OPENING ADDRESS

AT THE

LAKE MOHONK CONFERENCE

ON
INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION
ge May 19, 1909

BY

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER

President of Columbia University, President of the American Branch
of the Association for International Conciliation

Second Thousand
SK
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B48
/904
OPENING ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDING OFFICER
AT THE

LAKE MOHONK CONFERENCE ON
INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION

1909

Two years ago when I last had the honor of addressing this
Conference as its presiding officer, we were all looking forward
with confidence and high anticipation to the second Hague
Conference, then soon to assemble. We were much concerned
with the program of business to be laid before that Conference,
and with the forms of agreement or declaration which we hoped
would there be decided upon. In particular, emphasis was laid
upon the desire, widely entertained by right thinking men, that
the second Hague Conference should take the steps necessary to
build up a truly judicial international tribunal, by the side of or
in succession to the semi-diplomatic tribunal which had been the
fruit of the first conference at the Hague; and that the Conference
should, itself, provide for its reassembling at stated intervals
thereafter, without waiting for the specific call or invitation of
any monarch or national executive. The history of the second
Hague Conference is still fresh in our minds. Although not
everything was done that we had hoped for, yet when the cloud
of discussion lifted, we could plainly see that long steps in
advance had been taken, and that there was coming to be a more
fundamental and far-reaching agreement among the nations as to
what was wise and practicable in the steady substitution of the
rule of justice for the rule of force among men.

To-day, however, the most optimistic observer of the move-
ment of public opinion in the world, and the most stoutly
convinced advocate of international justice, must confess him-
self perplexed, if not amazed, by some of the striking phenomena
which meet his view. Expenditure for naval armaments is
everywhere growing by leaps and bounds.

3
Edmund Burke said that he did not know the method of
drawing up an indictment against a whole people; but perhaps it
may be easier to detect some of the signs of emotional insanity
than to draw an indictment for crime. The storm center of the
world’s weather to-day is to be found in the condition of mind
of a large portion of the English people. The nation which, for
generations, has contributed so powerfully to the world’s progress
in all that relates to the spread of the rule of law, to the peace-
ful development of commerce and industry, to the advance-
ment of letters and science, and to the spread of humanitarian
ideas, appears to be possessed for the moment—it can only be
for the moment—with the evil spirit of militarism. It is hard to
reconcile the excited and exaggerated utterances of responsible
statesmen in Parliament and on the platform; the loud beating
of drums and the sounding of alarums in the public press, even
in that portion of it most given to sobriety of judgment; and the
flocking of the populace to view a tawdry and highly sensational
drama of less than third-rate importance for the sake of its con-
tribution to their mental obsession by hobgoblins and the ghosts
of national enemies and invaders, with the traditional tempera-
ment of a nation that has acclaimed the work of Howard,
Wilberforce and Shaftesbury, whose public life was so long
dominated by the lofty personality of William Ewart Gladstone,
and of which the real heroes to-day are the John Milton and
the Charles Darwin whose anniversaries are just now celebrated
with so much sincerity and genuine appreciation.

What has happened? If an opinion may be ventured by an
observer whose friendliness amounts to real affection, and who is
in high degree jealous of the repute of the English people and
of their place in the van of the world’s civilization, it is that
this lamentable outburst is attendant upon a readjustment of
relative position and importance among the nations of the earth,
due to economic and intellectual causes, which readjustment is
interpreted in England, unconsciously of course, in terms of
the politics of the first Napoleon rather than in terms of the
politics of the industrial and intelligent democracies of the
twentieth century. Germany is steadily gaining in importance
in the world, and England is in turn losing some of her long-
standing relative primacy. The causes are easy to discover, and
are in no just sense provocative of war or strife. Indeed, it is
highly probable that war, if it should come with all its awful

4
consequences, would only hasten the change it was entered upon
to prevent.

It must not be forgotten that while there has long existed in
Europe a German people, yet the German nation as such is a
creation of very recent date. With the substantial completion
of German political unity after the Franco-Prussian war, there
began an internal development in Germany even more significant
and more far-reaching in its effects than that which was called
into existence by the trumpet voice of Fichte, after the disastrous
defeat of the Prussian army by Napoleon at Jena, and guided by
the hands of Stein and Hardenberg. This later development has
been fundamentally economic and educational in character, and
has been directed with great skill toward the development of the
nation’s foreign commerce, the husbanding of its own natural
resources, and the comfort and health of the masses of its rapidly
growing population.

Within a short generation the pressure of German competi-
tion has been severely felt in the trade and commerce of every
part of the world. The two most splendid fleets engaged in the
Atlantic carrying trade fly the German flag. Along either coast
of South America, in the waters of China and Japan, in the
ports of the Mediterranean and on the trade routes to India and
Australia, the German flag has become almost as familiar as the
English. The intensive application of the discoveries of
theoretical science to industrial processes has made Germany, in
a sense, the world’s chief teacher in its great international school
of industry and commerce. With this over-sea trade expansion
has gone the building of a German navy. It appears to be
the building of this navy which has so excited many of the
English people. For the moment we are not treated to the
‘well-worn paradox that the larger a nation’s navy the less
likely it is to be used in combat and the more certain is the
peace of the world. The old Adam asserts himself long enough
to complain, in this case at least, that if a navy is building in
Germany it must be intended for offensive use; and against
whom could the Germans possibly intend to use a navy except
against England? Their neighbors, the French and the Russians,
they could readily, and with less risk, overrun with their great
army. The United States is too far away to enter into the
problem as a factor of any real importance. Therefore, the
inference is drawn that the navy must be intended for an attack

5
upon England. It is worth while noting that, on this theory,
the German navy now building appears to be the first of modern
navies intended for military uses. It alone of all the world’s
navies, however large, however costly, is not a messenger of
peace!

One must needs ask, then, what reason is to be found in the
nature of the German people, in the declarations of their re-
sponsible rulers, or in the political relations between Germany
and any other nation, for the belief that the German navy alone,
among all modern navies, is building for a warlike purpose?
Those of us who feel that the business of navy-building is being
greatly overdone, and that it cannot for a moment be reconciled
with sound public policy, or with the increasingly insistent
demand for social improvements and reforms, may well wish
that the German naval program were much more restricted than
itis. But, waiving that point for the moment, what ground is
there for the suspicion which is so widespread in England against
Germany, and for the imputation to Germany of evil intentions
toward England? Speaking for myself, and making full use of
such opportunities for accurate information as I have had, I
say with the utmost emphasis and with entire sincerity that I do
not believe there is any ground whatever for those suspicions or
for those imputations. Nor, what is much more important, has
adequate ground for those suspicions and imputations been given
by any responsible person.

Are we to believe, for example, that the whole public life in
both Germany and England, is part of an opera bouffe, and that
all the public declarations of responsible leaders of opinion are
meaningless or untrue? Are the increasingly numerous inter-
national visits of municipal officials, of clergymen, of teachers,
of trades unionists, of newspaper men, as well as the cordial and
intimate reception given them by their hosts, all a sham and a
pretense? Have all these men daggers in their hands and subtle
poisons in their pockets? Are we to assume that there is no
truth or frankness or decency left in the world? Are nations
in the twentieth century, and nations that represent the most
in modern civilization at that, so lost to shame that they fall
upon each other’s necks and grasp each other’s hands and swear
eternal fealty as conditions precedent to making an unannounced
attack upon each other during a fog? Even the public morality
of the sixteenth century would have revolted at that. The whole

6
idea is too preposterous for words, and it is the duty of the
thoughtful and sincere friends of the English people, in this
country and in every country, to use every effort to bring them
to see the unreasonableness, to use no stronger term, of the
attitude toward Germany which they are at present made to
assume.

But, says the objector, England is an island nation. Unless
she commands the sea absolutely her national existence is in
danger; any strong navy in hands that may become unfriendly
threatens her safety. Therefore she is justified in being sus-
picious of any nation that builds a big navy. That formula has
been repeated so often that almost everybody believes it. There
was a time when it was probably and within limits true. One
cannot but wonder, however, whether it is true any longer. In
the first place, national existence does not now depend upon
military and naval force. Italy is safe; so are Holland and
Portugal, Mexico and Canada. Then, the possibilities of aerial
navigation alone, with the resulting power of attacking a popu-
lation or a fleet huddled beneath a cloud of monsters travelling
through the air and willing to risk their own existence and the
lives of their occupants for the opportunity to approach near
enough to enable a vital injury to be inflicted upon another
people, to say nothing of the enginery of electricity, have
changed the significance of the word ‘‘island.” Although an
island remains, as heretofore, a body of land entirely surrounded
by water, yet that surrounding water is no longer to be the only
avenue of approach to it, its possessions and its inhabitants.
Even if we speak in the most approved language of militarism
itself, it is apparent that a fleet a mile wide will not long pro-
tect England from attack or invasion, or from starvation, if the
attacking or invading party is in command of the full resources
of modern science and modern industry. But if justice be
substituted for force, England will always be safe; her achieve-
ments for the past thousand years have made that certain.

The greatest present obstacle to the limitation of the arma-
ments under the weight of which the world is staggering toward
bankruptcy; the greatest obstacle to carrying forward those
social and economic reforms for which every nation is crying out,
that its population may be better housed, the public health more
completely protected, and the burden of unemployment lifted
from the backs of the wage-earning classes, appears to many to be

7
the insistence by England on what it calls the two-power naval
standard. So long as the British Empire circles the globe and so
long as its ships and its goods are to be found in every port, the
British navy will, by common consent, be expected to be much
larger and more powerful than that of any other nation. Neither
in France nor in Germany nor in Japan nor in America would
that proposition be disputed. Even the two-power standard might
not bring poverty and distress and wasteful expenditure to other
nations if naval armaments were limited by agreement or were
diminishing in strength. But, insisted upon in an era of rapidly
increasing armaments, in this day of Dreadnoughis, the two-power
standard leads, and must inevitably lead, to huge programs
of naval construction in every nation where the patriotism and
good sense of the people do not put a stop to this modern form
of madness. The practical sense of the world is against it; only
so-called expert theories are on its side.

Under the prodding of alarmists in Parliament and the press,
a Liberal ministry has been compelled to say that it would
propose and support measures for naval aggrandizement and
expenditure based upon the principle that the fighting strength
of the British navy must be kept always one-tenth greater than
the sum total of the fighting strength of the two next most pow-
erful navies in the world. At first it was even proposed to
include the navy of the United States in making this computation.
Later that position was fortunately retreated from. But it will
be observed that in computing the so-called two-power standard,
the English jingoes count as contingent enemies the French and
the Japanese, with both of whom their nation is in closest
alliance, and also the Russians, with whom the English are now
on terms of cordial friendship. In other words, unless all
such treaties of alliance and comity are a fraud and a sham,
these nations at least should be omitted from the reckoning.
This would leave no important navy save that of Germany to be
counted in possible opposition. For this reason, it is just now
alike the interest and the highest opportunity for service of
America and of the world to bring about the substitution of
cordial friendship between England and Germany for the suspicion
and distrust which so widely prevail. When this is done, a long
step toward an international agreement for the limitation of
armaments will have been taken; new progress can then be made
in the organization of the world on those very principles for

8
which the English themselves have time-long stood, and for
whose development and application they have made such stu-
pendous sacrifices and performed such herculean service.

If America were substituted for England, it would be difficult
to see how any responsible statesman who had read the majority
and minority reports recently laid before Parliament by the Poor
Law Commission, could for one moment turn aside from the
stern duty of national protection against economic, educational
and social evils at home, to follow the will-o’-the-wisp of national
protection against a non-existent foreign enemy. England to-
day, in her own interest, needs to know Germany better; to
learn from Germany, to study with care her schools and univer-
sities, her system of workingman’s insurance, of old age pen-
sions, of accident insurance, of sanitary and tenement house
inspection and reform, and all her other great social undertakings,
rather than to spend time and energy and an impoverished
people’s money in the vain task of preparing, by monumental
expenditure and waste, to meet a condition of international
enmity which has only an imaginary existence. It is the plain
duty of the friends of both England and Germany—and what
right-minded man is not the warm friend and admirer of both
these splendid peoples—to exert every possible influence to
promote a better understanding of each of these peoples by the
other, a fuller appreciation of the services of each to modern
civilization, and to point out the folly, not to speak of the wick-
edness, of permitting the seeds of discord to be sown between
them by any element in the population of either.

I like to think that the real England and the real Germany
found voice on the occasion of a charming incident which it was
my privilege to witness in September of last year. At the close of
the impressive meeting of the Interparliamentary Union, held in
Berlin, the German Imperial Chancellor offered the gracious and
bountiful hospitality of his official residence to the hundreds of
representatives of foreign parliamentary bodies then gathered in
the German capital. Standing under the spreading trees of his
own great gardens, surrounded by the leaders of German scholar-
ship and of German political thought, Prince von Bilow was
approached by more than two score members of the British Par-
liament, with Lord Weardale at their head. In a few impressive,
eloquent and low-spoken sentences Lord Weardale expressed to
the Chancellor what he believed to be the real feeling of

9
England toward Germany, and what he felt should be the real
relationship to exist between the two governments and the two
peoples. In words equally cordial and quite as eloquent, Prince
von Biilow responded to Lord Weardale with complete sympathy
and without reserve. The incident made a deep impression upon
the small group who witnessed it. It was over in a few minutes.
It received no record in the public press, but in my memory it
remains as a weighty, and I hope as a final, refutation of the
widespread impression that England and Germany are at bottom
hostile, and are drifting inevitably toward the maelstrom of an
armed conflict. What could more surely lead to conviction of
high crimes and misdemeanors at the bar of history than for
two culture-peoples, with political and intellectual traditions in
their entirety unequaled in the world’s history, in this twentieth
century to tear each other to pieces like infuriated gladiators in
a bloody arena? The very thought is revolting, and the mere
suggestion of it ought to dismay the civilized world.

The aim of all rational and practicable activity for the per-
manent establishment of the world’s peace, and for the promotion
of justice, is and must always be the education of the world’s
public opinion. Governments, however popular and however
powerful, have ceased to dominate; everywhere public opinion
dominates governments. As never before, public opinion is con-
cerning itself with the solution of grave economic and social
questions which must be solved aright if the great masses of the
world’s population are to share comfort and happiness. A
nation’s credit means the general belief in its ability to pay in
the future. That nation which persistently turns away from the
consideration of those economic and social questions upon which
the productive power of its population must in last resort
depend, limits and eventually destroys its own credit. That
nation which insists, in response to cries more or less inarticulate
and to formulas more or less outworn, upon spending the treasure
taken from its population in taxes upon useless and: wasteful
armaments, hastens its day of doom, for it impairs its credit or
ultimate borrowing capacity in a double way. It not only
expends unproductively and wastefully vast sums of the nation’s
taxes, but it substitutes this unproductive and wasteful expendi-
ture for an expenditure of equal amount, which might well be
both productive and uplifting. The alternative to press upon

Io
the attention of mankind is that of huge armaments or social and
economic improvement. The world cannot have both. There
is a limit to man’s capacity to yield up taxes for public use.
Economic consumption is now heavily taxed everywhere.
Accumulated wealth is being sought out in its hiding places, and
is constantly being loaded with a heavier burden. All this cannot
go on forever. The world must choose between pinning its
faith to the symbols of a splendid barbarism and devoting its
energies to the tasks of an enlightened civilization.

Despite everything, the political organization of the world in
the interest of peace and justice proceeds apace. The move-
ment is as sure as that of an Alpine glacier, and it has now
become much more easily perceptible.

There is to be established at the Hague beyond any ques-
tion, either by the next Hague Conference or before it con-
venes by the leading nations of the world, acting along the lines
of the principles adopted at the second Hague Conference two
years ago, a high court of international justice. It is as clearly
indicated as anything can be that that court is to become the
supreme court of the nations of the world.

The Interparliamentary Union, which has within a few weeks
adopted a permanent form of organization, and chosen a per-
manent secretary, whose headquarters are to be in the Peace
Palace at the Hague itself—an occurrence of the greatest public
importance which has, to my knowledge, received absolutely no
mention in the press—now attracts to its membership representa-
tives of almost every parliamentary body in existence. At the
last meeting of the Interparliamentary Union, held in Berlin, the
Parliament of Japan, the Russian Duma, and the newly organ-
ized Turkish Parliament, were all represented. By their side sat
impressive delegations from the Parliaments of England, of
France, of Germany, of Austria-Hungary, of Italy, of Belgium,
of the Netherlands, and of the Scandinavian nations, as well as
eight or ten representatives of the American Congress. In this
Interparliamentary Union, which has now passed through its
preliminary or experimental stage, lies the germ of a coming
federation of the world’s legislatures which will be estab-
lished in the near future, and whose powers and functions,
if not precisely defined at first, will grow naturally from
consultative to that authority of which wisdom and justice can

Il
never be divested. Each year that the representatives of a
national parliament sit side by side with the representatives of
the parliaments of other nations, look their colleagues in the
face and discuss with them freely and frankly important matters
of international concern, it will become more difficult for them
to go back and vote a declaration of war against the men from
whose consultation room they have but just come. Among
honest men, familiarity breeds confidence, not contempt.

Where, then, in this coming political organization of the
world, is the international executive power to be found?
Granting that we have at the Hague an international court;
granting that we have sitting, now at one national capital and
now at another, what may be called a consultative international
parliament, in what direction is the executive authority to be
looked for? The answer to this vitally important question has
been indicated by no less an authority than Senator Root, in his
address before the American Society of International Law, more
than a year ago. Mr. Root then referred to the fact that because
there is an apparent absence of sanction for the enforcement of
the rules of international law, great authorities have denied that
those rules are entitled to be classed as law at all. He pointed
out that this apparent inability to execute in the field of interna-
tional politics a rule agreed upon as law, seems to many minds
to render quite futile the further discussion of the political organ-
ization of the world. Mr. Root, however, had too practical as
well as too profound a mind to rest content with any such lame
and impotent conclusion. He went on to show, as he readily
could, that nations day by day yield to arguments which have no
compulsion behind them, and that as a result of such argument
they are constantly changing policies, modifying conduct and
offering redress for injuries. Why is this? Because, as Mr. Root
pointed out, the public opinion of the world is the true interna-
tional executive. No law, not even municipal law, can long be
effective without a supporting public opinion. It may take its
place upon the statute book, all constitutional and legislative
requirements having been carefully complied with; yet it may
and does remain a dead letter unless public opinion cares
enough about it, believes enough in it, to vitalize it and to make
it real.

In this same direction lies the highest hope of civilization.
What the world’s public opinion demands of nations or of

12
international conferences, it will get. What the world’s public
Opinion is determined to enforce, will be enforced. The
occasional brawler and disturber of the peace in international life
will one day be treated as is the occasional brawler and disturber
of the peace in the streets of a great city. The aim of this Con-
ference, and of every gathering of like character, must insistently
and persistently be the education of the public opinion of the
civilized world.

The world is being politically organized while we are talking
about it, and wondering how it is to be done and when it is to
come to pass. Little by little the steps are taken, now in the
formulation of a treaty, now in the instructions given to repre-
sentatives at an international conference, now in the new state
of mind brought about by the participation in international
gatherings and the closer study of international problems, until
one day the world will be surprised to find how far it has
travelled by these successive short steps. We need not look for
any great revolutionary or evolutionary movement that will come
suddenly. A revolutionary movement would not be desirable,
and evolutionary movements do not come in that way. Slowly,
here a little, there a little, line upon line, and precept upon
precept, will the high ethical and political ideals of civilized man
assert themselves and take on such forms as may be necessary to
their fullest accomplishment.

We Americans have a peculiar responsibility toward the
political organization of the world. Whether we recognize it or
not we are universally looked to, if not to lead in this undertak-
ing, at least to contribute powerfully toward it. Our professions
and our principles are in accord with the highest hopes of man-
kind. We owe it to ourselves, to our reputation and to our
influence, that we do not by our conduct belie those principles
and those professions; that we do not permit selfish interests to
stir up among us international strife and ill-feeling; that we do
not permit the noisy boisterousness of irresponsible youth, how-
ever old in years or however high in place, to lead us into
extravagant expenditure for armies and navies; and that, most of
all, we shall cultivate at home and in our every relation, national
and international, that spirit of justice which we urge so valiantly
upon others. Si vis pacem, para pacem!

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Tin”