, just in proportion as we came to feel
+the necessity for a strong physical defensive or offensive in the way of
+a great standing army, and we probably would do it without any
+hesitation.
+
+Now, Germany has not any really bitter foe on the north, although there
+is no love lost between the Germans and the Scandinavians; but it has an
+embittered foe on the east, and another one on the west, and what has
+proved to be an embittered foe upon the water and a very lukewarm
+neutral State on the south, a State which had joined in alliance with
+her.
+
+Italy had joined what Italy considered a defensive alliance, but not an
+offensive alliance, and chose to regard the outbreak of this war as an
+offensive movement on the part of Germany, and for that reason has
+refused to participate in the struggle.
+
+I say for that reason because, having been accustomed to reading, all my
+life, long diplomatic documents, really having been trained, you might
+say, almost in the school of Ranke, who was the inaugurator of an
+entirely new school of historical writing based on the criticism of
+historical papers, I have come to realize that the dispatches of trained
+diplomats are for the most part purely formal, and that while these
+respective publications of Great Britain and of Germany have a certain
+value, yet nevertheless the most important plans are laid in the
+embrasures of windows, where important men stand and talk so that no one
+can hear, or they are arranged and often times amplified in private
+correspondence which does not see the light until years afterward, and
+that the most important historical documents are found in the archives
+of families, members of which have been the guiding spirits of European
+policy and politics.
+
+So that what the secret diplomacy of the last years may have been is as
+yet utterly unknown, and certainly will not be known for the generation
+yet to come and perhaps for several generations. The student in almost
+any European capital is given complete access to everything on file in
+the archives, including secret documents, only down to a certain date.
+That date differs in various of these storehouses, but I think in no
+case is it later than 1830.
+
+If you ask why, there are the sensibilities of families to be
+considered, there is the question of hidden policies which they do not
+care to reveal, and then there is the whole matter of who the examining
+student is. For instance, certain very important papers were absolutely
+denied to me, as an American, in Great Britain--or at least excuses were
+made if they were not absolutely denied--which were opened to an
+Englishman who was working upon the same subject at about the same time.
+
+The reason for such observations at the present hour is plain enough.
+Public opinion is formed upon what the public is permitted to know, and
+is not formed upon the actual facts which the public is not permitted to
+know. And for that reason Americans, remote as we are from the sources
+of information, and especially remote from that most delicate of all
+indications, the pulse of public opinion in foreign countries, ought to
+be extremely slow to commit themselves to anything.
+
+
+Attack on Sir Edward Grey.
+
+Now, we have just had a very interesting incident. THE NEW YORK TIMES
+printed recently what the British call their "White Paper," as well as
+the German "White Paper." The editors of our most important journals
+announced that they had read and studied those papers with care, and
+that on the face of those papers, beyond any peradventure, Germany was
+the aggressor. German militarism had flaunted itself as an insult in the
+face of Europe. Germany had violated neutrality, Germany had committed
+almost every sin known to international law, and therefore the whole
+German procedure was to be reprobated.
+
+Within a very short time a Labor member of Parliament, J. Ramsay
+Macdonald, rises in his place, able and fearless, and, on the basis of
+the "White Paper," as published and put in the hands of the British
+public, attacks Sir Edward Grey for having so committed Great Britain in
+advance to both Russia and France that, in spite of the representations
+of the German Ambassador, he dared not discuss the question of
+neutrality. This member of Parliament manifestly belongs to the powerful
+anti-war party of Great Britain, a party two of whose members, John
+Burns and Lord Morley, resigned from the Cabinet rather than condone
+iniquity; a party which before the outbreak of the war made itself
+heard and felt, and protested against the participation of Great
+Britain, desiring localization of the struggle.
+
+Mr. Macdonald says that in his opinion this talk about the violation of
+Belgian neutrality, from the point of view of British statesmen, is
+absurd, because as long ago as 1870 the plans for the use of Belgium,
+both by France and by Germany--in other words, the violation of its
+neutrality--were in the British War Office, and that Mr. Gladstone rose
+in his place and said he was not one of those whose opinion was that a
+formal guarantee should stand so far in thwarting the natural course of
+events as to commit Great Britain to war; and that has been the
+announced and avowed policy of Great Britain all the way down since
+1870, and that therefore talk about the violation of Belgian neutrality
+is a mere pretext.
+
+That is another instance of this secret agreement that goes on, which so
+commits a man like Sir Edward Grey that in the pinch, when the German
+Ambassador substantially proposed to yield everything to him and asked
+him for his proposition, he cannot make any.
+
+These facts are in the "White Paper." As far as I know, no editor in the
+United States who claims to have studied thoroughly that "White Paper"
+has ever brought this out, and they had not been published in that paper
+at the time when Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith made their respective
+speeches and committed the British Nation to the war.
+
+Another unhappy use of language which has been noted in the public press
+is due to the literal translation of words. Americans simply do not know
+what the word Emperor means. To most of them it connotes the later Roman
+Emperors, or the autocratic Czar of Russia, or the short-lived but
+autocratic quality of Napoleon III., so that when we use the word
+Emperor we are thinking of an absolutely non-existing personage, unless
+it be the Czar of Russia.
+
+We like very much to make sport of phrases from languages unfamiliar to
+us, and we enjoy the jokes of ludicrous translations, and so we take
+the term "Oberster Kriegsherr" and we translate it "Supreme War Lord."
+What conception the average American forms of that is manifest. Whereas,
+as a matter of fact--and this has already been pointed out both in
+conversation and in public prints--the term means nothing in the world
+but Commander in Chief of the German Empire, has not any different
+relation whatsoever in the substance of its meaning than that which
+Presidents of the United States have been in time of supreme danger to
+the country. Mr. Lincoln was just as much an "Oberster Kriegsherr" at
+one period of his term as the German Emperor could ever be; in fact,
+rather more.
+
+
+Sherman's March to the Sea.
+
+In truth, the sense of outrage which Americans feel over the horrors of
+war, while most creditable to them, is very often based upon an
+ignorance of the rules and regulations of so-called civilized warfare,
+and upon a sentimentality, which, though also very creditable, is
+unfortunately not one of the factors in the world's work. It would not
+hurt Americans occasionally to recall Sherman's march to the sea, during
+which every known kind of devastation occurred, or to recall Gen.
+Hunter's boast that he had made the Valley of Virginia such a desert
+that a crow could not find sustenance enough in it to fly from one side
+to the other, and yet at that time, in what we considered the supreme
+danger to our country, the conduct of those men was approved, and they
+themselves were almost deified for their actions.
+
+While parallels are dangerous and the existence of one wrong does not
+make another action right, yet at the same time a very considerable
+amount of open-mindedness must be exercised in a neutral country when
+regarding the passionate devotions of combatant nations to their
+culture, to their safety, to their interest; and it should be recalled
+that in the heats and horrors of war it is extremely difficult, however
+trained or disciplined troops may be, to prevent outrages, and that so
+far as we have gone in accurate information the least that can be said
+is that it is slowly dawning upon us that horror for horror and outrage
+for outrage there has been no overwhelming balance on either side.
+
+The Allies (this interview was received Tuesday morning) firmly believe
+that the struggle on the west is so indecisive up to this time that what
+will count for them is the duration of the war. Lloyd George has just
+said, not in the exact language, but virtually, what Disraeli said in
+1878: "We don't want to fight; but, by jingo, if we do we have got the
+ships, we have got the men, we have got the money, too." Those are the
+words that brought into use the expression "jingoists."
+
+Now, Lloyd George said the other day that it was the money which in the
+long run would count and that Great Britain had that; and the meetings
+that are held to induce Englishmen to enlist are addressed by speakers
+who meet with lots of applause when they say: "We may not be able to put
+the same number of men into the field immediately that Germany was able
+to put or Russia was able to put, but in the long run, considering the
+attitude of all the different parts of our empire, we will be able to
+put just as many men, and therefore time is on our side both as regards
+force in the field and money to sustain it." (The London Times confesses
+that enlistment in Ireland is a failure.)
+
+Lloyd George says that for a comparatively short time England's enemies
+can finance themselves and be very efficient, but that as time passes
+they unquestionably will exhaust not only their pecuniary means but
+their resources of men as well. That is his position at this time.
+Therefore, it does appear as if the long duration of the war was a thing
+desired, at least in Great Britain, as being their hope of victory. Both
+Great Britain and France are wealthy countries. Just how wealthy Germany
+is I do not think they realize, nor do we know, nor what its ultimate
+resources can be.
+
+Now, looking at the allied line as a whole, we will suppose that the
+German forces were overwhelmingly triumphant in France, and suppose,
+likewise, which is by no means as strong a hypothesis, that Russia is
+overwhelmingly victorious against Austria and the Eastern German Army;
+then, of course, you have the situation in which that one of the Allies
+which is triumphant will assert its leadership in the terms of peace
+that will be reached, and would have the hegemony, as we call it, of all
+Europe.
+
+
+Russia's Position.
+
+So that the defeat of the Allies in the west and their overwhelming
+success in the east would compel the acceptance, in any peace that might
+be made, of such terms as Russia chose to dictate. She would have to be
+satisfied, otherwise there would only be one outcome of it; that is, of
+course, if Great Britain and France could not accept those terms, there
+would be a rupture, and stranger things have been seen than Germany,
+France, and Great Britain fighting against Russia.
+
+Stranger things than that have been seen; such changes in the alliances
+between States have occurred at intervals from the seventeenth century
+onward in Europe, a phase of the subject that is too lengthy to discuss
+here, but which every student of history knows all about. And it is
+thinkable that they might occur again.
+
+Suppose, on the other hand, that the Germans should imitate Frederick
+the Great, which is not so preposterous as appears on the face of it,
+because of comparatively easy means of transportation, and should be
+able to make successive victorious dashes, first in the east and then in
+the west, backward and forward; leadership would be hers, and France
+would be a minor power for years to come.
+
+Probably peace might come more quickly if neither side should be
+absolutely victorious than otherwise. But for the moment I think that
+the agreement among the Allies is a very portentous thing, as far as the
+duration of the war is concerned.
+
+"Do you think that any secret agreement may exist; that France even now
+may have made an agreement with Germany?" Mr. Sloane was asked.
+
+I cannot think so. I think it very evident there is no such secret
+agreement. If one existed it would be much more likely to be between
+Russia and Germany. You remember the development of Prussia, which is,
+of course, the commanding State in the German Empire, occurred by its
+careful conservation of the policy which was laid down in the political
+will of Frederick the Great, that of keeping friends with Russia.
+
+The fact of the matter is, Prussia was saved in the Napoleonic wars by
+the act of Gen. Yorck at Tauroggen, when he suddenly abandoned the
+French and went over to the Prussians, and while Russia has within half
+a generation become intensely bitter against Germany, yet it is true
+that the Baltic Provinces, in which the gentry and the burghers are
+Germans, have furnished most important administrators to the Russian
+Empire, a fact that causes much of the jealousy in Russia on the part of
+the native-born Russians against the Germans of the Baltic Provinces.
+Nevertheless, self-interest is a very important thing, and if Russia
+thought for a moment that France was going to abandon her I think she
+would turn to Germany right away.
+
+As time has developed the nations of today, it has come to be understood
+by hard-headed statesmen that those who conduct their respective affairs
+can have no other guiding principle than the interest of their own
+State, no other.
+
+There is a persistent feeling throughout the world that there is an
+analogy between the individual man and organized society. There are
+books written to show that States must and do pass through the various
+stages through which an individual passes, namely, infancy, childhood,
+youth, middle age, old age, decay. By a perfectly natural parallel the
+majority of men apply the same morality to the State which they apply to
+the individual, and they insist upon it that a State must be moral in
+every respect; that it must have a conscience; that it must have virtue;
+that it must practice self-denial; that it must not lay its hands on
+what does not belong to it. In short, that it must as a State or as a
+nation be "good," in exactly the same sense in which a person is "good."
+In other words, they personify the State.
+
+I have never heard of any speaker or writer who would not approve of
+that as an ideal, and who would not desire that the millennium should
+come upon earth now, and that exactly the same virtues that are held up
+for personal ideals should be held up for national ideals.
+
+I think we all believe that, but, as a matter of fact, in a world
+constituted as ours is, the one test of a good Government, applied by
+every individual, is the material prosperity of the people who live
+under it, and for that reason if the people do not at first put in power
+men who can give them material prosperity they will put such failures
+out and try another set of rulers, and they will go on and on that way
+until necessarily the policies of statesmen must be based upon the
+interest of that State whose destinies are in their hands. So that the
+only hope of relations between nations similar to those that exist
+between good men and good women is that the individuals of that nation,
+its population, its inhabitants, should consent to exercise the
+self-denying virtues; and until that point is reached there can be no
+good State in the sense in which there can be a good man. We ought all
+to work for it, but it is not here now, and there are no signs on the
+horizon of its approach.
+
+In a war, therefore, every statesman studies the resources of his
+nation, and when the time comes that it is manifestly his duty to put an
+end to warfare, it is only by the public approval that he dares do it,
+by showing that it is to their advantage to give up the things for which
+they went to war, in greater or less degree.
+
+
+Armed Peace Not Disarmament.
+
+And the man of shrewd insight, who knows when that point is reached, is
+the leader who saves the face, so to speak, of these nations and steps
+in and says:
+
+"Now, the whole moral force of the civilized world must be brought to
+bear upon you to make a peace, the terms of which, if possible, shall
+not discredit any of you, but at the same time shall be as elastic and
+as proportionate to your respective gains and losses as will insure at
+least a considerable period of peace, not an armistice, not an armed
+armistice, though it may be an armed peace."
+
+We see no signs anywhere in Europe that disarmament has any substantial
+body of advocates in any nation. The basic principle hitherto of the
+German people has been to have, not the largest, but the strongest army;
+the basic principle of Great Britain, which sneers at militarism, has
+been not only to have the most powerful fleet, but twice the most
+powerful fleet.
+
+And what is the basic principle of the United States? The Monroe
+Doctrine, to have no armed neighbor which shall compel us to violate by
+its presence our dislike for compulsory military service or to expend
+great sums for armament.
+
+These are basic principles in each of us. Now, we have been able to
+maintain the Monroe Doctrine by simply showing our teeth, but whether we
+could maintain it in the future without an armed force sufficient to
+give it sanction I think is doubtful, and for that reason the Monroe
+Doctrine has undergone quite a number of modifications which I do not
+need to explain here.
+
+But this basic principle of ours that from Patagonia to the Mexican
+frontier we will suffer no armed nation of Europe to make permanent
+settlement and endanger our peace is exactly the same sort of principle
+that the German holds when he says, "We must have the strongest army,"
+and the same which the Englishman holds when he says, "We must have the
+strongest fleet."
+
+I want it distinctly understood that I am not a partisan. I am not pro
+this or pro that or pro anything except pro-American, and the principal
+impulse I have in trying to clarify my mind is my hope that there may be
+an end to these hysterical exhibitions of partisanship, in which
+(throughout this neutral nation) men indulge who still hold too
+strongly, as I think, to the glory, honor, dignity, and traditions of
+the lands of their origin.
+
+
+
+
+An Answer by Prof. Ladd
+
+     Emeritus Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at Yale
+     University; Lecturer on Philosophy in India and Japan; has
+     received numerous decorations in Japan, where he was guest and
+     unofficial adviser of Prince Ito; ex-President of American
+     Psychological Association.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+It seems strange to me that a student of history with the training and
+acumen of Prof. Sloane should overlook or minimize the important
+distinction that must hold the chief place in enabling us to understand
+the issues and appreciate the merits of the war now raging in Europe.
+This distinction is that between the German people and Germanic
+civilization, on the one hand, and, on the other, the present
+Constitution and cherished ambitions of the German Empire under the
+dominance of Prussia. The German people, by genuine processes of
+self-development, have worked out for themselves a veritable spiritual
+unity which manifests itself in language, laws, customs, and a large
+measure of substantial uniformity in moral and religious ideals.
+Germanic civilization, with its love of order, its high estimate of
+education, its notable additions to science, philosophy, and art,
+constitutes one of the most noble and beneficent contributions to the
+welfare of mankind.
+
+But the case is not at all the same with the German Empire as at present
+constituted. It is not a historical development, a truly national
+affair, as are the Empire of Great Britain, the Republics of France and
+the United States, or the Empires of Russia and Japan. It is a modern
+combination of politically divergent unities, forced by the ruthless but
+infinitely shrewd policy of Bismarck and his coadjutors, misdirected and
+perhaps driven to ruin by the man and his entourage, who, even if he is
+King of Prussia "by the grace of God," is only Emperor of Germany "by
+the will of the Princes."
+
+We are diligently given to understand that all these "Princes" and all
+the German people have entered heart and soul into this war, and without
+the slightest doubt as to its righteousness and as to the destiny of the
+empire, this modern military autocracy, ultimately to be completely
+victorious. This is hard to believe, although it must be admitted that
+the cowardice of the Socialists and the obsession of the professors are
+remarkable phenomena. As to the latter, however, we must remember their
+dependence on the Government, not only for their information and their
+"call" to speak, but also for their positions in the Government system
+of education.
+
+As to the significance of the two names most prominently quoted in this
+connection, I am not at all impressed, as so many of my colleagues
+appear to be. An intimate friend of mine some twenty years ago was
+several weeks en pension in the same house where Haeckel had his
+apartment, and even then he was notorious for his hatred of foreigners
+and of women. Those of us who have followed closely his career know how
+often he has written with more than German professorial virulence
+against those who differed from his theory of evolution, and that he is
+at present scarcely more abusive of England than he has several times
+been of his own Government and of the State Church because his system
+was not made a matter of compulsory teaching. As to Eucken, the reasons
+for his obsession are quite different. In his case the feeling and the
+utterance are due to intellectual weakness rather than to virulence of
+passion.
+
+After all, however, the temper of military and imperial Germany under
+the dominance of Prussia has been essentially the same from the
+beginning. In illustration of this, let me quote for your readers from a
+poem of Heine, written as long ago as 1842. I do this the more readily
+because I have recently seen, to my astonishment, Heine placed beside
+Goethe as representing the better temper of the Germanic civilization as
+opposed to the blinded judgment and immoral hatred of the modern German
+Empire:
+
+    Germany's still a little child,
+      But he's nursed by the sun, though tender;
+    He is not suckled on soothing milk,
+      But on flames of burning splendor.
+
+    One grows apace on such a diet;
+      It fires the blood from languor;
+    Ye neighbor's children, have a care,
+      This urchin how ye anger!
+
+    He is an awkward infant giant,
+      The oak by the roots uptearing;
+    He'll beat you till your backs are sore,
+      And crack your crowns for daring.
+
+    He is like Siegfried, the noble child,
+      That song-and-saga wonder,
+    Who, when his fabled sword was forged,
+      His anvil cleft in sunder!
+
+    To you, who will our Dragon slay,
+      Shall Siegfried's strength be given;
+    Hurrah! how joyfully your nurse
+      Will laugh on you from heaven!
+
+    The Dragon's hoard of royal gems
+      You'll win, with none to share it;
+    Hurrah! how bright the golden crown
+      Will sparkle when you wear it!
+
+But it would not be stranger than many other things which have happened
+in human history if the defeat of German military imperialism should
+result in restoring to Europe and spreading more widely over the world
+the beneficent influence of Germanic civilization. Certainly they are
+not the same thing, and they do not stand or fall together.
+
+GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD.
+
+Yale University, Oct. 20, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Possible Profits From War
+
+INTERVIEW WITH FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS.
+
+     Dr. Giddings is Professor of Sociology and the History of
+     Civilization at Columbia University; author of many works on
+     sociology and political economy; President of Institut
+     Internationale de Sociologie, 1913.
+
+By Edward Marshall.
+
+
+No man in the United States is better entitled to estimate the probable
+social and economic outcome of the present European debacle than Prof.
+Franklin H. Giddings of Columbia, one of the most distinguished
+sociologists and political economists in the United States.
+
+"Today all Europe fights," he said to me, "but, also, today all Europe
+thinks."
+
+That is an impressive sentence, with which he concluded our long talk,
+and with which I begin my record of it.
+
+He believes that this thinking of the men who crouch low in the drenched
+trenches and of the women who tragically wait for news of them will
+fashion a new Europe.
+
+He agrees with the remarkable opinions of President Butler, that that
+new Europe will be marked by the rise of democracy.
+
+He sees the probability of broadened individual opportunity in it,
+accompanied by the breaking down of international suspicions; and he
+thinks that all these processes, which surely make for peace, will
+surely bring a lasting peace.
+
+In the following interview, which Prof. Giddings has carefully reread,
+will be found one of the most interesting speculative utterances born of
+the war.
+
+"The immediate economic cause of the war," said Prof. Giddings, "lay in
+the affairs of Servia and Austria. Servia had been shut in. She had been
+able to get practically nothing from, and sell practically nothing to,
+the outside world, save by Austria's permission, while Austria, with
+Germany professing fear of Slavic development, for years had been taking
+every care to prevent the Balkan peoples from having free access to the
+Adriatic.
+
+"Some financial profit arose from this interning of the little States,
+but it is probable that the desire for this was all along entirely
+secondary to the fear of Balkan, especially Servian, political and
+economic development.
+
+"In the larger economic question Germany felt especial interest.
+
+"In a comparatively few years she had made the greatest progress ever
+made by any nation in an equal time, with the possible exception of that
+made by the United States in a similar period after our civil war, and
+it is probable that not even our own advance has equaled hers in
+rapidity or extent, if all could be tabbed up.
+
+"She had worked out a great manufacturing scheme, she had developed an
+immense internal commerce by means of her railroads and her Rhine and
+other waterways, she had built up an enormous trade with Eastern Europe,
+Western Asia, South America, and the United States.
+
+"She had highly specialized in and become somewhat dependent on the
+production of articles like dyestuffs and the commodities of the
+pharmacopoeia.
+
+"Her shipping had advanced until it closely crowded England's; her
+finances, on the whole, were well handled and her credit was excellent,
+while her wonderful system of co-operation between the Government and
+manufacturing producers and commercial distributers of all kinds had
+become the admiration of all nations. The extent to which her Government
+facilitated foreign trade through obtaining and distributing costly
+information might well be taken as the world's model.
+
+"Whatever claims be made or contested about her contributions to culture
+and theoretical science, there can be no argument about her material
+achievements."
+
+
+German Achievements.
+
+"Along every line her social organization of co-operation between the
+Government and the people successfully handled problems feared by all
+the outside world. While, as a result of the development of humane
+feeling, England and the United States have been saying that ignorance,
+vagabondage, and misery ought to be abolished, Germany has said, 'They
+shall be!' And, saying it, she had actually commenced to abolish them.
+
+"She had cut down enormous wastes of human energy and, for the first
+time in the history of the world, had established an economic minimum
+below which men and families were not permitted to sink.
+
+"The cost of this was large; for insurance, colonies for tramps and
+vagabonds, employment agencies, and the like; but Germany made it pay in
+the creation of a nation built of loyal and efficient people. Both their
+loyalty and their efficiency have been proved and reproved in the course
+of the present struggle. They had accomplished marvels, they were ready
+for amazing sacrifices.
+
+"Now, one of the principal reasons why Germany was able to do these
+things, although, she probably ignored it and possibly would deny it, is
+to be found in the free-trade policy of England.
+
+"At any time during the past twenty years England could have checked
+German progress effectively by the establishment of a protective tariff
+system designed to encourage her own colonies and other nations with
+whom she had long been on friendly and influential terms, to the utmost
+development of exclusive trade privileges designed to shut out Germany.
+Except for the long-established English policy of commercial freedom
+Germany could not have accomplished for herself what she has.
+
+"Germany has been growing rapidly. Her birth rate has been high, but of
+late it has been falling, and when the war began there were indications
+that she soon would approach the low ratio of population increase
+already characteristic of France, of New England and the Middle West in
+the United States, and lately of England. But Germany's population was
+still a growing one and, in a sense, a restive one.
+
+"The Malthusian theory has not worked out in the civilized world as
+Malthus supposed it would, for the application of science to
+manufacturing, agriculture, &c., has prevented increasing populations
+from pressing upon the means of subsistence; but in all parts of the
+Western World the standards of living have been raised, the ambitions of
+the average man and woman have expanded. They have lived better than
+their parents lived, and they have wished their children to live better
+still.
+
+"However, we can place no limit upon the probable expansion of human
+desires, and it is true that a population unchecked by the intelligent
+action of the human will tends to increase at a rate more rapid than
+that at which it is possible to raise the actual plane of human living.
+
+"The speed of the working of the two rules is different, perhaps, but
+both are dynamic, and the population of Germany tended to grow more
+rapidly than betterment of conditions could be provided, even under the
+nation's splendid governmental and commercial efficiency.
+
+"The natural yearning of the nation, therefore, was toward colonial
+expansion, and, although note that I make no charges against either the
+German Government or German people, the nation probably has wished
+sovereignty over Western Europe, through Belgium and Holland to the sea.
+Its narrow outlet through Hamburg and Bremen was insufficient for its
+needs.
+
+"Of course, its trade and economic advance has sometimes conflicted
+with that of other nations. It is natural for Germany to suppose that
+England tried to block it. However, I think that all the evidence which
+Germany has brought forward in proof of this is weak and improbable,
+because England's great source of revenue has been her foreign trade,
+and, above all, her carrying trade, and I am not partisan but stating
+the obvious when I say that England prospers when the rest of the world
+prospers, and that she has profited mightily through Germany's
+commercial advance.
+
+"These facts point to the conclusion that Germany really had everything
+to gain by avoiding war and continuing her prosperous expansion along
+commercial lines, increasing the strength of her grip in foreign
+countries, as, for example, in South America."
+
+
+Germany's Prosperous Commerce.
+
+"In South America we Americans were not really competing with her. She
+had studied the market and adopted the methods necessary to its
+satisfaction; we had not. England was relatively losing her hold there.
+In another twenty years Germany surely would have been one of the
+greatest commercial and manufacturing nations which the world has ever
+known. So it was not economic necessity, nor pressure approaching
+economic necessity, which precipitated this war.
+
+"I think the German people, as they professed to do, did become greatly
+alarmed over a possibility, magnified into a probability, that Russia,
+taking up the cause of the Balkan peoples, would obtain Constantinople,
+that Servia would make her way to the Adriatic, and that all possibility
+of the expansion of Germany to the southeast would be blocked, and
+Germany probably became alarmed over England's intentions--there were
+many indications of something close to panic in Germany after it was
+generally understood that King Edward figured in the pact with France.
+
+"I, for one, do not believe that the German fears of England were well
+grounded; I do not believe that in the excitement the German mind worked
+discriminatingly or that it is working with discrimination today. I
+think that Germany has presented an extraordinary example of nation-wide
+mobmindedness in a situation which offered nothing but ruin through war
+and boundless advantages if she sat tight and waited for some one else
+to strike the first blow, which, then, probably never would have been
+struck.
+
+"So, although I have outlined what I think may fairly be regarded as
+some of the economic conditions contributing to the war, I do not think
+that it is entirely to be explained by economic causes.
+
+"They fail to account for the actual precipitation of the conflict. I
+think that there is no explanation of that, short of recognition of an
+abnormal reaction of the German mind to a situation the nature of which
+was mistaken, or, at least, exaggerated.
+
+"And, of course, there were other factors concerning which we shall not
+know the truth for years, such as the personal influence of individual
+minds in the German and other Governments. It will be long before the
+complete history of the acts and negligence of diplomats and other
+responsible Ministers will be written."
+
+I asked Prof. Giddings if, in his opinion, the struggle is likely to
+result in any wide and profound change in the economic life of the
+world.
+
+"Yes," he replied, "I think it is sure to. In the first place, for at
+least half a generation, and perhaps longer, the producing capital of
+the world will be much smaller than it was before the war.
+
+"But in this speculation we must be cautious, because, so far, the
+costly war material which has been consumed, such as fortresses
+destroyed, guns worn out, ammunition consumed, soldiers' clothing, and
+in general food, were principally accumulated and paid for long ago.
+They have come out of the world's past production, and their cost
+already has been written off.
+
+"The real loss, the new waste, over and above the devastation of Belgium
+and other lands, has been of labor, productive activity which would have
+been carried on during the period of the war had the struggle been
+avoided, the destruction of the lives of men in their economic prime,
+the maiming of others to the depletion of their future usefulness and
+the loss to European fatherhood.
+
+"But if the war lasts a long time, necessitating the general renewal of
+ships, fortresses, weapons, and stores, the waste will be enormous, for
+the actual money expenditure will then come out of funds newly
+accumulated or charged against the future, and not out of those set
+aside in the past for war purposes."
+
+
+One Great Change Occurring.
+
+"Thus one great economic change already is occurring--the devastation
+wrought, the destruction of hoarded funds and supplies and of useful
+human life.
+
+"There are others which are probable, but also problematical, although I
+think we fairly may take them into account.
+
+"Will the European nations, in settlement of their differences through
+final terms of peace, simply endeavor to restore the old order, drawing
+their lines of demarkation very strictly, enacting, for example, higher
+tariffs, thinking that along that line will lie the easiest way of
+re-establishing national finances?
+
+"If so, the old contentions will be perpetuated. It will be the old
+order of things over again.
+
+"We shall again have the spirit of exclusiveness fostered and the old
+suspicions bred. The old intense competition of nation with nation for
+trade to the exclusion of other nations from the markets of the world
+will return with its attendant inefficiency.
+
+"But, on the other hand, the world will be an immense gainer through the
+war if it is followed by a broad and rational review of the whole
+situation and an adjustment of the map of Europe with due regard to the
+ambitions and legitimate economic opportunities and capabilities of the
+various peoples.
+
+"This war may be the greatest good the world has ever known if it leaves
+Europe in a mental state disposed to Broaden opportunity, to break down
+suspicions, to eliminate barriers, and make commerce much freer than it
+has been.
+
+"Then Europe's economic recovery will be rapid, animosities will die
+quickly away, and every nation which is now involved will progress with
+a new speed, seeing that opportunity is created only through superiority
+in fair competition.
+
+"The next possibility, one far more nearly a probability, I think, than
+the somewhat Utopian speculation in which I have just indulged, is that
+after the war the world will have been deeply impressed by the
+tremendous activity of Germany, whether she be victor or vanquished.
+
+"What is the secret of her efficiency as manifested in the mobilization
+of her vast army, in her use of science in new military devices, in her
+holding of the elements of her national life together during the
+struggle, in her keeping her industries going in the face of
+unprecedented difficulties--all to a degree never before dreamed of?
+will be a general query.
+
+"Other nations will study the German plan, asking whether it is true, as
+has been taught in America, that that Government is best which governs
+least.
+
+"It may be that this war will result, entirely apart from the urgency of
+the labor problem which it will magnify, and wholly on the grounds of
+general efficiency, in a general inquiry as to whether or not the time
+has come for quasi-socialistic national developments.
+
+"I think it unlikely that the war will give impetus to that proletarian
+socialism which is founded on class consciousness and class struggle;
+but it may urge forward a socialistic movement based upon the large and
+fruitful idea that the best hope for the future is offered by the most
+complete and highly organized co-operation of all elements, all
+interests, all agencies which in their combination make up national
+structures.
+
+"As a matter of fact, I am an optimist, and I believe that this is about
+what will come after this war ends.
+
+"To put my theory in slightly different terms, I believe that the
+conflict will greatly further the development of what perhaps may be
+called 'public socialism,' and I mean by that the highest attainable
+organization of whole peoples for the production of commodities, the
+furtherance of enterprise, and the promotion of the general well-being.
+
+"I think that when the world sobers up it will ask: 'How did Germany do
+it?'
+
+"Whether she wins or loses that must be the universal query, for whether
+she wins or loses her achievement has been in many ways unprecedented.
+
+"There can be but one answer to this query: She did it by an
+organization which brought together in efficient co-operation the
+individual, the quasi-private corporation, the public corporation, and
+the Government upon a scale never before seen.
+
+"The world is bound to take notice of this."
+
+
+Will Fear Loss of Liberty.
+
+I asked Prof. Giddings to go beyond economics and to consider the war's
+probable results in their broader sociological aspects.
+
+"If what I have predicted happens," he replied, "the democratic elements
+of society in all nations will become apprehensive of the loss of
+liberty.
+
+"They will fear that in the interests of efficiency the perfected social
+order will impose minute and unwelcome regulations upon individual life
+and effort, and that a degree of coercive control will be established
+which will end by making individuals mere cogs in the machine,
+diminishing their importance, curtailing their usefulness and initiative
+far more than is done by the great industrial corporations against which
+the working classes already are protesting so loudly.
+
+"And not only the working people but a large proportion of all other
+classes will develop these fears, especially in those nations which,
+during the last century, have built up popular sovereignty and
+democratic freedom, as the terms are understood in England and America.
+
+"We shall hear the argument that the loss of individual initiative and
+personal self-reliance is too great a price to pay even for supreme
+efficiency and the maximum production of material comforts.
+
+"The problem which such a conflict of interests and opinions will
+present may be speculatively defined as that of trying to find a way to
+reconcile a maximum of efficiency organization with a maximum of
+individual freedom.
+
+"So stating it, we have to recognize that this has been the biggest
+problem, in fact the comprehensive problem, that man, has faced
+throughout human history, and the one which, really, he has been trying
+to solve by the trial and error method in all his social experiments.
+
+"It is the sociological as distinguished from the merely economic
+problem.
+
+"Human society exists because early in his career man discovered that
+mutual aid, or team work, is, on the whole, in the struggle for
+existence and the pursuit of happiness, a more effective factor than
+physical strength or individual cleverness.
+
+"Natural selection has acted not only upon individuals, but, in the
+large sense, upon groups and aggregates of groups. The restrictions upon
+individual life have developed in the interests of groups, or collective
+efficiency.
+
+"On the other hand, collective efficiency has no meaning, it serves no
+purpose apart from the amelioration of individual life and the
+development of individual personality.
+
+"So long as groups fear one another and fight with one another the
+restrictions upon individual liberty must be extreme in the interests of
+the collective fighting efficiency of each group as a whole.
+
+"All the possibilities of personal development, of individual freedom,
+are involved in the larger possibilities of friendly relations between
+nation and nation.
+
+"Already the co-operative instinct has so grown that if war and the fear
+of war could be eliminated, mankind would have relatively little
+difficulty in working out ways and means of combining Governmental
+action with individual initiative for purposes of economic production,
+education, the promotion of the public health, and the administration
+of justice.
+
+"All those principles and rules which we call Morality are, in fact,
+mere rules of the game of life. We play the game or do not play it; we
+are fair or unfair.
+
+"On the whole, most of us try to be fair because it has been found that
+playing the game with a sense of fairness is the only way in which we
+can succeed in working together for common ends without the necessity of
+imposing upon ourselves coercive rules to hold our organization together
+for possible mass attack upon the end in view.
+
+"Social life, in this sense of playing the game fairly, has made man the
+superior of the brutes he sprang from. There is nothing mysterious or
+recondite about it.
+
+"In order to work together men must understand one another. Therefore,
+natural selection has picked out the intelligent for survival in the
+social world; and in order to work together intelligent men must depend
+on one another, abiding by their covenants.
+
+"Therefore, again, natural selection has picked out what we call
+Morality for survival in the social world. The whole further progress of
+mankind would seem to hang upon the possibility that we can find a way
+to limit and, if possible, to terminate wars between nations, for only
+in that contingency can we hope to develop a social system in which a
+supreme efficiency with a maximum of individual liberty can be combined
+upon a working basis."
+
+
+Application of the Facts.
+
+"These are incontrovertible facts, and they find their application to
+the existing European situation in various ways, the most important of
+which will appear in the discovery that, valuable as conventions and
+covenants of nation with nation may be, and intolerable as any violation
+of them surely is, we cannot hope for general and unfailing observance
+of them until the feeling of mankind and the whole attitude of the world
+in respect to international as well as private conduct shall be that the
+covenants and conventions shall become, in a degree, unnecessary.
+
+"Already it is apparent that the entire world, including the peoples of
+the nations at war as well as the peoples of the nations remaining
+happily at peace, have, begun to think these thoughts and reflect upon
+their momentous importance.
+
+"Shocked and stunned as never before by a calamity for which we find no
+measure in past human experience, mankind is bound to take at this
+moment a more sober view, a broader and more rational view, of the
+problems of responsibility and collective conduct than it hitherto has
+been able even to attempt.
+
+"The world is sure to ask what things make for sobriety of judgment and
+integrity of purpose. It is sure in future more carefully to weigh
+relative values, and will be disposed to count as unimportant many
+things for which hitherto the armed men of nations have rushed into war.
+
+"In a word, this war has made the whole world think as no one thing ever
+has made it think before, and, after all, it is upon the habit of
+thought that we must depend for all rational progress.
+
+"Other wars and other great events have fostered sentiment, much of
+which has been hopeful and useful; they have accomplished far-reaching
+economic changes, many of them necessary.
+
+"But the reactions of this war will surely go beyond all previous
+experience. They already are and must be, in a far greater measure,
+profoundly intellectual, and one of the consequences of this fact
+inevitably will be the broadening and deepening of the democratic
+current.
+
+"When peace returns it will be seen that democracy has received a
+hitherto unimagined impetus. Then it will be understood that democracy,
+in one of its most important aspects, is popular thinking, that it is
+the widest possible extension of the sense of responsibility.
+
+"A democratic world will be, all in all, a peace-loving world.
+
+"We may confidently expect far-reaching changes in the internal
+political organization of the nations now involved. In every nation of
+Europe the people are asking: What, after all, is this conflict all
+about?
+
+"They will ask this many times, and however they may answer it they
+will, by consequence, follow the question with another: Shall we go on
+fighting wars about the necessity, expedience, and righteousness of
+which we have not been consulted?
+
+"And to this query they will find only one answer--an emphatic negative.
+
+"Sooner or later there will be a comprehensive political reorganization
+of Europe, and when its day comes the rearrangement will be along the
+lines of a republic rather than along the lines of any monarchy, however
+liberal.
+
+"Then international agreements will be unnecessary and there will be no
+treaties to be broken--no 'scraps of paper' to be disregarded.
+
+"Apparently Germany has been as successful in training her people to
+think accurately along economic lines as she has been in training them
+to work efficiently along such lines; and that accurate thought
+undoubtedly is bearing startling fruit among the men today crouched in
+the trenches on the firing lines."
+
+
+Era of Individual Thought.
+
+"England, on the other hand, and France have encouraged the free and
+spontaneous life of democratic peoples. France and England, like the
+United States, have been training their peoples to think efficiently of
+and to appreciate and use liberty and initiative. And the men of these
+two nations are, in turn, exercising that ability as they crouch in
+their trenches.
+
+"In other words, this war has precipitated an era of sober individual
+thought about the individual's rights and responsibilities. It will
+everywhere bring about a wider political organization of mankind, a
+greater freedom of trade and opportunity, a more serious and thorough
+education, a more earnest attention and devotion to the higher interests
+of life, giving such thought preference above that overemphasis of
+material comforts which has been so marked a feature of recent human
+history.
+
+"All these things will make for peace; and another and potent influence
+will be the exhaustion of the weakened nations which will follow the
+conflict. Because of that very weakness Europe will turn its unanimous
+attention to the things of peace rather than to the things of war.
+
+"The new Europe is being fashioned by those questioning men who now are
+lying in the trenches.
+
+"They are searching in the universe for answers to such inquiries as
+they never dreamed about before, and the women, worrying at home--they,
+too, are busy with a search for answers to hitherto undreamed-of
+questions.
+
+"They all are pondering great things for the first time. Their pondering
+will be fruitful.
+
+"Today all Europe fights, but, also, today all Europe thinks. And,
+thinking, perhaps it may devise a better order, so that it may not ever
+fight again."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+"To Americans Leaving Germany"
+
+A FAREWELL WORD.
+
+
+AMERICANS!
+
+Citizens of the United States!
+
+In this earnest moment in which you are leaving the soil of Germany and
+Berlin, take with you from German citizens, from representatives of
+trade and industry, who are proud to entertain friendly commercial
+relations with the United States, a hearty farewell coupled with the
+desire of a speedy return.
+
+Together with this farewell we beg you to do us a favor. As our guests,
+whom we have always honored and protected, we ask you to take this paper
+with you as a memorial and to circulate the same among your authorities,
+press, friends, and acquaintances.
+
+For, we are well aware that the enemies of Germany are at work to make
+you the instruments to lower Germany's people and army in the face of
+the whole world in order to deceive foreign nations as to Germany's
+policy and economical power. We ask you, as free citizens face to face
+with free citizens, to circulate the real truth about Germany among your
+people as compared to the lies of our enemies.
+
+We beg you to take the following main points to heart:
+
+     1. The German Emperor and the German Nation wanted peace. The
+     cunning and breach of faith of our opponents have forced the
+     sword into the hands of Germany.
+
+     2. After war has been forced on us the German Nation, Emperor,
+     and Reichstag have granted everything in the most brilliant
+     unanimity for the war. No difference prevails in Germany any
+     longer, no difference between party, confession, rank or
+     position, but we are a united nation and army.
+
+     3. Our military organization and our mobilization has
+     proceeded with splendid precision. The mobilization was
+     accomplished during the course of a few days. In addition to
+     those who are compelled to serve, more than 1,200,000
+     volunteers have offered their services. All civil
+     organizations, from the head of industry and finance to the
+     smallest man downward, vie with each other in works of
+     voluntary aid and welfare.
+
+     4. In the field German arms have had splendid successes in the
+     first days of mobilization.
+
+In the east the Russian enemy has been driven from the German frontier,
+in numerous small fights by our troops in conjunction with those of the
+Austro-Hungarian monarchy. By successful coup de mains our navy has been
+successful in damaging and alarming our Russian opponent in her Baltic
+naval ports. The Russian port of Libau has been burned down and in
+Russian Poland revolution has already begun. Russian mobilization is a
+long way from being accomplished, the troops are badly, poorly
+nourished, and many deserters sell their weapons and horses.
+
+In the west the German Army has gained imposing victories over Belgium
+and France.
+
+In Belgium, where the population unfortunately committed the most
+barbarous atrocities against peaceful Germans before the war broke out,
+comparatively weak German forces conquered the strong fortress of Liege
+a few days after the mobilization, inflicting severe damage on the enemy
+and opening up the way via Belgium to France.
+
+Valuable victories have been obtained over France on the Alsatian
+frontier toward the strong French fortress of Belfort as well as in the
+direction of the fortress Luneville. At Muelhausen one and a half French
+Army divisions were overthrown and driven back over the frontier with
+heavy losses.
+
+The strong and effective German fleet is on the watch against the
+English fleet.
+
+England's risk is great in staking her reputation as the strongest
+naval power on one throw against the German fleet. Further, England runs
+the danger that her large colonies, such as India and Egypt, will seize
+a moment that has been long desired to revolt.
+
+It is for the United States to utilize the present moment to frustrate
+by powerful initiative England's endeavors to keep down all nations,
+including America, in the trade and traffic of the world.
+
+Citizens of the United States! Take the conviction with you to your
+homes that Germany will stake her last man and her last penny for
+victory. Germany must conquer and will conquer.
+
+Remember! That after a successful victory Germany will make new
+political and economical progress, and that America, as a shrewd
+businesslike State and as a friend of Germany, will participate in such
+progress.
+
+Today we beg you earnestly to convey to your fellow-citizens that the
+German Nation, as the safe refuge of civilization and culture, has
+always protected the loyal citizens of its enemies in every manner in
+contrast to Russia, France, and Belgium. By circulating this short
+memorial among your fellow-citizens you are likewise insuring that also
+in the future the United States will learn the truth about Germany's
+battles and victories. Your friends here will always do the best in
+their power to supply you with genuine news. We wish you a happy voyage
+toward your home, so appreciated by all Germans, and hope to see you
+again in a victorious and prosperous Germany.
+
+REPRESENTATIVES OF GERMAN INDUSTRY.
+
+Berlin, Aug. 13, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+German Declarations
+
+By Rudolf Eucken and Ernst Haeckel.
+
+     Dr. Eucken is Privy Councilor and Professor of Philosophy in
+     the University of Jena; won the Nobel Prize for Literature in
+     1908; has received many foreign honorary degrees and his
+     philosophy has been expounded in English.
+
+     Ernst Haeckel is Privy Councilor and late Professor of Zoology
+     at the University of Jena; has written many works on evolution
+     which have been translated into English.
+
+
+The whole German world of letters is today filled with deep indignation
+and strong moral resentment at the present behavior of England. Both of
+us, for many years bound to England by numerous scientific and personal
+ties, believe ourselves prepared to give open expression to this inward
+revulsion. In close co-operation with like-minded English investigators
+we have zealously exerted ourselves to bring the two great peoples
+closer together in spirit and to promote a mutual understanding. A
+fruitful reciprocal interchange of English and German culture seemed to
+us worth while, indeed necessary, for the spiritual advance of mankind,
+which today confronts such great problems. Gratefully we recall in this
+connection the friendly reception which our efforts received in England.
+So great and noble were the traits of English character which revealed
+themselves to us that we were permitted to hope that in their sure
+growth they would come to be superior to the pitfalls and seamy sides of
+this character. And now they have proved inferior, inferior to the old
+evil of a brutal national egotism which recognizes no rights on the
+part of others, which, unconcerned about morality or unmorality, pursues
+only its own advantage.
+
+History furnishes in abundance examples of such an unscrupulous egotism;
+we need recall here only the destruction of the Danish fleet (1807) and
+the theft of the Dutch colonies in the Napoleonic wars. But what is
+taking place today is the worst of all; it will be forever pointed at in
+the annals of world history as England's indelible shame. England fights
+in behalf of a Slavic, half-Asiatic power against Germanism; she fights
+on the side not only of barbarism but also of moral injustice, for it is
+indeed not forgotten that Russia began the war because she would permit
+no radical reparation for a shameful murder.
+
+It is England whose fault has extended the present war into a world war,
+and has thereby endangered our joint culture. And all this for what
+reason? Because she was jealous of Germany's greatness, because she
+wanted to hinder at any price a further growth of this greatness. For
+there cannot be the least doubt on this point that England was
+determined in advance to cast as many obstacles as possible in the way
+of Germany's great struggle for national existence, and to hinder her as
+much as possible in the full development of her powers. She (England)
+was watching only for a favorable opportunity when she could break out
+suddenly against Germany, and she therefore promptly seized on the
+necessary German invasion of Belgium in order that she might cover with
+a small cloak of decency her brutal national egotism. Or is there in the
+whole wide world any one so simple as to believe that England would have
+declared war on France also if the latter had invaded Belgium? In that
+event she would have wept hypocritical tears over the unavoidable
+violation of international law; but as for the rest she would have
+laughed in her sleeve with great satisfaction. This hypocritical
+Pharisaism is the most repugnant feature of the whole matter; it
+deserves nothing but contempt.
+
+The history of the world shows that such sentiments lead the nations not
+upward but downward. For the present, however, we trust firmly in our
+just cause, in the superior strength and the unyielding victorious
+spirit of the German people. Yet we must at the same time lament deeply
+that the boundless egotism we have referred to has disturbed for an
+immeasurable period of time the spiritual co-operation of the two
+peoples which promised so much good for the development of mankind. But
+they wished it so on their side--on England alone falls the monstrous
+guilt and the historical responsibility.
+
+RUDOLF EUCKEN.
+
+ERNST HAECKEL.
+
+Jena, Aug. 18, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+A Second Appeal
+
+
+_To the Universities of America:_
+
+In a time when half of the world falls upon Germany full of hatred and
+envy, we Germans derive great benefit from the idea of our being sure of
+the friendly feeling of the American universities. If from any quarter
+in the world, it must be from them that we expect the right
+comprehension of the present situation and present attitude of Germany.
+Numerous American scholars who received their scientific training at our
+universities have convinced themselves of the quality and the peaceful
+tendency of German work, the exchange of scientists has proved of
+deepening influence on the mutual understanding, the lasting intercourse
+of scholarly research gives us the feeling of being members of one great
+community. This is why we entertain the hope that the scientific
+circles of America will not give credit to the libels our enemies
+propagate against us.
+
+These libels, above all, accuse Germany of having brought about the
+present war, she being responsible for the monstrous struggle which is
+extending more and more over the whole world. The truth points to the
+contrary. Our foes have disturbed us in our peaceful work, forcing the
+war upon us very much against our desire. We are at a righteous war for
+the preservation of our existence and at the same time of sacred goods
+of humanity. The murder of Serajevo was not our work; it was the outcome
+of a widely extending conspiracy pointing back to Servia, where for many
+years already a passionate agitation against Austria had been carried
+on, supported by Russia. It was Russia, therefore, that took the
+assassins under her wings, and some weeks already before the war broke
+out she promised her assistance to that blood-stained State. Nobody but
+Russia has given the dangerous turn to the conflict; nobody but Russia
+is to blame for the outbreak of the war. The German Emperor, who has
+proved his love of peace by a peaceful reign of more than twenty-five
+years, in face of the imminent danger, tried to intermediate between
+Austria and Russia with the greatest zeal, but while he was negotiating
+with the Czar Russia was busy with the mobilization of a large army
+toward the German frontier. This necessitated an open and decisive
+inquiry that led to the war. This only happened because Russia wanted it
+so, because she wanted to raise the Muscovites against the Germans and
+the Western Slavs and to lead Asia into the field against Europe.
+
+France, too, might have kept the peace, the decision resting solely with
+her. The security of Germany demanded that she should inquire what
+France would do in the impending war; the answer of France unmistakably
+betrayed her intention to join in the war. As a matter of fact, it was
+not Germany but France who commenced the war.
+
+England already before the war stood in close relations to France. From
+the very beginning she has clearly shown that she by no means wanted to
+keep absolutely neutral. From the very beginning she made endeavors to
+protect France against Germany. Undoubtedly the German invasion in
+Belgium served England as a welcome pretext to openly declare her
+hostility. In reality, before the German invasion, already the
+neutrality of Belgium had been given up in favor of the French. It has
+been officially stated, e.g., that not only before but also after the
+outbreak of the war French officers have been at Liege in order to
+instruct the Belgian soldiers as to the fortification service. England's
+complaints of the violation of international law, however, are the most
+atrocious hypocrisy and the vilest Pharisaism. At all times English
+politics have unscrupulously disregarded all forms of law as soon as
+their own interest was touched. During the last few weeks the same
+method has been quite sufficiently manifested in the unlawful capture of
+the Turkish warships, and still more so in the instigation of the
+Japanese to undertake the detestable raid upon the German territory in
+China, which needs must end in strengthening the power of that Mongolian
+nation at the costs of Europeans and Americans.
+
+How it is possible for a nation that in such a way has betrayed precious
+interests of Western culture as soon as it seems to benefit them, how is
+it possible for these accomplices of the Japanese robbery to put on the
+air of being the guardians of morality?
+
+We Germans did not want this war, but as it has been forced upon us we
+shall carry it on bravely and vigorously. In the face of all envy and
+hatred, all brutality and hypocrisy, Germany feels unshakably conscious
+of serving a righteous cause and of standing up for the preservation of
+her national self as well as for sacred goods of humanity; indeed, for
+the very progress of true culture. It is from this conviction that she
+draws her unrelenting force and the absolute certainty that she will
+beat back the assault of all her enemies. This conviction does not stand
+in need of any encouragement from abroad; our country absolutely relies
+upon itself and confides in the strength of its right.
+
+Nevertheless, the idea of our American friends' thoughts and sympathies
+being with us gives us a strong feeling of comfort in this gigantic
+struggle. We both of us feel especially justified in pronouncing this as
+being the conviction of all German scientists, as so many scientific and
+personal relations connect us both with the universities of America.
+These universities know what German culture means to the world, so we
+trust they will stand by Germany.
+
+RUDOLF EUCKEN.
+
+ERNST HAECKEL.
+
+Jena, Aug. 31, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+The Eucken and Haeckel Charges
+
+By John Warbeke.
+
+     Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at Mount Holyoke
+     College.
+
+_A Letter to the Springfield Republican._
+
+
+_To the Editor of The Springfield Republican:_
+
+The approval of President Wilson for neutrality of language can hardly
+be construed into complacency in the face of monstrous evil. If a
+judicial attitude of mind be not jeopardized a discussion of the issues
+raised by Profs. Eucken and Haeckel ought to help us in the attainment
+of impartial judgment. A long acquaintance with both these men makes it
+hard for the present writer to give expression to such negative
+criticism as he is constrained to do. But his plea can be only this: Not
+truth but only passion can separate, and truth is greater even than
+friendship.
+
+The charge of "brutal national egoism" is laid at England's door. She is
+declared to be the instigator of the present world war. "Upon her alone
+falls the monstrous guilt and the judgment of history." Such language
+from two benevolent philosophers, one of them a winner of the Nobel
+Peace Prize for Idealistic Literature, seems to suggest a lack of
+information among the German people, including its most enlightened
+exponents, of not only their own published "White Paper" dispatches, but
+also of the events of the last two months. It seems hardly possible that
+in the case of these two gentlemen a deliberate campaign of vituperation
+could have been inaugurated with determination to blind themselves to
+facts clearly stated in the reports of both contending parties--
+
+First--That Servia, in reply to ten urgent demands on the part of
+Austria, acquiesced in nine and proposed to submit the tenth, as
+concerning her national integrity, to The Hague Tribunal. Austria,
+nevertheless, declared war, with Germany's self-confessed assurances of
+support.
+
+Secondly--Germany was the second to declare war, the mobilization of
+Russia being assigned as the reason for this step. The objection of
+Germany's initial campaign, as shown by events, was not defense against
+the confessedly slowly mobilizing Russians, however, but the humiliation
+and subjugation of France. And the means employed to that end included
+the treaty-breaking invasion, and more than invasion, of Belgium, who is
+suffering because of this step "so necessary for Germany."
+
+Thirdly--England, as is repeatedly demonstrated by the official
+documents, of both sides, strained every means to bring about a common
+understanding. The appeals of Sir Edward Grey for more time in the
+Servian ultimatum and for a council of Ambassadors were met by the
+Austrian and German Governments respectively with evasion. And England
+was the last of the great powers to enter the conflict, her plea being
+the moral obligation of supporting treaties in which she guaranteed the
+integrity of a weak neighbor and undertook to defend her ally, France,
+when attacked.
+
+
+The Case of England.
+
+We may justifiably ask, then, What basis is there for the charge that
+England's "brutal, national egoism" provoked the world war? The answer
+is a two-fold one. Historically, England has exhibited aggression in the
+extension of her interests; morally, England supports the Russian
+aggressor, who declined "to allow Austria the thoroughgoing punishment
+of an ignominious murder," cloaking her real intentions behind the
+mantle of a "contemptible sanctimoniousness" and "hypocrisy" concerning
+treaty obligations.
+
+The first charge against England is unfortunately true. History records
+instances of British aggression in the extension of her interests and
+the cases cited (destruction of the Danish fleet and the taking of Dutch
+colonies) are good examples. The implication, however, involved in the
+statement is that such aggression is not to be found in the history of
+Prussia. This is clearly an error.
+
+From the time of the Markgrafen even unto the Agadir incident it has
+been characteristic of Prussia to extend her boundaries and interests
+under the plea of military necessity. Aggression is the only word to
+characterize Frederick's seizure of Silesia and part of Poland. South
+and East Prussia were added by the same forcible means (1793-1795). In
+the Napoleonic wars Swedish Pomerania fell as the booty of military
+necessity. Schleswig-Holstein was filched from Denmark (1866) by the
+same "extension of her greatness." Once more it was the plea in
+Alsace-Lorraine--"so necessary for Germany."
+
+Nor are we here urging immunity of criticism for ourselves. It is sadly
+true that the history of many nominally Christian States, including that
+of the United States, and not excluding the Papacy, includes chapters of
+aggression. But the point involved, namely, the charge of England's
+aggression in the present instance, is clearly an a priori one, based on
+a presupposition of monopoly which lacks material support. No evidence
+is presented to justify the statement, nor do the facts seem to allow of
+any such construction.
+
+The second argument, England's support of Russia's unwillingness to
+permit the expiation of an ignominious murder, is a strange and
+unfortunate commentary on how even in philosophic minds a preconceived
+idea will distort the most unmistakable evidence. For Servia in her
+reply to the Austrian demands agreed to have just punishment inflicted
+upon the murderers, even going so far as to cause the arrest of those
+perhaps unjustly suspected by the Austrian committee and to suggest an
+international court. How, then, did Russia stand in the way of the
+punishment? Austria declared war, with the self-confessed assurances of
+German support, all too obviously for reasons other than the ones
+mentioned in the ultimatum to which Servia acquiesced. The charge of
+Russian mobilization in view of such a situation suggests the temper of
+the man who, when caught in his own bear trap, tries to find his
+neighbor at fault. Suppose Germany had remained on the defensive, would
+war have been likely? Suppose Germany had not backed up the entirely
+unjustifiable military movement of Austria, would the general war have
+been probable?
+
+
+Where Nietzsche Comes In.
+
+It seems more likely when one passes in review the extant data that at
+least one and a crucial cause for the present situation is the
+"overwhelming power and unbending will to victory in the German people"
+when confronted with an opportunity for the "further expansion of their
+greatness." That such phrases should be in the mouths of our apologists
+for the war is significant. And that the invasion of Belgium "so
+necessary for the Germans" is treated by the spokesmen of morality
+solely and confessedly from the standpoint of military expediency seems
+to indicate the permeation of the Nietzsche superman into the very
+stronghold of idealistic philosophy.
+
+It would, of course, be as absurd to suppose Nietzsche a direct cause of
+this war as it would be to regard the Serajevo murderers as the sole
+cause. Nietzsche was and is an exponent of his time, as well as one
+reciprocally fostering such movements as Bernhardi militarism and the
+Crown Prince's war book. Perhaps it will not be inappropriate here to
+cite from "War and the People of War," in "Also Sprach Zarathustra,"
+(Pages 67-68,) the magnum opus of Nietzsche:
+
+     You should love peace as a means to new war and brief peace
+     more than a long one. Do you say, "It is a good cause by which
+     a war is hallowed"? I say unto you, It is a good war which
+     hallows every cause. War and courage have done greater things
+     than the love of one's neighbor. "What, then, is good?" you
+     ask. To be brave is good. Let young maidens say, "Good is to
+     be pretty and touching." But you are hateful? Well, so be it,
+     my brethren! Cast about you a mantle of the sublimely hateful.
+     And when your soul has become great it will become wanton; in
+     your greatness there will be malice, I know, and in malice the
+     proud heart will meet the weakling.
+
+This, we are told, is not to be taken literally--all is symbolism and
+has a meaning other than the more direct one. But the fact remains, as
+can be testified by the present writer from three years' residence as a
+university student in Germany, that the rank and file as well as the
+aristocracy--from laborers and small shopkeepers, petty officials, and
+students to Judges of the Supreme Court and university professors who
+have become "secret councilors" (Geheimrat)--not only in Berlin and Bonn
+but in Munich and Heidelberg, all have become ominously full of the
+doctrine of the survival of the fittest and the consequent expediency of
+power, not only in intellectual rivalry but in Krupps and high
+explosives.
+
+The Nietzsche fire may, perhaps, serve a purpose on the hearthstone of
+our inmost life if it be to rescue us from complacency and secure
+inanity, but in the form of electrically connected lyddite stores and
+gasoline bombs it drives those who believe in a supernation to a
+literal interpretation of the above widely popular philosophy. And, as
+demonstrated at Louvain and Rheims, it goes far to obliterate the
+memorials of a past which Nietzsche thought so contemptible a check upon
+the prowess of the "blonde Bestie" as he progressed toward--toward the
+superman.
+
+It was wide of the mark, therefore, to attribute that which bears the
+stamp "made in Germany" to England. Bernhardi and the Crown Prince with
+their thousands of officers and the multitudes in the ranks to whom
+Nietzsche has become an inspiring motive are not to be construed as
+English surely. Nor does the English "culture," so far as the present
+writer is informed, contain a superman, unless it be Bernard Shaw!
+English people have to import "beyond good and evil" philosophy, and as
+historians of thought Profs. Eucken and Haeckel must know that it has
+never had a foothold there. Had it been "brutal national egoism, knowing
+no rights of others," which motivated Britain, she would not now have
+gone to war--in order that she might profit finally by the inevitable
+exhaustion of the Continent. And having taken the clear stand she has,
+what but good-will and the consciousness of a just cause brought support
+and sacrifice from the hands and lives of her grateful peoples all over
+the earth? Would brutality have done it? The same question might be
+asked concerning France's empire from which she derives chiefly the
+consciousness of an extending civilization.
+
+
+The Claims of German Culture.
+
+A word more should be added concerning the condescending tone generally
+of the exponents of German culture and more specifically that of the
+distinguished writers of the circular letter. They had up to the present
+continued to hope for growth in English literary and scientific
+development. Before this dismal egoism got the upper hand the English
+people really and truly possessed some noble traits and so forth. As for
+Russian culture, supposedly including its science and literature, music,
+architecture and the rest, it is all effaced by a single "barbarism"!
+The implication of such an attitude and such words is that the Kremlin
+or Rheims, Shakespeare and Rembrandt, Michaelangelo, Darwin, Spinoza and
+the treasures of Louvain might be easily paralleled or surpassed by
+German cathedrals, German sculpture, German paintings, German literature
+and so forth. It is not our present purpose to dispute the claim, but
+only to remind the Teutons that in France and Belgium they have declared
+war, not indeed upon supermen, but upon many gentlemen and some worthy
+fruits of their spirits, and that they have destroyed much which
+formerly enriched the life of the world.
+
+It is the claim of some objective German writers that a modicum of
+modesty would prove the most substantial contribution to Teutonic
+civilization. Defeat of German arms might, therefore, prove a blessing
+to the self-lauded culture as well as call a halt to the brutal science
+of Krupps. As instances of authors mentioned above, a passage from the
+lamented Friedrich Paulsen's "System der Ethic" (Page 582) may, justly,
+be cited: "Insolence still continues to impress the average German. The
+spirit of English scientific intercourse forms a highly pleasing
+contrast to the German habit. Take such writers as Mill and Darwin; they
+speak to the reader as though he did them a favor by listening to them,
+and whenever they enter upon a controversy, they do it in a manner
+which expresses respect and a desire for mutual understanding. The
+German scholar believes that it will detract from the respect due him if
+he does not assume a tone of condescension or overbearing censure.
+Examine the first scientific journal you may happen to pick up; even the
+smallest anonymous announcement breathes the air of infinite
+superiority."
+
+A second passage is quoted from the great work of Wilhelm Scherer,
+"Geschichte der Deutschen Litteratur" (Pages 20-21): "Recklessness seems
+to be the curse of our spiritual development ... obstinacy in good and
+in evil. Beauty we have not often served, nor long at a time." These
+are, of course, not the judgments of the present writer.
+
+Conviction does not flow from the argument concerning England's brutal
+egoism and reckless immorality under the cloak of sanctimoniousness; nor
+is there strength in the appeal for Teuton culture. All has the tone of
+special pleading and makes doubly significant a sentence from Nietzsche
+when he pleads for an overcoming of our ideals of veracity: "'I have
+done this thing,' says my memory, 'I could not have done this thing,'
+says my pride and remains inexorable. Finally memory yields." ("Beyond
+Good and Evil," Page 94.)
+
+JOHN WARBEKE.
+
+Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Sept. 23, 1914.
+
+[Illustration: BRANDER MATTHEWS
+
+_(Photo by Brown Bros.)_
+
+_See Page 541_]
+
+[Illustration: NEWELL DWIGHT HILL
+
+_See Page 573_]
+
+
+
+
+Concerning German Culture
+
+By Brander Matthews.
+
+     Professor of Dramatic Literature at Columbia University;
+     author of many works on literature and the development of the
+     drama.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+In the earnest and sincere appeals of various distinguished Germans,
+Prof. Eucken, Prof. Haeckel, and the several authors of "The Truth About
+Germany," we find frequent references to "German culture" as though it
+was of a superior quality to the culture of every other nationality; and
+we seem to perceive also a sustaining belief that Germany is not only
+the defender of civilization, but its foremost exponent. We have no
+right to question the good faith of scholars of the high character of
+Eucken and Haeckel; and we cannot doubt their being honestly possessed
+of the conviction that Germany is the supreme example of a highly
+civilized State and the undisputed leader in the arts and sciences which
+represent culture. It is plain that these German writers take this for
+granted and that they would be indignantly surprised if it should be
+questioned.
+
+To an American who feels himself a sharer of the noble heritage of
+English literature, and who has sat for more than forty years at the
+feet of the masters of French literature, this claim cannot but come as
+a startling surprise.
+
+The most obvious characteristic of a highly civilized man is his
+willingness to keep his word, at whatever cost to himself. For reasons
+satisfactory to itself, Germany broke its pledge to respect the
+neutrality of Luxemburg and of Belgium. It is another characteristic of
+civilization to cherish the works of art which have been bequeathed to
+us by the past. For reasons satisfactory to itself Germany destroyed
+Louvain, more or less completely. It is a final characteristic of
+civilized man to be humane and to refrain from ill-treating the
+blameless. For reasons satisfactory to itself Germany dropped bombs in
+the unbesieged City of Antwerp and caused the death of innocent women
+and children. Here are three instances where German culture has been
+tested and found wanting.
+
+
+The Standard Bearer of Culture.
+
+But it may be urged that war has its own exigencies and that these three
+instances of uncivilized conduct partook of the nature of military
+necessities. Turning from the outrages of war to the triumphs of peace,
+let us make a disinterested attempt to find out just what foundation
+there may be for the implicit assertion that Germany is the standard
+bearer of civilization.
+
+Perhaps it is too petty to point out that manners are the outward and
+visible sign of civilization, and that in this respect the Germans have
+not yet attained to the standard set by the French and the English. But
+it is not insignificant to record that the Germans alone retain a
+barbaric mediaeval alphabet, while the rest of Western Europe has
+adopted the more legible and more graceful Roman letter; and it is not
+unimportant to note that German press style is cumbrous and uncouth.
+Taken collectively, these things seem to show German culture is a little
+lacking in the social instinct, the desire to make things easy and
+pleasant for others. It is this social instinct which is the dominating
+influence in French civilization and which has given to French
+civilization its incomparable urbanity and amenity. It is to the absence
+of this social instinct, to the inability to understand the attitude of
+other parties to a discussion, to the unwillingness to appreciate their
+point of view, that we may ascribe the failure of German diplomacy, a
+failure which has left her almost without a friend in her hour of need.
+And success in diplomacy is one of the supreme tests of civilization.
+
+The claim asserted explicity or implicitly in behalf of German culture
+seems to be based on the belief that the Germans are leaders in the arts
+and in the sciences. So far as the art of war is concerned there is no
+need today to dispute the German claim. It is to the preparation for war
+that Prussia has devoted its utmost energy for half a century--in fact,
+ever since Bismarck began to make ready for the seizing of unwilling
+Schleswig-Holstein. And so far as the art of music is concerned there is
+also no need to cavil.
+
+But what about the other and more purely intellectual arts? How many are
+the contemporary painters and sculptors and architects of Germany who
+have succeeded in winning the cosmopolitan reputation which has been the
+reward of a score of the artists of France and of half a dozen of the
+artists of America?
+
+
+Since Goethe, Who?
+
+When we consider the art of letters we find a similar condition. Germany
+has had philosophers and historians of high rank; but in pure
+literature, in what used to be called "belles-lettres," from the death
+of Goethe in 1832 to the advent of the younger generation of dramatists,
+Sudermann and Hauptmann and the rest, in the final decade of the
+nineteenth century--that is to say, for a period of nearly sixty
+years--only one German author succeeded in winning a worldwide
+celebrity--and Heine was a Hebrew, who died in Paris, out of favor with
+his countrymen, perhaps because he had been unceasing in calling
+attention to the deficiencies of German culture. There were in Germany
+many writers who appealed strongly to their fellow-countrymen, but
+except only the solitary Heine no German writer attained to the
+international fame achieved by Cooper and by Poe, by Walt Whitman and by
+Mark Twain. And it was during these threescore years of literary aridity
+in Germany that there was a superb literary fecundity in Great Britain
+and in France, and that each of these countries produced at least a
+score of authors whose names are known throughout the world. Even
+sparsely settled Scandinavia brought forth a triumvirate, Bjoernsen,
+Ibsen, and Brandes, without compeers in Germany. And from Russia the
+fame of Turgenef and of Tolstoy spread abroad a knowledge of the heart
+and mind of a great people who are denounced by Germans as barbarous.
+
+It is probably in the field of science, pure and applied, that the
+defenders of the supremacy of German culture would take their last
+stand. That the German contribution to science has been important is
+indisputable; yet it is equally indisputable that the two dominating
+scientific leaders of the second half of the nineteenth century are
+Darwin and Pasteur. It is in chemistry that the Germans have been
+pioneers; yet the greatest of modern chemists is Mendeleef. It was Hertz
+who made the discovery which is the foundation of Marconi's invention;
+but although not a few valuable discoveries are to be credited to the
+Germans, perhaps almost as many as to either the French or the British,
+the German contribution in the field of invention, in the practical
+application of scientific discovery, has been less than that of France,
+less than that of Great Britain, and less than that of the United
+States. The Germans contributed little or nothing to the development of
+the railroad, the steamboat, the automobile, the aeroplane, the
+telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the photograph, the moving
+picture, the electric light, the sewing machine, and the reaper and
+binder. Even those dread instruments of war, the revolver and the
+machine gun, the turreted ship, the torpedo, and the submarine, are not
+due to the military ardor of the Germans. It would seem as though the
+Germans had been lacking in the inventiveness which is so marked a
+feature of our modern civilization.
+
+In this inquiry there has been no desire to deny the value of the German
+contributions to the arts and to the sciences. These contributions are
+known to all; they speak for themselves; they redound to the honor of
+German culture; and for them, whatever may be their number, the other
+nations of the world are eternally indebted to Germany. But these German
+contributions are neither important enough nor numerous enough to
+justify the assumption that German culture is superior or that Germany
+is entitled to think herself the supreme leader of the arts and of the
+sciences. No one nation can claim this lofty position, although few
+would be so bold as to deny the superior achievement of the French in
+the fine arts and of the English in pure science.
+
+Nations are never accepted by other nations at their own valuation; and
+the Germans need not be surprised that we are now astonished to find
+them asserting their natural self-appreciation, with the apparent
+expectation that it will pass unchallenged. The world owes a debt to
+modern Germany beyond all question, but this is far less than the debt
+owed to England and to France. It would be interesting if some German,
+speaking with authority, should now be moved to explain to us Americans
+the reasons which underlie the insistent assertion of the superiority of
+German civilization. Within the past few weeks we have been forced to
+gaze at certain of the less pleasant aspects of the German character;
+and we have been made to see that the militarism of the Germans is in
+absolute contradiction to the preaching and to the practice of the great
+Goethe, to whom they proudly point as the ultimate representative of
+German culture.
+
+BRANDER MATTHEWS.
+
+Columbia University in the City of New York, Sept. 18, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Culture vs. Kultur
+
+By Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Current discussion of the worth of German culture has been almost
+hopelessly clouded by the fact that when a German speaks of Kultur he
+means an entirely different thing from what a Latin or Briton means by
+culture. Kultur means the organized efficiency of a nation in the
+broadest sense--its successful achievement in civil and military
+administration, industry, commerce, finance, and in a quite secondary
+way in scholarship, letters, and art. Kultur applies to a nation as a
+whole, implying an enlightened Government to which the individual is
+strictly subordinated. Thus Kultur is an attribute not of
+individuals--whose particular interests, on the contrary, must often be
+sacrificed to it--but of nations.
+
+Culture, for which nearest German equivalent is Bildung, is the opposite
+of all this. It is an attribute not of nations as a whole but of
+accomplished individuals. It acquires national import only through the
+approval and admiration of these individuals by the rest, who share but
+slightly in the culture they applaud. The aim of culture is the
+enlightened and humane individual, conversant with the best values of
+the past and sensitive to the best values of the present. The
+open-mindedness and imagination implied in culture are potentially
+destructive to a highly organized national Kultur. A cultured leader is
+generally too much alive to the point of view of his rival to be a
+wholly convinced partisan. Hence he lacks the intensity, drive, and
+narrowness that make for competitive success. He keeps his place in the
+sun not by masterfully overriding others, but by a series of delicate
+compromises which reconcile the apparently conflicting claims. Moreover,
+he has too great a respect for the differences between men's gifts to
+formulate any rigid plan which, requires for its execution a strictly
+regimented humanity. He will sacrifice a little efficiency that life may
+be more various, rich, and delightful.
+
+Hence nations with cultured leaders have generally been beaten by those
+whose leaders had merely Kultur. The Spartans and Macedonians had
+abundant Kultur; they generally beat the Athenians, who had merely very
+high culture. The Romans had Kultur, and the Hellenistic world wore
+their yoke. Germany unquestionably has admirable Kultur, and none of the
+mere cultured nations who are leagued against her could hope to beat her
+singly.
+
+
+She Does Not Desire Culture.
+
+On the other hand, Germany has singularly little culture, has less than
+she had a hundred years ago, does not apparently desire it. She has
+willingly sacrificed the culture of a few leading individuals to the
+Kultur of the empire as a whole. Thus it is not surprising that Germany,
+as measured by the production of cultured individuals, takes a very low
+place today. Not only France and England, Italy and Spain, but also
+Russia and America, may fairly claim a higher degree of culture. Here
+the fetich of German scholarship should not deceive us. Culture--a
+balanced and humanized state of mind--is only remotely connected with
+scholarship or even with education. A Spanish peasant or an Italian
+waiter may have finer culture than a German university professor. And in
+the field of scholarship, Germany is in the main chiefly laborious,
+accurate, and small-minded. Her scholarship is related not to culture,
+but is a minor expression of Kultur. Such scholarly men of letters as
+Darwin, Huxley, Renan, Taine, Boissier, Gaston Paris, Menendez y Pelayo,
+Francis J. Child, Germany used to produce in the days of the Grimms and
+Schlegels. She rarely does so now. Her culture has been swallowed up in
+her Kultur.
+
+The claim of Germany to realize her Kultur at the expense of her
+neighbors is at first sight plausible. Her Kultur is unquestionably
+higher than theirs. She has a sharply realized idea of the State, and
+she has justified it largely in practice. In a certain patience,
+thoroughness, and perfection of political organization her pre-eminence
+is unquestionable. The tone of her apologists shows amazement and
+indignation over the fact that the world, so far from welcoming the
+extension of German Kultur, is actively hostile to that ambition. Yet,
+even if it be conceded that Germany's Kultur is wholly good for
+herself--surely a debatable proposition--it does not follow that it is
+or would be a universal benefit. Nations may deliberately and
+legitimately prefer their culture, with its admitted disadvantages, to
+the Kultur which pleases Germany. England is often mocked for the way in
+which she "muddles through" successive perils, yet she may feel that the
+stereotyping of her people in a rigid administrative frame might be too
+high a price to pay for constant preparedness. As for us Americans, we
+have made a virtue, perhaps overdone it, of avoiding a mechanical
+Kultur. We prefer the greatest freedom for the individual to the
+perfectly regimented state. We will move toward culture and cheerfully
+assume the necessary risks of the process.
+
+
+Unlovely and Impressive.
+
+In a broader view, the war may be regarded as a contest between the
+metallic, half-mechanical Kultur of Prussianized Germany and the more
+flexible civilizations of States that have inherited culture or aspire
+to it. Germany herself has rejected the humane and somewhat hazardous
+ideal of culture, so she cannot wonder or complain when she sees that
+the culture of the world is almost unanimously hostile to her. There is
+no quarrel with German Kultur itself; merely a feeling that it has its
+drawbacks, that it is, on the whole, as unlovely as it is impressive,
+that there is quite enough of it in the world already, and that its
+broad extension would be disastrous.
+
+Meanwhile the nations of culture have much to learn from Germany's
+Kultur. Flexibility may mean weakness. The United States, for example,
+could well have a standing army and an army reserve commensurate with
+its history and prospects without incurring any danger of militarism.
+There is, finally, some disadvantage in being merely a culture nation,
+for such a nation can add a large measure of Kultur without belying
+itself. On the contrary, so highly developed a Kultur nation as the
+German Empire puts itself in a position where it is almost impossible to
+acquire any considerable degree of culture. Culture is the enemy of such
+a state--it must remain in the Spartan or Macedonian stage. Rome began
+to decline as soon as Hellenistic culture got the ascendency over the
+old Latin Kultur. Kultur, in short, galvanizes; culture liberates. A
+survey of modern Germany hardly warrants a desire for her world
+dominion.
+
+If any reader is still unclear about the distinction between culture and
+Kultur, let him examine his most-gifted friends as to their sympathies
+in the present war, choosing, of course, persons who have no racial
+reasons for taking sides. Almost without exception he will find they
+fall into two sharply defined classes. The mental characteristics of his
+pro-German friends will pretty certainly illustrate Kultur quite
+concretely, while he may read the meaning of culture in his more-gifted
+friends who favor the Allies.
+
+FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jr.
+
+Princeton, Nov. 6, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+The Trespass in Belgium
+
+By John Grier Hibben.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Some time ago I received with many others an appeal "To the Civilized
+World!" from certain distinguished representatives of German science and
+art. I at once wrote to Prof. Eucken, whom I know, and who is one of the
+signers of this document. I wished to draw his attention particularly to
+the second statement of this appeal, which is as follows:
+
+     It is not true that we trespassed in neutral Belgium. It has
+     been proved that France and England had resolved on such a
+     trespass, and it has likewise been proved that Belgium had
+     agreed to their doing so,
+
+and I stated to him that "It is naturally to be expected of a group of
+scholars that where reference is made to proof, some citation should be
+given both of the sources of the proof and of its nature. I am sure you
+will agree with me that it is of the very essence of scholarly method in
+the treatment of any subject whatsoever that one should cite his
+authority as regards every important and significant statement that is
+made. No one of the distinguished group of scholars signing their names
+to this letter would think of writing an article in his own specialty
+and not add in the text or in a footnote the complete list of
+authorities for his several assertions.
+
+"In your appeal, however, the most important statement by far which you
+make, and the one bearing most intimately upon the honor and integrity
+of your nation, is left without even the attempt to support it, save the
+bare assertion by you and your colleagues. In the interests of a fair
+understanding of Germany's position, I feel that it is incumbent upon
+you to give us who are under such a deep debt of gratitude to German
+scholarship in our own lives the opportunity of a full knowledge of all
+the facts which definitely bear upon this present situation."
+
+At the time of writing Prof. Eucken, I also wrote to a friend of mine,
+Dr. A.E. Shipley, the Master of Christ's College, Cambridge, England,
+asking him if he could get for me some authoritative statement from the
+British Foreign Office concerning the assertion that "it has been proved
+that France and England had resolved on such a trespass, and it has
+likewise been proved that Belgium had agreed to their doing so." I have
+just received a letter from Mr. Shipley, stating that Lord Haldane had
+prepared a statement in answer to this question. Thinking that your
+readers would be interested in seeing this, I am sending it to you.
+Faithfully yours,
+
+JOHN GRIER HIBBEN.
+
+Princeton, N.J., Nov. 24, 1914.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _(Inclosure from Lord Haldane to the Master of Christ's
+     College, Cambridge.)_
+
+     10 Downing St., Whitehall, S.W., Nov. 14.
+
+     Dear Master of Christ's: The inclosed memoranda have been
+     specially prepared for me by the Foreign Office in answer to
+     your question. Yours truly,
+
+     HALDANE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     (MEMORANDUM.)
+
+     It is quite untrue that the British Government had ever
+     arranged with Belgium to trespass on her country in case of
+     war, or that Belgium had agreed to this. The strategic
+     dispositions of Germany, especially as regards railways, have
+     for some years given rise to the apprehension that Germany
+     would attack France through Belgium. Whatever military
+     discussions have taken place before this war have been limited
+     entirely to the suggestion of what could be done to defend
+     France if Germany attacked her through Belgium.
+
+     The Germans have stated that we contemplated sending troops to
+     Belgium. We had never committed ourselves at all to the
+     sending of troops to the Continent, and we had never
+     contemplated the possibility of sending troops to Belgium to
+     attack Germany.
+
+     The Germans have stated that British military stores had been
+     placed at Maubeuge, a French fortress near the Belgian
+     frontier, before the outbreak of the war, and that this is
+     evidence of an intention to attack Germany through Belgium. No
+     British soldiers and no British stores were landed on the
+     Continent till after Germany had invaded Belgium and Belgium
+     had appealed to France and England for assistance. It was only
+     after this appeal that British troops were sent to France;
+     and, if the Germans found British munitions of war in
+     Maubeuge, these munitions were sent with our expedition to
+     France after the outbreak of the war. The idea of violating
+     the neutrality of Belgium was never discussed or contemplated
+     by the British Government.
+
+     The extract inclosed, which is taken from an official
+     publication of the Belgian Government, and the extract from an
+     official statement by the Belgian Minister of War, prove that
+     the Belgian Government had never connived, or been willing to
+     connive, at the breach of the treaty that made the maintenance
+     of Belgian neutrality an international obligation. The moment
+     that there appeared to be danger that this treaty might be
+     violated the British Government made an appeal for an
+     assurance from both France and Germany, as had been done in
+     1870 by Mr. Gladstone, that neither of those countries would
+     violate the neutrality of Belgium if the other country
+     respected it. The French agreed, the Germans declined to
+     agree. The appeal made by the British Government is to be
+     found in our first "White Paper" after the outbreak of the
+     war.
+
+     The reason why Germany would not agree was stated very frankly
+     by Herr von Jagow, the German Minister for Foreign Affairs, to
+     Sir Edward Goschen, our Ambassador in Berlin; and it is
+     recorded in the second "White Paper" that we published. The
+     attitude of the British Government throughout has been to
+     endeavor to preserve the neutrality of Belgium, and we never
+     thought of sending troops to Belgium until Germany had invaded
+     it and Belgium had appealed for assistance to maintain the
+     international treaty.
+
+     We have known for some years past that in Holland, in Denmark,
+     and in Norway the Germans have inspired the apprehension that,
+     if England was at war with Germany, England would violate the
+     neutrality of those countries and seize some of their harbors.
+     This allegation is as baseless as the allegation about our
+     intention to violate the neutrality of Belgium, and events
+     have shown it to be so. But it seems to be a rule with Germany
+     to attribute to others the designs that she herself
+     entertains; as it is clear now that, for some long time past,
+     it has been a settled part of her strategic plans to attack
+     France through Belgium. A statement is inclosed, which was
+     issued by us on Oct. 14 last, dealing with this point.
+
+     This memorandum and its inclosures should provide ample
+     material for a reply to the German statements.
+
+     Foreign Office, Nov. 9, 1914.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Belgian Official Denials.
+
+Here is inclosed a copy of the note of Aug. 3 sent by M. Davignon,
+Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Herr von Below Saleske, the
+German Minister at Brussels, included in the Belgian "Gray Paper," and
+printed in full in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Oct. 18 and reprinted in THE
+TIMES'S pamphlet of the war's diplomatic papers. This is the note
+expressing the "profound and painful surprise" caused to King Albert's
+Government by the German invitation to it to abandon Belgian neutrality
+and denying that France had, as alleged by Germany, manifested any such
+intention.
+
+A second inclosure gives this clipping from The London Times of Sept.
+30:
+
+     OFFICIAL STATEMENT.
+
+     The German press has been attempting to persuade the public
+     that if Germany herself had not violated Belgian neutrality,
+     France or Great Britain would have done so. It has declared
+     that French and British troops had marched into Belgium before
+     the outbreak of war. We have received from the Belgian
+     Minister of War an official statement which denies absolutely
+     these allegations. It declares, on the one hand, that "before
+     Aug. 3 not a single French soldier had set foot on Belgian
+     territory," and, again, "it is untrue that on Aug. 4 there was
+     a single English soldier in Belgium." It adds:
+
+     "For long past Great Britain knew that the Belgian Army would
+     oppose by force a 'preventive' disembarkation of British
+     troops in Belgium. The Belgian Government did not hesitate at
+     the time of the Agadir crisis to warn foreign Ambassadors, in
+     terms which could not be misunderstood, of its formal
+     intention to compel respect for the neutrality of Belgium by
+     every means at its disposal, and against attempts upon it from
+     any and every quarter."
+
+
+The "Agreement" of 1903.
+
+The third inclosure is this British official communique:
+
+     14 October, 1914.
+
+     The story of an alleged Anglo-Belgian agreement of 1906
+     published in the German press, and based on documents said to
+     have been found at Brussels, is only a fresh edition of a
+     story which has been reproduced in various forms and denied
+     on several occasions. No such agreement has ever existed.
+
+     As the Germans well know, Gen. Grierson is dead and Col. (now
+     Gen.) Barnardiston is commanding the British forces before
+     Tsing-tau. In 1906 Gen. Grierson was on the General Staff at
+     the War Office, and Col. Barnardiston was Military Attache at
+     Brussels. In view of the solemn guarantee given by Great
+     Britain to protect the neutrality of Belgium against violation
+     from any side, some academic discussions may, through the
+     instrumentality of Col. Barnardiston, have taken place between
+     Gen. Grierson and the Belgian military authorities as to what
+     assistance the British Army might be able to afford to Belgium
+     should one of her neighbors violate that neutrality. Some
+     notes with reference to the subject may exist in the archives
+     at Brussels.
+
+     It should be noted that the date mentioned, namely, 1906, was
+     the year following that in which Germany had, as in 1911,
+     adopted a threatening attitude toward France with regard to
+     Morocco, and, in view of the apprehensions existing of an
+     attack on France through Belgium, it was natural that possible
+     eventualities should be discussed.
+
+     The impossibility of Belgium having been a party to any
+     agreement of the nature indicated or to any design for the
+     violation of Belgian neutrality is clearly shown by the
+     reiterated declarations that she has made for many years past
+     that she would resist to the utmost any violation of her
+     neutrality from whatever quarter and in whatever form such
+     violation might come.
+
+     It is worthy of attention that these charges of aggressive
+     designs on the part of other powers are made by Germany, who,
+     since 1906, has established an elaborate network of
+     strategical railways leading from the Rhine to the Belgian
+     frontier through a barren, thinly populated tract,
+     deliberately constructed to permit of the sudden attack upon
+     Belgium, which was carried out two months ago.
+
+
+
+
+Apportioning the Blame
+
+By Arthur v. Briesen.
+
+     Of the law firm of Briesen & Knauth; Doctor of Laws, New York
+     University; philanthropist; has served the American public as
+     head of important civic bodies and Governmental commissions.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Having been requested by you to express my views with reference to the
+war which is now lacerating Europe, I take pleasure to comply with your
+desire.
+
+As an American citizen I am, of course, under obligations to be neutral
+and to send no ammunition to either belligerent. At the same time the
+German blood in my veins naturally causes me to sympathize with Germany
+in this conflict. But even if we leave out of consideration any matter
+of sympathy, if we look upon the situation in an entirely unbiased
+spirit, the conclusion which I propose to lay before you appears to be
+irresistible.
+
+The questions that seem to have agitated the American public mostly in
+connection with this awful conflict have been:
+
+     _First_--Who is to blame for bringing about this war, and,
+
+     _Second_--Assuming that Germany was not to blame for beginning
+     the war, is she to blame for violating the neutrality of
+     Belgium?
+
+If we should find the fault regarding the first question to lie
+primarily with England and secondarily with Russia, we should at once
+clear the German people and their Government from the charge that has
+heretofore been brought against them for having incited the war. And if
+we should find that the neutrality of Belgium was not binding upon any
+country whose existence or whose interests were threatened by other
+countries, that fact would then absolve either country from a charge
+which thus far seems to have been brought against one of them.
+
+_How was the war brought about?_ As far back as 1906 it is known, and
+can be proved by the files of New York papers, to say nothing of
+official correspondence now found in Brussels and elsewhere, that
+measures were started by England to circumscribe or isolate the German
+Empire, and treaties were entered between England, France, and Russia
+(the Triple Entente) to insure joint action against Germany when
+necessary.
+
+Germany herself has been peaceful, progressive, and anxious to retain
+her position as a nation undisturbed by others, as a nation that should
+advance in art, in science, in population, and in all things that make
+happiness through peace. What was the situation in other countries?
+
+Since 1870 _France_ had cried for revenge (_revanche_). Its school
+books, newspapers, public speakers, and political leaders were all
+charged with the one great idea of seeking revenge against Germany for
+having retaken Alsace and Lorraine in 1870, which France had wrongfully
+occupied since the time of Louis XIV. Alsace and Lorraine had been
+German for centuries before; they were wrested from Germany without even
+a semblance of an excuse at the close of the seventeenth century, and
+were largely German in language and in spirit in 1870. Goethe's studies
+in Strassburg and his visits to Frederica von Sesenheim in the
+eighteenth century show that he was living in a German country whenever
+he was in Alsace. A _united_ Germany did not exist prior to 1870.
+However, the cry for revenge was there, and France distinctly declared
+it to be her policy to take her revenge as soon as opportunity offered.
+France was, therefore, a pronounced enemy of Germany ever since 1870,
+and when asked by the German Government on July 31, 1914, whether she
+would remain neutral in a Russian-German war (Annex 25, German "White
+Paper") she answered: "France would do that which might be required of
+her _by her interests_." This answer was given on Aug. 1, 1914, (Annex
+27, German "White Paper.") Today we may well ask France whether, since
+Aug. 1, 1914, she has done that which was required by her interests.
+
+_Russia_ may next be looked at. How did Russia become involved in this
+contest? The little kingdom of Servia, which had familiarized itself
+with the fine art of disposing of crowned heads by throwing its King and
+Queen, Alexandra and Draga, out of the window of their castle, caused
+through its officials and its followers to have the heir to the Austrian
+throne and his wife cruelly assassinated on June 28, 1914. This
+assassination was an act of enmity toward Austria and a step toward the
+enlargement of Servia. Deeming her existence threatened and her national
+dignity offended, Austria sent a rather sharp demand under date of July
+23, 1914, to Servia, requiring prompt and thorough satisfaction for the
+gross attack made upon her and her reigning family through Servia's
+official directions.
+
+Strange to say, however, the British "White Book" shows that three days
+before, on July 20, 1914, Sir Edward Grey, (Paper 1, British "White
+Book,") wrote to Sir E. Goschen, British Ambassador at Berlin, a letter
+in which he states:
+
+     In fact, the more Austria could keep her demand within
+     reasonable limits, and the stronger the justification she
+     could produce for making any demand, the more chance there
+     would be of smoothing things over. _I hated the idea of a war
+     between any of the great powers_, and that any of them should
+     be dragged into a war by Servia would be detestable.
+
+On July 24, 1914, the Austrian message to Servia became known to all
+countries, and on the same day Sir George Buchanan, British Ambassador
+at St. Petersburg, wrote that he had been asked by Mr. Sazonof, Russian
+Minister of Foreign Affairs, to meet him at the French Embassy to
+discuss matters, as Austria's step clearly meant that war was imminent.
+He wrote that Mr. Sazonof expressed himself as follows (British Paper
+6):
+
+     He hoped that his Majesty's Government would not fail to
+     _proclaim their solidarity with Russia and France_. The French
+     Ambassador gave me to understand that France would fulfill all
+     the obligations entailed by her alliance with Russia, if
+     necessity arose, besides supporting Russia strongly in any
+     diplomatic negotiations.
+
+Later, on July 29, 1914, Sir George Buchanan wrote to Sir Edward Grey
+(Paper 72, English "White Book") as follows:
+
+     I made it clear to his Excellency that, _Russia being
+     thoroughly in earnest, a general war could not be averted_ if
+     Servia were attacked by Austria.
+
+Sir George Buchanan would not have said that if he had not been
+authorized to do so. He would not have said a "general war could not be
+averted if Servia were attacked by Austria"; and by "general war" he
+meant, and we all understand he meant, a war between England, France,
+and Russia on one side and Germany and Austria on the other.
+
+Servia's reply to the demand of Austria, which was dated July 25, 1914,
+not being deemed satisfactory, Austria proceeded to a punitive
+expedition against Servia, and she repeatedly asserted and assured all
+the other powers that the expedition was merely punitive and that
+neither the independence nor the territorial integrity of Servia were at
+all involved or in any danger.
+
+But all this had no effect upon Russia. In fact, when Russia was first
+informed of the Austrian demand (Annex 4, German "White Book") Minister
+of Foreign Affairs Sazonof made wild complaints on _July_ 24, 1914,
+against Austria-Hungary. What he said most definitely was this:
+
+     _That Russia could not possibly permit the Servian-Austrian
+     dispute to be confined to the parties concerned._
+
+This was the keynote of the Russian situation and of the Russian
+intention. Russia wanted, of course, to expand its realm as far
+westward as possible, and it wanted to take advantage of the opportunity
+offered by the necessary consequences of the dreadful insult and cruelty
+practiced by Servia on Austria, not only to prevent the punishment of
+Servia, but also to proceed against Germany, for, as Paper 4 says:
+"Russia could not possibly permit the Servian-Austrian dispute to be
+_confined_ to the parties concerned."
+
+Who, then, was to blame for not allowing the war to be confined, for not
+permitting Austria to punish the murderers of her King, but utilizing
+this opportunity for the purpose of bringing about the great war which
+Russia and France had carefully prepared long ago? The great war which
+should involve all the civilized nations in a conflict, and threaten to
+extinguish Austria and to carry barbarism into the heart of Europe! She
+_did_ not permit the Servian-Austrian dispute to be confined to the
+parties concerned.
+
+Again, in Paper 56, (English "White Book,") we find the English
+Ambassador to Austria writing to Sir Edward Grey on July 27, 1914, the
+following:
+
+     If actual war broke out with Servia it would be _impossible_
+     to localize it, for _Russia_ was not prepared to give way
+     again.
+
+Again, in Paper 72, (English "White Book,") dated July 28, 1914, from
+the English Ambassador in Russia to Sir Edward Grey:
+
+     I made it clear to his Excellency (German Ambassador) that,
+     _Russia being thoroughly in earnest_, a general war could not
+     be averted if Servia were attacked by Austria.
+
+Paper 121, (English "White Book,") British Ambassador in Berlin to Sir
+Edward Grey under date of July 31, 1914:
+
+     He (the German Secretary of State) again assured me that both
+     the Emperor William, at the request of the Emperor of Russia,
+     and the German Foreign Office had even up till last night been
+     urging Austria to show willingness to continue
+     discussions--and telegraphic and telephonic communications
+     from Vienna had been of a promising nature--_but Russia's
+     mobilization had spoiled everything_.
+
+I could repeat, _ad infinitum_, quotations from these books to show
+that Russia not only wanted this war if Austria wanted to punish Servia
+for her misdeeds, but started it against the protest of Germany, and
+started it, I sincerely believe, largely because encouraged by Great
+Britain.
+
+_England_: The letter written by the Belgian Charge at St. Petersburg to
+his Government on July 30, 1914, which letter was published in THE NEW
+YORK TIMES on Oct. 7, 1914, and which letter, nearly a month before, had
+been published abroad and never disavowed by the Belgian Government,
+states distinctly on the part of Belgium:
+
+     _What is incontestable is that Germany has striven here, as
+     well as at Vienna, to find some means of avoiding a general
+     conflict...._ M. Sazonof, Russian Foreign Minister, has
+     declared that it would be impossible for Russia not to hold
+     herself ready and to mobilize, but that these preparations
+     were not directed against Germany. This morning an official
+     communique to the newspapers announces that "the reserves have
+     been called under arms in a certain number of Governments."
+     Knowing the discreet nature of the official communique one can
+     without fear assert that _mobilization is going on
+     everywhere_.
+
+     ... One can truly ask one's self whether the whole world does
+     not desire war and is trying merely to retard its declaration
+     a little in order to gain time. England began by allowing it
+     to be understood that she did not want to be drawn into a
+     conflict. Sir George Buchanan (British Ambassador) said that
+     openly. Today one is firmly convinced at St. Petersburg--one
+     has even the assurance of it--that England will support
+     France. This support is of enormous weight, and _has
+     contributed not a little to give the upper hand to the war
+     party_.
+
+The German Emperor during these times believed England to be really and
+honestly striving to avoid the war; he went so far as to announce in one
+of his letters published in the "White Book" that "he had shoulder to
+shoulder with England tried to bring about a peaceful solution." It
+certainly now appears that all this while England had made her
+arrangements with France and with Russia, and had strengthened the war
+party in Russia to such an extent that Russia's desire to set Europe
+afire was rendered possible.
+
+_Belgian neutrality._ It is charged that Germany violated an alleged
+treaty with Belgium, which treaty is supposed to have guaranteed the
+integrity of Belgium. When Germany found her efforts to maintain peace
+frustrated, Russian troops having crossed the German frontier on the
+afternoon of Aug. 1, while France opened hostilities on Aug. 2, she
+announced to Belgium on Aug. 2, 1914, that she found herself under
+obligation, to prevent a French attack through Belgium, to pass through
+Belgian territory; she expressed her readiness to guarantee the
+integrity of the kingdom and its possessions and to pay any damage
+caused if Belgium would, in a friendly way, permit such a passage of
+troops through it.
+
+The English "White Book" contains, Paper 151, dated Aug. 3, 1914, which
+paper we repeat in full:
+
+(British Minister to Belgium to Sir Edward Grey.)
+
+     French Government have offered through their Military Attache
+     the support of five French Army corps to the Belgian
+     Government. Following reply has been received today: We are
+     sincerely grateful to the French Government for offering
+     eventual support. In the actual circumstances, however, _we do
+     not propose to appeal to the guarantee of the powers_. Belgian
+     Government will decide later on the action which they may
+     think it necessary to take.
+
+In short, Belgium says in the foregoing notice to France, that she does
+not propose to appeal to the guarantee of the powers.
+
+Was Germany justified in disregarding any previous treaty which related
+to Belgium if her interests required her so to do?
+
+_United States Supreme Court:_ In its unanimous opinion in the Chinese
+exclusion cases, reported on Pages 581 to 611 of Vol. 130 of United
+States Reports, the Supreme Court of the United States had this very
+question before it. A treaty had been entered into by the United States
+and China, allowing Chinese subjects the right to visit and reside in
+the United States and to there enjoy the same privileges that are
+enjoyed by citizens of the United States. After that treaty an act of
+Congress was passed in violation of the treaty, providing it to be
+unlawful thereafter for Chinese laborers to enter the United States. The
+question was, whether we had the right to violate a treaty solemnly
+entered into with another country? On this subject the court said (Page
+600):
+
+     The effect of legislation upon conflicting treaty stipulations
+     was elaborately considered in THE HEAD MONEY CASES, and it was
+     there adjudged: "that so far as a treaty made by the United
+     States with any foreign nation can become the subject of
+     judicial cognizance in the courts of this country, it is
+     subject to such acts as Congress may pass for its enforcement,
+     modification, or repeal," 112 U.S. 580, 599. This doctrine was
+     affirmed and followed in WHITNEY v. ROBERTSON, 124 U.S. 190,
+     195. It will not be presumed that the legislative department
+     of the Government will lightly pass laws which are in conflict
+     with the treaties of the country; _but that circumstances may
+     arise which would not only justify the Government in
+     disregarding their stipulations, but demand in the interests
+     of the country that it should do so, there can be no question.
+     Unexpected events may call for a change in the policy of the
+     country._
+
+In the same opinion the Supreme Court calls attention to an act passed
+in 1798, declaring that the United States were freed and exonerated from
+the stipulations of previous treaties with France. This subject was
+fully considered by Justice Curtis, who held, as the Supreme Court says
+(Page 602): "That whilst it would always be a matter of the utmost
+gravity and delicacy to refuse to execute a treaty, the power to do so
+was a prerogative of which no nation could be deprived without deeply
+affecting its independence."
+
+We observe, therefore, that under our own ideas of international law the
+United States claims the right to disregard its stipulations if the
+interests of the country should require it. And the same right we should
+concede to other nations. Particularly to Germany in the present
+instance, when we find her battling for her very existence against
+enemies that seek to destroy her, against enemies that surround her on
+all sides, against enemies that do not hesitate to bring troops into the
+conflict from the wilds of Africa and Asia, and who do not hesitate to
+drag Japan into this war, causing her to disregard Chinese neutrality in
+her effort to capture a small settlement, lawfully occupied in China by
+a handful of German soldiers.
+
+In this connection I quote the British sentiment, as expressed by
+Gladstone regarding Belgium neutrality in the year 1870:
+
+     But I am not able to subscribe to the doctrine of those who
+     have held in this House, what plainly amounts to the assertion
+     that the simple fact of the existence of a guarantee is
+     binding to every party to it, irrespective altogether of the
+     particular position in which it may find itself at the time
+     when the occasion for _acting on the question arises_.
+
+This shows that England herself reserved the right, whenever her
+interests required her to do so, to act in violation of the treaty with
+Belgium. That, at least, is my understanding of Gladstone's language.
+England did not respect Danish neutrality a hundred years ago, when she
+destroyed the Danish fleet at Copenhagen because her interests required,
+and England does not now, through its Asiatic ally, and directly,
+respect Chinese neutrality, claiming the right primarily to consult her
+own interests. Should this right, asserted by our own Supreme Court, and
+actually assumed by England and Japan, be denied to Germany? Finally, I
+understand that The Hague Conference of 1907 drafted a convention which
+reads:
+
+     The territory of neutral powers is inviolable. Belligerents
+     are forbidden to move troops or convoys of either munitions of
+     war or supplies across the territory of a neutral power. Great
+     Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy refused to sign
+     it and did not sign it. Russia was not represented.
+
+MILITARISM. There is one more subject which many people in this country
+have failed to understand, and that is the matter of militarism. German
+militarism is supposed to be something dreadful, and many good people
+believe that it would be a great advance toward eternal peace if that
+militarism could be wiped out. Well, now, let us see.
+
+If Germany did not require every one of her sons to spend a year, or at
+most two years, in the army, and if she had not provided for all these
+men sufficient arms and accoutrements for immediate use in case of war,
+what would have happened when Russia entered her territory, or when
+France came on a like errand?
+
+Any one who lives among enemies is expected to be sufficiently prepared
+to defend himself should they attack him, be he ever so peaceful.
+
+At the time the United States of America was born there was no such
+thing as Germany. Every country around it had a slice of it. Napoleon
+took the larger western part of Germany as his property, England held
+Hanover, the former Kingdom of Poland held Saxony, Austria held Silesia,
+and so there was no Germany. The Teutonic races had no home in which
+they could develop and live without interference by others. To prevent
+such interference Germany of all nations needed an army; to prevent
+similar interference at sea England of all nations needed a navy. That
+great British Navy bears precisely the same relation to the protection
+of Great Britain at sea which the German Army bears to the protection of
+Germany on land.
+
+To sum up, what are the countries fighting for? Russia for her
+enlargement; she has no grudge whatever against Germany except that it
+exists. France for revenge; she has no grudge whatever against Germany
+except that she wants revenge for 1870. What grudge has England against
+Germany, except that Germany has grown commercially, financially, and
+industrially to a position which threatens to crowd England into a
+second rank? Jealousy appears to control the English attitude.
+
+The position apparently assumed by England is best expressed by the King
+of England in his telegram to Prince Henry of Prussia, dated July 30,
+1914:
+
+     My Government is doing its utmost, suggesting to Russia and
+     France to _suspend further military preparations_ if Austria
+     will consent to be satisfied with occupation of Belgrade and
+     neighboring Servian territory as a hostage for satisfactory
+     settlement of her demands, other countries meanwhile
+     suspending their war preparations. Trust William will use his
+     great influence to induce Austria to accept this proposal,
+     thus proving that Germany and England are working together to
+     prevent what would be an international catastrophe.
+
+On July 31, the very next day, Sir Edward Grey wrote the telegram, No.
+111, (English "White Book,") to the British Ambassador at Berlin, in
+which we find the following:
+
+     I would undertake to sound St. Petersburg, whether it would be
+     possible for the four disinterested powers to offer to Austria
+     that they would undertake to see that she obtained full
+     satisfaction of her demands on Servia, provided that they did
+     not impair Servian sovereignty and the integrity of Servian
+     territory. _As your Excellency is aware, Austria has already
+     declared her willingness to respect them._ (Established by
+     Paper 3, July 24, and Paper 5, July 26, German "White Book.")
+
+Hence, we find that all King George said he wanted had been granted, and
+yet England entered into the war. Why? Probably because she thought, as
+France had expressed it, that she acted in pursuance of her interests.
+
+And what is Germany fighting for? Does she want anything from anybody?
+She wants to be left alone; she always wanted to be left alone; she
+prospered while she was left alone; she grew while she was left alone.
+Not being left alone she has to defend herself. Hence, I bespeak for
+Germany and for her side fair play, just judgment on behalf of the
+American people.
+
+ARTHUR v. BRIESEN.
+
+New York, Oct. 17, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+PARTING.
+
+By LOUISE VON WETTER.
+
+
+    Sodger lad, O sodger lad,
+      The dawn will see ye marchin'--
+    The nicht drag's on--its dark is out
+      Wi' searchlichts, shiftin', archin'.
+
+    Sodger lad, O sodger lad,
+      D'ye mind our Summer meetin'?
+    And noo, ye'll gang. The heather's dead ...
+      I canna keep frae greetin'.
+
+    Sodger lad, my sodger lad--
+      D'ye mind, my time is nearin'?
+    Alone--alone--wi'out yer hand!
+      How shall I keep frae fearin'?
+
+    Sodger lad, O sodger lad,
+      Far, far awa' ye're goin'--
+    I'll not dare count the leagues an' days--
+      _Gude God! The cocks are crowin'!_
+
+    Sodger lad, my luve, my dear,
+      Awake! The morn is grayin'!
+    E'en tho' my heart drags, sick wi' dread,
+      I wouldna have ye stayin'.
+
+
+
+
+French Hate and English Jealousy
+
+By Kuno Francke.
+
+
+It is easy to see why American public opinion should have condemned by
+an overwhelming majority the diplomatic acts of Austria and Hungary
+which have been the immediate occasion of the terrific explosion which
+now shakes the foundations of the whole civilized world. Austria's break
+with Servia and Germany's violation of Belgian neutrality--the one
+leading to war between Russia and Germany, the other bringing England
+into the fray--must appear to the uninitiated as reckless and
+indefensible provocations and as wanton attacks upon the laws of
+nations.
+
+The thoughtful observer, however, should look beyond the immediate
+occasion of this world conflict and try to understand its underlying
+causes. By doing so he will, I believe, come to the conclusion that
+fundamental justice is to be found on the German side, and that Germany
+has been forced to fight for her life.
+
+It is an unquestionable fact that the unification of Germany and the
+establishment of a strong German Empire, half a century ago, were
+brought about against the bitter opposition of France, and that the
+defeat incurred by France in 1870, in her attempt to prevent German
+unification, is at the bottom of the constant irritation that has
+agitated Europe during the last forty-three years. Germany's policy
+toward France during these forty-three years has been one of utmost
+restraint and forbearance, and has been dictated by the one desire of
+making her forget the loss of the two provinces, German until the
+seventeenth century and inhabited by German stock, which were won back
+from France in 1870. Whether the acquisition of these provinces was a
+fortunate thing for Germany may be doubted. The possession of
+Alsace-Lorraine has certainly robbed Germany of the undivided sympathy
+of the world, which she otherwise would have had. But it is probably
+true that from the military point of view Alsace-Lorraine was needed by
+Germany as a bulwark against the repetition of the many wanton French
+invasions from which Germany has had to suffer since the time of the
+Thirty Years' War and the age of Louis XIV.
+
+
+Sought to Heal the Breach.
+
+However this may be, Germany has done her best during the last four
+decades to heal the wounds struck by her to French national pride. She
+abetted French colonial expansion in Cochin-China, Madagascar, Tunis.
+She yielded to France her own well-founded claims to political influence
+in Morocco. In Alsace-Lorraine itself she introduced an amount of local
+self-government and home rule such as England has not accorded even now
+to Ireland. While Ireland still is waiting for a Parliament at Dublin,
+Strassburg has been for years the seat of the Alsace-Lorraine Diet, a
+provincial Parliament based on universal suffrage. And even in spite of
+the incessant and inflammatory French propaganda which last year led to
+such unhappy counter-strokes as the deplorable Zabern affair, there can
+be no reasonable doubt that the people of Alsace-Lorraine have been
+gradually settling down to willing co-operation with the German
+administration--an administration which insures them order, justice, and
+prosperity. Nothing is a clearer indication of the peaceable trend which
+affairs have lately taken in Alsace-Lorraine than the fact that the
+Nationalists, i.e., French party, in the Strassburg Diet has never been
+able to rise above insignificance, and that, on the other hand, a
+considerable number of responsible officers in the civil administration,
+including the highest Governmental positions, have been occupied by
+native Alsatians.
+
+While Germany has thus repeatedly shown her willingness and desire to
+end the ancient feud, France has remained irreconcilable; and
+particularly the intellectual class of France cannot escape the charge
+that they have persistently and willfully kept alive the flame of
+discord.
+
+It surely cannot be said that the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine is a
+vital necessity to France. Without Alsace-Lorraine France has recovered
+her prosperity and her prestige in a manner that has been the admiration
+of the world. It is a mere illusion to think that the reconquest of
+Alsace-Lorraine would add to her glory. It would have been a demand of
+patriotism for the intellectual class to combat this illusion. Instead
+of this, every French writer, every French scholar, every French orator,
+except the Socialists, year in and year out, has been dinning into the
+popular ear the one word revenge.
+
+
+France to Blame.
+
+There can be little doubt that Prof. Gustave Lanson, the distinguished
+literary historian, voiced the sentiments of the vast majority of his
+countrymen when in a lecture, delivered some years ago at Harvard, he
+stated that France could not and would not reorganize the peace of
+Frankfurt as a final settlement, and that the one aim of the French
+policy of the last forty years had been to force Germany to reopen the
+Alsace-Lorraine question.
+
+If there were people in Germany inclined to overlook or to minimize this
+constantly growing menace from France, their eyes must have been opened
+when in 1912 the French Government, having previously abolished the
+one-year volunteers, raised the duration of active military service for
+every Frenchman from two years to three, and, in addition to this,
+called out in the Autumn of 1913 the recruits not only of the year whose
+turn had come, namely, the recruits born in 1892, but also those born
+in 1893. This was a measure nearly identical with mobilization; it was a
+measure which clearly showed that France would not delay much longer
+striking the deadly blow. For no nation could possibly stand for any
+length of time this terrific strain of holding under the colors its
+entire male population from the twentieth to the twenty-fourth year. No
+wonder that the Paris papers were speaking as long ago as the Summer of
+1912 of the regiments stationed in the Eastern Departments as the
+"vanguard of our glorious army," and were advocating double pay for
+them, as being practically in contact with the enemy.
+
+The second foe now threatening the destruction of Germany is England.
+Can it truly be said that England's hostility has been brought about by
+German aggression? True, Germany has built a powerful navy; but so have
+Japan, the United States, France, and even Italy. Has England felt any
+menace from these? Why, then, is the German Navy singled out as a
+specially sinister threat to England? Has German diplomacy during the
+last generation been particularly menacing to England? Germany has
+acquired some colonies in Africa and in the Far East. But what are
+Kamerun and Dar-es-Salaam and Kiao-Chau compared with the colonial
+possessions of the other great powers? Where has Germany pursued a
+colonial aggressiveness that could in any way be compared with the
+British subjugation of the South African republics or the Italian
+conquest of Tripoli or the French expansion in Algiers, Tunis, and
+Morocco, or the American acquisition of the Philippines?
+
+
+Her Open-Door Policy.
+
+Wherever Germany has made her influence felt on the globe she has stood
+for the principle of the open door. Wherever she has engaged in colonial
+enterprises, she has been willing to make compromises with other nations
+and to accept their co-operation, notably so in the Bagdad railway
+undertaking. And yet, the colonial expansion of every other nation is
+hailed by England as "beneficial to mankind," as "work for
+civilization"; the slightest attempt of Germany to take part in this
+expansion is denounced as "intolerable aggression," as evidence of the
+"bullying tendencies of the War Lord."
+
+What is the reason for this singular unfairness of England toward
+Germany, of this incessant attempt to check her and hem her in? Not so
+much the existence of a large German Navy as the encroachment upon
+English commerce by the rapidly growing commerce of Germany has made
+Germany hateful to England. The navy has simply added to this hate of
+Germany the dread of Germany. But if there had been no German Navy, and
+consequently no dread of Germany, this hate of Germany might have come
+to an explosion before now. For the history of the last 300 years proves
+that England has habitually considered as her mortal enemy any nation
+which dared to contest her commercial and industrial supremacy--first
+Spain, then Holland, then France, and now Germany. As long as German
+firms, by the manufacture of artificial indigo, keep on ruining the
+English importation of indigo from India, and as long as the German
+steamship lines keep on outstripping the prestige of the English boats,
+there can be no real friendship between England and Germany. Although
+England has repeatedly proposed to Germany naval agreements, these
+agreements were avowedly meant to perpetuate the overwhelming
+preponderance of England's fighting power, so that she would at any
+moment be in a position to crush German commercial rivalry for all time.
+She apparently thinks that this moment has now come.
+
+That Germany's third implacable enemy, Russia, is clearly the aggressor,
+and not the defender of her own national existence, need hardly be
+demonstrated. She poses as the guardian of the Balkan States. But is
+there any case on record where Russia has really protected the
+independence of smaller neighboring countries? Has she not crushed out
+provincial and racial individuality wherever she has extended her power?
+Is it not the sole aim of her national policy to Russianize forcibly
+every nationality under her sway?
+
+In Finland she has gone back on her solemnly pledged word to maintain
+the Finnish Constitution, and is ruthlessly reducing one of her most
+highly developed provinces to the dead level of autocratic rule. In her
+Baltic provinces she is trying to destroy, root and branch, whatever
+there is left of German culture. Wherever the Russian Church holds
+dominion intellectual blight is sure to follow.
+
+To think, therefore, that Russia would promote the free development of a
+number of independent Balkan States under her protectorate is to shut
+one's eyes to the whole history of Russian expansion. No, Russian
+expansion in the Balkans means nothing less than the extinction of all
+local independence and the establishment of Russian despotism from the
+Black Sea to the Adriatic.
+
+
+Why Germany Supports Austria.
+
+Not Russia, but Austria, is the natural protector of the equilibrium
+between the existing States on the Balkan Peninsula and their natural
+guardian against Russian domination. Austria is their nearest neighbor;
+indeed, the possession of Bosnia and Herzegovina makes her a Balkan
+State herself.
+
+Being herself more than half of Slavic stock, she has every reason for
+living on good terms with the various Slav kingdoms south of her. Being
+herself forced, through the conglomerateness of her population, to
+constant compromises in her internal affairs between conflicting
+nationalities within her borders, she could not possibly absorb a large
+additional amount of foreign territory. She is bound to respect the
+existing lines of political demarkation in the Balkans, and her sole
+object can be through commercial treaties and tariff legislation to open
+up what used to be European Turkey to her trade and her civilizing
+influence.
+
+In this she must clearly be supported by Germany. For only if Austria is
+left free to exercise her natural protectorate over the Balkan States
+can the passage between Germany and the Near Orient, one of the most
+important routes of German commerce, be kept open.
+
+Russia's unwillingness, then, to allow Austria a free hand in her
+dealings with Servia was an open menace to Germany, a challenge which
+had to be accepted unless Germany was prepared to abdicate all her
+influence in the Near Orient and to allow Russia to override the
+legitimate claims and aspirations of her only firm and faithful ally.
+
+This formidable coalition of the three greatest European powers,
+threatening the very existence of Germany, has now been joined by Japan,
+openly and boldly for the purpose of snatching from Germany her one
+Asiatic possession.
+
+If any additional proof had been needed to make it clear that, if
+Germany wanted to retain the slightest chance of extricating herself
+from this worldwide conspiracy against her, she had to strike the first
+blow, even at the risk of offending against international good manners,
+this stab in the back by Japan would furnish such proof.
+
+
+
+
+Dr. Sanderson Replies
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+Although I hate to enter into a controversy with Prof. Kuno Francke, who
+was once my excellent friend, I cannot refrain from answering his
+article which appeared in last Sunday's NEW YORK TIMES.
+
+How can any one say, in all fairness, that Germany's policy toward
+France during the last forty-three years has been one of the utmost
+restraint and forbearance, and has been dictated by the one desire to
+make her forget the loss of the two provinces? What are the facts? We
+know that not once, but again and again, since 1878, Germany has tried
+to provoke France into war. We know that on one occasion Queen Victoria
+herself threatened the Kaiser with Great Britain's intervention if he
+did not desist from his intended attack on France. And to cite only the
+two most recent instances, the Agadir affair and the enforced
+resignation of the French Premier, Delcasse! Would Germany have
+swallowed such insults?
+
+This may be the German conception of "utmost restraint and forbearance,"
+but it appeared to the French, as it did to the rest of the world, that
+it required their utmost restraint and forbearance to remain calm under
+the affronts.
+
+The fact that Alsace-Lorraine was German up to the seventeenth century,
+and inhabited by German stock, cannot be brought forward today, after
+more than 200 years, to justify the retaking of those provinces by the
+Germans. The whole world would be in a state of continual warfare if
+nations claimed provinces or States that belonged to them once upon a
+time. Richelieu's idea was that the Rhine was the natural and
+geographical frontier between France and Germany, and the war was
+undertaken to carry out that plan. Since then the inhabitants have
+become French, and the attempts to re-Germanize them have proved futile.
+Prof. Francke may well doubt if the acquisition of these provinces was a
+fortunate thing for Germany. It was undoubtedly the most unfortunate
+thing not only for Germany but for France and the rest of Europe, for it
+kept open a wound which might have been healed either by a return of the
+lost provinces, with or without compensation, or by granting them
+autonomy, or, better still, by leaving it to the inhabitants to choose
+for themselves, as France did with Nice and Savoy.
+
+The ruthless methods of a Bismarck are no longer of this age. They are
+too odious, and the human conscience revolts at them. What a
+preposterous idea, in this twentieth century, to compel by force
+millions of people to renounce their traditions and even their
+language! If Great Britain had followed the same method in dealing with
+the French Canadians, instead of loyal subjects she would have made
+rebels of them all.
+
+It is neither right nor just nor truthful to say that Germany has done
+her best during the last four decades to heal the wounds struck by her
+to French national pride. On the contrary, Germany's attitude has been
+all along one of studied provocation; and if the instances already
+mentioned are not sufficient, many others could be added.
+
+Germany abetted French colonial expansion. Well, by what right should
+she have opposed it? And if she yielded to France in Morocco, it was
+only after France had given Germany part of her African possessions
+rather than go to war with her.
+
+It will be news to the world to be informed that there can be no
+reasonable doubt that the people of Alsace-Lorraine have been gradually
+settling down to willing co-operation with the German administration.
+Certainly such a statement is in violent contradiction with all we hear
+and read and know of the state of mind, the feelings, and aspirations of
+the inhabitants of those two provinces.
+
+To argue that the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine is not a vital
+necessity to France; that without these provinces she has recovered her
+prosperity and her prestige, and that it is mere illusion to think that
+the reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine would add to her glory is pure
+sophistry. It is just as if you said to a man whom you had robbed of
+some valuable property: "What does it matter? You are just as well off
+without it." Yes, Prof. Larson did voice the sentiment of the vast
+majority of his countrymen when he stated that France could not and
+would not recognize the treaty of Frankfurt. If I have an enemy who
+takes me by surprise and with revolver leveled at my head compels me to
+sign a paper by which I despoil myself to his advantage, what is the
+validity of such a document?
+
+That is the way that all Frenchmen of all classes look upon the treaty
+of Frankfurt, wrung from them under duress.
+
+The term "revanche" is a slogan. It simply typifies in one word the
+reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine; but it does not carry with it the idea of
+willfully laying waste the enemy's country, burning and pillaging,
+shooting inoffensive non-combatants, and cleaning banks of all the gold
+they contain.
+
+Another statement which is misleading in Prof. Francke's article is the
+one which refers to the "growing menace from France," in which he speaks
+of the increasing armament that has been going on in that country since
+1912. But what is called in Germany "the menace from France" is called
+in the latter country "the menace from Germany." Who started these
+enormous armaments? Each time Germany increased her army France was
+forced to do the same; and when France recently increased from two to
+three years the duration of military service, it was her only way of
+meeting Germany's increase of 500,000 men.
+
+The attempt to change the roles and present France to the world as the
+aggressor, or even as premeditating an attack upon Germany, is futile.
+It is a strange and yet not uncommon psychological fact that the hate of
+the conqueror is often greater than that of the conquered; and it is
+German, not French, hate which has forced Germany into this savage war.
+France had recovered too rapidly from her disasters; she was too rich;
+her colonies were too vast and too prosperous; she must be crushed. What
+right had she to have large colonies when Germany, the superior nation,
+had none worth mentioning? There you have the key to the Kaiser's
+repeated provocations and to his final attack.
+
+In regard to England and Russia, the writer will simply confine himself
+to the statement that if the German Imperial Government can produce as
+clean a bill of health as the "White Paper" of the British Foreign
+Office, just published, it will do more to convince American public
+opinion of the justice of its cause than anything that has yet been
+written in the press by Germans and their sympathizers.
+
+R.L. SANDERSON.
+
+Yale University, New Haven, Conn., Sept. 5, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+In Defense of Austria
+
+By Baron L. Hengelmuller.
+
+     Late Austro-Hungarian Ambassador to the United States.
+
+
+_The following letter was written by Baron Hengelmuller to Col. Theodore
+Roosevelt._
+
+ABBAZIA, Sept. 25, 1914.
+
+My Dear Mr. Roosevelt:
+
+Our correspondence has suffered a long interruption. Your last letter
+was from July of last year. I do not know whether you ever received my
+answer, by which I thanked you for your preface to my book. You were in
+Arizona when I wrote it, and soon after your return you started for
+Brazil. At the occasion of your son's wedding I sent him a telegram to
+Madrid, but I had no chance to write to you because I had no information
+with regard to the length of your stay and your whereabouts in Europe.
+
+Now I write to you at the time of a most momentous crisis in the world's
+history, and I do so impelled by the desire to talk with you about my
+country's cause and to win your just and fair appreciation for the same.
+I wish I could address my appeal to the American people, but having no
+standing and no opportunity to do so, I address it to you as to one of
+America's most illustrious citizens with whom it has been my privilege
+to entertain during many years the most friendly relations.
+
+Since the outbreak of the war our communications with America are slow
+and irregular. In the beginning they were nil. From the end of July to
+the middle of August we received neither letters, telegrams, nor papers.
+I suppose it was the same with you concerning direct news from us. Our
+adversaries had the field all for themselves and they seem to have made
+the most of it. To judge from what I have learned since and from what I
+could glean in our papers, the New York press seem to have written about
+us and Germany very much in the same tone and spirit as they did about
+you during your last Presidential campaign. I have seen it stated that
+The Outlook published an article in which Austro-Hungary was accused of
+having brought about the war through her greed of conquest and the
+overbearing arrogance of her behavior toward Servia. I do not know
+whether I cite correctly, as I have not seen the article, and I am aware
+that you have severed your connection with The Outlook after your return
+from Brazil. I only mention the statement as an illustration of what I
+have said above, for if a review of the standing of The Outlook opens
+its columns to such a glaringly false accusation the daily papers have
+certainly not lagged behind.
+
+It is natural that our adversaries should be anxious to win the
+sympathies of the American people. So are we. But it is not for this
+purpose that I now write to you. Sympathy is a sentiment and, as a rule,
+not to be won by argument. What I want to discuss with you are the
+causes of this war and the issues at stake.
+
+
+The Cause of the War.
+
+Undoubtedly the war broke out over our conflict with Servia, but this
+conflict was not of our seeking. We had no wish of aggrandizement or
+extension of power at the expense of Servia, but Servia covets territory
+which belongs to us, and for years has pursued her ends by the most
+nefarious and criminal means. The assassination of our heir to the crown
+and his consort was not an isolated fact, but only the most glaring
+link in a long chain of plotting and agitating against us. This
+attitude of Servia toward us dates back to the day when the gang of
+officers who murdered their own King came to power, and when it became
+their policy to keep a hold over their own people by exciting their
+ambitions against us. This policy reached its first climax when we
+declared the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which we had occupied
+and developed for thirty years. You were in office then, and the events
+of the time are familiar to you. The crisis ended then by Servia's
+formal acknowledgment that our annexation violated none of her rights,
+and by her promise to cultivate henceforth correct and friendly
+relations with us. This promise was not kept. The plotting continued,
+lies were disseminated about a pretended oppression of our South Slav
+population, and associations were formed for the purpose of stirring
+them to discontent and if possible to treason.
+
+Things came to a second climax with the murder of Archduke Francis
+Ferdinand. The plot for this crime was hatched in Servia, the bombs and
+revolvers for its execution were furnished there, and Servian officers
+instructed the murder candidates in their use. At last we could stand it
+no longer. What we wanted from Servia was the punishment of the plotters
+and accomplices and a guarantee for normal relations in the future. This
+was the object of our ultimatum. Servia made a show of complying with
+some of our demands, but in reality her answer was evasive.
+
+These facts are exposed and authenticated in the note which we sent to
+the powers after having presented our ultimatum in Belgrade and in the
+memorandum which accompanied it. I do not know whether the American
+papers published these documents at the time. Today they are outstripped
+by greater events, but for the just appreciation of our proceedings in
+regard to Servia they are indispensable.
+
+In reality, however, our conflict with Servia was not the cause of the
+great war now raging, but only the spark which brought the overloaded
+powder barrel to explosion. Who talks of Servia today, and who believes
+that France, England, and Japan are making war on Germany and on us
+because of Servia? The war broke out because Russia decided to shield
+Servia against the consequences of her provocations and because, owing
+to preconcerted arrangements, the situation in Europe was such that the
+action of one great power was bound to bring all or nearly all the
+others into the field. And again those preconcerted arrangements were
+the outcome of a mass of pent-up passions, of hatred, envy, and
+jealousy, the like of which--all Hague conferences and pacific unions
+notwithstanding--the world has never seen before.
+
+We are fully aware of the danger which threatened us from Russia when we
+formulated our demands in Belgrade. Russia's population is three times
+as large as ours and it was not with a light heart that our Emperor-King
+took his final resolution. But our national honor and our very existence
+as a self-respecting power were at stake. We could not hesitate. Now we
+are in a struggle for life or death and we mean to carry it through with
+full confidence in the rightfulness of our cause and in the force of our
+arms. In one respect events have already belied the calculations of our
+enemies, who counted on internal dissensions within our own borders. I
+am happy to say that Croatians, Slovenes, and a large majority of our
+own Servians are fighting in our ranks with the same valor and
+enthusiasm as Czechs, Rumanians, Poles, Magyars, and Germans.
+
+But why did Russia decide to assail us? During the whole nineteenth
+century she has shown herself a very shifty and unreliable protectress
+of Servia. She made use of the smaller country when it suited her own
+aggressive purposes against others, and she dropped it whenever it
+served her ends. It was so at the time of the Turkish war of 1877 and of
+the Berlin Congress, and it remained so until with the advent of the
+present dynasty Servia offered a sure prospect of becoming and remaining
+a permanent tool in Russia's hands and a thorn in our flesh.
+
+Russia is an aggressive power. For 200 years she has extended her
+dominions at the cost of Sweden first, of Poland and Turkey afterward.
+Now she thinks our turn has come. Finding us to be in the way of her
+ultimate aims in the Balkan Peninsula, she began to regard us as her
+enemy. For years the propaganda for undermining the bases of our empire
+has been carried on in the name of Pan-Slavism. It seems that she judged
+that now the time had come to draw the consequences and to bring things
+to a final issue. With what result remains to be seen.
+
+
+Germany Bound to Aid Austria.
+
+By the terms of our treaty of alliance Germany was bound to come to our
+assistance if we were attacked by Russia. There was no secrecy about
+that treaty. Its text had been made public long ago and its purely
+defensive character brought to the knowledge of the world. No more than
+we did Germany entertain hostile intentions or nourish hostile feelings
+against Russia. There were no clashing interests to excite the first, no
+historical reminiscences to justify the second. If it is otherwise in
+Russia, it is because her present leaders find German power in the way
+of their conquering aspirations against us. Germany, true to her
+obligations, hastened to our side when she saw us menaced, and when she
+declared war she did it because she had positive information that in
+spite of formal and solemn assurances to the contrary Russia
+mobilization was proceeding.
+
+The terms of the Franco-Russian alliance have never been made public.
+Whether it was concluded merely for defensive or also for offensive
+purposes, and whether France was obliged by her treaty to draw the sword
+in the present case, remains therefore a matter of surmise. But there is
+no mystery about the feelings of France with regard to Germany, and no
+doubt about the greed for revenge which during the last forty-four years
+has swayed the overwhelming majority of her people and been the
+dominant factor of her foreign policy. It was for this object that she
+entered into her alliances and agreements, and it is for this cause that
+she is fighting now.
+
+It is simple hypocrisy to talk about German aggressiveness against
+France. France stood in no danger of being attacked by Germany if she
+had chosen to remain neutral in the latter's war with Russia. Asked
+whether she would do so, she replied that her actions would be guided by
+her interests. The meaning of this reply was clear, and left Germany no
+choice. The formal declaration of war became then a mere matter of
+political and military convenience, and has no bearing on the moral
+issue of the case.
+
+But why has England plunged into this war? Officially and to the world
+at large she has explained her resolution by Germany's violation of
+Belgian neutrality, and in the royal message to Parliament it was
+solemnly declared that England could not stand by and passively tolerate
+such a breach of international law and obligations.
+
+No Austrian can read this declaration otherwise than with a mournful
+smile. Its futility has been exposed by the question which Englishmen of
+standing and renown have put to their Government, viz., whether they
+would equally have declared war on France if that violation of
+neutrality had first come from her side. In face of this question having
+remained unanswered, and in face of what has come to light since about
+French preparations in Belgium, there is no need to expiate on this
+subject. All that there is to be said about it has been said by the
+German Chancellor in open session of the Reichstag, and all that may be
+added is the remark that, considering England's history and what she did
+before Copenhagen in 1807, she of all nations should be the last to put
+on airs of moral indignation over the application of the principle that
+in time of war "salus reipublicae suprema lex est."
+
+The existence of a convention binding England to France in case of war
+has--as far as I know--never been admitted officially by England. As I
+see now from manifestations of Englishmen disapproving of their
+country's participation in the war, the belief exists nevertheless that
+such a convention had been concluded. But whether England's declaration
+of war was the consequence of previously entered obligations or the
+outcome of present free initiative, the main fact remains that in the
+last resort it sprang from jealousy of Germany's growing sea power and
+commercial prosperity. This feeling was the dominant factor in English
+foreign policy, just as greed for revenge was in France. It was the
+propelling power for the agreements which England has made and for
+others which she endeavored but did not succeed in bringing about.
+
+England claims the dominion over the seas as her native right, and, what
+is more, she holds it. Her title is no better and no worse than that of
+the Romans when they conquered the world, or of the Turkish Sultans in
+the days of their power. Like them, she has succeeded in making good her
+claim. For three centuries the nations of Continental Europe have been
+hating, fighting, and devastating each other for the sake of strips of
+frontier land and a shadowy balance of power. These centuries were
+England's opportunity, and she has made the most of it. That she should
+mean to keep what she has and hold to her maritime supremacy as to the
+apple of her eye is natural. Whether it is for the benefit of mankind
+that it should be so, and whether the world in general would not be
+better off if there existed a balance of power on sea as well as on
+land, does not enter into the present discussion. What is more to the
+purpose is that in reality England's sea power stood in no danger at
+all. To any thinking and fair-minded observer it must be clear that
+Germany, hemmed in by hostile neighbors in the east and west, and
+obliged, therefore, to keep up her armaments on land, would not have
+been able to threaten England's maritime superiority for generations to
+come. If the issue has been thrown into the balance, it has been done so
+by England's own doing.
+
+But it is not only the nascent German Navy that excited the distrust
+and envy of England. German colonies and every trading German vessel
+seem equally to have become thorns in English eyes. The wish to sweep
+those vessels from off the seas, to destroy all German ports, in one
+word, to down Germany, has long been nourished and lately openly avowed
+in England. Norman Angell's theories about the great illusion of the
+profitability of modern warfare seem to have made mighty small
+impression on his countrymen.
+
+Russian lust of conquest, French greed of revenge, and English envy were
+the forces at work in the European powder magazine. The Servian spark
+ignited it, but the explosion was bound to come sooner or later. What
+alone could have stopped it would have been England's stepping out of
+the conspiracy. That she did not do so, in fact became its really
+directing power, will forever remain a blot on her history.
+
+About Japan's motives and methods I do not think it necessary to write.
+American public opinion will hardly need any enlightenment on this
+subject. America forced Japan out of the isolation in which she had
+lived during centuries. I hope the day may not come when she will wish
+that she had not done so.
+
+The issues of the war stand in relation to its causes and the same
+attempts have been made to distort and falsify them in the eyes of the
+American public. I have seen it stated in a New York paper that this war
+is a fight between civilization and barbarism, and I have seen a member
+of the present English Cabinet quoted as having said that the issue was
+one between militarism and freedom, civilization and freedom standing,
+of course, in both cases on the side of our enemies.
+
+
+Not a War for Civilization.
+
+More idiotic rot--excuse the expression--I have never read in my life.
+What has civilization to do with Servia's murderous plotting against
+us? What with Russia's desire to shield her from the consequences
+of her aggressions and to demonstrate to the world that we are of
+no account in the Balkans and to establish her own--more or less
+veiled--protectorate there? And if the case of civilization is advanced
+by Japan's ousting Germany from Kiao-Chau, why should it not be equally
+furthered if Japan did the same to England in Hongkong, Singapore, or,
+if the opportunity offered, in India itself? And a person must be indeed
+at his wits' end for arguments to proclaim Russia as a standard bearer
+of freedom in her war against us. Compare her treatment of Poles, Finns,
+Ukrainanians (small Russians) and Hebrews with the freedom which the
+different nationalities enjoy in our empire! And England herself. Is it
+for freedom's sake that she holds Gibraltar and that she subjugated the
+Boers?
+
+No! Civilization and freedom have nothing to do with the issues at stake
+now, least of all in the sense that our enemies have drawn the sword for
+their cause. It is a war for conquest and supremacy stirred up by all
+the hateful passions in human nature, fully as much as any war that has
+ever been waged before. But we did not stir it up. We are fighting for
+our existence, right and justice are on our side, and so we trust will
+victory be.
+
+The causes of the war are clear. To make its issues still clearer,
+imagine for a moment and merely for argument's sake the consequences of
+our adversaries being successful. Russia, England, and Japan would
+remain masters of the field. Is this a consummation any thinking
+American can wish for?
+
+These are the considerations I wished to lay before you, and I ask your
+assistance to bring them before the American people. I ask for no reply,
+no manifestation of feelings or opinion from you. What I ask you is to
+publish this letter as an open letter addressed by me to you, signed
+with my full name. How to do this I leave entirely to you. It goes
+without saying that your private reply, if you favor me with one, will
+be treated as such.
+
+Hoping to meet you in better times, and sending our kindest regards to
+Mrs. Roosevelt, believe me, yours most sincerely,
+
+BARON L. HENGELMULLER.
+
+Abbazia, Sept. 25, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Russian Atrocities
+
+By George Haven Putnam.
+
+     Publisher, Director of the Knickerbocker Press, Secretary
+     American Copyright League; decorated with the Cross of the
+     Legion of Honor, France.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+It is possible that the letter presented herewith from a German neighbor
+(who is a stranger to me) may be of interest to your readers as an
+example of a curious confusion of thought into which have fallen Germans
+on both sides of the Atlantic in regard to the issues of the present
+struggle and the conduct and the actions of the German Army. I am
+inclosing a copy of my reply to Mr. Thienes.
+
+GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM.
+
+New York, Nov. 4, 1914.
+
+
+THE LETTER.
+
+NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 1914.
+
+Mr. George Haven Putnam.
+
+DEAR SIR: Now that you have shown your "true" spirit of neutrality
+toward Germany, would you not be kind enough to give us a similar piece
+of your wisdom and describe in detail the way the Russians acted in East
+Prussia during their short stay there, and how they murdered, tortured,
+and assaulted women and girls, and cut children and infants to pieces
+without even the provocation of "sniping"?
+
+This, your new article in THE TIMES, I anticipate with the greatest
+interest.
+
+RUDOLF F. THIENES.
+
+
+THE REPLY.
+
+Rudolf F. Thienes, Esq.
+
+MY DEAR SIR: Your letter of the 28th inst., intended as a rejoinder to a
+letter recently printed by me in THE TIMES, is written under a
+misapprehension in regard to one important matter.
+
+The Americans, who are in a position to judge impartially in regard to
+the issues of the war, have criticised the official acts which have
+attended the devastation of Belgium, not because these acts were
+committed by Germans, but because they were in themselves abominable and
+contrary to precedents and to civilized standards.
+
+If the Russians had, under official order, burned Lemburg, including the
+university and the library, and executed the Burgomaster, they would
+have come under the same condemnation from Americans that has been given
+to Germans for the burning of Louvain and Aerschot and the shooting of
+the Aerschot Burgomaster. I am myself familiar with Germany. I am an
+old-time German student, and I have German friends on both sides of the
+Atlantic, and I am in a position to sympathize with legitimate
+aspirations and ideals of these German friends.
+
+I am convinced, however, that no nation can secure in this twentieth
+century its rightful development unless its national conduct is
+regulated with a "decent respect to the opinions of mankind." The
+references made in my TIMES letters were restricted to official actions;
+things done under the direction of the military commanders acting in
+accord with the instructions or the general policy of the Imperial
+Government.
+
+The misdeeds of individual soldiers are difficult to verify. While these
+are always exaggerated, it remains the sad truth that every big army
+contains a certain percentage of ruffians, and that when these ruffians
+are let loose in a community, with weapons and with military power
+behind them, bad things are done. It is my own belief that the material
+in the German Army (which is the best fighting machine that the world
+has ever seen) will compare favorably with that of any army in the
+world, and that the percentage of wrongful acts on the part of the
+German soldiers has been small. Such misdeeds, sometimes to be
+characterized as atrocities, are the inevitable result of war, and they
+bring a grave responsibility upon a Government which (to accept as well
+founded the frank utterances of the leaders of opinion in Germany) has
+initiated this war for the purpose of "crushing France and of breaking
+up the British Empire."
+
+You appear to think that it is in order for Germany to visit upon
+unoffending Belgians reprisal for the misdeeds (as far as such misdeeds
+may be in evidence) committed by Russians in East Prussia. I cannot see
+that this contention is in accord with justice or with common sense.
+
+GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM.
+
+New York, Oct. 28, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+"The United States of Europe"
+
+INTERVIEW WITH NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER.
+
+     Dr. Butler is President of Columbia University; received
+     Republican electoral vote for Vice President of the United
+     States, 1913; President of American Branch of Conciliation
+     Internationale; President American Historical Association;
+     Trustee Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Commander
+     Order of the Red Eagle (with Star) of Prussia; Commandeur de
+     Legion d'Honneur of France.
+
+By Edward Marshall.
+
+
+The United States of Europe.
+
+Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, firmly
+believes that the organization of such a federation will be the outcome,
+soon or late, of a situation built up through years of European failure
+to adjust government to the growth of civilization.
+
+He thinks it possible that the ending of the present war may see the
+rising of the new sun of democracy to light a day of freedom for our
+transatlantic neighbors.
+
+He tells me that thinking men in all the contending nations are
+beginning vividly to consider such a contingency, to argue for it or
+against it; in other words, to regard it as an undoubted possibility.
+
+Dr. Butler's acquaintance among those thinking men of all shades of
+political belief is probably wider than that of any other American, and
+it is significant of the startling importance of what he says that by
+far the greater number of his European friends, the men upon whose views
+he has largely, directly or indirectly, based his conclusions, are not
+of the socialistic or of any other revolutionary or semi-revolutionary
+groups, but are among the most conservative and most important figures
+in European political, literary, and educational fields.
+
+This being unquestionably true, it is by no means improbable that in the
+interview which follows, fruit of two evenings in Dr. Butler's library,
+may be found the most important speculative utterance yet to appear in
+relation to the general European war.
+
+Dr. Butler's estimate of the place which the United States now holds
+upon the stage of the theatre of world progress and his forecast of the
+tremendously momentous role which she is destined to play there must
+make every American's heart first swell with pride and then thrill with
+a realization of responsibility.
+
+The United States of Europe, modeled after and instructed by the United
+States of America! The thought is stimulating.
+
+Said Dr. Butler:
+
+"The European cataclysm puts the people of the United States in a unique
+and tremendously important position. As neutrals we are able to observe
+events and to learn the lesson that they teach. If we learn rightly we
+shall gain for ourselves and be able to confer upon others benefits far
+more important than any of the material advantages which may come to us
+through a shrewd handling of the new possibilities in international
+trade.
+
+"I hesitate to discuss any phase of the great conflict now raging in
+Europe. By today's mail, for example, I received long, personal letters
+from Lord Haldane, from Lord Morley, from Lord Weardale, and from Lord
+Bryce. Another has just come from Prof. Schiemann of Berlin, perhaps the
+Emperor's most intimate adviser; another from Prof. Lamasch of Austria,
+who was the Presiding Judge of the British-American arbitration in
+relation to the Newfoundland fisheries a few years ago, and is a member
+of the Austrian House of Peers. Still others are from M. Ribot, Minister
+of Finance in France, and M. d'Estournelles de Constant. These
+confidential letters give a wealth of information as to the intellectual
+and political forces that are behind the conflict.
+
+"You will understand, then, that without disloyalty to my many friends
+in Europe, I could not discuss with freedom the causes or the progress
+of the war, or speculate in detail about the future of the European
+problem. My friends in Germany, France, and England all write to me with
+the utmost freedom and not for the public eye; so you see that my great
+difficulty, when you ask me to talk about the meaning of the struggle,
+arises from the obligation that I am under to preserve a proper personal
+reserve regarding the great figures behind the vast intellectual and
+political changes which really are in the background of the war.
+
+"If such reserve is necessary in my case, it seems to me that it also is
+necessary for the country as a whole. The attitude of the President has
+been impeccable. That of the whole American press and people should be
+the same.
+
+"Especially is it true that all Americans who hope to have influence, as
+individuals, in shaping the events which will follow the war, must avoid
+any expression which even might be tortured into an avowal of
+partisanship or final judgment.
+
+"Even the free expression of views criticising particular details of the
+war, which might, in fact, deserve criticism, might destroy one's chance
+of future possible usefulness. A statement which might be unquestionably
+true might also be remembered to the damage of some important cause
+later on.
+
+"There are reasons why my position is, perhaps, more difficult than that
+of some others. Talking is often a hazardous practice, and never more so
+than now.
+
+"The World is at crossroads, and everything may depend upon the United
+States, which has been thrust by events into a unique position of moral
+leadership. Whether the march of the future is to be to the right or to
+the left, uphill or down, after the war is over, may well depend upon
+the course this nation shall then take, and upon the influence which it
+shall exercise.
+
+"If we keep our heads clear there are two things that we can bring
+insistently to the attention of Europe--each of vast import at such a
+time as that which will follow the ending of this war.
+
+"The first of these is the fact that race antagonisms die away and
+disappear under the influence of liberal and enlightened political
+institutions. This has been proved in the United States.
+
+"We have huge Celtic, Latin, Teutonic and Slavic populations all living
+here at peace and in harmony; and, as years pass, they tend to merge,
+creating new and homogeneous types. The Old World antagonisms have
+become memories. This proves that such antagonisms are not mysterious
+attributes of geography or climate, but that they are the outgrowth
+principally of social and political conditions. Here a man can do about
+what he likes, so long as he does not violate the law; he may pray as he
+pleases or not at all, and he may speak any language that he chooses.
+
+"The United States is itself proof that most of the contentions of
+Europeans as to race antagonisms are ill-founded. We have demonstrated
+that racial antagonisms need not necessarily become the basis of
+permanent hatreds and an excuse for war."
+
+
+Hyphens Are Going.
+
+"If human beings are given the chance they will make the most of
+themselves, and, by living happily--which means by living at peace--they
+will avoid conflict. The hyphen tends to disappear from American
+terminology. The German-American, the Italio-American, the
+Irish-American all become Americans.
+
+"So, by and large, our institutions have proved their capacity to
+amalgamate and to set free every type of human being which thus far has
+come under our flag. There is in this a lesson which may well be taken
+seriously to heart by the leaders of opinion in Europe when this war
+ends.
+
+"The second thing which we may press, with propriety, upon the attention
+of the people of Europe after peace comes to them is the fact that we
+are not only the great exponents but the great example of the success of
+the principle of federation in its application to unity of political
+life regardless of local, economic, and racial differences.
+
+"If our fathers had attempted to organize this country upon the basis of
+a single, closely unified State, it would have gone to smash almost at
+the outset, wrecked by clashing economic and personal interests. Indeed,
+this nearly happened in the civil war, which was more economic than
+political in its origin.
+
+"But, though we had our difficulties, we did find a way to make a
+unified nation of a hundred million people and forty-eight
+Commonwealths, all bound together in unity and in loyalty to a common
+political ideal and a common political purpose.
+
+"Just as certainly as we sit here this must and will be the future of
+Europe. There will be a federation into the United States of Europe.
+
+"When one nation sets out to assert itself by force against the will, or
+even the wish, of its neighbors, disaster must inevitably come. Disaster
+would have come here if, in 1789, New York had endeavored to assert
+itself against New England or Pennsylvania.
+
+"As a matter of fact, certain inhabitants of Rhode Island and
+Pennsylvania did try something of the sort after the Federal Government
+had been formed, but, fortunately, their effort was a failure.
+
+"The leaders of our national life had established such a flexible and
+admirable plan of government that it was soon apparent that each State
+could retain its identity, forming its own ideals and shaping its own
+progress, and still remain a loyal part of the whole; that each State
+could make a place for itself in the new federated nation and not be
+destroyed thereby.
+
+"There is no reason why each nation in Europe should not make a place
+for itself in the sun of unity which I am sure is rising there behind
+the war clouds. Europe's stupendous economic loss, which already has
+been appalling and will soon be incalculable, will give us an
+opportunity to press this argument home.
+
+"True internationalism is not the enemy of the nationalistic principle.
+
+"On the contrary, it helps true nationalism to thrive. The Vermonter is
+more a Vermonter because he is an American, and there is no reason why
+Hungary, for example, should not be more than ever before Hungarian
+after she becomes a member of the United States of Europe.
+
+"Europe, of course, is not without examples of the successful
+application of the principle of federation within itself. It so happens
+that the federated State next greatest to our own is the German Empire.
+It is only forty-three years old, but their federation has been notably
+successful. So the idea of federation is familiar to German publicists.
+
+"It is familiar, also, to the English, and has lately been pressed there
+as the probable final solution of the Irish question.
+
+"It has insistently suggested itself as the solution of the Balkan
+problem.
+
+"In a lesser way it already is represented in the structure of
+Austria-Hungary."
+
+
+America's Great Work.
+
+"This principle of nation building, of international building through
+federation, certainly has in it the seeds of the world's next great
+development--and we Americans are in a position both to expand the
+theory and to illustrate the practice. It seems to me that this is the
+greatest work which America will have to do at the end of this war.
+
+"These are the things which I am writing to my European correspondents
+in the several belligerent countries by every mail.
+
+"The cataclysm is so awful that it is quite within the bounds of truth
+to say that on July 31 the curtain went down upon a world which never
+will be seen again.
+
+"This conflict is the birth-throe of a new European order of things. The
+man who attempts to judge the future by the old standards or to force
+the future back to them will be found to be hopelessly out of date. The
+world will have no use for him. The world has left behind forever the
+international policies of Palmerston and of Beaconsfield and even those
+of Bismarck, which were far more powerful.
+
+"When the war ends conditions will be such that a new kind of
+imagination and a new kind of statesmanship will be required. This war
+will prove to be the most effective education of 500,000,000 people
+which possibly could have been thought of, although it is the most
+costly and most terrible means which could have been chosen. The results
+of this education will be shown, I think, in the process of general
+reconstruction which will follow.
+
+"All the talk of which we hear so much about, the peril from the Slav or
+from the Teuton or from the Celt, is unworthy of serious attention. It
+would be quite as reasonable to discuss seriously the red-headed peril
+or the six-footer peril.
+
+"There is no peril to the world in the Slav, the Teuton, the Celt, or
+any other race, provided the people of that race have an opportunity to
+develop as social and economic units, and are not bottled up so that an
+explosion must come.
+
+"It is my firm belief that nowhere in the world, from this time on, will
+any form of government be tolerated which does not set men free to
+develop in this fashion."
+
+I asked Dr. Butler to make some prognostication of what the United
+States of Europe, which he so confidently expects, will be. He answered:
+
+
+Has Advanced Much.
+
+"I can say only this: The international organization of the world
+already has progressed much further than is ordinarily understood. Ever
+since the Franco-Prussian war and the Geneva Arbitration, both
+landmarks in modern history, this has advanced inconspicuously, but by
+leaps and bounds.
+
+"The postal service of the world has been internationalized in its
+control for years. The several Postal Conventions have been evidences of
+an international organization of the highest order.
+
+"Europe abounds in illustrations of the international administration of
+large things. The very laws of war, which are at present the subject of
+so much and such bitter discussion, are the result of international
+organization.
+
+"They were not adopted by a Congress, a Parliament, or a Reichstag. They
+were agreed to by many and divergent peoples, who sent representatives
+to meet for their discussion and determination."
+
+
+One of the Examples.
+
+"In the admiralty law we have a most striking example of uniformity of
+practice in all parts of the world. If a ship is captured or harmed in
+the Far East and taken into Yokohama or Nagasaki, damages will be
+assessed and collected precisely as they would be in New York or
+Liverpool.
+
+"The world is gradually developing a code for international legal
+procedure. Special arbitral tribunals have tended to merge and grow into
+the international court at The Hague, and that, in turn, will develop
+until it becomes a real supreme judicial tribunal.
+
+"Of course the analogy with the federated State fails at some points,
+but I believe the time will come when each nation will deposit in a
+world federation some portion of its sovereignty.
+
+"When this occurs we shall be able to establish an international
+executive and an international police, both devised for the especial
+purpose of enforcing the decisions of the international court.
+
+"Here, again, we offer a perfect object lesson. Our Central Government
+is one of limited and defined powers. Our history can show Europe how
+such limitations and definitions can be established and interpreted, and
+how they can be modified and amended when necessary to meet new
+conditions.
+
+"My colleague, Prof. John Bassett Moore, is now preparing and publishing
+a series of annotated reports of the international arbitration
+tribunals, in order that the Governments and jurists of the world may
+have at hand, as they have in the United States Supreme Court, reports,
+a record of decided cases which, when the time comes, may be referred to
+as precedents.
+
+"It will be through graded processes such as this that the great end
+will be accomplished. Beginning with such annotated reports as a basis
+for precedents, each new case tried before this tribunal will add a
+further precedent, and presently a complete international code will be
+in existence. It was in this way that the English common law was built,
+and such has been the admirable history of the work done by our own
+judicial system.
+
+"The study of such problems is at this time infinitely more important
+than the consideration of how large a fine shall be inflicted by the
+victors upon the vanquished."
+
+
+The Chief Result.
+
+"There is the probability of some dislocation of territory and some
+shiftings of sovereignty after the war ends, but these will be of
+comparatively minor importance. The important result of this great war
+will be the stimulation of international organization along some such
+lines as I have suggested.
+
+"Dislocation of territory and the shifting of sovereigns as the result
+of international disagreements are mediaeval practices. After this war
+the world will want to solve its problems in terms of the future, not in
+those of the outgrown past.
+
+"Conventional diplomacy and conventional statesmanship have very
+evidently broken down in Europe. They have made a disastrous failure of
+the work with which they were intrusted. They did not and could not
+prevent the war because they knew and used only the old formulas. They
+had no tools for a job like this.
+
+"A new type of international statesman is certain to arise, who will
+have a grasp of new tendencies, a new outlook upon life. Bismarck used
+to say that it would pay any nation to wear the clean linen of a
+civilized State. The truth of this must be taught to those nations of
+the world which are weakest in morale, and it can only be done, I
+suppose, as similar work is accomplished with individuals. Courts, not
+killings, have accomplished it with individuals.
+
+"One more point ought to be remembered. We sometimes hear it said that
+nationalism, the desire for national expression by each individual
+nation, makes the permanent peace and good order of the world
+impossible.
+
+"To me it seems absurd to believe that this is any truer of nations than
+it is of individuals. It is not each nation's desire for national
+oppression which makes peace impossible; it is the fact that thus far in
+the world's history such desire has been bound up with militarism.
+
+"The nation whose frontier bristles with bayonets and with forts is like
+the individual with a magazine pistol in his pocket. Both make for
+murder. Both in their hearts really mean murder.
+
+"The world will be better when the nations invite the judgment of their
+neighbors and are influenced by it.
+
+"When John Hay said that the Golden Rule and the open door should guide
+our new diplomacy he said something which should be applicable to the
+new diplomacy of the whole world. The Golden Rule and a free chance are
+all that any man ought to want or ought to have, and they are all that
+any nation ought to want or ought to have.
+
+"One of the controlling principles of a democratic State is that its
+military and naval establishments must be completely subservient to the
+civil power. They should form the police, and not be the dominant factor
+of any national life.
+
+"As soon as they go beyond this simple function in any nation, then that
+nation is afflicted with militarism.
+
+"It is difficult to make predictions of the war's effect on us. As I see
+it, our position will depend a good deal upon the outcome of the
+conflict, and what that will be no one at present knows.
+
+"If a new map of Europe follows the war, its permanence will depend upon
+whether or not the changes are such as will permit nationalities to
+organize as nations.
+
+"The world should have learned through the lessons of the past that it
+is impossible permanently and peacefully to submerge large bodies of
+aliens if they are treated as aliens. That is the opposite of the mixing
+process which is so successfully building a nation out of varied
+nationalities in the United States.
+
+"The old Romans understood this. They permitted their outlying vassal
+nations to speak any language they chose and to worship whatever god
+they chose, so long as they recognized the sovereignty of Rome. When a
+conquering nation goes beyond that, and begins to suppress religions,
+languages, and customs, it begins at that very moment to sow the seeds
+of insurrection and revolution.
+
+"My old teacher and colleague, Prof. Burgess, once defined a nation as
+an ethnographic unit inhabiting a geographic unit. That is an
+illuminating definition. If a nation is not an ethnographic unit, it
+tries to become one by oppressing or amalgamating the weaker portions of
+its people. If it is not a geographic unit, it tries to become one by
+reaching out to a mountain chain or to the sea--to something which will
+serve as a real dividing line between it and its next neighbors.
+
+"The accuracy of this definition can hardly be denied, and we all know
+what the violations of this principle have been in Europe. It is
+unnecessary for me to point them out.
+
+"Races rarely have been successfully mixed by conquest. The military
+winner of a war is not always the real conqueror in the long run. The
+Normans conquered Saxon England, but Saxon law and Saxon institutions
+worked up through the new power and have dominated England's later
+history. The Teutonic tribes conquered Rome, but Roman civilization, by
+a sort of capillary attraction, went up into the mass above and
+presently dominated the Teutons.
+
+"The persistency of a civilization may well be superior in tenacity to
+mere military conquest and control.
+
+"The smallness of the number of instances in which conquering nations
+have been able successfully to deal with alien peoples is extraordinary.
+The Romans were unusually successful, and England has been successful
+with all but the Irish, but perhaps no other peoples have been
+successful in high degree in an effort to hold alien populations as
+vassals and to make them really happy and comfortable as such.
+
+"One of the war's chief effects on us will be to change our point of
+view. Europe will be more vivid to us from now on. There are many public
+men who have never thought much about Europe, and who have been far from
+a realization of its actual importance to us. It has been a place to
+which to go for a Summer holiday.
+
+"But, suddenly, they find they cannot sell their cotton there or their
+copper, that they cannot market their stocks and bonds there, that they
+cannot send money to their families who are traveling there, because
+there is a war. To such men the war must have made it apparent that
+interdependence among nations is more than a mere phrase.
+
+"All our trade and all our economic and social policies must recognize
+this. The world has discovered that cash without credit means little.
+One cannot use cash if one cannot use one's credit to draw it whenever
+and wherever needed. Credit is intangible and volatile, and may be
+destroyed over night.
+
+"I saw this in Venice.
+
+"On July 31 I could have drawn every cent that my letter of credit
+called for up to the time the banks closed. At 10 in the morning on the
+1st of August I could not draw the value of a postage stamp.
+
+"Yet the banker in New York who issued my letter of credit had not
+failed. His standing was as good as ever it had been. But the world's
+system of international exchange of credit had suffered a stroke of
+paralysis over night.
+
+"This realization of international interdependence, I hope, will
+elevate and refine our patriotism by teaching men a wider sympathy and a
+deeper understanding of other peoples, nations, and languages. I
+sincerely hope it will educate us up to what I have called 'The
+International Mind.'
+
+"When Joseph Chamberlain began his campaign after returning from South
+Africa his keynote was, 'Learn to think imperially.' I think ours should
+be, 'Learn to think internationally,' to see ourselves not in
+competition with the other peoples of the world, but working with them
+toward a common end, the advance of civilization."
+
+
+A Note of Optimism.
+
+"There are hopeful signs, even in the midst of the gloom that hangs over
+us. Think what it has meant for the great nations of Europe to have come
+to us, as they have done, asking our favorable public opinion. We have
+no army and navy worthy of their fears. They can have been induced by
+nothing save their conviction that we are the possessors of sound
+political ideals and a great moral force.
+
+"In other words, they do not want us to fight for them, but they do want
+us to approve of them. They want us to pass judgment upon the humanity
+and the legality of their acts, because they feel that our judgment
+will be the judgment of history. There is a lesson in this.
+
+"If we had not repealed the Panama Canal Tolls Exemption act last June
+they would not have come to us as they are doing now. Who would have
+cared for our opinion in the matter of a treaty violation if, for mere
+financial interest or from sheer vanity, we ourselves had violated a
+solemn treaty?
+
+"When Congress repealed the Panama Canal Tolls Exemption act it marked
+an epoch in the history of the United States. This did more than the
+Spanish war, than the building of the Panama Canal, or than anything
+else I think of, to make us a true world power.
+
+"As a nation we have kept our word when sorely tempted to break it. We
+made Cuba independent, we have not exploited the Philippines, we have
+stood by our word as to Panama Canal tolls.
+
+"In consequence we are the first moral power in the world today. Others
+may be first with armies, still others first with navies. But we have
+made good our right to be appealed to on questions of national and
+international morality. That Europe is seeking our favor is the tribute
+of the European nations to this fact."
+
+
+
+
+A New World Map
+
+By Wilhelm Ostwald.
+
+     Late Visiting Professor to Harvard and Columbia Universities
+     from the University of Leipsic.
+
+
+_The following article is extracted from a letter written by Prof.
+Ostwald to Edwin D. Mead, Director of the World Peace Foundation._
+
+The war is the result of a deliberate onslaught upon Germany and Austria
+by the powers of the Triple Entente--Russia, France, and England. Its
+object is on the part of Russia an extension of Russian supremacy over
+the Balkans, on the side of France revenge, and on the side of England
+annihilation of the German Navy and German commerce. In England
+especially it has been for several centuries a constant policy to
+destroy upon favoring occasion every navy of every other country which
+threatened to become equal to the English Navy.
+
+Germany has proved its love of peace for forty-four years under the most
+trying circumstances. While all other States have expanded themselves
+by conquest, Russia in Manchuria, England in the Transvaal, France in
+Morocco, Italy in Tripoli, Austria in Bosnia, Japan in Korea, Germany
+alone has contented itself with the borders fixed in 1871. It is purely
+a war of defense which is now forced upon us.
+
+In the face of these attacks Germany has until now (the end of August)
+proved its military superiority, which rests upon the fact that the
+entire German military force is scientifically organized and honestly
+administered.
+
+The violation of Belgian neutrality was an act of military necessity,
+since it is now proved that Belgian neutrality was to be violated by
+France and England. A proof of this is the accumulation of English
+munitions in Maubeuge, aside from many other facts.
+
+According to the course of the war up to the present time, European
+peace seems to me nearer than ever before. We pacificists must only
+understand that unhappily the time was not yet sufficiently developed to
+establish peace by the peaceful way. If Germany, as everything now seems
+to make probable, is victorious in the struggle not only with Russia and
+France but attains the further end of destroying the source from which
+for two or three centuries all European strifes have been nourished and
+intensified, namely, the English policy of world dominion, then will
+Germany, fortified on one side by its military superiority, on the other
+side by the eminently peaceful sentiment of the greatest part of its
+people, and especially of the German Emperor, dictate peace to the rest
+of Europe, I hope especially that the future treaty of peace will in
+the first place provide effectually that a European war such as the
+present can never again break out.
+
+I hope, moreover, that the Russian people, after the conquest of their
+armies, will free themselves from Czarism through an internal movement
+by which the present political Russia will be resolved into its natural
+units, namely, Great Russia, the Caucasus, Little Russia, Poland,
+Siberia, and Finland, to which probably the Baltic provinces would join
+themselves. These, I trust, would unite themselves with Finland and
+Sweden, and perhaps with Norway and Denmark, into a Baltic federation,
+which in close connection with Germany would insure European peace, and
+especially form a bulwark against any disposition to war which might
+remain in Great Britain.
+
+For the other side of the earth I predict a similar development under
+the leadership of the United States. I assume that the English dominion
+will suffer a downfall similar to that which I have predicted for
+Russia, and that under these circumstances Canada would join the United
+States, the expanded republic assuming a certain leadership with
+reference to the South American republics.
+
+The principle of the absolute sovereignty of the individual nations,
+which in the present European tumult has proved itself so inadequate and
+baneful, must be given up and replaced by a system conforming to the
+world's actual conditions and especially to those political and economic
+relations which determine industrial and cultural progress and the
+common welfare.
+
+[Illustration: NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER
+
+_See Page 565_]
+
+[Illustration: ARTHUR VON BRIESEN
+
+_See Page 548_]
+
+
+
+
+The Verdict of the American People
+
+By Newell Dwight Hillis.
+
+     _Dr. Hillis, who occupies the pulpit of Plymouth Church,
+     Brooklyn, made famous by the pastorate of the late Henry Ward
+     Beecher, delivered the following remarkable sermon on the
+     European War on Sunday, Dec. 20, 1914, choosing as his text
+     the words: "From whence come wars? Come they not from your own
+     lusts?"_
+
+
+Nearly five months have now passed by since the German Army invaded
+Belgium and France. These 140 days have been packed with thrilling and
+momentous events. While from their safe vantage ground the American
+people have surveyed the scene, an old regime has literally crumbled
+under our very eyes. Europe is a loom on whose earthen framework
+demiurgic forces like Frederick the Great, Bismarck, and Napoleon once
+wove the texture of European civilization. Now the demon of war has,
+with hot knife, shorn away the texture, and a modern Czar and Kaiser,
+King and President, with Generals and Admirals, are weaving the warp and
+woof of a new world. One hundred years ago the forces that bred wars
+were political forces; today the collision between nations is born of
+economic interests. The twentieth century influences are chiefly the
+force of wealth and the force of public opinion. These are the giant
+steeds, though the reins of the horses may be in the hands of Kings and
+Kaisers. In Napoleon's day antagonism grew out of the natural hatred of
+autocracy for democracy, of German imperialism for French radicalism.
+Today Germany is not even interested in France's republican form of
+Government, nor is France concerned with Germany's imperial autocrat.
+But all Europe is intensely concerned with the question of economic
+supremacy or financial subordination.
+
+Ever since Oliver Cromwell's day England has been the mistress of the
+seas, and Germany is envious and believes that she has a right to
+supplant England in this naval leadership. France has long been the
+banker of Europe, and Germany covets financial leadership. From whence
+come wars? Come they not from men's lusts? Now that long time has
+passed, it is quite certain that neither Napoleon nor Bismarck nor
+William II. understood the future. It is a proverb that yesterday is a
+seed, today the stalk, and tomorrow is the full corn in the ear.
+Napoleon was a practical man, but he could not see the shock in the
+seed. When Napoleon said, "One hundred years from now Europe will be all
+republican or all Cossack"--Napoleon was quite wrong. Forty years ago
+Bismarck said that he had reduced France to the level of a fourth-class
+nation, and that henceforth France did not count; while as for the
+Balkan States, "the whole Eastern question is not worth the bones of a
+Pomeranian grenadier"--Bismarck was quite wrong. The present Kaiser has
+no imagination. A man of any prevision of the future might have foreseen
+that any attack upon England would settle the Irish question; that any
+treaty with Turkey would force Italy, as Turkey's enemy in the late
+Italian-Turkish war, to break with Germany; any man with the least
+instinct for diplomacy might have known that the twentieth century man
+is so incensed by an enemy's trespass upon his property, that Belgium
+would have resisted encroachment, and so cost Germany the best three
+weeks of the entire war. If the history of great wars tells us anything,
+it tells us that the first qualification of the statesman and diplomat
+is an intuitive knowledge of a future that is the certain outcome of the
+present. There has been no foresight on the part of the makers and
+advisers of this war. Years ago, when the Austrian Emperor visited
+Innsbruck, the Burgomaster ordered foresters to go up on the mountain
+sides and cut certain swaths of brush. At the moment the man with his
+axe did not know what he was doing, but when the night fell, and the
+torch was lifted on the boughs, the people in the city below read these
+words written in letters of fire, "Welcome to our Emperor." Today the
+demon of war has been writing with blazing letters certain lessons upon
+the hills and valleys of Europe, and fortunate is that youth who can
+read the writing and interpret aright the lessons of the times.
+
+The people of the republic now realize for the first time what are the
+inevitable fruits of imperialism and militarism. One of the perils of
+America's distance from the scenes of autocracy is that our people have
+come to think that the forms of government are of little importance. We
+hear it said that climate determines government and that one nation
+likes autocracy and another limited monarchy, that we like democracy
+self-government, and that the people are about as happy under one form
+of control as another. This misconception is based upon a failure to
+understand foreign imperialism. Superficially, the fruits of autocracy
+are efficiency, industrial wealth, and military power. But now, after
+nearly five months of constant discussion, our people understand
+thoroughly the other side of imperialism. The 6,000,000 of
+German-Americans living in this country, with their high type of
+character, millions who have left their native land to escape service in
+the army, the burdens of taxation involved in militarism, and the law of
+lese majeste, should have opened our eyes long ago. During the last five
+years I have lectured in more than one hundred cities on the New Germany
+and the lessons derived from her industrial efficiency, with the
+application of science to the production of wealth, but I did not
+appreciate fully the far-off harvest of militarism. And, lest an
+American overstate the meaning of militarism, let me condense
+Treitschke's view. He holds that the nation should be looked upon as a
+vast military engine; that its ruler should be the commander of the
+army; that his Cabinet should be under Generals; that the whole nation
+should march with the force of an armed regiment; that the real "sin
+against the Holy Ghost was the sin of military impotence; that such an
+army should take all it wants and the territory it needs and explain
+afterward." Manufacturers are essentially inventors of cannons and guns
+and dreadnoughts, incidentally self-supporting men. Bankers are here to
+finance the army and incidentally to make money. Physicians are here to
+heal the wounded soldiers. Gymnasiums are founded to train soldiers.
+Women are here to breed soldiers, and militarism is the path that will
+bring Germany to her place in the sun. The youth is first of all to be a
+soldier and incidentally to be a man. No one has indicted Germany's
+militarism in stronger language than the distinguished German-American,
+Carl Schurz. In words that burn the great statesman expressed his hatred
+of the imperialism and militarism against which he helped to organize a
+revolution that led to his flight to this country. Of late Americans
+have been asking themselves certain questions.
+
+
+The American Ideal vs. the German.
+
+What will be the result if Germany is allowed to seize any smaller State
+whose territory and property she covets? Is all Europe to become an
+armed camp? What is the meaning of this German professor's article in
+The North American Review, written two or three years ago, in which he
+says that once she is victorious the Monroe Doctrine will go and the
+United States will receive the "thrashing she so richly deserves"? Must
+we then go over to the military ideal? If Germany supports 8,000,000
+soldiers out of 66,000,000, must we withdraw from productive industry
+12,000,000 men for at least two or three of the best years of their
+young life? Must we start in on a programme of ten dreadnoughts a year
+instead of building ten colleges and universities for the same sum of
+money? Of late Americans who love their country have been searching
+their own hearts. Merchants hitherto busied with commerce are asking
+themselves whither this country is drifting. Is Germany to compel us to
+become a vast military machine? This military question is a subject of
+discussion on the street cars and in the stores, at the dining room
+table. No articles in paper and magazine are so eagerly read and
+analyzed. The American ideal is not a military machine, but a high
+quality of manhood. To make men free, with the gift of self-expression;
+to make men wise through the public school and the free press; to make
+men self-sufficing and happy in their homes, through freedom of
+industrial contracts; to make men sound in their manhood through
+religious liberty for Jew and Gentile and Catholic and Protestant--these
+are our national ideals. America stands at the other pole of the
+universe from imperialism and militarism. So far from being willing to
+desert the political faith of the fathers, this war has confirmed our
+confidence in self-government. Liberty to grow, freedom to climb as high
+as industry and ability will permit, liberty to analyze and discuss the
+views of President, Congress, Governor--these are our rights. In a
+military autocracy there can be no liberty of the printing press. If a
+man criticises the Kaiser, he goes to jail; in this republic, if Horace
+Greeley criticises Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln does not send the
+great editor to jail, but writes the latter, "My paramount object is to
+save the Union," and vindicates himself at the bar of the nation. An
+American editor or citizen would choke to death in Germany. He could not
+breathe because of the mephitic gases of imperialism and militarism. For
+a long time some of us did not realize what was involved, but now we do
+realize the difference between the fruits of democratic self-government
+and the fruits of military imperialism.
+
+The last five months have brought a new realization to American citizens
+as to the rights and liberties of small States. In the republic the sin
+of trespass is one of the blackest of sins. Here we hold to the
+sanctity of property. A man's home is his castle, a citadel that cannot
+be invaded even by the power of the State. So deep is the American
+hatred of trespass against property rights that imperialism finds it
+impossible to understand this. Here the individual is a king of kings in
+his native right, and takes out an injunction against the city that
+wishes to trespass upon his property. This antagonism manifests itself
+in the laws that safeguard the small shopkeeper against the big firm,
+and the small manufacturer against any company with its billion dollars
+of capital. This antagonism to the sin of trespass has lent a peculiar
+sanctity to treaties between Canada and the United States. We have one
+hundred millions of people, and Canada nine millions. We need many
+things that Canada has, but it is intellectually unthinkable that "we
+should take what we want and explain afterward," or that we should
+violate our treaty guaranteeing neutrality to Canada. Our frontier line
+is three thousand miles long. There is not a fort from Maine to
+Victoria. If we adopted Germany's position we would have to build one
+thousand forts, withdraw two million young men from the farm, factory,
+store and bank, and load the working people with taxes to support them.
+In a free land, and in God's world, there should be a place for the poor
+man and for the small nation. In the olden time there was a king who had
+herds and flocks, and a poor man who had one pet lamb. It came to pass
+that a stranger claimed the right of hospitality at the rich man's
+palace, and the king sent out and took the poor man's one lamb and gave
+it for food to the stranger. And, soon or late, the time will come when
+history will tell the story of Germany's taking little Belgium, and
+conscience, like a prophet, will indict the militarism that seized the
+one lamb that belonged to the poor man. This episode is not closed. The
+German representative who says that Belgium is a part of Germany may be
+right in terms of future government and war, but the incident has just
+begun in the memory of the soldiers who never can forget that they first
+broke their sacred treaty, and then, when the Belgian defended his home
+as his castle, butchered the man, who died with a sacred treaty in his
+hand. Why, all over this land, teachers, fathers, editors, authors, have
+found it necessary to say to the young men and women of the republic,
+"Do not sign your name to an obligation unless you intend to keep it."
+Keep your faith. Remember that your word given should be as good as your
+bond. "Swear to your own hurt, and change not." All this is inevitable,
+as the result of Germany's trespass upon the property and the homes of
+Belgium. In some European lands the State is everything and the
+individual nothing. In this republic the individual is first, and the
+State is here to safeguard his rights and see to it that no one
+trespasses upon his property. The time will come when the nation that
+breaks its treaties and sows to the wind shall of that wind reap the
+whirlwind. It is an awful thing for a nation to make it inevitable that
+hereafter when other people sign a treaty with that country, that our
+representatives shall say: "Before we sign this treaty with you, we wish
+to ask one question. Later, if it is to your interest to break this
+treaty, is this document to be sneered at as a scrap of paper? Or does
+this treaty mean the faith of a nation that will die rather than break
+its word, given before the tribunal of civilized States?"
+
+
+The Death of the Tribal God Idea.
+
+This great war and one or two of the leaders thereof have killed the old
+tribal idea of God. In the twentieth century it seems almost ludicrous
+to find that the conception of the ancient Hebrews is still held by some
+rulers. Be the reasons what they may, of late there has been a strange
+recrudescence of the tribal God idea. This is the twentieth century, not
+the tenth! Think of a man sending his soldiers into Belgium, saying,
+"Make yourselves as terrible as the Huns of Attila, and the Lord our God
+will give you victory." Just as if God were not the God of the whole
+earth, a disinterested God, a God who makes His sun to shine and His
+rain to fall upon all His children, without regard to race or clime or
+color. Why, it is as artless as the way the old Hebrew peasant called on
+God to blast his enemy's field, and drown his children with floods, and
+smite his herds with the plague. The tribal idea of God belongs with the
+ox cart, the medicine man, the cave dweller. This is an era of science.
+Whatever is true is universal, not racial. If the heart beats and the
+blood circulates in a German soldier's veins, the blood flows in the
+veins of the people of England and France. If the earth goes around the
+sun in Berlin, the earth goes around the sun in Petrograd and Edinburgh.
+If there are seven rays in the sunbeam, why, the discussion is closed,
+and it is a universal fact. And if Jesus was right when He said, "God is
+our Father, and all the races are our brothers, and the world has been
+fitted up by God as an Eden garden for His children," then no man or
+ruler should ever adopt the view of the peasant and the cave man, and
+try to make the Eternal God a tribal God. The unconscious humor in the
+statements of one or two men as to their tribal God idea has added to
+the gayety of nations. But when any view is laughed at, it is doomed.
+From the very moment that the doctrine of election, that made God love a
+few aristocrats and pass the non-elect by, became a matter of joke in
+the comic papers, that theory was dead. Not otherwise is it with this
+idea of a tribal God. When Barry Paine begins to say,
+
+    Led by William, as you tell,
+    God has done extremely well,
+
+the tribal idea has been relegated to the theological scrap-heap. The
+peasant's view must go. In this age men must be citizens of all
+countries and of the universe. God is a sun Who shines for the poor
+man's hut as truly as for the rich man's palace. The Judge of all the
+earth is also the Father of all the races, and He will do men good and
+not evil.
+
+In view of the events of the last few months, all Americans now realize
+as never before the futility of war as a means of settling disputes.
+Indeed, it may be doubted whether any war has ever settled any question.
+Defeat did not convince the South that they were wrong in their idea of
+State rights or slavery. If the South has given up both ideas today it
+is because time, events, and social progress have changed their view,
+not because the sword convinced them. Bismarck's victory at Versailles
+and von Moltke's at Sedan did not settle the dispute with France. To
+keep one billion dollars of indemnity Germany must have spent five
+billions on forts and armies in the government of Alsace and Lorraine.
+Germany's apparent victory simply put Germany's trouble with France out
+at compound interest, and left the next generation of Germans to pay
+several billions of dollars of accrued debt through hatred. Plainly it
+is folly not to reconstitute the map of Europe. The frontier lines of
+the geographer should exactly coincide with the racial lines. The German
+race, with their peculiar ideals, ought not to try to govern the French
+race. It is an expensive experiment. It is an impossible experiment. The
+plan is doomed to failure in advance. And when the day of payment comes
+it is quite certain that the questions at issue will not have been
+settled by regiments of soldiers. They must finally be settled by an
+appeal to some court of arbitration that will do justice and love mercy;
+that will insist upon the rights of the smaller States, and make it
+impossible for the great ones of the earth to trespass upon the property
+and the liberties of brave little peoples.
+
+
+Imperialism Confuses Men's Judgments.
+
+Out of the smoke of battle another lesson is written for all who have
+eyes to read. In view of the mistakes made by men who have absolute
+power it is now certain that exemption from criticism is a bad thing for
+any man, and that endless adoration destroys the ruler's power to think
+in straight lines. There never lived a man who was not injured by
+perpetual compliments. Strong men are willing to pay cash for criticism.
+Flattery will conceal the weakness, and they know that pitiless
+criticism will expose the danger and perhaps save them. No man is so
+unfortunate as the man who is put on a throne lifted up beyond the
+reach of plain truth telling. It is doubtful if so many blunders were
+ever made by statesmen and diplomats as were made at the beginning of
+this war. Just think of one Government being wrong in all these
+particulars at the same time! Lincoln said, "You can't fool all of the
+people all of the time." Yes, that may be true in a republic, but you
+certainly can fool all the diplomats and Generals and do it all the
+time--during July and August, in any event. Call the roll of the
+diplomatic blunders, and the list is long. First, England will be
+neutral and Ireland will keep her from going to war; second, Italy will
+be our ally; third, Belgium will be neutral and allow us to trespass
+upon her property and her homes; fourth, France is unprepared and Paris
+will fall within three weeks; fifth, an alliance with Turkey, despite
+her polygamy and butcheries in Armenia and the civilized world's hatred
+for her cruelties, will help us; sixth, Japan will hold Russia in check;
+seventh, the Czar will be attacked by Bulgaria, Italy, and China. It
+seems incredible that any ruler and group of diplomats could be so
+entirely wrong, all the time, on every question, for a whole Summer! Was
+there no man as diplomat who had the wisdom to see that an attack upon
+England would end the disputes in Ireland? And bind together Canada,
+Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India into a new United States of
+Great Britain? Was there no statesman with enough prevision of the
+future, and with courage to tell the people in Wilhelmstrasse that the
+certain result would be the United States of Balkany, to stand
+henceforth as a barrier between Germany and the Bosphorus? Was there no
+one to remind Berlin that Italy had just completed a war with Turkey and
+that any treaty with Turkey meant inevitably the breaking of friendship
+with Italy? Alas! for the man who is elevated to a throne, in whose
+presence men burn incense, pour forth flattery that he may breathe its
+perfume, sing songs of praise that he may slumber!
+
+In concluding our survey of the nations and the stake of each country
+in the war, there is one reflection that must be obvious to all thinking
+men. This little fire of last August has become a world conflagration.
+The nation that first sent out her armies was Germany. There is a
+high-water mark of battle in every war, and after that, the invading
+waves begin their retreat. The high-water mark of Napoleon's was
+Austerlitz and the waves ebbed away at Waterloo. The high-water mark of
+the civil war was Gettysburg, and the tide ebbed out at Appomattox.
+Belgium's defense cost Germany the three most important weeks of the
+war, and her high-water mark was when she was within twenty miles of
+Paris. Occasional eddies and returns of the tide there may be, but
+nothing is more certain than that there are ten nations and six hundred
+millions of men that had rather die than have militarism imposed upon
+themselves and their children. Americans who admire German efficiency,
+the German people, and want to see German science preserved, and feel an
+immeasurable debt to Martin Luther, do not want Germany destroyed. But
+Germany will not listen to England, nor France, nor America. There is
+only one voice that can reach Germany--it is the voice of the
+German-Americans in this country. They are six million strong. They are
+among the most honored and esteemed folk in American life. Their
+achievements are beyond all praise. The Germans have built Milwaukee and
+have done much for St. Louis. The Germans have been great forces in
+Cincinnati and Chicago and New York. What wealth among their bankers!
+What prosperity among German manufacturers! What solidity of manhood in
+these German Lutherans! Was there ever a finer body of farming folk than
+the German landowners of the Middle West? The republic owes the
+German-American a great debt as to liberty through men like Carl Schurz.
+Take Martin Luther and German liberty of thought out of the republic and
+this land would suffer an immeasurable loss. Many of these
+German-Americans own great estates and have investments in the
+Fatherland. Today these six million German-Americans have the centre of
+the world's stage. This war is a conflagration that will probably burn
+itself out. But if the six million German-Americans organize themselves
+and hold great meetings of protest in New York and Brooklyn and Chicago
+and Milwaukee, in St. Louis and Cincinnati; if German-American editors
+and bankers and business men united their voice, they would be heard.
+
+
+German-American Man of the Hour.
+
+And do they not owe something to this republic? Having come to the
+kingdom for such a crisis as this, should they not use their influence
+with the Fatherland? Having escaped conscription and years of military
+service, with heavy taxation and enjoyed the liberty of the press;
+having become convinced that militarism does not promote the prosperity
+and manhood of the people, why should they not as one man ask the
+Fatherland now to present their cause to arbitrators? To no body of
+American citizens has there ever come a more strategic opportunity, or a
+responsibility so heavy. Some of the most thoughtful men in this land
+believe that the destiny of Germany rests now largely with the leaders
+of the 6,000,000 German-Americans in our country. But no matter what the
+outcome, let no man think that God and justice are not fully equal to
+this emergency. The great vine of Liberty was planted by Divine hands in
+the Eden garden. Just now men are feeding the blossoms of the tree of
+life to their war horses and splitting the boughs of that tree into
+shafts for their spears. The storm roars through the branches, but the
+storm will die out. Better days are coming. It may be that the
+convulsion of war will do for Europe what the earthquake did for the
+rude folk of Greece--cracked the solid rock and exposed the silver veins
+that gave the wealth with which rude men built Athens, with its art, its
+literature, its law and its liberty. Take no counsel of crouching fear,
+God is abroad in the world. With Him a thousand years are as one day.
+When a long time has passed let us believe that self-government will be
+found to be the most stable form of government, and that these golden
+words, Liberty, Opportunity, Intelligence, and Integrity, will be the
+watch-words not only of the republic, but of all the nations of the
+earth.
+
+
+
+
+Interview With Dr. Hillis
+
+_From the Brooklyn Eagle._
+
+
+A frank declaration that he was opposed to Germany in the present great
+war was the answer returned today [Dec. 21, 1914] by the Rev. Dr. Newell
+Dwight Hillis to the protests against his sermon at Plymouth Church last
+night, in which he scored militarism and the Kaiser.
+
+Not only did Dr. Hillis come out with the statement that he had said and
+meant all to which exception was taken in his sermon, but, in an
+interview today in his study, in the Arbuckle Institute, he asserted as
+well that he had told but little of what he had come to believe about
+Germany. This position, he said, was that America and all the world must
+hope for German defeat, and must see that Germany was in the wrong.
+
+"I was for Germany five months ago," said Dr. Hillis. "I have been
+lecturing for five years about the lessons we might learn from Germany.
+Five months ago, it may be remembered, I gave an interview, in which I
+praised Germany and in which I took the part of the German people in the
+dreadful war that had come.
+
+"But I have changed my mind. I have seen that I was mistaken. Several
+months ago I gave instructions to my lecture bureau to withdraw my
+lecture, 'The New Germany,' from my list. That was about the middle of
+September, and it was only then that I realized what a German success
+would mean to the world--how there could be nothing else but a world of
+armed camps, how we in this country, too, would have to adopt militarism
+in order to live.
+
+"Just prior to that time, in the first of my Sunday evening sermons in
+this course, I had praised the Kaiser. I believed in the German ideals,
+I believed in German progress, German inventions, German principles. But
+I was wrong. I have now become convinced of what I never imagined
+before--that in the German viewpoint the only sin against the Holy Ghost
+is military impotency, and, to use Treitschke's words again, the only
+virtue is militarism."
+
+The pastor of Plymouth uttered this attack upon Germany with a
+scornfulness which the printed word can hardly indicate. He was as
+strongly against Germany--more strongly against Germany now than he had
+before been in favor of Germany, he said. It was a position, he said, to
+which everybody in the United States was turning, and it was inevitable
+that Germany should find the world against her.
+
+In his frank avowal of his position regarding Germany and the Kaiser,
+Dr. Hillis admitted, too, that his sermon last night had contained more
+than appeared on the surface. When he stated in the sermon that no man
+or ruler should ever adopt the view of the peasant and the cave man, and
+try to make the Eternal God a tribal God, he had the Kaiser in mind,
+said Dr. Hillis. The sermon is published in full in today's sermon pages
+of The Eagle.
+
+In addition, Dr. Hillis said that while he believed that his sermon
+could not be considered in any way a violation of President Wilson's
+appeal for neutrality, yet, indirectly, the passages to which exception
+had been taken could be rightly construed as an attack upon Germany and
+the Kaiser.
+
+"You believe that it is right for a minister to use the pulpit to
+express his own views upon a subject like this?" was asked.
+
+"I do not believe that it is right for a minister to air his peculiar
+political views upon any subject--personal, social, or economic,"
+answered Dr. Hillis, emphatically. "The church is a conservatory where a
+warm, genial atmosphere should be created. My conception of the work of
+a minister is that he is to create an atmosphere in the church on Sunday
+so that the Republican with the tariff, the Democrat who believes in
+free trade, and the Single Taxer can all grow and express their judgment
+during the week.
+
+"The sun and the Summer shine for all kinds of seeds and roots, and the
+minister and the church should create an atmosphere in which all
+temperaments and races and faiths can grow. It is quite true that there
+were some of my German friends and members who rather protested against
+my view last night. But they had the same right and liberty to protest
+that I have. A German physician told me plainly that he thought that
+within six months I would change my view, and with the new light go over
+to the position of his native land, and even thought that I might
+retract all my studies, that are apparently prejudiced in favor of the
+republic and self-government and the liberty of the press. Well, if I do
+change my views and am converted to his viewpoint, I certainly will
+retract my statements. But I think this improbable. The task of
+converting me should be let out as a Government contract--in piecemeal."
+
+Dr. Hillis was reminded here that a number of people were said to have
+left the church last night in the course of his sermon as a sign of
+protest against the expression of his views. Asked if it were true, Dr.
+Hillis answered:
+
+"I did not see many leave," and then declared that it was impossible to
+imagine that war should not be discussed in the churches as it was being
+discussed everywhere else. He continued with the assertion that he
+believed it was his duty as the minister of Plymouth Church to say what
+he had, and then made this assertion with a vehemence that was almost
+startling:
+
+"Whenever the time comes that I have to add God and the devil together
+and divide by two in the name of neutrality, I'll withdraw. I'm not
+going to sacrifice my manhood for what some people call neutrality."
+
+It was on this score that Dr. Hillis came out with his unequivocal
+declaration that he was against Germany and against the Kaiser. He
+asserted that the viewpoint of the German people would have to be
+changed if they were to take the place in the world he had thought their
+due, five months ago, and he stated there could be no doubt but that the
+war was occasioned by Germany's lust for power--political, industrial,
+economic.
+
+"I believe that the real issue of this war is largely industrial,"
+continued Dr. Hillis. "It is an industrial war and not a political war.
+Some days ago I said that the real fight between Germany and the nations
+opposed to her was a fight for the possession of the iron fields
+recently discovered in Northern France. That statement regarding
+Germany's iron deposits and the whole economic situation has been
+challenged.
+
+"Instead of modifying my position, I wish to reaffirm it. This is an age
+of steel. Without hematite iron deposits Germany cannot build her
+steamships, her cannon, her railways, her factories. German engineers
+have been saying for five years that another five years will exhaust her
+present iron supply. On Page 221 of the volume 'Problems of Power,' the
+author says that within a generation 20,000,000 of Germany's people will
+have to leave their native land. The pressure of iron and the call of
+steel led to Germany's development of the Morocco situation, where there
+are valuable iron mines. A short time ago French engineers discovered
+the largest and richest body of iron ore in Europe. Fullerton, in his
+book on the subject, expresses the judgment that one province has enough
+hematite iron ore to last Europe for the next 150 years.
+
+"This diplomat and author said plainly two years ago, in one of his
+review articles, that Germany would go to war to obtain the iron
+deposits in Northern France, and that if she loses the war, she will
+fall behind in the manufacturing race, and that the French bankers and
+French engineers will make France the great manufacturing force and the
+richest people in Europe. The Napoleonic wars were wars between
+political ideas. The collision was between autocracy and bureaucracy and
+French democracy and radicalism. The new antagonism grows out of
+economic conditions. Germany wants to supersede England upon the seas,
+and Germany wants the iron mines of France, and this is the whole
+situation in a nutshell.
+
+"No, I am not sinning against the law of neutrality. I am trying to
+freshen the old American ideals of self-government for the young men and
+women in Plymouth Church. If the whole-hearted support of America's free
+institutions involves indirectly a dissent from imperialism and
+militarism, I am not responsible. I admit there is a necessary
+condemnation of autocracy involved in the mere publication of the
+Declaration of Independence. Ours is a Government of laws and not of
+men, and I have been discussing the principles of self-government and
+not rulers who represent imperialism.
+
+"Neutrality does not mean the wiping out of conviction. There are some
+men who think that neutrality means adding God and the devil together
+and dividing by two. And there are some statesmen who seem to think that
+neutrality means adding together autocracy and democracy, and halving
+the result. I do not share that view. I believe it is the first duty of
+the German-American and the native-born American to uphold the
+fundamental principles of self-government, and of an industrial
+civilization as opposed to a military machine, and if this means protest
+and criticism, then that protest must be accepted."
+
+
+
+
+TIPPERARY.
+
+By JOHN B. KENNEDY.
+
+
+     (At the other end of the long, long road.)
+
+    Who is it stands at the full o' the door?
+      Mary O'Fay, Mother O'Fay.
+    An' what is she watching an' waiting for?
+      Och, none but her soul can say.
+
+    There's a list in the Post Office long an' black,
+      With tidings bad, and woeful sad;
+    The names of the boys who'll ne'er come back,
+      An' one is her darling lad.
+
+    We showed her the list; but she cannot read,
+      So we told her true, yes, we told her true.
+    Her old eyes stared till they'd almost bleed,
+      An' she swore that none of us knew.
+
+    She's waiting now for Father O'Toole,
+      Till he goes her way at the noon of day.
+    She's simperin' white--the poor old fool,
+      For she knows what the priest'll say.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Who is it sprawls upon the sod
+      At the break o' day? It's Mickey O'Fay;
+    His eyes glare up to the walls of God,
+      And half of his head is blown away.
+
+    What is he doing in that strange place,
+      Torn and shred, and murdered dead?
+    He's singin' the psalm of the fighting race
+      As his soul soars wide o'erhead.
+
+    He killed three foemen before he fell
+      (Och, the toll he'd take and the skulls he'd break!)
+    And he shrieked like a soul escaped from Hell
+      As he died for the Sassenach's sake.
+
+    Who shall we blame for the awful thing--
+      For the blood that flows and the heart-wrung throes?
+    Kaiser or Czar; statesman or King?
+      Och, leave it to Him Who Knows!
+
+
+
+
+As America Sees the War
+
+By Harold Begbie.
+
+
+I.
+
+     _In order to determine how American public opinion concerning
+     the war is running, The London Daily Chronicle sent Mr. Begbie
+     to this country. The two articles printed below appeared in
+     The Chronicle_.
+
+Every day of my sojourn in this country deepens the desire in my mind to
+see an increasing unity of understanding between America and England. I
+feel that the audacity of America, its passion for the Right Thing, and
+its impatience with the spirit of muddling through are the finest
+incentives for modern England, England at this dawn of her political
+renascence. I feel, too, as Americans themselves most willingly
+acknowledge, that Great Britain has something to give to America out of
+the ancient treasury of her domestic experience. Finally, I like
+Americans so heartily that I want to be the best of friends with them.
+
+But it was only last night in this old and mighty city of Philadelphia
+that the greatest of reasons for an alliance was brought sharply home to
+my mind. I had thought, loosely enough, that since we speak the same
+language, share many of the same traditions, and equally desire peace
+for the prosperity of our trade, surely some alliance between us was
+natural, and with a little effort might be made inevitable. The deeper,
+more political, and far grander reason for this comradeship between the
+two nations had never definitely shaped itself to my consciousness.
+
+Enlightenment came to me in the course of conversation with two
+thoughtful Philadelphians whose minds are centred on something which
+transcends patriotism and who work with fine courage and remarkable
+ability for the triumph of their idea.
+
+One of these men said to me: "You speak of an alliance between England
+and America; do you mind telling us what you mean by that term
+alliance?"
+
+I explained that I had no thought in my mind of treaties and tariffs;
+that the word "alliance" meant nothing more to me than conscious
+friendship, and that such a disposition between two nations thinking in
+the same language, speaking and writing the same language, must result,
+I thought, in an ever-multiplying volume of trade, to the great
+advantage of both parties.
+
+
+Thinks Little of Blood Ties.
+
+Out of this explanation came the following statement, made by the second
+Philadelphian: "I am as desirous as you are for such an understanding. I
+desire it so greatly that I venture to offer you a warning on the
+subject. It would be a mistake on your part, I am convinced, to advocate
+any such friendship, any such understanding, any such alliance, if you
+prefer that word, on the score of blood ties or a common speech. Believe
+me, the American, to speak generally, thinks very little of such
+matters. When America was far more English in its population than it is
+now scarcely any country was more unpopular with us than your country.
+
+"I can remember when hatred for England was a kind of gospel with
+Americans. The Irish fanned that hatred. Your country had behaved badly
+toward us, war had left its scar on our memories, we rejoiced that we
+had thrown off a yoke which we felt to be definitely tyrannous. What,
+then, has produced the change in America--America, whose population is
+now made up from nearly all the nations of the earth? Have your people
+thought why we are on their side in this present war? Have they asked
+themselves that question? If so, and they have answered it with such a
+phrase as 'blood is thicker than water,' I can assure you they give not
+only a false answer but an answer which betrays amazing ignorance, if
+you will forgive the word, of this country's population. Blood thicker
+than water! Why, look at our names; our blood is world's blood.
+
+"We're a nation of all the nations. The English element is only one
+element. Our ancestors were French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Norwegian,
+Russian, Danish, Irish, Greek, and Italian. The modern American citizen
+is no more English than the Boers of South Africa are English. And yet
+in overwhelming figures the American population is on the side of the
+Allies, and particularly on the side of England. Why?"
+
+
+England Stands for Democracy.
+
+"It is," he continued, "because England of all the nations on the earth
+stands for the democratic ideals which are the very breath of life to
+America. Modern England is for us the greatest of democracies. You lead
+the way to the rest of the world, if not in science and art, at any rate
+here in the great business of humanity's social existence. We see that
+the old England of privilege and obstinate prerogatives and bull-headed
+conservatism is dead. All your best qualities, straight dealing,
+honesty, fearless justice, and faith in the goodness of human nature are
+devoted now to the only ideals which can save progress from rot and
+decay. Your democracy is master. It has no overlords. And, from what we
+can gather since this war broke out, it would seem that your aristocracy
+is coming more and more into line with the democracy, making great
+sacrifices, showing a deeper appreciation of the democracy and shedding
+the worst of its prejudices in the common love of liberty and right.
+
+"We hope that your aristocracy may render as great a service to the
+extravagant plutocracy of this country as your democracy has rendered to
+our democracy. To make life better, that's the work of all intelligent
+people. That's what our democracy is after, and, because your democracy
+is after the same thing, that's why we are on your side in this war.
+Under all the sentiment on the subject this is the bedrock fact. We're
+for England because we're for the ideals of democracy. That we speak the
+same language is only an accident. It's your spirit we desire to share,
+the spirit which desires to make life kinder, sweeter, better, more
+beautiful, and more righteous. America believes in civilization. It
+doesn't want culture in bearskin and top boots. It wants civilization,
+and civilization means a culture that takes in the whole of a man's
+being--his body, his mind, his spirit. Well, we think you're after the
+same ideal; we believe that you're as conscious of humanity as we are,
+and we begin to realize pretty acutely that in a world rather barbarous
+on the whole, come to think of it, we can't afford to lose England."
+
+The other man added: "Germany stands for nearly everything we Americans
+are opposed to, tooth and nail. We just loathe militarism.
+Conscription's a thing we abominate. And feudalism is more dead over
+here than in any country in the world."
+
+"But bear in mind," said the first, "we have few people in America
+better than the Germans. The Germans are almost the most efficient of
+our immigrants. They've taught us a lot. We owe them a mighty big debt.
+Before their coming we were prodigals. We used up our natural resources
+with a ruthless disregard for the future. We leveled our forests for
+timber, and just scratched the top soil of the land for corn. Now we're
+learning to farm scientifically and to conserve our wealth. And this is
+due in no small degree to the Germans. The German, emancipated from
+feudalism and kaiserism, is a pretty good citizen. In fact, among the
+men who have most helped modern America we reckon Germans and Irishmen."
+
+I told them this story: A man in New York was speaking the other day to
+Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador. Count von Bernstorff was
+endeavoring to prove to this important personage that England had forced
+the war upon Germany out of jealousy of her trade competition. "Sir,"
+said the American, "you really must not tell me that, and I advise you
+not to tell such a tale to other Americans. For we know very well that
+we are greater trade rivals of England than you are, and that, in spite
+of that fact, here on this continent of America we have got 3,000 miles
+of British frontier without a fort or a gun." He then said to the
+Ambassador: "No, Sir; your mistake all through has been in making an
+enemy of England when your best interest was to make friends with her.
+If you had made friends with England, you would have got all you
+wanted." To this accusation, I understand, the Ambassador made answer
+that Germany had endeavored to make friends with England, but had been
+repulsed. We have a different record in England. The American quietly
+reminded the Ambassador of the fact that England admits German goods
+free of tariff charges.
+
+
+Germany Represents Autocracy.
+
+The two Philadelphians perfectly agreed with the justice of this
+accusation, and declared again that it was because Germany represented
+all the perils and slavishness of autocracy, and because England
+represented the freedom, the justice, and the passion for social welfare
+which inspire all living democracies, that America was so absolutely on
+the English side.
+
+They spoke of Ireland, and expressed the hope that the Conservative
+Party would do nothing to hinder that great settlement which has done so
+much to increase American respect for England.
+
+"We recognize over here," said one, "that the Liberal Party, in going to
+the rescue of Belgium, sacrificed some of its greatest ideals on the
+altar of national righteousness. War must have been a bitter draught for
+Lloyd George. Your social programme will be checked for many years. But
+if the Conservatives attempt to spoil the Irish settlement, that will be
+worse than anything else. It will mean confusion for you at home and
+loss of reputation abroad."
+
+I spoke of what I had heard on this subject from Irish-Americans, and
+they confirmed everything recorded in my former article. The three great
+things, outside of increasing opportunities for intercourse, which have
+drawn modern America toward England, they told me, are the social
+legislation of the Liberal Party, the triumph of home rule, and
+England's keeping her word to Belgium. By these three things, I was
+assured, the old animosities against England have been destroyed, and a
+spirit of enthusiasm for English ideals has been born among Americans.
+
+I should like to say that, while many American women love England for
+the beauty and repose of her social life, and most eloquently base their
+affection on the assertion that blood is thicker than water, the men of
+America are sometimes inclined, and not unnaturally, to disapprove of
+this pleasing sentimentalism. I now begin to perceive that the men of
+America are not jealous of England's social life, but anxious to put
+their friendship on a more substantial foundation.
+
+Liberalism not only uplifts democracy; it establishes England in the
+affection of all vital democracies. If the Conservatives, so liberal and
+charming in their private lives, combine with the Liberals after this
+hideous war to reconstruct our national life and to consolidate the
+empire, how great will be the harvest reaped by our children!
+
+It is in the high and lofty name of civilization that the American
+people are anxious to make friends with the people of Great Britain. We
+have both got something to live for greater than patriotism and
+imperialism, greater because it includes them both.
+
+
+II.
+
+Irish-American Feeling
+
+Until I came to America I had not the least idea of the depth of hatred
+which has existed among Irish-Americans toward England. Nothing that I
+ever encountered in Ireland itself is comparable with this transatlantic
+fury of unforgiving hate.
+
+An Irishman who had held very high office in America, a well-educated, a
+kindly, and a judicious man, told me that when war with Germany was in
+the air he could not prevent himself from hailing this opportunity for
+declaring his hatred, his undying hatred, of England. His father had
+suffered frightfully in the great famine; every story he ever heard at
+his mother's knee was a story of English tyranny, English brutality,
+English rapacity; England, for him, stood at the rack centre, the
+lustful and bestial slave driver, the cruel and merciless extortioner.
+
+This man's good judgment, however, would not suffer him to approve of
+German militarism, and as events moved forward he gave his support more
+and more to the cause of the Allies.
+
+"But I want you to know," he told me, striking the table with his hand
+and watching me carefully, "that I was dead against John Redmond for
+saying that Ireland must go to the aid of England. Ireland's call was to
+go to the aid of civilization. If Germany had stood for civilization, I
+should have been on Germany's side and dead against England.
+
+"I tell you, at the beginning of this business I longed to see England
+defeated, humiliated, broken to the dust. But civilization is of such
+enormous consequence that I put my natural hatred of England on one
+side. The violation of Belgium made me an anti-German. And with the vast
+majority of Irishmen in America it was the same thing. The menace of
+German militarism forced us into your camp.
+
+"I am perfectly certain that but for the violation of Belgium there
+would have been in this country among Irish-Americans an open movement
+publicly proclaimed in favor of Germany. That is my fixed opinion. And I
+happen to know what I am talking about."
+
+
+No Hatred of England.
+
+I gathered in the course of his conversation that Irish friendliness
+toward England is a final manifestation of a change in the feeling of
+all America toward England. It was not very long ago that President
+Cleveland wanted war with England. Hatred of England was at one time as
+fiercely handed down from generation to generation by Americans as by
+Irish-Americans. We have to thank our English stars that America has
+outgrown this historic hate and that Irish-Americans now show the new
+and happier feeling of their compatriots.
+
+I asked this Irishman, no one better able throughout America to express
+a just opinion on the subject, what difference had been made in the
+feeling toward England by the passing of the Home Rule bill.
+
+"It was the passing of that bill," he replied, "which finished the work
+begun by German militarism. Home rule has softened our feelings toward
+England, particularly among the thousands of Irish-Americans who are
+born over here and whose fathers have become too Americanized to
+remember the sufferings of their ancestors.
+
+"There is still some hatred of England, but not very much. It is a
+sentimental, a poetic hatred, not a political hatred. One finds it among
+a few individuals. What agitation is now going on is secret and
+underground, a sure proof that it is unrepresentative. We ignore it. It
+means nothing. No; the passing of the Home Rule bill has given balance
+to the Irish mind.
+
+"It has helped Irish-Americans to realize that the dreadful sins of
+England are sins of a dead and gone England, and it has helped them to
+see that the present England, so far as its democracy is concerned,
+sincerely desires to make reparation for the past. In fact, the war and
+the Home Rule bill together have produced such a transformation in the
+Irish-American nature as I, for one, never expected and never hoped to
+see."
+
+He then warned me that this great change might suffer a dangerous
+reaction if England allows the religious bigotry of Ulster to split
+Ireland into two camps. To the Irish-American Ireland is a country, a
+home, and a shrine, one and indivisible.
+
+"Such a surrender," said my friend, "would not only be fatal to Ireland
+but fatal to something even greater than Ireland, and that is the cause
+of religion in an age of increasing paganism. For the world can only be
+saved from the ruin of paganism, as we are beginning to see very clearly
+in America, by a union of religious forces.
+
+"I am a Catholic, but I say that any man who says 'Only through my door
+can you enter into heaven' is a bad Christian. There are many doors into
+heaven. What we have all got to do, Catholics and non-Catholics, is to
+insist together that there is a heaven, that there is a life after
+death, that there is a God. The more doors the better. No one has a
+monopoly of heaven.
+
+"And to Ireland is offered the opportunity, greater than politicians
+appear to perceive, of presenting to the world an example of tolerance
+and compromise in the supreme interests of religion which may have
+incalculable results for the whole world. But what will happen if
+England bows before the worst and the stupidest bigotry the modern world
+can show? Not only will you strike a blow at Ireland and a blow at
+Irish-American sympathy, but a blow at the vitals of religion.
+
+"For it is only by sinking religious differences and making a common
+advance against this universal paganism that religion can save the soul
+of civilization. If you do not see the truth of that fact in England I
+think you must be blind. The fullness of civilization hangs upon
+religious union; religious dissension is the enemy."
+
+
+Change in Ulster.
+
+Another Irish-American who was present on this occasion, an accomplished
+man of letters and a traveler, asked me what England felt about Ulster's
+share in the responsibility for the present war.
+
+"I myself have seen two letters from Ulster," he said, "in which the
+phrase occurs, 'Rather the Kaiser than the Pope.' These letters were
+written before the war. Ulster, no doubt, has now changed her tune. But
+it was that spirit, surely, and the reports sent to Berlin by German
+officers who visited Ulster and inquired into the military character of
+Carsonism which persuaded Germany that England would not fight."
+
+Irish-Americans are persuaded that Sir Edward Carson is in very great
+measure responsible for all the ruin and death and bitter suffering of
+the enormous catastrophe. He boasted that he would make civil war, and
+such were his preparations that in any other country in the world civil
+war would have been inevitable.
+
+Germany counted on that civil war. The British Army was said to be
+completely under the influence of Carsonism. The real catastrophe for
+the diplomacy of Berlin was not India's loyalty and the vigorous
+uprising of the young dominions, but the dying down of Ulster mutiny.
+
+These Irish-Americans have hated the ruling classes in England, not only
+for sins of the past but for the unworthy and most cruel opposition
+offered by those ruling classes, in the name of religious intolerance,
+to the ideals of the Irish Nation.
+
+When Unionist politicians sneer at the subscriptions sent by Irish
+servant girls in America to help the cause of Ireland they should
+reflect that not only do they fail to make a good joke, not only do they
+exhibit a horribly bad taste, but they spread hatred of England through
+the thousands and thousands of people. For it is the loyalty of the
+poorest of these Irish-Americans, the sacrifices perpetually made by
+the humblest of them, which should move us to see, as it has certainly
+moved the American people to see, that the cause of Irish liberty is
+noble and undying.
+
+
+Religious Education.
+
+With all my heart I would beg Unionists in England to reflect
+conscientiously upon this very significant state of affairs in America:
+
+A non-Catholic Bible used to be read in the public schools of America
+down to the year 1888. A Catholic agitation against this Bible reading
+was begun in 1885, and in 1888 the custom was finally abolished. From
+that date to this there has been no religious instruction of any kind in
+the public schools of America.
+
+Bigotry and intolerance won that victory. The Catholic Church, in its
+folly, destroyed religious teaching in the schools of the country.
+Catholics themselves are now looking back on that agitation with
+religious repentance and political regret.
+
+The result of this abolition is that Catholics and non-Catholics who
+believe in the importance of religious instruction, and who see the
+pagan effect of purely secular instruction, do not send their children
+to the public schools.
+
+"These schools, for which Christians are heavily taxed, are in the
+possession of the Hebrews. If nothing is done to alter the existing
+state of things Americans themselves assure me that in five-and-twenty
+years America will be a pagan country. But a fight is to be made to
+avert this disaster at the Constitutional Convention to be held next
+month.
+
+"What we have to do," my Irish friend told me, "Catholics and
+non-Catholics alike, is to appeal for schools representing Catholic and
+non-Catholic teaching. Instead of the various churches fighting against
+each other they must fight together, helping one another to get the
+schools they demand. Only in this way can we save civilization."
+
+This is how the Irishman, breathing the free air of America, and in
+America rising to positions of extraordinary power and responsibility,
+views the foundational question of religion; while England allows
+herself to be dragged at the heels of the frothing fanatic who has
+actually dared to raise the unholy battle cry of "Rather the Kaiser than
+the Pope."
+
+Let the Unionist Party hesitate before it seeks to revive this hideous,
+utterly irrational and most unchristianlike spirit at the very heart of
+the British Empire. The sower of hate is the reaper of death.
+
+
+
+
+TO MELOS, POMEGRANATE ISLE.
+
+By GRACE HARRIET MACURDY.
+
+     (Destroyed by Athens, 416 B.C., because of her refusal to
+     break neutrality.--Thucydides V., 84-116; Euripides, "Trojan
+     Women.")
+
+
+    O thou Pomegranate of the Sea,
+      Sweet Melian isle, across the years
+    Thy Belgian sister calls to thee
+      In anguished sweat of blood and tears.
+
+    Her fate like thine--a ruthless band
+      Hath ravaged all her loveliness.
+    How Athens spoiled thy prosperous land
+      Athenian lips with shame confess.
+
+    Thou, too, a land of lovely arts,
+      Of potter's and of sculptor's skill--
+    Thy folk of high undaunted hearts
+      As those that throb in Belgium still.
+
+    Within thy harbor's circling rim
+      The warships long, with banners bright,
+    Sailed bearing Athens' message grim--
+      "God hates the weak. Respect our Might."
+
+    The flame within thy fanes grew cold,
+      Stilled by the foeman's swarming hordes.
+    Thy sons were slain, thy daughters sold
+      To serve the lusts of stranger lords.
+
+    For Attic might thou didst defy
+      Thy folk the foeman slew as sheep,
+    Across the years hear Belgium's cry--
+      "O Sister, of the Wine-Dark Deep,
+
+    "Whose cliffs gleam seaward roseate.
+      Not one of all my martyr roll
+    But keeps his faith inviolate,
+      Man kills our body, not our soul."
+
+
+
+
+What America Can Do
+
+By Lord Channing of Wellingborough.
+
+     Lord Channing, who makes the following suggestion to American
+     statesmen, was born in the United States of the well-known
+     Channings of Boston. His father was the Rev. W.H. Channing,
+     Chaplain of the House of Representatives during the civil war
+     and a close friend of President Lincoln. Lord Channing has
+     been for twenty-five years a member of the British Parliament,
+     and for the last three years a member of the House of Lords,
+     having been created first Baron of Wellingborough in 1912. He
+     is President of the British National Peace Congress.
+
+
+To the Editor of The New York Times:
+
+As a member of the British Legislature for a generation, and a lifelong
+Liberal, and having also the closest ties of blood with America, and a
+proud reverence for her ideals, I would wish, with the utmost respect,
+to offer some comments on one specific aspect of present affairs, as
+they affect America, which does not seem to have been marked off with
+the distinctness its importance calls for.
+
+This is the greatest crisis in the history of the world, and attention
+concentrates itself on the attitude of the greatest neutral State.
+
+It is unthinkable that America can divest herself of responsibility for
+the final outcome. This seems as clearly recognized in America as in
+Europe.
+
+To us in England this war is a life or death struggle between two
+principles--Pan-Germanism on the one side, with its avowed purpose to
+impose its hegemony and its rigid system of ideas and organization on
+the rest of the world, not by consent, but by irresistible military
+force; on the other side the claim of the other nations, large and
+small, to maintain inviolate their freedom and individuality, and to
+think and work out for themselves their own political and economic
+future in their own way.
+
+The one principle would seem the flat contradiction of all that America
+stands for, the other principle would seem to be precisely the essential
+idea of free self-government and democratic evolution, in which are
+rooted the very life and being of America.
+
+For this reason there is instinctive and profound sympathy on the part
+of the great majority of native Americans with the cause of England and
+her allies.
+
+This sympathy is not merely the tie of blood or the unity of ideals.
+Reason has convinced Americans that the supreme principles and highest
+interests of America will be best safeguarded if the Allies win.
+
+They dread instinctively what might happen if Pan-Germanism absorbed the
+smaller nationalities, crushed the great free countries like France and
+England, and dominated the whole world with the "mailed fist," not only
+Europe and the Far East, but South America and the Pacific. Perhaps the
+hint of Count Bernstorff that Canada may be treated like Belgium, and
+the Monroe Doctrine like other "scraps of paper," may also have thrown
+some light for Americans on a "Germanized" future! And a cast-iron
+system of commercial and industrial monopoly dictated by German needs
+cannot attract.
+
+
+America Can't Stand Apart.
+
+That is one side that American statesmen have to consider. There is, of
+course, another.
+
+The United States visibly form the greatest force the world has yet seen
+to bring together, to unite, to assimilate, in the development of their
+vast territories, measureless resources, and complicated industries, all
+that is best from all the other great nations, welding slowly but
+surely, through free institutions, these new elements into instruments
+for the fuller realization of the generous and noble ideals for which
+America stands. Perhaps an eighteenth or even fifteenth part of the
+population is of German origin, a percentage not far from equal to that
+contributed by the United Kingdom and Canada.
+
+There is thus not only the broad question of avoiding war with Germany,
+whose people have so large a share in the life of America, a war doubly
+unwelcome at all times because of the innumerable links of science,
+invention, professional training, of commerce, and of personal
+friendship; but there is also the local question of peace and good-will
+in the daily work of America as between huge sections of her population.
+These visible facts not unnaturally give great weight to the argument
+for neutrality. No wise man on this side of the Atlantic will try to
+ignore them, or take exception to the dignity and correctness with which
+the American Executive has dealt with the grave problem before it.
+
+Neutrality has, of course, its limits and conditions, logical and moral.
+Those limits and conditions, the possibility of their infringement in
+such a way as to make some change of policy imperative, are matters
+solely for the United States.
+
+The point the present writer wishes to press is on a different plane,
+and is precisely this:
+
+America does not and can not stand wholly apart from supreme European
+decisions.
+
+America is as responsible as Europe for the great extensions,
+definitions, the strengthening and modification of international law.
+America stands forth as the apostle of arbitration, to widen the area
+within which disputed points may be determined amicably. America stands
+also as the chief signatory of the great world conventions which have
+settled new rules for the conduct of war, to mitigate its horrors,
+especially for non-combatants.
+
+America has taken a noble part in framing machinery for securing peace
+and justice, and in moving forward the landmarks of civilization as
+against savagery, and of human mercy as against cruel terrorism.
+
+Can America safely or wisely divest herself of the duty thus placed upon
+her, logically and morally, by her participation in this, the noblest
+work of our age?
+
+And is it wise or is it safe to indefinitely postpone the discharge of
+this duty?
+
+By the events of the last three months the whole of this new charter of
+humanity has been challenged and is at stake.
+
+Is it not sound policy as well as an imperative duty to take some step
+here and now to "stop the rot" and to make good here and now as much as
+we can of what we have won and wish to keep?
+
+
+Belgium's Wrongs.
+
+Admittedly a "guiltless and unoffending nation,"[1] whose neutrality and
+independence had been solemnly guaranteed by treaty, to which the powers
+concerned in the war were parties, has had her treaty rights violated by
+one of these powers on the cynical plea that there is no right or wrong
+as against national interest, that necessity obeys no law, and treaties
+are "scraps of paper." This is not matter for inquiry or judicial
+decision at some later date. It has been frankly avowed by the German
+Government from the outset of this war.
+
+[Footnote 1: Theodore Roosevelt.]
+
+Again, this admitted wrong is not the sudden and unavoidable outcome of
+events unforeseen and uncontrollable. It has been deliberately planned
+years ahead, with elaborate preparation of railway and other facilities,
+and with every invention and contrivance, to rush in irresistible
+forces; to subvert and destroy the independent State that Germany was
+herself pledged to defend.
+
+Thirdly, this policy of absolute annihilation of Belgium, of its right
+to live its own life, its right even to preserve those monuments of its
+noble and beautiful history which had become treasured heirlooms of the
+whole world, has been carried out with a ruthless barbarity to the
+people, and especially the non-combatants, for which it is hard to find
+a parallel in the worst incidents of the Thirty Years' War or of the
+devastation of the Palatinate. To bring the actual guilt home to those
+who actually did or ordered these deeds to be done in individual cases
+is one thing. The broad fact that these barbarous deeds were done stands
+manifest and insistent, and demands such instant action as can be taken
+by a great and responsible people.
+
+And, lastly, there is the undisguised adoption of the policy of
+terrorizing non-combatants to submission by such acts as forcing women
+and children to walk before the advancing enemy, the wholesale burning
+of houses, shooting of hostages and other non-combatants, and the
+dropping of bombs from aeroplanes not on forts or troops, but on places
+where women and children can be killed or injured.
+
+And all this tragic sweeping away of such good things as had been won
+with worldwide consent, at the instance of the Czar in initiating The
+Hague policy, has gone on, so far as it could go on, with equal horror,
+throughout Northern France. Rheims and Senlis have suffered the fate of
+Louvain and Termonde and Malines, and Paris has had her quota of women
+and children wantonly slain by bombs, exactly like Antwerp.
+
+
+The Threat to England.
+
+And America knows, as we here in England know, from the open menace of
+the German press, writing of England as the _one supreme enemy_, that it
+is the full intention of Germans, if they can, to carry through England,
+too, even more ruthlessly, the same policy.
+
+We are fighting here, and are confident that we shall fight with
+success, not only to protect our English homes and to guard the historic
+buildings of this land but to make an end of this Prussian terrorism of
+the world; to secure no national aggrandizement, but to secure a
+permanent and solid peace, based on guaranteed liberties, and a rational
+settlement of the question of armaments.
+
+These questions touch us all the more because many of us have been the
+most persistent friends of international peace and have specially
+labored to promote happy and friendly relations with the German people.
+The present writer, who was honored by election as President of this
+year's National Peace Congress, has been associated with the work of men
+like Lord Brassey, Sir John Lubbock, (later Lord Avebury,) as a member
+of the Anglo-German Friendship League, and has repeatedly in Parliament
+argued against any hostile or provocative attitude toward Germany. This
+war is our answer and our reward!
+
+
+America in the Settlement.
+
+So far as can be judged from authoritative words of President Wilson and
+ex-President Roosevelt, America does and will claim a right to share in
+the final settlement of the terms of a permanent and stable peace.
+
+If that claim is sound, if the efforts of America to create better
+machinery for securing peace and for generously and humanely vindicating
+the liberties and happiness of nations and of the individuals who make
+them up do entitle America to a voice, and a potent voice, in the work
+of mending and remaking the world after this terrific catastrophe, then
+I would submit with all respect that it is really idle to wait till all
+the recognized principles of what has been held to be right or wrong as
+between nations, and what has been held to be right or wrong in the
+methods of conducting war have gone overboard, without one word of
+protest; we must save the world first, if we are to have a real chance
+of remaking it on lines which are worth having.
+
+Nothing but good could come from immediate action by the American
+Executive to assert as they, best of all nations, could assert, now and
+at once in terms uncompromising, unanswerable, that the ground taken up
+by international consent in the past generation must be held now and
+hereafter, and accepted as an essential basis of the final settlement.
+
+Such a pronouncement now by America would make a landmark in
+history--would render a measureless service to the whole world in
+emancipation from the persistent degradation of the twin doctrines that
+might makes right, and that necessity knows no law, and would bring to
+America herself imperishable honor and glory in the fearless assertion
+and eternal consecration of her own noblest ideals.
+
+I would submit further that such a national declaration by America
+involves no violation of neutrality, and is in no sense inconsistent
+with the spirit of official utterances already made.
+
+To take the latter first--we have had notable utterances from the
+President and from the ex-President.
+
+President Wilson seems to have given a sympathetic hearing to the
+mission which laid the case of Belgium before him, both as to the
+violation of Belgium's neutrality and as to the cruel treatment of the
+non-combatant population and the wanton destruction of towns and
+villages and of precious historical monuments. He is understood to have
+promised an investigation, and it is gathered from the Independance
+Belge this week that this investigation has been, and is being, carried
+out by American Military Attaches in Belgium, and also at the London
+Embassy of the United States.
+
+Again, President Wilson's recent letter to the Kaiser, while confirming
+neutrality in precise terms, went on to intimate that there must be a
+"day of settlement" and that "where injustices have found a place
+results are sure to follow, and all those who have been found at fault
+will have to answer for them." If the "general settlement" does not
+sufficiently determine this, there is the ultimate sanction of "the
+opinion of mankind" which will "in such cases interfere." He would
+apparently reserve judgment until the end of the war, but in no way
+disclaims or surrenders American responsibility.
+
+Mr. Roosevelt is not tied by official responsibility, and can speak with
+less restraint and more freedom. In The Outlook he has substantially
+accepted and indorsed all that is material in the Belgian case.
+
+America should help in securing a peace which will not mean the
+"crushing the liberty and life of just and inoffending peoples or
+consecrate the rule of militarism," but which "will, by international
+agreement, minimize the chances of the recurrence of such worldwide
+disaster," and "will, in the interests of civilization, create
+conditions which will make such action" as the violation of Belgian
+treaty rights "impossible in the future."
+
+Like President Wilson, he seems to think that the time for judicial
+pronouncement on acts presumably guilty and wrongful will come at the
+conclusion of the war. At the same time he surrenders no part of
+America's responsibility, but reaffirms it with all the force of his
+trenchant style.
+
+But elsewhere, and later, he has insisted on the "helplessness"--the
+"humiliating impotence created by the fact that our neutrality can only
+be preserved by failure to help to right what is wrong."
+
+
+Mr. Roosevelt's Remedy.
+
+And he has gone on to adumbrate his practical remedy--"a world league"
+with "an amplified Hague Court," made strong by joint agreement of the
+powers, to secure "peace and righteousness," and to vindicate the just
+decisions of such a court by "a union of forces to enforce the decree."
+He adds that this might help to obtain a "limitation of armaments that
+would be real and effective."
+
+That so happy a plan may be capable of realization would be the hope of
+all wise men.
+
+But where I take exception with Col. Roosevelt is as to America's
+present "impotence"--that nothing effectual can be done by America
+without breaking her own neutrality.
+
+That view I wholly traverse. It might conceivably be felt by America,
+under certain grave eventualities, that neutrality must be broken.
+
+But it is clear that the articles of The Hague Convention of 1907 amply
+provide for the type of action here and now by the United States which
+I have ventured to lay before American statesmen in this paper. And, in
+my opinion, it is conceivable that more good might be achieved by
+America taking that action, while maintaining her neutrality.
+
+It goes without saying, it really needs no demonstration, that nearly
+every international agreement embodied in The Hague Convention has been
+broken, wholly or in part, in the letter and in the spirit, in the
+proceedings of this unhappy year.
+
+The violation of the territory of a neutral State by the transit of
+belligerent troops and other acts of war is forbidden, (Articles 1, 2,
+3, 4, &c.) It is the duty of the neutral State not to tolerate, (Article
+5,) but to resist such acts, and her forcible resistance is not to be
+regarded as an act of war, (Article 10.)
+
+
+Interference with Neutrals.
+
+That, of course, covers the case of Belgium completely and establishes
+absolutely that there is, and need be, no breach of neutrality in
+resistance thus legally sanctioned to illegal interference with neutral
+rights.
+
+It is hardly necessary to recapitulate the articles that have been torn
+up. To refer to the most striking, there is the repeated bombardment of
+undefended towns, pillage incessant throughout Belgium and Northern
+France, (Articles 28 and 47;) the levying of illegal contributions,
+(Articles 49 and 52;) the seizure of cash and securities belonging to
+private persons, banks, and local authorities, (Articles 52 and 56;)
+collective penalties for individual acts for which the community as a
+whole are not responsible, (Article 50.) Articles 50 and 43 should have
+made impossible the punitive destruction of Vise, Aerschot, Dinant, and
+Louvain, and numberless villages; Article 56 should have preserved from
+destruction institutions and buildings dedicated to religion, education,
+charity, hospitals, &c. All these wrongful acts, committed everywhere,
+have been prohibited by these articles.
+
+The gradual introduction of the policy of terrorism has been ably traced
+by perhaps the highest French authority on international law, Prof.
+Edouard Clunet, formerly President of the Institute of International
+Law, in a recent address.
+
+"Bombardment par intimidation" was adopted by the Germans in 1870 and
+used at Strassburg, Paris, Peronne, &c., shells being directed and
+conflagrations spread in the inhabited parts of towns apart from the
+fortifications. Germany herself assented to serious mitigations of this
+practice at the Conference of Brussels in 1874 and at The Hague in 1907.
+
+The worst evolution of the policy of terrorism has been in the throwing
+from aeroplanes of bombs, explosive or incendiary. M. Clunet lays down
+that, by the most recent decision of the institute, bomb throwing from
+aeroplanes must follow the rules of bombardment by artillery. This would
+prohibit such bombs without formal notice. But in Antwerp bombs were
+dropped without notice over the Royal Palace, to the peril of the Queen
+and her young children, and the number of peaceable inhabitants killed
+or injured was thirty-eight, three children being mutilated in their
+beds. In Paris, besides the bombs dropped on Notre Dame, bombs were
+deliberately dropped in the public streets and a number of peaceable
+victims killed or wounded. The dropping of bombs as an act of war on
+fortresses, ammunition depots, Zeppelin sheds, &c., is, of course,
+legal. But the bomb dropping adopted in Belgium and France, and
+threatened in England, if the opportunity arises, is undisguised
+terrorism, and not war.
+
+It is important to note also that at Brussels in 1874 Antwerp addressed
+a petition to the conference praying that any bombardment should be
+limited to fortifications only. The commission of the conference, which
+included three well-known German Generals and two professors, recognized
+the justice of this plea and recommended Generals to conform to it.
+
+But the one point that should appeal most strongly to the patriotism as
+well as the idealism of America is the fact that the instructions of
+1863 for armies in campaign, drawn up by the United States Government
+in the height of the civil war, first codified the laws for the conduct
+of war, and have been the source and starting point of all these later
+international agreements.
+
+And it should be remembered that both Germany and America signed the
+Fourth Convention of The Hague with its annexed regulations as to sieges
+and bombardments (Articles 22 to 28) and the further provision which may
+even yet be applied punitively to the proceedings of the present war.
+"The belligerent who shall have violated the provisions of the said
+regulation shall be held liable for an indemnity."
+
+And if it be thought that America can render no help in such a position
+as the present without violating her neutrality, the answer is that by
+Article 3 of Convention 1 of The Hague, 1907, neutral powers have the
+right to offer their suggestions (bons offices) or their mediation, even
+during the course of hostilities. And further: "The exercise of this
+right must never be considered by one or the other of the parties to
+the conflict as an unfriendly act."
+
+With all submission, I earnestly urge on the leaders of American thought
+to support this attempted interpretation of the supreme duty and the
+noble opportunity the present position places before their country.
+
+One more word. I referred to the possible benefit of neutrality being
+maintained while this protest against wrong and appeal for right is at
+the same time advanced.
+
+Is it not more than probable that there is an immense section of
+moderate though patriotic opinion in the great German people which at
+heart deprecates the extreme doctrines of conquest and world supremacy
+in pursuit of which the great, the wonderful achievements of the German
+race in science, in industry, in the extension of commerce, are being
+rashly risked?
+
+CHANNING OF WELLINGBOROUGH.
+
+40 Eaton Place, London S.W., Oct. 29, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+TO A COUSIN GERMAN.
+
+By Adeline Adams.
+
+
+    My Hans, you say, with self-applausive jest,
+      "When Albert gave his Belgians Caesar's name--
+      'Bravest of all the Gauls'--surely 'twere shame
+    The King, unthorough man, forgot the rest:
+
+    "'Bravest because most far from all the best
+      Provincial culture.'"[2] Friend, if now your aim
+      Be that fine thoroughness your people claim,
+    Read on: "Such culture's wares, it stands confest,
+
+    "Oft weaken minds." And Caesar's word was just.
+      If men, bedeviled under culture's star,
+      Have left Louvain a void where flames still hiss,
+    Speared babes, and stamped the world's own Rose to dust,
+      God grant that Belgium's soul may dwell afar
+    Forever, from a culture such as this!
+
+[Footnote 2: "Propterea quod a cultu atque humanitute provinciae
+longissime absunt."]
+
+
+
+
+What the Economic Effects May Be
+
+By Irving Fisher.
+
+     Professor of Political Economy at Yale University; member of
+     many scientific societies.
+
+
+When the future historian chronicles the facts of the present great
+world struggle and attempts to analyze its causes and effects the
+economic losses, gains, shiftings, and dislocations will form an
+important part of the story. It is, of course, quite impossible at this
+time to know, in any detail, what all the economic results will be. Much
+will depend on how long the war lasts, how many people and how much
+property are destroyed, what financial devices are resorted to in order
+to finance it, and which side is finally victorious.
+
+The most palpable and the most fundamental effects will be a partial
+stoppage of earnings in the nations directly concerned, i.e., a
+reduction in the "real income," which consists of enjoyable goods. All
+the other important results follow from this.
+
+The cost, however reckoned, is sure to be stupendous. Prof. Richet is
+quoted as reckoning it at $50,000,000 a day. This is probably more than
+half the total income of all the inhabitants of the warring countries.
+The highest estimates of the total income of the United Kingdom, France,
+and Germany, estimates of Bowley, Laverge, and Buchel, respectively,
+total up less than $70,000,000 a day. Russia and Austria are poor
+countries per capita, and would scarcely bring the grand total to
+$100,000,000 a day. Moreover, the loss of real income to Europe is, I
+imagine, in reality much greater than Richet's estimate, chiefly because
+he takes little account of the indirect costs, which may well be the
+greatest of all. The cost to the fiscal departments of Government is
+probably only a small part of the total cost which the people will have
+to bear. The killing and disabling of the men engaged will cut off the
+financial support of European families to the tune of hundreds of
+millions of dollars per year. The physical destruction of capital
+through the devastation of crops, the burning and demolishing of
+merchant ships and buildings, the crippling of industry through the
+sudden withdrawal of labor and raw materials, the introduction of new
+trade risks, and the cutting off of transportation, both internal and
+foreign, make up a sum of items which cannot be measured, but which may
+exceed those which can. Last, but not least, is the impairment of that
+subtle but vital basis of business, commercial credit.
+
+In short, the central effect is a vast impairment of Europe's current
+income and of the capital from which her future income will flow. It
+means a veritable impoverishment of vast populations. The great burden
+will bear heaviest, of course, on the poor. It will impinge very
+unequally and will cause a great redistribution of wealth. As always
+happens, some people, mostly lucky speculators, will come out of the
+melee wealthier than before. This fact will not serve to lessen the
+discontent of the masses, which their impoverishment is sure to create.
+Food prices will be high, the earnings of labor will be low, and after
+the war unemployment will be great, due to the impossibility of quick
+absorption into the industrial system of returned soldiers, as well as
+other maladjustments which the war is sure to bring.
+
+The victor may secure indemnity for part of the loss, but not for all;
+he will, in spite of himself, be a net loser. Taxes will be a crushing
+burden, merely to secure funds with which to pay high interest on vast
+new war debts, to say nothing of funds with which to purchase new
+armaments--if again the nations are forced, by lack of international
+control, to resume the stupendous folly of racing each other in military
+equipments.
+
+
+Bankruptcy and Revolution.
+
+It may well be that among the economic consequences of the war there
+will be some national bankruptcies, and that among the political
+consequences will be revolutions. High prices, high taxes, low wages,
+and unemployment make an ominous combination. We may be sure that
+discontent will be profound and widespread. This discontent is pretty
+sure to lead, especially in the defeated nations where there is no
+compensating "glory," to strong revolutionary movements just as was the
+case in Russia after her defeat by Japan. Whether or to what extent
+these movements, in which "Socialism" in the various meanings of that
+word is sure to play a part, will succeed, depends on the relative
+strength of opposing tendencies which cannot yet be measured. One
+possible if not probable result may be, as I suggested in THE TIMES two
+weeks ago, some international device to secure disarmament and to
+safeguard peace.
+
+Though part of the losses to Europe will be permanent, her chief loss
+will be coterminous with the war. She will, therefore, seek ways and
+means to fill in this immediate hole in her income in order to "get by."
+To do this she must borrow; that is, she must secure her present bread
+and butter from us and other nations and arrange to repay later out of
+the fruits of peace. She can stint herself, but not enough to meet the
+situation. She must borrow. And in one way and another she will satisfy
+this necessity by borrowing in the United States.
+
+Most of the strange and unprecedented phenomena which we have witnessed
+in the last month, in rapid succession, are due to this pressing
+necessity of the belligerent peoples to cash in now and trust to good
+fortune to pay later. As soon as the war became even probable Europe
+tried to cash in on our securities. The pressure for our gold pushed it
+toward Europe faster than it could move. Exchange jumped to the
+gold-shipping point of $4.89 per pound sterling, and did not stop. In
+some cases it reached $7. This was partly due to the desire to get our
+gold and bolster up a credit structure, tottering before the deadly blow
+of war; but it was also partly due to the need of ready money for
+supplies of all kinds. This need applies not only to the Governments,
+but to the individual people. To obtain this ready money they threw back
+on us the securities they had purchased of us in former years. They
+wanted us to take back these titles to future income and give them
+instead titles to present income. Had they secured our gold their next
+step would have been to spend part of it for supplies, and this would
+have caused any foreign dealers to whom they applied to place orders
+with us. The gold then might have turned the exchanges and have been
+brought back to us in return for our wheat and other products.
+
+This double transaction is in essence one--a barter of present income in
+the form of our wheat to Europe for future income in the form of
+investment securities. It was interfered with by the refusal of the
+insurance companies to insure the gold and by the closing of Stock
+Exchanges against the inundating flood of securities. The first
+difficulty, as to transporting gold, has been largely removed by
+arranging for drafts against stocks of it kept on both sides of the
+Atlantic. This will save the need of sending it on risky voyages back
+and forth, and any final net balances can be liquidated after the war.
+The second obstacle, the closure of the Stock Exchanges, is more
+formidable, but cannot completely or permanently prevent the
+transactions which so many people on both sides are anxious to
+consummate. Curb markets and limited cash sales on the Exchanges
+themselves are doing some of this business, and, sooner or later, much
+more will be done, whether the Exchanges are open or not. Europe needs
+our wheat and cannot pay for it except with securities, partly because
+her own industry is paralyzed, partly because ocean transportation is
+difficult.
+
+
+What Dumping Securities Means.
+
+Few people seem to realize that the dumping of securities on our shores
+and the efforts of foreign Governments, such as France and Switzerland,
+to borrow money in our markets are at the bottom very much the same
+thing. They are simply two forms of securing present supplies from
+America in return for future supplies, the dividends and interest on
+securities from Europe.
+
+It does not much matter whether we buy Government bonds or other
+securities. If we buy of French capitalists their holdings in American
+railway securities we simply provide them with the wherewithal to take
+the French Government loans themselves. They virtually become, without
+our knowledge, the go-between through which we lend, as it were, to the
+French Government, in spite of ourselves. It is doubtless well, as a
+matter of policy, to refuse to loan directly to France, but we must not
+for a moment conclude that France or any other nation will have to
+finance the war without our aid. We shall not be consciously helping any
+particular nation, but we shall be actually helping any nation which can
+trade with us. Evidently England will get more of our help than any
+other nation because her shores are more accessible. Germany is more
+isolated. Unless she possesses a larger food stock than commercial
+statistics indicate she will be pressing for our food supplies, which
+may reach her indirectly, we selling to Holland and Holland to Germany;
+also reversely, via Holland or via Austria and Italy, Germany may sell a
+stream of securities the other end of which we receive. Whether directly
+or by devious routes there will inevitably be, so far as I can see, a
+vast exchange of commodities passing to Europe for securities coming
+from Europe. In this interchange will be found the dominant economic
+effect of the war on the United States.
+
+Foreign nations will get their much-needed loans on better terms, even
+if less promptly, by the circuitous process mentioned than if they
+could borrow directly in our markets; for their own citizens will pay
+higher prices than we would, even if, to get the money, they have to
+sell their other investment securities to us at a considerable
+sacrifice. England has sold Treasury bills for seventy-five millions of
+dollars on as low a "basis" as 3-3/4 per cent.
+
+In this virtual trade of this year's crops for titles to future years'
+crops we shall get a high price for the former and pay a low price (in
+present valuation) for the latter. Investment securities are, and will
+be, a drug on the market. In other words, the rate of return to the
+investor will be high; the rate of interest on long-time loans will be
+high and stay high, that on short-time loans may fluctuate greatly. The
+rise in the rate of interest on long-time investments is one of the most
+vital and far-reaching effects of the war. At bottom, interest always
+arises from the exchange of present and future goods. The rate of
+interest, as I have tried to show in my book of that title, is simply
+the crystallization, in a market rate, of the impatience of the human
+race for its bread and butter. War has now produced such impatience in
+populations of hundreds of millions. It is this impatience which dumps
+the securities upon us, sends down their price, and sends up the rate of
+interest. As Byron W. Holt has said, there is no moratorium for hunger.
+The fall of securities in Europe produces the like fall in this and
+other countries.
+
+One of the consequences to America of being forced to play the role of
+money lender and one of the consequences of the rise in the rate of
+interest here, or what amounts to the same thing, the fall in the prices
+of bonds, will be an increased difficulty of financing our own
+enterprises. Only the most promising enterprises will be able to sell
+their securities. This means that we shall be neglecting, to some
+extent, our own enterprises, to finance the European war instead.
+
+This general depreciation of investment securities will doubtless lead
+to many bankruptcies, if not to a genuine crisis. It will also give
+tempting opportunities to investors. The likelihood of a genuine panic
+is lessened by the fact that every one recognizes the real cause of the
+disturbance and that insolvency is not suspected. According to the best
+commercial observers, the previous liquidation had been fairly well
+completed. Unless they are mistaken, disaster will not be likely to
+follow.
+
+We repeat that since the necessities of Europe have forced her to buy
+our food in return for her investments, it is evident that during the
+war food prices will be high and security prices, especially bonds, will
+be low. These are the two facts of greatest economic significance to us.
+To the country as a whole they defer some of our pleasures till after
+the war. Uncle Sam will cut down for the present on his eating and
+drinking, his clothes, shelter, and amusements in order to share his
+rations with Europe. Instead of the pleasures foregone he will
+invest--not in new enterprises at home, but in old ones--American and
+possibly European also--purchased of Europe. We can never have our cake
+and eat it too. In this case we shall let Europe eat some of it on
+condition that she in turn shares hers with us after the war. Moreover,
+we shall trade off a relatively small piece of our present cake for a
+relatively large piece of Europe's future cake. In other words, Europe
+will fill up the great breach in her income now impending by inducing us
+to make a small breach in ours. The result will be that the course of
+our real income, that is, economic satisfaction or enjoyable
+consumption, will imitate in some degree that of Europe. This is,
+reduced to its lowest terms, the chief economic result of the war.
+
+But to many the question is, do we gain or lose, as compared with what
+might have been the case if there had been no war? I do not think any
+one can answer that question with certainty. Europe is willing to
+mortgage its future to us on terms very advantageous to us; but when the
+future comes, the purchasing power of money will probably be so much
+lessened as to have absorbed all our advantage. Probably we shall lose
+slightly on the whole. But it is not economically impossible that there
+will be a net gain. In either case the net effect will, I believe, be
+small.
+
+Of more importance will be the various effects on various classes.
+Certain people will be greatly benefited by the rise in food prices and
+the fall in security prices. The farming classes will profit by the
+former; the investing classes by the latter. Those who have the good
+fortune to belong to both classes will grow rich. The farmer who is in a
+position to save money will both make more money to save and be able to
+invest it more advantageously after he has saved it. If he lends to his
+neighbors he will find the market rate of interest high. Even if he buys
+more land the purchase price will be restrained from the great rise we
+might expect from the prosperity of farming by the fact that the "number
+of years purchase," as the phrase is in England, will be small, or, in
+other words, that the interest basis, which enters into every land
+price, will be high.
+
+
+Labor Will Not Suffer Much.
+
+On the other hand the general consumer of farm products will suffer from
+another advance in that part of his cost of living, while the debtor
+classes will suffer from the fall in bonds or rise in interest. Many
+speculators on the Stock Exchange, those who have speculated for a rise,
+are in effect undoubtedly ruined already, and many borrowers at banks on
+collateral security will feel the pinch from the depreciation of their
+property and the hard terms of renewing their loans.
+
+And the laboring man, who forms the majority, what of him? It seems
+improbable that he will be greatly affected, that is, on the average. He
+will have to pay more for his food, and food constitutes more than a
+third of his budget. But some articles he buys will probably fall and he
+may secure higher wages because of the withdrawal of competing laborers.
+Some labor may rise, especially in the industries benefited by the war,
+such as, for instance, farming and other food industries, canning, flour
+mills, sugar, &c., the automobile industry and perhaps ammunition and
+steel. In other industries thrown out of gear for lack of foreign
+markets or for lack of foreign raw material, the wage earner may lose in
+wages and employment. In other words, labor will be dislocated in spots,
+like the other parts of our industrial machinery.
+
+Important dislocations will be felt in the fields of shipping and
+banking. One consequence is that American enterprise has now the golden
+opportunity to capture a good share of each. The outbreak of the war and
+the simultaneous opening of the Panama Canal will tend to divert the
+course of trade from Europe to South America. Probably our merchant
+marine can be developed more successfully for this South American trade
+than it could for the European trade. New York can largely take the
+place of London as the world's exchange centre for Pan-American trade.
+This opportunity is increased by the possibilities in the new Banking
+act for the establishment of branch banks abroad.
+
+With these opportunities and the rise of interest in Europe, the United
+States will change to a great degree from a debtor to a creditor nation.
+
+One of the dislocations of the war in the United States will be the
+cutting off of imports of a large part of our dutiable commodities, and
+therefore the loss of national revenue. There is an urgent need to
+compensate for this loss by some other form of tax.
+
+But it is well not to lose perspective, to remember that dislocations
+are not necessarily losses, that, however loudly they are proclaimed in
+news columns, they are small in extent, when considered in relation to
+our whole trade, that this country of ours is a vast one, and that the
+rank and file of Americans will be but slightly affected by the
+war--especially by contrast with our friends, now fighting each other,
+across the sea.
+
+We are too nearly self-supporting to be prostrated. Our foreign trade is
+and always has been a trifling matter compared with our internal
+commerce. The internal commerce paid for by money and checks annually
+in the United States amounts to nearly five hundred billions of dollars,
+which is more than a hundred times as much as our combined exports and
+imports.
+
+Almost all of what has been said so far had grown out of the prospect
+that the prices of foods and other materials needed in Europe will be
+high, while the prices of securities which Europe does not need and
+cannot afford will be low. Other prices will rise or fall according to
+special circumstances. Like a bomb-shell, the effect of the war will be
+to disperse or scatter prices at all angles of rises and falls. The
+prices of luxuries will be lowered. The prices of chemicals will be
+raised. The same article will fall in price in one country and rise in
+another if the transportation from the former to the latter is
+interfered with. This is true today of cotton.
+
+There has already been a speculative movement to anticipate these
+changes and arbitrarily to mark some prices up and some prices down. But
+as this is guesswork, and will be subject to frequent revision, one of
+the striking phenomena will doubtless be an increase in the variability
+of prices. The general level of prices will tend to rise. The rise will
+probably be greatest in little countries like Belgium, which are in the
+war zone and largely dependent on foreign trade. The rise will be less
+in England and in the United States than on the Continent. In fact, it
+is conceivable that in England the hoarding of money and the shock to
+credit, which is as predominant there as it is here, may actually lower
+the general level of prices during the war, especially if we could
+include in the index number the prices of securities, luxuries, and
+articles of English internal trade. If any nation tries the old
+experiment of paying its bills in irredeemable paper money, that
+desperate expedient will have the same result that it did with us during
+the civil war. Inflation of the currency will expel gold from that
+country and raise its price level higher than elsewhere.
+
+After the war is over prices will probably not retreat, but will move
+upward even faster than before. There may then come the familiar "boom"
+period, which may culminate in a commercial crisis in a few years after
+the close of the war, as was true after the Crimean war, the American
+civil war, and the Franco-Prussian war. The rebound will probably be
+fastest in England. Statistical price curves of many nations usually
+show an upward turn when war begins and another when it ends. The war
+will thus aggravate a rise of prices already in prospect.
+
+It would take considerable space to give, completely, the reasons for
+these prognostications, but I have tried to justify them in a brief
+addendum to a book to be issued this week on "Why Is the Dollar
+Shrinking?"
+
+The sudden lightning bolt of war produced as one of its first economic
+effects a general dislocation of credit machinery in Europe and to some
+extent in this country. We heard at once that letters of credit of
+travelers in Europe were uncashable. Gold was hoarded everywhere. It is
+estimated that about $30,000,000 in gold was hoarded in New York in the
+first week in August. Runs on banks were frequent. Bank reserves were
+depleted.
+
+The moratorium was resorted to to avoid a general cataclysm of
+bankruptcies which might have occurred--not from actual insolvency but
+from mere insufficiency of cash.
+
+To me one of the most striking phenomena was the promptness and
+effectiveness of the co-operative actions by which, so far, any business
+cataclysm has been avoided. The closure of Stock Exchanges perhaps saved
+us from general financial panic. Most striking of all is the manner in
+which the Governments of the world have come to the rescue of business.
+Those of us who were brought up in the old laissez-faire school have to
+rub our eyes. Had the world been guided by laissez-faire ideas, in this
+emergency we should in all probability have witnessed by this time the
+greatest collapse of credit the world has ever seen. Almost all the
+large and effective measures to meet the many emergencies arising were
+taken by Governments. The moratorium must be counted among the
+Governmental acts which, so far at least, have saved the day for
+business credits. In England the Government permitted suspension of the
+Bank act, (not of the Bank, as many Americans seem to imagine.)
+
+
+Improvised Accounting Methods.
+
+The Bank of England has been enabled to rediscount a great mass of
+acceptances by the guarantee of the British Government against loss in
+so doing. These in the end will amount to several hundred millions of
+dollars. Emergency notes were issued by Governmental authority on both
+sides of the Atlantic, and in the arrangements made for special gold
+funds in Canada and in France the Governments of England and France
+played the important parts. Thus have been improvised methods of
+international accounting by which the transportation of gold balances
+may be deferred and largely dispensed with. Our own Government has
+co-operated in the currency exchange and credit situation in many ways.
+It made provision for sending gold to Europe for our stranded
+countrymen. It promptly revised the banking and shipping laws.
+
+Whether further instability will be found to need such bolstering we
+cannot be sure. The present outlook is that business conditions are
+fairly sound and stable. In which direction across the Atlantic the
+title to gold will tend to change cannot as yet be foreseen. It will
+depend largely on how much Europe wants our products and how large a
+sacrifice she is willing to make in selling us her securities. It will
+also depend on possible issues of paper money. Fortunately, we are the
+happy possessors of over $1,500,000,000 in gold, and it is inconceivable
+that any large part of this should flow out--unless we should be so
+insensate as to inflate the currency.
+
+If we keep our heads, we shall at the end of the war be in the proud
+position of being the only great nation whose economic resources have
+not even been strained.
+
+
+
+
+Effects of War on America
+
+By Roland G. Usher.
+
+     Head of Department of History at Washington University; author
+     of "Pan-Germanism," "The Rise of the American People," &c.
+
+     _From The Boston Transcript, Sept. 2, 1914._
+
+
+The events of the last few days of July, 1914, showed the Americans the
+far-reaching effects of a state of war. There are now few who would say,
+as used to be so common, that a European war would make no difference to
+us. The closing of the New York Stock Exchange, the great shipments of
+gold and its consequent scarcity in the United States, the closing of
+the New England cotton mills, the cessation of export to Europe and of
+transatlantic communication with the Continent were instantaneous
+effects of a war 3,000 miles away obvious even to the apathetic and the
+heedless. With these we have not here to do; such are already past
+history. There is, however, a legitimate field for speculation as to the
+probable effects on the United States of the continuation of the state
+of war in Europe for months or years. The permanent results of a war
+naturally cannot be predicted in advance, but in the light of the
+history of the past, certain changes and developments in the United
+States appear so probable if the war continues as to reach almost the
+realm of certainty.
+
+Needless to say, the European war will not involve the United States in
+actual hostilities. It is highly improbable that either our army or our
+navy will see service. We are too distant from the seat of war; too
+entirely devoid of interests the combatants might seriously injure which
+a resort to war could remedy; too completely incapable of aiding or
+abetting one or the other in arms to cause them to assail us. Even were
+we not as a nation of a peaceable disposition, even had we not a
+President blessed with a singularly clear head and able to keep his
+temper, we should still stand little chance of going to war. One
+eventuality alone might affect us--Japan might attempt some measures of
+aggression in the Far East which would interest us as possessors of the
+Philippines, but that is practically foreclosed by her official
+announcement that she will side with England. The effects of the war
+upon the United States will be indirect effects; they will be economic
+in character, though far-reaching and significant for every man, woman,
+and child in the country.
+
+The economic structure of the United States rests today upon the
+assumption of the interdependence of international trade, upon an
+international division of labor, where England makes some things,
+Germany others, and we still more, all of which are exchanged. In a
+sense each country manufactures and produces for the whole world, and in
+turn expects the rest of the world to buy its products and to
+manufacture and produce things for its consumption. While something of
+this sort has always been true in international trade, the process
+reached during the nineteenth century an unprecedented development which
+actually made countries interdependent, or, if you will, actually
+dependent for the necessities of life upon each other's prosperity and
+continued activity. Hand in hand went the expansion of the international
+credit structure, based upon public confidence in the mutual honesty of
+merchants, until finally personal checks have begun to be exchanged
+(between the United States and England at least) at par and without
+investigation or previous indorsement by the banks on which they were
+drawn.
+
+With the outbreak of war a striking and artificial change, a totally
+uneconomic and unnatural factor, came to transform the situation and
+leave the United States for all practical purposes in contact with only
+two of her really large customers. We have no merchant marine and cannot
+therefore avail ourselves of our neutral status to trade with the
+belligerents. We shall be compelled (for a time at least) to ship in
+English bottoms to such ports as English ships can make--which will
+practically be limited to England, France, Portugal, Spain, and the
+Mediterranean ports. The ordinary commercial roads to Russia through the
+Baltic are automatically closed by the location of the German fleet, and
+probably England and France, deprived of other outlets for their own
+trade, will nearly monopolize the trade with Russia through the
+Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
+
+On the other hand, the mobilization of armies and fleets in Europe will
+draw millions of men from the field and factories where they have been
+accustomed to make what we have usually bought. The war will vastly
+diminish and in many cases stop altogether the stream of imports to the
+United States. These millions of men in the field and on the sea will
+not possess most of the economic wants they had in time of peace and
+will become conscious of many which they usually did not feel. The war
+will diminish and in many cases entirely stop the stream of ordinary
+American exports to Europe. Because of the stoppage of the European
+supply of things we have usually bought of them, and the cessation of a
+European demand for things we have usually sold to them, the conditions
+of the home market, both in regard to what we must buy in it, and to
+what we must sell in it, will be vitally changed. When our present
+supplies of European importations are exhausted, we shall be obliged to
+make for each other and buy from each other the things which we happen
+to be no longer able to import or export. A great readjustment of the
+economic fabric in the United States will take place if the war lasts
+longer than a comparatively short time.
+
+How long a time that must be will depend entirely upon the sharpness of
+the break in the economic life of Europe, and the amount of supplies
+they have on hand, which, as they will not now need them at home, they
+will be anxious to sell in the United States. Indeed, it would not be
+surprising if there was for a short time a glut of English and French
+manufactured goods in the United States market.
+
+
+Europe May Depend On Us.
+
+Of late years the commercial relationship between the United States and
+Europe has changed very greatly. For centuries we were a debtor
+community, buying largely from Europe, possessed only of crude staple
+products for export, and scarcely able by a series of expedients and
+exchanges to pay for what we bought. Tobacco for many decades, then
+cotton, were the only commodities of which much was exported direct to
+Europe. Then came, during the European famines of 1846, 1861, and 1862,
+an enormous demand for American grain. Yet only during the last few
+decades have we been able to export largely manufactured products or
+been able to deal with Europe on an equality of terms. We are no longer
+a debtor nation; we are no longer dependent upon Europe; the United
+States is an integral and essential part of the interdependent
+international economic fabric. Indeed, if the war continues ten years,
+Europe may be dependent upon us.
+
+In a sense we are not ready to meet the crisis. During the last ten or
+fifteen years the exports of foodstuffs have fallen off greatly, and the
+supply in this country has actually declined in proportion to
+population. There has been also a most marked increase in the exports of
+manufactured goods and a decided increase in the importation of raw
+materials, including foodstuffs. Now will come an enormous demand from
+Europe for the very things of which we have not produced so much and
+exported little or nothing--bacon, eggs, butter, beef. The demand will
+also be greatly increased for woolen cloth, raw leather, shoes, steel
+in all its forms, railroad equipment of all sorts, automobiles and
+machinery, and, in particular, coal and gasoline. To supply this demand
+old industries will be expanded and new ones created, and a shift of
+capital and labor will inevitably take place to the industries for which
+a demand becomes clear in Europe, as soon as it seems reasonably certain
+that the war will last, beyond the present year.
+
+
+An American Merchant Marine.
+
+Above all, an American merchant marine is likely to be seen again upon
+the seas. There will be German ships in plenty for sale, in all
+probability, unless Germany wins an immediate victory on the sea, and
+the advantage of an unquestioned neutral status, easily obtained by a
+bona-fide purchase, will be so great that American capital will probably
+invest largely in freight steamers and ocean liners. It seems entirely
+unlikely that England, while she remains mistress of the seas, should
+recognize as valid the registration in the United States of vessels
+actually owned by belligerents or regard as anything more than
+masquerading their appearance under the American flag. England has never
+recognized any one's "right" to do anything at sea in time of war which
+did not accrue directly to her own benefit. It is scarcely necessary to
+say that she will not allow trade with Germany or Austria while she can
+prevent it. The only refuge will be the sale of the ship by the foreign
+owner to Americans who will trade with England, her allies, and strictly
+neutral nations. As always in time of war, privateering and smuggling
+will be profitable, and trade with Germany, unless she is immediately
+victorious at sea, will offer to the adventurous plenty of risk and the
+certainty of huge profits. During the Napoleonic wars the flats and bars
+of the German coast along the North Sea offered light vessels a great
+opportunity and the pursuing warships great obstacles. A modern
+motor-driven light craft will now have an enormous advantage over
+destroyers or cruisers. Here, as a century ago, many an American will
+find an opportunity to make a fortune.
+
+The preoccupation of Europe with the war and the opening of the Panama
+Canal will afford the United States an unrivaled opportunity to develop
+trade with Canada, South America, Australia, New Zealand, India, China,
+and the Far East in general. We have never bulked large in the eyes of
+these countries and there has been much speculation as to the reasons
+why the German succeeded so well in South America and why the Englishman
+did so much business in China. Whether from sentiment or from a national
+habit that prefers English goods, the English colonies have bought more
+largely of the mother country than they have of us. But now that the war
+has closed the German factories, called German commercial agents home,
+and sent German ships racing to neutral harbors; now that the Panama
+Canal brings us some thousands of miles nearer to Australia and New
+Zealand than they are to London via Suez; now that England will be busy
+manufacturing for Europe and will have less to sell her colonies, these
+particular parts of the world will probably be compelled to look for
+their manufactured goods to the United States. Indeed, if one were not
+afraid of being accused of gross exaggeration, he might take heart and
+proclaim his conviction that a long and really inclusive European war
+would give the United States a practical monopoly of the South American
+and Pacific trade, provided always that the United States acquire by
+purchase a merchant marine and that the Panama Canal becomes feasible in
+January for large ships.
+
+
+Foreigners Leaving America
+
+One other effect of the war has already begun to reveal itself in the
+emigration from America of thousands of Servians, Austrians, Russians,
+Germans, Frenchmen, going home to take their places in the ranks. While
+many of these men are brave and honorable citizens, the fact that they
+respond to such a call proves them not yet Americans. The war will tend
+to remove a goodly part of the distinctly foreign element in the
+country, the part not yet amalgamated, and therefore the part most alien
+to our institutions and the most difficult to place in our social
+structure. If the war continues, Europe will draw every able-bodied man
+who can be influenced to go. Far more important, immigration will
+probably become negligible not only during the war, but for some time
+after it. Usually the reason for leaving home lies in the crowded
+population of European States and the lack of opportunity for
+advancement, plus the glib tongue of some agent of a contractor or of a
+steamship company. In recent years those who have come have not been
+desirable additions to our population because they came from nations
+alien in blood, language, religion and institutions, and were not
+therefore easily knit into our national structure and absorbed. There
+will be little, if any, further immigration. The men are wanted for the
+army and will not be allowed to leave during the war. After peace is
+restored, they will be imperatively needed in the fields and factories
+and every effort will be made to retain them. In fact, it does not take
+any wild stretch of the imagination for one acquainted with the results
+of the Thirty Years' War and of the Napoleonic wars to conceive that,
+from the view of economic opportunity and rewards, Europe might become a
+more favorable scene for the truly capable and ambitious than America is
+today. The tendency of a war is to absorb the best of a nation and to
+leave the dregs. For the power of organization and the fire of
+initiative Europe will at no distant date be ready to pay well.
+
+
+The Effect of Economic Readjustment.
+
+Unquestionably the economic readjustment which the war will force upon
+the United States will have an immediate and serious effect on
+individuals. Some will profit largely and promptly. All who at present
+possess large stocks of food, leather, oil, woolen cloth will be able to
+dispose of them at enormous profits. From the greater volume of freight
+the railroads will benefit directly. But while the farmers and
+cattle-men, the steel and oil kings are rejoicing in the opportunity,
+all industries which depend chiefly upon exportation or which
+manufacture an amount beyond the normal American demand, will be closing
+the factories or curtailing the output. For a time certain individuals,
+perhaps a relatively large number of individuals, will suffer
+inconvenience, loss, anxiety, and even privation. But the vast demand
+for labor in other industries, and the almost certain extensive demand
+for relatively unskilled labor ought not to make the period of
+transition long or the amount of suffering considerable. After all, the
+vast majority of the people of the United States are connected with
+farming, with the manufacture or production of the very things for which
+there will most likely be a great demand, or with the transportation and
+distribution of both imports and exports to the rest of the community.
+In certain industries, like the manufacture of cotton cloth, which is
+localized in New England to such an extent that whole districts are
+dependent upon it for a livelihood, the distress will be great, for the
+factories closed upon the declaration of war and the workers are a long
+distance from the Western fields, where laborers are only too scarce.
+The cheapening of transportation, the rapidity of communication, the
+superior mobility of the population today over ten years ago, make it
+probable that these people will soon find new places.
+
+Concomitant with the war came a rise of prices. Foodstuffs especially
+advanced sharply and will certainly continue to rise until some material
+increase of the supply is assured beyond a peradventure. The tendency in
+England and above all on the Continent for the cities to buy great
+supplies to guard against possible want will increase this tendency.
+But, without question, should the war last, a rise in the whole level of
+prices of everything, including labor, will take place in the United
+States. It will affect some individuals adversely, but for most will be
+in the long run almost negligible. For those who actually produce or
+handle goods which advance in price the result will be a profit, because
+the price of the commodity they have to sell will almost certainly
+advance sooner and faster than the prices of the commodities they
+themselves are compelled to buy. In time the two will equalize and they
+will be precisely where they were before the war; they will pay out with
+one hand what they take in with the other. In nearly all cases where the
+individual produces or shares in the production of an actual commodity a
+general rise in prices, even to the extent which this war threatens to
+produce, will be to him only a temporary advantage or disadvantage.
+True, wages and salaries in industrial pursuits will not quite keep pace
+with the rise in foodstuffs, and factory workers and clerks will not
+benefit to the same extent nor as soon as the farmers will. People whose
+incomes are derived from stocks in the businesses which prosper will
+probably receive much more than they pay by reason of the increased
+prices of other commodities, and certainly cannot be worse off than
+before.
+
+
+America's Real Sufferers.
+
+The real sufferers in America will be those who hold stock in the
+enterprises which fail or cease to operate, and that far larger class
+who are dependent on a fixed salary. Professors and teachers of all
+sorts and grades; people living on annuities or small incomes derived
+from bonds or real estate; those dependent on the rent derived from
+leases for a term of years of dwelling houses, office buildings and the
+like, these will lose a material amount, exactly in proportion to the
+rise in prices. To that extent, the purchasing power of the stated
+number of dollars they receive will depreciate and that much they will
+lose beyond a peradventure. In time, some relief will be afforded by a
+tardy rise in salaries, by the expiration of leases and the payment of
+bonds, but the actual losses of the intervening years have never been in
+any way refunded in like cases in the past.
+
+For some individuals, then, the European war will spell strict economy;
+for a comparatively few, let us hope, ruin. For the country as a whole,
+considered as a social and economic unit, a long war will introduce an
+era of astounding prosperity. Never before has the country had, and
+certainly it will never again have, almost a monopoly of the world's
+trade thrust into its hands. The United States will have only one real
+competitor, England, and, should the English Navy prove itself less
+capable than is expected, or should England and her colonies be forced
+to order a general mobilization of their armies, the United States might
+conceivably remain the only great mercantile community to which the
+world could look for supplies. No such eventuality need be predicated to
+prove that the continuation of this war or a series of wars will create
+a demand for manufactured goods such as our merchants have never dreamed
+of. And they will command war prices. It means employment with rich
+reward for capital and labor alike--a vastly increased foreign market, a
+much greater domestic market, high prices, and a steadily voracious
+demand for the entire output. The result will be the rapid
+diversification of industry in the United States, the creation of
+industries never before possible because of European competition, the
+invention of machines to meet new needs. The normal economic development
+will be accelerated decades.
+
+After the close of the European war, when manufacturing and production
+are resumed, America will find herself overproducing and face to face
+with another economic readjustment necessary to meet the new situation.
+Then will ensue a commercial crisis with all its attendant suffering and
+trouble such as the United States has probably never seen and which will
+be violent and serious in proportion to the length of the war.
+
+
+
+
+Germany of the Future
+
+AN INTERVIEW WITH M. DE LAPREDELLE.
+
+Exchange Professor from the University of Paris at Columbia University.
+
+By Edward Marshall.
+
+
+In the American press French views of the great war's significance have
+been less common than British views and far less frequent than German
+views. Therefore, this talk with M. de Lapredelle, Exchange Professor
+from the University of Paris at Columbia, will have especial interest.
+
+This very distinguished Frenchman, although but 43 years old, has won
+high eminence in his native land, especially in the domain of
+international law, which is his branch at the University of Paris. Also
+he is Directeur de Recuel des Arbitrages Internacioneaux, he is the
+editor of The International Law Review in Paris, he is a member of the
+Committee on International Law for the French Department of Justice, he
+is a member of the French Committee on Aerial Navigation, he is General
+Secretary of the French Society of International Law, and he occupies
+other important posts and bears other important scholastic honors.
+
+He is a cautious conversationist, as might be expected of one who has so
+deeply delved into the most cautious of all professions, but in the mind
+of the thoughtful reader this should add to the value of his utterances,
+which, as expressed in the following columns, were carefully revised by
+him before going into type.
+
+I asked M. de Lapredelle to estimate the great war's probable effect
+upon education.
+
+"Of course it is too early to guess intelligently," he replied, "for the
+effect of the war will be dependent entirely upon the results of the
+war, and, while we of the Allies have no doubt of our ultimate victory,
+it is the fact that victory has not been won as yet by either side.
+
+"In talking with you my impulse is to assume what I feel in my
+heart--the certainty of German defeat, but I must not do that, although
+all the letters which I get from the front and from Paris express a
+growing confidence in the victory of the Allies.
+
+"But it is too early to attempt intelligent detailed prophecy as to the
+effect of the great struggle upon the world's philosophy, or upon any
+other phase of its intellectual development.
+
+"Almost certainly, however, a reaction against certain Germanic
+influences will be apparent after the war ends, for the world will not
+want ever to risk repetition of the horrors of this struggle, and it
+will be plain that they were the inevitable fruit of Germany's attempt
+at intellectual domination.
+
+"This German assumption was due, largely, to their victory in 1870, but
+it went far beyond the bounds of reason, far beyond the fields in which
+German achievement really had established legitimate supremacy.
+
+"The momentum of victory often has led humanity into excess. It led
+Germany into excessive claims of social superiority and into an
+excessive assumption of intellectual supremacy. Even in the eyes of
+others it gave Germany an unwarranted intellectual prestige.
+
+"Really, the German is not a big thinker; he is an immensely careful
+thinker.
+
+"Above everything, the German is an observer--a very diligent
+observer--and his mental eyes are likely to be so close to the wall
+that he sees only a single brick in it, wholly failing to get a
+comprehensive view of the whole structure.
+
+"Germans are very careful students. They attach a vast importance to
+detail. I think it is not unfair to say that, with the German, the
+smaller, the more minute the detail, the more it interests him. The
+German loves to write a big book on a small subject, and, loving it, he
+does it well.
+
+"But there are more exalted tasks, as, for example, the writing of big
+books upon big subjects, giving the world fresh visions of new and
+far-flung vistas. The German loves to catalogue and catalogues almost
+with genius; he loves to deliver long lectures upon microcosms.
+
+"Cataloguing and the near-sightedness which may arise from intense study
+of the atom, to the exclusion of the collective organism, whether that
+collective organism be the human individual or the social mass, may
+render immense service to the world, but it never will be the only
+service necessary, and, if pursued to the exclusion of all other
+investigations, such study is likely to produce an aggravated narrowness
+of vision. Narrow vision is certain to eventuate in selfishness.
+
+"The Germans became selfish after this fashion. The present struggle is
+the war of selfishness against world advance.
+
+"Innumerable, or at least many, individuals have furnished smaller
+parallels to the course which Germany has taken as a nation. The
+individual with the truly and exclusively scientific mind is likely to
+go too far into abstractions, built from a possible misinterpretation of
+minutiae.
+
+"The ideal national intellectual development will combine both fact and
+theory, will join rationalism to idealism, and will be far more like
+that of certain nations which I shall not name than it will be like that
+of Germany. These nations which I shall not name have both.
+
+"In other words, it seems to be the fixed idea of the German that the
+German civilization is the only civilization; but it is not the thought
+of France or England that their civilizations are the only ones.
+
+"This very lack of what may be defined as national egotism in France and
+England enables these nations to work, as Germany does not, for world
+science and world development--the growth of civilization as a whole.
+
+"Germany's scientific work is for German science, she thinks
+of civilization only as German civilization. The world's other
+great nations--and may I say the world's great Latin nations
+especially?--internationalize their science and their civilization."
+
+
+Why the Philosopher Is Important.
+
+"One must be struck by the fact that Germany's critical philosophy
+formed the basis of her educational system and, therefore, the basis of
+her social system, and that it had in it the basis of the war.
+
+"It cannot be denied, I think, that her education, as well as her
+politics and militarism, directly pointed to this great conflict.
+Indeed, the industrialism, the politics, the philosophy of Germany all
+find their logical expression in present events.
+
+"Hegel was the first, in the beginning of the last century, to insist
+upon the ideas which, already being paramount in him, quickly became
+paramount in his followers, serving as the basis for the development of
+Prussia. To him this represented all and everything; to him divinity on
+earth was incarcerated in the State, and, therefore, the development of
+the State, not justice, was, in his mind, the object of all law.
+
+"Since this beginning that has been the consistent German viewpoint, and
+increasingly so. The glorification of the State has included, of
+necessity, the sacrifice of the individual, and this has been conducted
+ruthlessly in Germany itself.
+
+"Of course the State which considers it right to sacrifice the
+individuals of its own citizenship will be sure to consider it right to
+sacrifice the individuals of other nations' citizenships.
+
+"That explains why international law never has been considered binding
+by the German; it explains why international law was not considered
+binding when Belgium stood in the path of Germany's march toward Paris.
+
+"International law never has bound the German; it never will bind him
+until he changes his national psychology.
+
+"Ihering, one of Germany's greatest theoretical jurists and a scholar in
+the matter of Roman law, declared, 'Right is the child of might.' He did
+not say exactly that right is might, but he defined it as 'the child of
+might.'
+
+"That may be taken as the German keynote, for this man is of such great
+influence in Germany that his utterances must have an enormous effect.
+
+"Treitschke, the historian, in his teaching in Berlin, naturally drew
+some of his inspiration from these two men. For him the State need
+consider no law save that which will promote its own expansion.
+
+"Moral law, he holds, need not and must not stand in the way of the
+prosperity and growth of States, as it frequently must obstruct the
+prosperity and growth of individuals.
+
+"Under this theory the State has two functions--these are, inside the
+country, to make law; outside the country, to make war. Germany denies
+the right of an extraneous law to decide upon the details of right and
+wrong within a country, and that is why Germany defies and even denies
+international law.
+
+"If it happens that a treaty which the State has entered into later
+proves to be obstructive to some expansion which is thought to be a
+necessity of the State's destiny, that treaty may be disregarded with
+the full approval of Germany's national morality, although similar
+conduct on the part of an individual in Germany would be considered
+highly reprehensible.
+
+"The State may bind itself to secure advantage, but, also, it may unbind
+itself to secure advantage, and this without consultation with, or the
+approval of, the other party or parties to the contract.
+
+"This theory becomes confusing to the student reared in other nations
+under different educational influences. It indicates beyond
+contradiction that Germany feels no sense of duty toward other nations,
+but only an obligation to further her own interests.
+
+"Germany has immense patriotism but no humanitarianism. Her only duty is
+to herself. Her national egotism can be characterized by no other word
+than selfishness.
+
+"It is a curious phenomenon that at a time when humanitarianism in its
+broadest sense has become the keynote of all other of the great nations
+it has not become at all the keynote of German civilization."
+
+
+Teutonic Superexcitation.
+
+"It is impossible that such pride, such a sense of arrogant national
+superiority as that which marks Germany, should maintain among a
+democratic people; it is possible only to a very aristocratic country.
+What has happened is its logical outgrowth in the country which it has
+infected.
+
+"In Germany this sense of national pride, of intolerance of others, even
+of contempt for others, has been developed until it amounts to
+superexcitation. It not only affects Germany's relations to other
+peoples, but it affects the relations of Germans to one another.
+
+"Different classes of the German population continually exhibit it in
+their dealings with one another.
+
+"It is continually illustrated in those events which have been the
+wonder of visiting foreigners--episodes of the contemptuous
+ill-treatment of subordinate German soldiers by their superiors. It goes
+beyond that, manifesting itself in the treatment of all civilians by the
+lowest soldier, and, further still, in the attitude even of the lowest
+civilian to all foreigners, even the highest.
+
+"The German individual may not consider himself superior to all
+individuals of other nationalities, but he will be sure to consider his
+nation so far superior to every other that there can be no comparison
+between it and them. His is a peculiar arrogance. It is not at all
+personal; it is purely national; but none the less it is arrogance, and
+all arrogance is dangerous.
+
+"A hierarchy always exists in aristocratic countries; the hierarchical
+idea has been developed further in Germany than elsewhere.
+
+"This has given Germany an unfortunate impulse. If to this impulse we
+add that other born of all her various victories since 1866, especially
+those which were won while Germany was realizing Bismarck's dream of
+triumph 'through fire and blood'--her industrial victories, her
+scientific advance, her social progress--and consider the Germanic
+tendency toward egotism, we do not find ourselves surprised when we
+find, examine, and appraise exactly what we have today in Germany.
+
+"The perversion of national sentiment into national arrogance has been
+the definite, although, perhaps, unrealized and unintended, aim of every
+educational influence which has been at work in Germany since 1870. It
+has amounted to an unparalleled perversion of a nation's sentiment
+toward all the outside world.
+
+"This war marks the crisis of this German pride.
+
+"Germany's course throughout has borne all the earmarks of a national
+ego-mania. The whole German people, as a nation, not always, perhaps, as
+individuals, have fallen victim to the most colossal attack of ego-mania
+which the world ever has known.
+
+"Combine this ego-mania with another delusion--the entirely unjustified
+conclusion that Germany was the object of a worldwide persecution--and
+it is unnecessary to search further for the causes of the war, just as
+it is unnecessary to search further for reasons for the combination of
+practically all other Europe against Germany.
+
+"What would German victory mean to the world, if German victory came,
+save the worldwide dominance of German egotism, imposed at the expense
+of every other people? France would not escape, England would not
+escape, and, I assure you, you, America, would not escape. German
+victory would be far more than a European disaster--it would be a world
+disaster.
+
+"Of all the nations in the world perhaps the United States and France
+have stood most notably for the ideas of international justice. This
+really makes your interest in the outcome of the present war indirectly
+as great as ours.
+
+"I cannot see how the people of the United States can feel otherwise
+than that not only their hearts but their reason demands victory for the
+Allies, not because of any wish for the destruction of Germany, but
+because of the wish for the preservation of the world.
+
+"Indeed, it is inconceivable that victory for the Allies can mean
+destruction for Germany. It can mean only the destruction of German
+militarism, which has brought about the perversion of the German mind.
+
+"No abler mind exists. Its release from the thralldom which has fettered
+it would be a vast world service, would, indeed, be a vast benefit to
+Germany herself. It is curious, but true, that I believe Germany's own
+salvation depends upon her absolute defeat in this great war.
+
+"A few weeks before the war began Prof. Schucking expressed regret that
+Germany--that is, the German Government--should be so antagonistic to
+international spirit. The fact that he made this expression shows that,
+in spite of and beyond military Germany, the intellectual elite, the
+cream of the elite in Germany, has remained faithful to the traditions
+of the great philosopher, Kant.
+
+"The intellectual elite--the cream of the elite--therefore may be
+absolved from all responsibility. Loyalty to the teachings of Kant will
+make it possible for the friends of humanity in all nations to join with
+Germany for human advancement on the basis of universal justice.
+
+"After the victory of the Allies a new Germany will appear; it will be a
+liberal Germany, willing to renounce the narrow Prussian ideals, finding
+again the old German ideal in its disinterested form, a Germany which
+will be able to join hands with other nations, to help them in taking up
+again the works of international civilization, which Prussian Germany
+herself brutally brought to an end, with insolent scorn of right--an act
+for which she is now paying and must pay the penalty."
+
+
+
+
+Germany the Aggressor
+
+By Albert Sauveur.
+
+Professor of Metallurgy at Harvard University.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
+
+German professors and editors and other German sympathizers in the
+present struggle of nations have attempted the difficult task of
+convincing the American public, first, that Germany was not the
+aggressor, and, second, that she is conducting a war of civilization
+directed primarily against Russia, that Europe may not fall under
+Muscovite domination. The German Chancellor has made similar claims,
+while in the German "White Paper," published in full in THE NEW YORK
+TIMES of Aug. 24, it is likewise attempted to fasten the responsibility
+for this war on Germany's opponents.
+
+A close and impartial study of both the English and German "White
+Papers" must suffice to convince the reader that Germany clearly was the
+aggressor and that England made every possible effort first to prevent a
+war between Austria and Servia and later to localize the conflict.
+Germany, on the contrary, by insisting from the start that there should
+be no intervention in the settlement of the dispute between Servia and
+her ally, Austria, made a European war inevitable. The sophistry,
+inaccuracies, and unwarranted conclusions of the German professors and
+editors have not helped their cause. The irrefutable facts remain,
+first, that Austria with the knowledge and approval of Germany presented
+to Servia an ultimatum so worded that she knew that the conditions
+imposed could not be complied with by any nation retaining a spark of
+self-respect; second, that after Servia had accepted Austria's ultimatum
+with the single exception of the most offensive clause, which she
+proposed to submit to arbitration, Austria, with Germany's consent,
+proclaimed herself unsatisfied and immediately declared war on Servia;
+third, that Germany and Austria knew that a war with Servia meant a war
+with Russia, and that a war with Russia meant a general European
+conflagration; fourth, that Germany declared war on Russia, started the
+invasion of France before declaring war, and, by refusing to respect the
+neutrality of Belgium, to which she was solemnly pledged, forced both
+Belgium and England into the war. In the face of so flagrant a violation
+of all sentiments making for peace no sophistry will avail in attempting
+to protect Germany from the odium of being responsible for the greatest
+calamity the civilized world has ever seen.
+
+We are told that Germany is conducting this war in the interest of
+civilization, that her chief purpose is to protect Europe from the
+domination of the Slav. And to ward off this Muscovite danger Germany is
+at present making desperate efforts to crush England and France, the
+standard bearers of democracy in Europe! In her war for civilization she
+is employing the methods of barbarian tribes, methods condemned by
+civilized nations and which have already horrified the world. It is
+hardly conceivable that Russia, which the German Chancellor describes as
+a semi-Asiatic, slightly cultured barbaric nation, could have committed
+in Belgium the atrocities imputed to the Germans had she conquered that
+country in similar circumstances.
+
+It is manifest that Germany's supreme desire is to fasten Teutonic rule
+on Europe, to crush Russia, to be sure, but also to crush France and
+French civilization and to reduce England to the rank of a second-class
+nation. It is obvious that this is a struggle between militarism and its
+evils as represented by the Hohenzollern dynasty and democracy as
+represented by England and France.
+
+ALBERT SAUVEUR.
+
+Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 5, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Militarism and Christianity
+
+By Lyman Abbott.
+
+_A Letter to The New York Sun._
+
+     Editor in Chief of The Outlook; author of numerous works on
+     theology, religion, and democracy.
+
+
+_To the Editor of The New York Sun:_
+
+In answer to your request for a statement of the causes and meaning of
+the European war I write with necessary brevity, both because of the
+limits on my time and the limits on your crowded columns.
+
+What is the cause of the explosion of a powder magazine? The gases
+stored in the powder. The lighted match is the occasion, not the cause
+of the explosion. The cause of the European war is the spirit of envy,
+jealousy, selfishness and suspicion in the so-called Christian nations.
+The assassination by a Servian of the Crown Prince of Austria was only
+the lighted match which set the European combustibles in flame.
+
+In the United States we recognize the truth that the interests of each
+State are identical with the interests of the Union, and that no State
+can permanently prosper by reason of the misfortune of its neighbor. In
+the German Empire since its unification each principality similarly
+recognizes that the interests of the German Empire and the interests of
+the several principalities are essentially identical. But there is no
+such recognition of the common interest binding the warring nations of
+Europe together.
+
+Each nation looks with envy on the prosperity of its neighbor and acts
+upon the assumption that its neighbor is a rival, and that its own
+commerce and wealth can be built up only at the expense of its rival.
+New York is quite willing that the harbor of Boston should be improved.
+Bremen is quite willing that the harbor of Hamburg should be improved.
+The west coast of England does not object to harbor facilities on the
+east coast of England. But Germany envies England's harbor facilities,
+and England and Germany are both resolved to prevent if possible Russia
+from getting harbor facilities on the Mediterranean Sea. Not every
+individual German, Austrian, Frenchman, and Englishman holds this
+opinion, but the policies of these nations are governed by this spirit
+of international rivalry.
+
+A striking illustration of this spirit, perhaps the most striking
+illustration in modern international life, is furnished by the military
+party in Prussia. Gen. Bernhardi, in a volume entitled "Germany and the
+Next War," has given what may be regarded as a semi-official
+interpretation of German militarism. He holds that life is a struggle
+for existence, with a survival of the fittest, and the strongest is the
+fittest; that a military organization constitutes the true strength of a
+nation; that there is no higher power in human life, certainly none in
+international life, than the power of physical force; that only the
+strong nation has a right to exist, and he objects to international
+arbitration because it recognizes the right to life of a small nation.
+In this volume he calls on Germany to establish a "world sovereignty" by
+force of arms, and he indicates what should be the twofold purpose of
+Germany in the next war, namely, to crush France and to establish such
+world sovereignty of Germany.
+
+
+Militarism to Blame.
+
+It was this spirit which led Germany into the present war; this spirit
+which denied that Belgium had any rights which Germany was bound to
+respect; this spirit which inspired the military party in Germany to
+regard its treaty with France and England guaranteeing the neutrality of
+Belgium as only a "scrap of paper," and this spirit which could not and
+apparently still does not comprehend why Belgium should be bound in
+honor to defend her neutrality, or why England, with no very direct and
+immediate interests to protect, should feel herself bound to come to the
+defense of her weaker neighbor.
+
+The delay of the German Army, which is likely to prove disastrous to her
+designs, has demonstrated in her own chosen field that there is a force
+in national honor and national conscience which can put up a very
+efficient resistance to Krupp guns.
+
+It is a great mistake to suppose that all Germany is actuated by this
+spirit of militarism. Frederick William Wile, for over seven years the
+chief German correspondent of The London Daily Mail, in an article in
+The Outlook recently said: "There are 66,000,000 Germans; 65,000,000 of
+them did not want war; the other million are the war party." But he adds
+that now Germany is absolutely united and that the Germans will not
+stack arms "till the last among them capable of shouldering a rifle is
+incapacitated, till the last copper pfennig capable of purchasing
+ammunition of war has vanished from their impoverished grasp."
+
+There is in this nothing extraordinary. Whoever is responsible for
+bringing on the war, the interests, the welfare, and in some sense the
+honor of Germany are apparently involved in it. And yet it may be true,
+and I believe it is true, that the defeat of Germany will be its
+salvation, for it will be the overthrow of the spirit of militarism
+inherited from Frederick the Great, and this has been the bane of the
+German Empire.
+
+In our civil war there was at first only a minority in most of the
+Southern States in favor of secession, but when the national troops
+invaded Virginia the South was as united for State independence as the
+North was for national union, and yet today it will be difficult to find
+anywhere in the South an intelligent man who does not recognize the
+truth that the defeat of secession and the emancipation of the slave
+have been of inestimable benefit to the Southern States.
+
+I make no attempt here to apportion the responsibility for this war
+between the several powers engaged in it. However this responsibility
+must be shared among them I can see but one meaning in the awful
+campaign. The victory of Germany would mean the victory of Prussian
+militarism. The defeat of Germany will mean the defeat of Prussian
+militarism, the rehabilitation of Germany as a great industrial and
+educational power in the world, and probably the practical overthrow of
+military autocracy in all Western Europe.
+
+
+Divine Right of Kings Obsolete.
+
+The campaigns of Napoleon ended for Western Europe the Divine right of
+Kings. The campaigns of the Allies will end for Western Europe the
+Divine right of the armed man. The Russo-Japanese war gave to Russia its
+first representative assembly, the Duma. It is not unreasonable to hope
+that the present European war will result in greatly enlarging the
+powers of the Duma and establishing true constitutional government in
+Germany, a government in which the Ministry will be responsible not to
+the Emperor but to the Reichstag; and the power both of the purse and
+the sword will not be in the hands of an aristocratic oligarchy but in
+the hands of the common people.
+
+It is not strange that men should point to this, perhaps the greatest
+war of history, as an evidence that Christianity is a failure. If
+Christianity professed to be able by a miracle to transform human nature
+at once, such a war would be fatal to its claim. But no such claim can
+be made for Christianity. It is a great human movement, a phase of the
+gradual evolution of man, governed by conscience and reason, out of the
+brute, governed by appetite and passion.
+
+Man as he is seen in the world to day is an unfinished product. He is in
+the making. The best that can be said of a Christian is that he is
+further along toward the goal of humanity than the barbarian.
+Theological doctrines such as the Trinity, the Atonement, and the like
+are not the essential doctrines of Christianity. The essential doctrine
+is that life is a struggle for others as well as for self; that in this
+struggle every one owes a duty to his neighbor, and the stronger he is
+and the greater the need of his neighbor the more imperative is his
+duty; that as the father and the mother care for, educate and govern
+their child until he grows able to care for, educate and govern himself,
+so always the strong men and women owe the duty of protection,
+education, and, in some measure, government to the weaker of the human
+race until they have outgrown the need for it.
+
+In so far as autocracy is the rule of the few for the benefit of the few
+it is paganism. In so far as democracy is the rule of the many for the
+benefit of the many it is Christianity. He who believes this will
+perhaps believe with me that in a true sense this is a religious war,
+the war of conscience, honor, the moral sense against the rule of the
+bayonet and the bullet.
+
+The cynic who thinks this war demonstrates the failure of Christianity
+should not forget such facts as the heroic struggle of Belgium to
+maintain her neutrality, the resolve of England at every cost to
+maintain her pledges to Belgium, the Red Cross following the armies in
+the field and ministering to the sick, the wounded and the suffering,
+regardless of their nationality, the general kind treatment to
+prisoners, accentuated by some very horrible exceptions, and all this
+contrasted with the enslaving, torturing, the crucifying, the flaying
+alive of prisoners captured in war by barbaric nations before the dawn
+of Christianity.
+
+LYMAN ABBOTT.
+
+Cornwall-on-Hudson, Sept. 17, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+VIGIL
+
+By HORTENSE FLEXNER.
+
+
+I have waited with my mothers down the dim, uncertain ages,
+I have waited in the cave and hut and tower,
+  From the first dawn's nameless fear
+  To the death-list posted here
+I have slain my soul in waiting, hour by hour.
+
+Under pelt of beast, trap-taken, or the leaves by chance winds blow,
+Under tunic, peasant hemp, or cloth of gold,
+  By the fire, in low flame burning,
+  I have crouched in silence, yearning,
+And as now, my helpless heart has waited cold.
+
+Ancient is the part I play--like a cloak of heavy mourning,
+I take it, bending, from a million women's hands.
+  They have worn it, they have torn it,
+  Agonizing, they have borne it,
+And its folds are dark with heart-break of all lands.
+
+Oh, the woman figure standing, with the face toward the horizon,
+Oh, the hand above the eyes to ease the strain!
+  Gaunt and barren, stricken, lonely,
+  With the empty memories only,
+We have stood, the dry-eyed sentries of our pain.
+
+Nothing we can do to stop them, nothing we can say to hold them;
+Taking sunlight, laughter, youth, they swing away,
+  And the things they leave grow strange,
+  House and street and voices change,
+But the women and the burdened hours stay.
+
+I have waited with my mothers down the dim, uncertain ages,
+While my children die, I pray the centuries through,
+  And I wonder in my fear
+  At the death-list posted here
+If God has left the women waiting, too!
+
+
+
+
+Nietzsche and German Culture
+
+By Abraham Solomon.
+
+_A Letter to The New York Evening Post._
+
+
+Sir: Those who trace the German militaristic doctrines to Nietzsche's
+influence commit Pastor Mander's sin when he told Mrs. Alving to bar
+from her library a book which he had never read. Nietzsche was an
+inveterate enemy of efficiency, astigmatic with regard to practical
+life, and he never worked out a philosophy in the accepted sense of the
+term. He was a lyric poet who wrote psychology when he failed to sustain
+the poetic mood. In the Engadine and at Sils-Maria, brooding in a rocky
+void wherein he touched the sharp edge of infinity, he sang a Dionysian
+hymn to life against the melancholy products of German learning and
+against those Nihilistic snares which he thought lurked in Christian
+doctrine. There he worked out the mystic idea of "Eternal Recurrence"
+and his song of Zarathustra with the bell strokes of noon.
+
+What he knew of history he used for an analysis of values, and not for
+State polity. He shrank from the irritations of reality, and he had
+little patience with the national mania cultivated after Sedan, warning
+his country that their victory was not one of a superior culture, that
+Germany had no style but a barbaric mixture of many styles; and he
+pointed out the essential difference between culture and erudition.
+
+His unfinished work, "The Will to Power," was an attempt to house his
+lyric passions in an architectural frame. The facade of the structure,
+as posthumously revealed to us, is an indication that he was really
+engaged in building a Tower of Babel. Power, Affirmation, Yea-Saying he
+considered the attributes of life, and he found in them recompense for
+his weakness and his lack of capacity for happiness. He was a master of
+the exquisite nuances of vision, but since he touched real life at the
+circumference, and not at the centre, his philosophical valuations are
+bizarre, and have only a literary value.
+
+It is superficial to make Treitschke and Bernhardi his disciples, as
+some American writers have made Roosevelt his disciple. Treitschke is a
+heavy-footed historian who raised the axiom of self-preservation into a
+philosophy of force. Von Bernhardi's book, though extreme in its
+expression, is based on the fundamental truth that if Germany desired a
+just proportion of oversea territories (a proportion denied her by
+England) she would have to gain it by force of arms. In the development
+of this idea he makes many generalizations calculated to dazzle the
+multitude and to imbue it with the courage to expansion. Treitschke
+would have rested in obscurity but for the war; Bernhardi does not
+pretend to talents as a philosopher.
+
+The real origin of Germany's policy in the last forty years may be
+derived from the eminently practical and direct mind of Bismarck. From
+reading of history he learned that chicane and force had been utilized
+as the roads to power, of which fact he found ample demonstration in the
+histories of England and Russia. He proved himself a true adept by using
+chicane and force to achieve German unity, after the theorists had
+failed.
+
+Those who glibly condemn a lyric philosopher in order to make out a case
+against Germany reveal the weakness of their position. It is strange
+that these lantern-eyed critics haven't cited Heine as an enemy of
+democracy because he adored Napoleon. Was it because Heine lived for
+years in Paris on the adulation of advanced feminines?
+
+ABRAHAM SOLOMON.
+
+New York, Oct. 13, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+Belgium's Bitter Need
+
+By Sir Gilbert Parker.
+
+
+_Sir Gilbert Parker, M.P., went to Holland at the request of the
+American Committee for the Relief of Belgium a week ago to inquire into
+the work of the committee and the needs of the Belgians._
+
+_Sir Gilbert visited frontier towns and the camps of the refugees for
+the purpose of making a personal investigation into the conditions. That
+he is deeply impressed by the desperate need of the Belgians may be
+gathered from the following graphic statement and appeal, dated Dec. 5,
+1914, to the American people:_
+
+Since the beginning of the war the hearts of all humane people have been
+tortured by the sufferings of Belgium. For myself the martyrdom of
+Belgium had been a nightmare since the fall of Liege. Whoever or
+whatever country is to blame for this war, Belgium is innocent. Her
+hands are free from stain. She has kept the faith. She saw it with the
+eyes of duty and honor. Her Government is carried on in another land.
+Her King is in the trenches. Her army is decimated, but the last
+decimals fight on.
+
+Her people wander in foreign lands, the highest and lowest looking for
+work and bread; they cannot look for homes. Those left behind huddle
+near the ruins of their shattered villages or take refuge in towns which
+cannot feed their own citizens.
+
+
+Abyss of Want and Woe.
+
+Many cities and towns have been completely destroyed; others, reduced or
+shattered, struggle in vain to feed their poor and broken populations.
+Stones and ashes mark the places where small communities lived their
+peaceful lives before the invasion. The Belgian people live now in the
+abyss of want and woe.
+
+All this I knew in England, but knew it from the reports of others. I
+did not, could not, know what the destitution, the desolation of Belgium
+was, what were the imperative needs of this people, until I got to
+Holland and to the borders of Belgian territory. Inside that territory I
+could not pass because I was a Britisher, but there I could see German
+soldiers, the Landwehr, keeping guard over what they call their new
+German province. Belgium a German province!
+
+There at Maastricht I saw fugitives crossing the frontier into Holland
+with all their worldly goods on their shoulders or in their hands, or
+with nothing at all, seeking hospitality of a little land which itself
+feels, though it is neutral, the painful stress and cost of the war.
+There, on the frontier, I was standing between Dutch soldiers and German
+soldiers, so near the Germans that I could almost have touched them, so
+near three German officers that their conversation as they saluted me
+reached my ears.
+
+I begin to understand what the sufferings and needs of Belgium are. They
+are such that the horror of it almost paralyzes expression. I met at
+Maastricht Belgians, representatives of municipalities, who said that
+they had food for only a fortnight longer. And what was the food they
+had? No meat, no vegetables, but only one-third of a soldier's rations
+of bread for each person per day. At Liege, as I write, there is food
+for only three days.
+
+What is it the people of Belgium ask for? They ask for bread and salt,
+no more, and it is not forthcoming. They do not ask for meat; they
+cannot get it. They have no fires for cooking, and they do not beg for
+petrol. Money is of little use to them, because there is no food to be
+bought with money.
+
+Belgium under ordinary circumstances imports five-sixths of the food she
+eats. The ordinary channels of sale and purchase are closed. They
+cannot buy and sell if they would. Representatives of Belgian
+communities told me at Maastricht yesterday that the crops were taken
+from their fields--the wheat and potatoes--and were sent into Germany.
+
+
+No Work, but Taxes Continue.
+
+There is no work. The factories are closed because they have not raw
+material, coal, or petrol, because they have no markets.
+
+And yet war taxes are falling with hideous pressure upon a people whose
+hands are empty, whose workshops are closed, whose fields are idle,
+whose cattle have been taken, or compulsorily purchased without value
+received.
+
+In Belgium itself the misery of the populace is greater than the misery
+of the Belgian fugitives in other countries, such as Holland, where
+there have come since the fall of Liege one and a half million of
+fugitives. To gauge what that misery in Belgium is, think of what even
+the fugitives suffer. I have seen in a room without fire, the walls
+damp, the floor without covering, not even straw, a family of nine women
+and eight children, one on an improvised bunk seriously ill. Their home
+in Belgium was leveled with the ground, the father killed in battle.
+
+Their food is coffee and bread for breakfast, potatoes for dinner, with
+salt--and in having the salt they were lucky--bread and coffee for
+supper. Insufficiently clothed, there by the North Sea, they watched the
+bleak hours pass, with nothing to do except cling together in a vain
+attempt to keep warm.
+
+Multiply this case by hundreds of thousands and you will have some hint
+of the people's sufferings.
+
+In a lighter on the River Maas at Rotterdam, without windows, without
+doors, with only an open hatchway from which a ladder descends, several
+hundred fugitives spend their nights and the best parts of their days in
+the iron hold, forever covered with moisture, leaky when rain comes,
+with the floor never dry, and pervasive with a perpetual smell like the
+smell of a cave which never gets the light of day. Here men, women, and
+children were huddled together in a promiscuous communion of misery,
+made infinitely more pathetic and heartrending because none complained.
+
+At Rosendaal, at Scheveningen, Eysden, and Flushing, at a dozen other
+places, these ghastly things are repeated in one form or another.
+Holland has sheltered hundreds of thousands, but she could not in a
+moment organize even adequate shelter, much less comforts.
+
+In Bergen-op-Zoom, where I write these words, there have come since the
+fall of Antwerp 300,000 hungry marchers, with no resources except what
+they carry with them. This little town of 15,000 people did its best to
+meet the terrible pressure, and its citizens went without bread
+themselves to feed the refugees. How can a small municipality suddenly
+deal with so vast a catastrophe? Yet slowly some sort of order was
+organized out of chaos, and when the Government was able to establish
+refugee camps through the military the worst conditions were moderated,
+and now, in tents and in vans on a fortunately situated piece of land,
+over 3,000 people live, so far as comforts are concerned, like Kaffirs
+in Karoo or aborigines in a camp in the back blocks of Australia. The
+tents are crammed with people, and life is reduced to its barest
+elements. Straw, boards, and a few blankets and dishes for rations--that
+constitutes the menage.
+
+Children are born in the hugger mugger of such conditions, but the good
+Holland citizens see that the children are cared for and that the babies
+have milk. Devoted priests teach the children, and the value of military
+organization illuminates the whole panoply of misery. Yet the best of
+the refugee camps would seem to American citizens like the dark and
+dreadful life of an underworld, in which is neither work, purpose, nor
+opportunity. It is a sight repugnant to civilization.
+
+The saddest, most heartrending thing I have ever seen has been the
+patience of every Belgian, whatever his state, I have met. Among the
+thousands of refugees I have seen in Holland, in the long stream that
+crossed the frontier at Maastricht and besieged the doors of the
+Belgian Consul while I was there, no man, no woman railed or declaimed
+against the horror of their situation. The pathos of lonely, staring,
+apathetic endurance is tragic beyond words. So grateful, so simply
+grateful, are they, every one, for whatever is done for them.
+
+
+None of the Refugees Begs.
+
+None begs, none asks for money, and yet on the faces of these frontier
+refugees I saw stark hunger, the weakness come of long weeks of famine.
+One man, one fortunate man from Verviers, told me he could purchase as
+much as 2s. 8d. worth of food for himself, his wife, and child for a
+week.
+
+Think of it, American citizens! Sixty-six cents' worth of food for a
+man, his wife, and child for a whole week, if he were permitted to
+purchase that much! Sixty-six cents! That is what an average American
+citizen pays for his dinner in his own home. He cannot get breakfast, he
+can only get half a breakfast, for that at the Waldorf or the Plaza in
+New York.
+
+This man was only allowed to purchase that much food if he could,
+because if he purchased more he would be taking from some one else, and
+they were living on rations for the week which would represent the food
+of an ordinary man for a day. A rich man can have no more than a poor
+man. It is a democracy of famine.
+
+There is enough food wasted in the average American household in one day
+to keep a Belgian for a fortnight in health and strength. They want in
+Belgium 300,000 tons of food a month. That is their normal requirement.
+The American Relief Committee is asking for 8,000 tons a month,
+one-quarter of the normal requirements, one-half of a soldier's rations
+for each Belgian. The American Committee needs $5,000,000 a month until
+next harvest. It is a huge sum, but it must be forthcoming.
+
+Of all the great powers of the world the United States is the only one
+not at war or in peril of war. Of all the foremost nations of the world
+the United States is the only one that can save Belgium from starvation
+if she will. She was the only nation that Germany would allow a foothold
+for humanity's and for Christ's sake in Belgium. Such an opportunity,
+such responsibility, no nation ever had before in the history of the
+world. Spain and Italy join with her, but the initiative and resources
+and organization are hers.
+
+Around Belgium is a ring of steel. Within that ring of steel are a
+disappearing and for ever disappearing population. Towns like
+Dendermonde, that were of 10,000 people, have now 4,000, and in
+Dendermonde 1,200 houses have fallen under the iron and fire of war.
+Into that vast graveyard and camp of the desolate only the United States
+enters with an adequate and responsible organization upon the mission of
+humanity.
+
+No such opportunity was ever given to a people, no such test ever came
+to a Christian people in all the records of time. Will the American
+Nation rise to the chance given to it to prove that its civilization is
+a real thing and that its acts measure up with its inherent and
+professed Christianity?
+
+I am a profound believer in the great-heartedness of the United States,
+and there is not an American of German origin who ought not gladly and
+freely give to the relief of people who, unless the world feeds them,
+must be the remnant of a nation; and the world in this case is the
+United States. She can give most.
+
+The price of one good meal a week for a family in an American home will
+keep a Belgian alive for a fortnight.
+
+Probably the United States has 18,000,000 homes. How many of them will
+deny themselves a meal for martyred Belgium? The mass of the American
+people do not need to deny themselves anything to give to Belgium. The
+whole standard of living on the American Continent, in the United States
+and Canada, is so much higher than the European standard that if they
+lowered the scale by one-tenth just for one six months the Belgium
+problem would be solved.
+
+I say to the American people that they cannot conceive what this strain
+upon the populations of Europe is at this moment, and, in the cruel
+grip of Winter, hundreds of thousands will agonize till death or relief
+comes. In Australia in drought times vast flocks of sheep go traveling
+with shepherds looking for food and water, and no flock ever comes back
+as it went forth. Not in flocks guided by shepherds, but lonely,
+hopeless units, the Belgian people take flight, looking for food and
+shelter, or remain paralyzed by the tragedy fallen upon them in their
+own land.
+
+Their sufferings are majestic in simple heroism and uncomplaining
+endurance. So majestic in proportion ought the relief to be. The Belgian
+people are wards of the world. In the circumstances the Belgian people
+are special wards of the one great country that is secure in its peace
+and that by its natural instincts of human sympathy and love of freedom
+is best suited to do the work that should be done for Belgium. If every
+millionaire would give a thousand, if every man with $100 a month would
+give $10, the American Committee for the Relief of Belgium, with its
+splendid organization, its unrivaled efficiency, through which flows a
+tide of human sympathy, would be able to report at the end of the war
+that a small nation in misfortune had been saved from famine and despair
+by a great people far away, who had responded to the call, "Come over
+and help us!"
+
+GILBERT PARKER.
+
+
+
+
+A CORRECTION.
+
+
+Under the head of "Russia's 'Little Brother,'" on Page 364 of this
+magazine history, in its issue of Dec. 26, 1914, appeared a statement
+taken from The New York Sun of Oct. 12, 1914, and attributed to George
+Bakhmeteff, Russian Ambassador at Washington. Our attention has been
+called to the following editorial paragraph printed by The Sun on Oct.
+14, embodying the Russian Ambassador's denial of its authenticity:
+
+     The Sun on Monday printed in good faith what it believed to be
+     an authorized statement of the views and sentiments of Mr.
+     George Bakhmeteff, Russian Ambassador to the United States.
+     Ambassador Bakhmeteff telegraphs to us from Washington as
+     follows:
+
+     "I most emphatically deny having spoken one single word to the
+     reporter who published an interview with me in your paper. I
+     have not even seen one, and must insist on your publishing
+     this very categorical and direct statement."
+
+     Of course, we publish the Ambassador's denial not less in
+     justice to our readers and to ourselves than to him, at the
+     same time expressing our extreme regret that The Sun should
+     have been led to believe that it was presenting the Russian
+     case as viewed by Mr. Bakhmeteff with his full acquiescence.
+
+We add our cordial regret to that of The Sun that this repudiated
+statement should have gained further circulation.--Editor.
+
+
+
+
+[English Cartoon]
+
+Certainly Not!
+
+
+[Illustration: _--From The Sketch, London._
+
+TURKEY, THE OFFICE BOY (to his master): Please, Sir, can I have a day
+off?]
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEW YORK TIMES CURRENT HISTORY
+OF THE EUROPEAN WAR, VOL. 1, JANUARY 9, 1915***
+
+
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