A world in ferment; interpretations of the war for a new world

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I Introduction i

II The Onrush of War n

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

Since August I, 1914, no American has been quite free to speak in public on the issues and the consequences of the war without bearing constantly in mind the attitude of the Government of the United States. That attitude, which began as neutrality and which on April 6, 1917 passed over into participation in the conflict, has in its various stages of development probably marked with substantial correctness the state of American public opinion in relation to the war. When one looks back, however, from participation to neutrality, he cannot help seeing how imperfectly, even from the very beginning, neutrality reflected the actual relations of the war to the present and the future of the people of the United States. Nevertheless, it takes time and events of a compelling character to affect the controlling opinion of a nation of more than one hundred millions whose traditions are of detachment from world politics in general and from European controversies in particular. It seems quite certain that the future historian will dwell with more emphasis upon the complete transformation which the war has effected in the feelings and policies of the people of the United States than upon the fact that it took nearly three years to effect that transformation. It may well be that the war would have been differently conducted and more quickly ended had the Government of the United States announced immediately on the first declaration of war that, as a co-signatory of the Hague Conventions, it would deem it a duty to protest against the violation by any belligerent of the Hague Conventions, of the laws and customs of civilized warfare, or of the rules of international law. Such a declaration would not have prevented the invasion of Belgium; that had been planned too long and was too essential a part of the contemplated attack to be so easily checked. But it might well have prevented some of the shocking outrages that followed in Belgium, in northern France, in Poland, in Serbia, and in Roumania, as well as have held in leash the dogs of submarine warfare. Whether this be true or not, such a declaration would have marked an epoch in the history of nations, for it would have pointed with the utmost energy and directness to law at a time when resort to force was being had on a scale hitherto unheard of in history.

As the war has proceeded, it has become so plain that even he who runs may read, that it is essentially a war for a new world. It is a war for a new international world, and a war for a new intranational world.

It requires no great gift of prophecy to foresee that the new international world that will almost certainly arise upon the ruins of this war will be one in which the nations of the earth will band themselves together more closely than ever before, not to enforce peace but to secure peace. The dreams of seers and the longcherished projects of statesmen are likely soon to be fulfilled in many of their essential parts. This appears to be a safe prediction, for the reason that there seems to be no other way in which human foresight and human capacity can make highly improbable the recurrence of any such holocaust as is now consuming civilization. Some suggestions as to ways and means by which this new international world may be achieved and established are offered in the pages that follow.

The war is also a war for a new intranational world. The political developments in Great Britain, in France, and in the United States, to say nothing of the stupendous revolution in Russia, indicate the character of this new world. It will be a world in which democracy will be more secure, more effective, more just and better established. It is to be hoped that it will be a world in which there will be a larger measure of co-operation between government and private enterprise than has heretofore been usual, but in which government will not stifle and suppress private enterprise with its clumsy and costly hand. It will not be a world from which vagaries and vice can be excluded, because vagaries and vice accompany humanity on its progress; but there is every reason to believe that it will be a world purified and strengthened by the tremendous trials to which the world of to-day is being subjected.

The new world will be one in which international policies will play a greatly increased part. Perhaps the greatest enemy of true internationalism is false internationalism. Movements to advance international interdependence and international understanding are of two distinct kinds. One of these is both misleading and harmful, and by its methods and processes would make the achievement of its declared aim quite impossible. The other is wise and statesmanlike, and follows the path by which such progress as has already been made has been achieved. Of these two methods of promoting what may be called internationalism the former would proceed by denouncing all nationalistic and patriotic feeling whatsoever in order to exalt the supernational brotherhood of man, and to lay stress upon a world-wide community without national ties or national ambitions. To use a figure drawn from chemistry, this might be called colloidal internationalism. It is hopelessly impractical as an ideal, and hopelessly unsound and unstable as a public policy, whether for individuals or for nations. The second method of promoting internationalism would strengthen and develop nationalistic and patriotic sentiments and aims, in order that when so strengthened they may be used without impairment or weakening as elements in a larger human undertaking of which each nation should be an independent and integral part. Pursuing the same figure, this might be called crystalline internationalism. The strength and beauty of the whole international structure when complete would then depend upon and reflect the strength and beauty of each of its national elements. The colloidal internationalism of the type of person who insists that he knows no country but humanity, and that he is a citizen of no state but only of the world, is hopeless nonsense. It prevents the development of true internationalism by affronting common sense.

It is hoped that the new world will also come to an understanding with itself about peace. It will perhaps understand, what some excellent persons are not now able to see, that peace is not an ideal at all; it is a state attendant upon the achievement of an ideal. The ideal itself is human liberty, justice, and the honorable conduct of an orderly and humane society. Given this, a durable peace follows naturally as a matter of course. Without this, there is no peace, but only a rule of force until liberty and justice revolt against it in search of peace. It is Tacitus who records the British chieftain Calgacus as saying of the invading Romans of his day, Solitudinem faciunt, pacem

INTRODUCTION g

appellant. If Imperium be read for Solitudinem, this pregnant sentence is a true description of the political philosophy and the military policy of the twentieth century Teutons.

To regard peace as an end in itself and as something to be achieved at all hazards, is in effect to labor for the indefinite continuance of war. The new world of which we are in search will insist upon justice, liberty, and righteousness, as its foundation, and it will welcome durable peace as their accustomed companion and friend.

Nicholas Murray Butler.

Columbia University

In the City of New York

II

An Address at the Opening of the 161st Academic Year of Columbia University, September 23, 1914

Our usual interests however great, our usual problems however pressing, all seem petty and insignificant in view of what has befallen the world while we were seeking rest and refreshment in the summer holiday. The murky clouds of cruel, relentless war, lit by the lightning flash of great guns and made more terrible by the thunderous booming of cannon, hang over the European countries that we know and love so well. The great scholars that we would have so gladly welcomed here, have not come to us. They are killing and being killed across the sea. Friends and colleagues whom we honor are filled with hate toward each other, and toward each other's countrymen. The words that oftenest come to our lips, the ideals that we cherish and pursue, the progress that we fancied we were making, seem not to exist. Mankind is back in the primeval forest, with the elemental brute passions finding a truly fiendish expression. The only apparent use of science is to enable men to kill other men more i 4 THE ONRUSH OF WAR

quickly and in greater numbers. The only apparent service of philosophy is to make the worse appear the better reason. The only apparent evidence of the existence of religion is the fact that divergent and impious appeals to a palpably pagan God, have led him, in perplexed distress, to turn over the affairs of Europe to an active and singularly accomplished devil.

What are we to think ? Is science a sham ? Is philosophy a pretense ? Is religion a mere rumor ? Is the great international structure of friendship, good will, and scholarly co-operation upon which this University and many of its members have worked so long, so faithfully, and apparently with so much success, only an illusion ? Are the long and devoted labors of scholars and of statesmen to enthrone Justice in the place of Brute Force in the world, all without effect ? Are Lowell's lines true —

" Right forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne"?

The answer is No; a thousand times, No !

Despite all appearances, even in this wicked and unprovoked assault on the liberties of peace-loving men and nations which is decimating the flower of European manhood, multiplying by the million the widows, the orphans, the suffering, and the distressed, wrecking the commercial and industrial progress of a century, impoverishing alike the belligerents and the neutrals, closing the exchanges from New York to Buenos Aires, ruining the cotton-planter of the South as well as the copper-miner of the Far West, loosing in the frenzied combatants the primitive instincts of savagery and lust — even here there is to be found something on which this University may continue to build the temple of wisdom, of justice, and of true civilization to which its hand was laid when George II was king, when Louis XV still reigned in France, and when Frederick the Great was at the height of his fame in Prussia.

We are a neutral nation, and the President has enjoined us all to observe neutrality in speech and in deed; but neutrality is not indifference. Ours is not the neutrality of the casual passer-by who views with amused carelessness a fight between two street rowdies; it is the neutrality of the just judge who aims, without passion and without prejudice, to render judgment on the proved facts. We cannot if we would refrain from passing judgment upon the conduct of men, whether singly or in nations, and we should not attempt to do so.

In the first place, the moral judgment of the American people as to the aggressors in this war and as to the several steps in the declaration and conduct of it, is clear, calm, and practically unanimous. There is no beating of drums and blowing of bugles, but rather a sad pain and grief that our kin across the sea, owing whatever allegiance and speaking whatever tongue, have been led to engage in public murder and destruction on the most stupendous scale recorded in history. This of itself proves that the education of public opinion has proceeded far, and, whatever he who extols war for its own sake may say, it shows that the heart of the American people is sound and its head well-informed. The attitude of the American press is worthy of the highest praise; in some notable instances the very high-water mark of dignity and of power has been reached. When the war-clouds have lifted, I believe that the moral judgment of the American people as to the responsibility for this war will

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prove to be that of the sober-minded and fairminded men in every country of Europe.

Next, it must not be forgotten that this war was made primarily by kings and by cabinets; it was not decreed by peoples. We can all testify that the statement that kings and cabinets were forced into the war by public sentiment is absolutely untrue so far at least as several of the belligerent nations are concerned. Certainly in not more than two cases were the chosen representatives of the people consulted at all. A tiny minority in each of several countries whose conduct was hostile and provoked hostilities may have desired war, but the militarist spirit was singularly lacking among the masses of the population in Germany, in Austria-Hungary, and in Russia. There the people generally have simply accepted with grim resignation and reluctant enthusiasm the conflict which in each case they are taught to believe has been forced on them by another's aggression.

The most significant statement that I heard in Europe was made to me on the third day of August last by a German-speaking railway servant, a grizzled veteran of the Franco-Prussian War. In reply to my question as to whether he would have to go to the front, the old man said: "No; I am too old. I am seventy-two. But my four boys went yesterday, God help them ! and I hate to have them go. For, sir," he added in a lowered voice, "this is not a peopled war; it is a kings' war, and when it is over there may not be so many kings."

Again, a final end has now been put to the contention, always made with more emphasis than reasonableness, that huge armaments are themselves an insurance against war and an aid in maintaining peace. This argument was invented by those who really believe in war and in armaments as ends in themselves. Sundry politicians, many newspapers, and not a few good people who are proud to have their thinking done for them, accepted this dictum as a profound political truth. Its falsity is now plain to every one. Guns and bullets and armor are not made to take the place of postage stamps and books and laboratories and other instruments of civilization and of peace; they are made to kill people. Their only other possible use is to excite terror, and terror, national or international, is not a safe foundation on which to attempt to build a civilization.

It seems pretty clear that when the present huge supplies of guns and ammunition are used up in the contest now going on, no civilized people will ever again permit its government to enter into a competitive armament race. The time may not be so very far distant when to be the first moral power in the world will be a considerably greater distinction than to be the first military power or the first naval power, and when the several nations will band themselves together to repress the rule of force and to advance the rule of law. How any one, not a fit subject for a madhouse, can find in the awful events now happening in Europe a reason for asking the United States to desist from its attempts to promote a new international order in the world, is to me wholly inconceivable.

Another great gain is to be found in the fact that no one is willing to be responsible for this war. Every combatant alleges that he is on the defensive, and summons his fellow countrymen who are scientists and philosophers to find some way to prove it. The old claim that war was a part of the moral order, a God-given instrument for the spreading of enlightenment, and the only real training-school for the manly virtues, is just now in a state of eclipse. Each one of the several belligerent nations insists that it — and its government — are devoted friends of peace, and that it is at war only because war was forced upon it by the acts of some one else. As to who that some one else is, it has not yet been possible to get a unanimous agreement. What we do know is that no one steps forward to claim credit for the war or to ask a vote of thanks or a decoration for having forced it upon Europe and upon the world. Everybody concerned is ashamed of it and apologetic for it.

It may well be, moreover, that the desperately practical and direct education which this war is already affording will hasten very much the coming of the day when the close economic and intellectual interdependence of the nations will assert itself more emphatically and more successfully against national chauvinism and the preposterous tyranny of those who worship at the shrine of militarism. The armed peace which preceded this war and led directly to it, was in some respects worse than war itself; for it had many of the evils of war without war's educational advantages. We are not likely to return again to that form of wickedness and folly, unless perchance the continent of Europe is able to produce another generation of public men as self-centred and of as narrow a vision as those who have generally been in control of public policy there for forty years past. The whole card-house of alliances and ententes, together with the balance of power theory, has come tumbling heavily to the ground. Something far different and much more rational will arise in its stead. In the Europe of to-morrow there will be no place for secret treaties and understandings, for huge systems of armed camps and limitless navies, for wide-spread international enmity and treachery, for carefully stimulated race and religious hatred, or for wars made on the sole responsibility of monarchs and of ministers. Moral, social, and political progress will refuse longer to pay the crushing tolls which a conventional diplomacy and an unenlightened statesmanship have demanded of them. It is not the Slav or the Teuton, the Latin or the Briton, the Oriental or the American, who is the enemy of civilization and of culture. Militarism, there is the enemy!

The first notable victim of the Great War was the eloquent and accomplished French parliamentarian, M. Jaures. He was murdered by a war-crazed fanatic. In the course of a long and intimate conversation with M. Jaures shortly before his tragic death, he dwelt much on the part that America could play in binding the nations of Europe together. He spoke of the success of the policies that had been worked out here to make the United States and Germany and the United States and France better known to each other, and he thought that through the agency of the United States it might eventually be practicable to draw Germany and France together in real trust and friendship. As we parted, his last words to me were: "Do not leave off trying. No matter what the difficulties are, do not leave off trying." To-day the words of this great socialist leader of men seem like a voice from beyond the grave. They are true. We must not leave off trying.

When exhaustion, physical and economic, brings this war to an end, as I believe it must, the task of America and Americans will be heavy and responsible. It will be for us to bind up the war's wounds, to soften the war's animosities, and to lead the way in the colossal work of reconstruction that must follow. Then if our heads are clear, our hearts strong, and our aims unselfish — and if our nation continues to show that it means always to keep its own plighted word — we may gain new honor and imperishable fame for our country. We may yet live to see our great policies of peace, of freedom from entangling alliances, of a world concert instead of a continental balance of power, of an international judiciary and an international police, of international co-operation instead of international suspicion, generally assented to, and, as a result, the world's resources set free to improve the lot of peoples, to advance science and scholarship, and to raise humanity to a level yet unheard of. Here lies the path of national glory for us, and here is the call to action in the near future.

It is often darkest just before the dawn, and the hope of mankind may lie in a direction other than that Europe toward which we are now looking so anxiously. Arthur Hugh Clough's noble verses are an inspiration to us at this hour:

" Say not the struggle naught availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

And as things have been they remain.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light;

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly! But westward, look, the land is bright!"

Ill

An Interview with Edward Marshall printed in the New York Times, October 18, 191 4

What will be in substance a United States of Europe, a more or less formal federation of the self-governing countries of Europe, may be the outcome of the demonstrated failure of the existing national system to adjust government to the growth of civilization. The ending of the present war may see the rising of the sun of democracy to light a new day of freedom even for those of our transatlantic neighbors who now seem most remote from it.

Thinking men in all the contending nations are beginning seriously to consider such a contingency, to argue for it or against it; in other words, to regard it as an undoubted possibility.

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 lessons that they teach. If we learn rightly we may 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.

Prophecy is always hazardous, and never more so than now, but it seems clear that the world is at the crossroads and that 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, up hill or down, after the war is over, may well depend upon the course this nation shall now 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 the war.

The first of these is the fact that race antagonisms tend to 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 Slavonic 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 of climate, but that they are the outgrowth chiefly 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 hatred and an excuse for war.

If human beings are given the chance they will make the most of themselves, and by living happily — which means living in justice and at peace — they will avoid conflict. The hyphen tends to disappear from American terminology. The German-American, the Italo- 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

So THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE

heart by the leaders of opinion in Europe when this war ends.

The second thing which we may with propriety press 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 as a basis of unity in 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 w T ould 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. Why is not this principle of federation, not in all its details but in its fundamentals, applicable to a group of European States that wish to achieve a common purpose ?

There might readily 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 of 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 so flexible and so admirable a plan of government that it was soon apparent that each State could retain its identity, form its own ideals and shape its own progress, and still remain a loyal part of the whole nation; that each State could make a place for itself in the new federation 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 feel 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 it 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 there federation has been notably successful. The idea of federation is perfectly familiar to German publicists.

It is familiar, also, to the English, and has lately been pressed 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. 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 expound the theory and to illustrate the practice. This may be the greatest work which America will have to do at the end of this war.

The cataclysm is so awful that it is quite within the bounds of truth to say that the world can never again be the same as it was. 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 could possibly 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 in the process of general reconstruction which will doubtless follow.

All the talk of which so much is heard 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 so bound and confined by tyranny as to force an explosion, or so deluded by militarism and national chauvinism as to become a public danger. It is not races but wrong ideas that are dangerous.