Gopyiight}!". COPYRIGHT DEPOSm ^P Charles W, CUat THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE. UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION. CHARLES ELIOT, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT, HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK THE EOAD TOWAKD PEACE THE ROAD TOWAED PEACE A CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF THE CAUSES OF THE EUROPEAN WAR AND OF THE MEANS OF PREVENTING WAR IN THE FUTURE BY CHARLES W. ELIOT BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 1915 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY CHARLES W. KLIOT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published April jqis APR 19 1915 ©CI,.A398422 PREFACE For more than eight years past my mind has turned from time to time to the study of the causes of war, and of the means of preventing war. The first time I discussed in public the means of preventing war was at a meeting of the Canadian Club of Ottawa, on the 23d of February, 1907. The speech I made there is the first chapter in the present volume. In May of the same year, I took part in the discussions at the Lake Mohonk Conference on Interna- tional Arbitration ; and two short speeches which I made then form the second chapter of this volume. At the Lake Mohonk Conference of 1910, I read a paper on " The Fears which cause Increasing Armaments," which appears here as the third chapter. In 1911-12, I went round the world as an envoy of the Trustees of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to " procure material for a Report to the Trustees, through the Division of Intercourse and Education, as to what activities may wisely and helpfully be planned in and for the Asiatic countries, that will advance the cause of peace vi PREFACE and international good-will." In the summer of 1913, I presented to the Trustees a rather full Report of my observations and reflections, ac- companied by a considerable number of sup- porting documents. Selected pages from that Report constitute the fourth chapter. The next three chapters consist each of a letter on the War written to the J^ew York Times. Chapter VIII is an address to the Business Women's Club of Boston on " America's Duty in Regard to the European War." The ninth chapter is a letter to the I^ew York Times on "The Sources and the Outcome of the War." Be- tween November 24 and December 14, I ex- changed letters with my friend Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, the eminent financier, each of us writ- ing four letters, and neither of us having any thought of publishing our letters. But, after three weeks of correspondence, it seemed to both of us that the publication of the letters might do some good. This correspondence ap- pears in the tenth chapter. A fifth letter to the JVew York Times makes the eleventh chapter. I have included in the volume as the twelfth chapter, an address on Forefathers' Day, 1914, before the New England Society in the City of New York; because the Pilgrim ideals, spread PBEFACE VU across the American Continent, account in large measure for the wide difference to-day between the national ideals of Germany and those of the United States. The thirteenth chapter of the book contains an address given on the 15th of January, 1915, before the Harvard Club of Boston on " National Efficiency best developed under Free Governments," but later revised and enlarged. The huge war in Europe is going to put to a supreme test this theory concerning the surest sources of national efficiency. The last chapter consists of a letter to the I^ew York Times in which I endeavored to describe the lessons concerning international relations which the war had taught convincingly down to the 9th of March, 1915. The chapters follow the chronological order. In an appendix I have placed two addresses I made on the 6th of March, 1902, on the oc- casion of the visit of Prince Henry of Prussia to Cambridge and Boston. Charles W. Eliot. Cambridge, Mass., 15 March, 1915. CONTENTS CHAPTER I The Competitive Arming of the Nations — A Way of Escape 1 CHAPTER n Is Force the Rightful Ruler? — International Plans must precede International Action . 10 Force has ceased to be the main reliance in school and home discipline — Prescription is a diminishing ele- ment in college discipline — The supreme object in edu- cation is to acquire self-control — In government, pro- tective force, which keeps peace, preserves order, and brings help, will always be necessary — Free governments use little force and that a police force — Reduction of ar- maments is impossible until there exists an Interna- tional Court and a force behind the Court. CHAPTER ni The Fears which cause the Increasing Arma- ments 17 The cutting-off of over-seas supplies of food and raw materials — Sudden invasion — The remedies, immun- ity for private property at sea and a Supreme Court with a force behind it. CHAPTER IV Present and Future Causes of War, Especi- ally m the Orient — Alien Government — Chinese Unity — Japanese Ambitions — The Domination of the Pacific 30 The future causes — The fear of invasion — The exemption of private property at sea — The Occidental CONTENTS desire for ports, concessions, and spheres of influence in the East — The inexpediency of very large units of na- tional territory and government — The sentiment of nationality — The universal objection to alien govern- ment — The ambitions of the Japanese — The domina- tion of the Pacific impossible for any one nation, desir- able for a combination of strong naval powers — Inter- national peace the interest of Japan — Many of the causes of war in time past continue to exist — Promising expenditures for the promotion of peace. CHAPTER V The Geeat European War — Its Causes, Scope, AND Objects — What Gains for Mankind can come out of it 57 The chances of getting some gains for mankind out of the gigantic struggle — Secret negotiations a great mischief — the permanent national executive independ- ent of popular control — the small state in Europe — the larger national units in Europe — The national desire for larger territories and for colonies — Competitive armaments and universal conscription are preparations ' for war not peace — Militarism is inconsistent with democratic society — the Allies are fighting for freedom and civilization — The American Government must be neutral, but American sympathies and hopes cannot be. CHAPTER VI True National Greatness — are its Founda- tions Imperialism or Democracy, Fighting Power or Solemn Public Compacts.'* .... 71 Can the ideals of fighting power and domination be replaced by the ideals of peaceful competition, gener- ous rivalry, and cooperation for mutual benefit — Can civilization enforce the inviolability of treaties and other solemn compacts between peoples? CONTENTS XI CHAPTER VII Some Grounds for American Sympathy with Modern Germany — Why American Opinion FAVORS THE ALLIES IN THE GrEAT WaR — ThE Most Favorable Issue of the War .... 81 German commercial and industrial growth since the Franco-Prussian War — Achievements in Letters and Science in the nineteenth century — Administrative eflS- ciency — Why American opinion favors the Allies — Why thoughtful Americans see but one possible issue of the War — For more than a generation the fallacy that Might makes Right has been poisoning the springs of German thought — Americans hope and expect that the present struggle will result in neither Worid-Empire nor ruin for the German Nation. CHAPTER VIII America's Duty in regard to the European War 97 The great disappointments the War has brought to all persons who hoped that the human race was making steady progress in civilization — The destructiveness of the fighting — The violation of treaties and conven- tions — The abandonment of the chivalrous principle that the strong should protect, not crush, the weak — The disregard of the ameliorations of warfare which in- ternational law was supposed to have procured — The development of fierce hatreds between nations — The acceptance by Germany of the dogma that Might makes Right — American neutrality official or legal — Keep the industries going — No hoarding — Least possible reduction of expenditures, except expenditures on luxu- ries — Neither party will stop fighting till exhaustion threatens — Reasons for the American belief that Eng- land, France, and Russia will hold out longest — The obligations of the American people to England and France — Can we think of giving no aid to England or Xll CONTENTS Prance if she come near the end of her resources — Amer- icans see whither the German policies and the teachings of the German leaders have led the German people. CHAPTER IX The Causes of the War are Autocratic In- stitutions, National Desires for Empire, Disregard for Treaties and Conventions, AND False Philosophies — Why Germany must BE Defeated 114 German desire for World-Empire — The invincible army and navy — The doctrine of military necessity — The religion of valor — What German domination would mean — Germany has never feared Russia — Empire or downfall, victory or ruin, the real mottoes of German leaders — Desirable outcomes of the War — No World- Empire for any race or nation — No chief executives with power to throw their countrymen into war — No secret diplomacy — No conscript armies — A league or Federal Council to prevent war, bring about the reduction of armaments, and secure the liberties of each and all the federated states — The justifiable war — The cause of righteous liberty is the cause of civilization. CHAPTER X Correspondence between Charles W. Eliot and Jacob H. Schiff about the War, between November 24, and December 14, 1914 . . . 129 No lasting peace without the abandonment of Ger- many's intense desire for enlargement — American pub- lic opinion should express itself in favor of an early peace — A group of American publicists might induce the Governments of England, France, and Germany to listen to reasonable terms — The War ought not to stop until Germany sees that its declared policies cannot pre- CONTIJNTS xiu vail — Europe should now choose between the German ideal of the State and the Anglo-American — The com- batants would not Usten now to outsiders advising im- mediate peace — The United States has no right to any position as umpire — To stop the War now would be to leave humanity exposed to the certain recurrence of ferocious war — Make peace now to stop the destruc- tion of life and capital — The perpetual ceasing of war is impracticable — Free-trade cannot be established throughout the world — The European nationalism of the past fifty years will not cease — England will not abandon her domination of the high seas — If England and her ally Japan come out victorious, the United States will be forced into heavy expenditures for defense — K the Allies are victorious, Russia will become the most powerful nation and England's Nemesis. CHAPTER XI The War an Unprecedented Calamity — SHAiji ITS Outcome be an Unprecedented Gain? . . 151 Unprecedented scale and destructiveness of the War — The most horrible calamity that has befallen the race — Each Government denies responsibility for it — Real causes are, (1) autocratic governments, (2) conscript armies and large mihtary class, (3) bureaucracy, (4) the lust of empire — Germany has three times added to her territory in Europe by war — Has been aggressive in her search for colonies and in her eager desire for World- Empire — The Emperor as War Lord and Sovereign by Divine Right — The German conception of the State — the Beatitudes and the Religion of Valor — No such thing as World-Empire for any single nation — National militarism to be controlled by an international force under the direction of a European League or Council — The establishment of such a League or Council must precede reductions in national armaments — The ex- amples of Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States — Peace proposals should be minirniiin not maxi- mum proposals. XIV CONTENTS CHAPTER Xn The Pilgrims' Ideals — A Free Church in a Free State in 1620 164 Religious liberty and toleration, civil and political liberty, and a chief executive elected for one year — A progressive church in a state created and controlled by free men — Stock in their commercial company paid for either in cash or in personal risk and service — An exam- ple of cooperative management — Every able-bodied citizen bore arms — The " United Colonies of New Eng- land" an early example of confederation — Europe has never got so far as the Pilgrims in 1643 — The Pilgrims proved that there is no safe substitute for the institution of private property — Compare the teachings of modern Socialism — The Pilgrims practiced "Each for All and All for Each" — The Pilgrim women courageous, cap- able, and strong — More truth and light are constantly to be won, and it is Truth that makes men free — This faith can rescue Europe from the present horrors and sufferings. CHAPTER XIII National Efficiency best Developed under Free Governments 181 The real causes of the War are states of mind, ambi- tions of princes and peoples, and popular emotions — The potent sentiment of nationality is independent of common language, size of territory, and form of govern- ment — Recent tendency toward larger national units — New conceptions of the State — Imperialism — The government of Germany the most autocratic in Europe — The Germans do not know what political and social liberty is, or understand parliamentary or party govern- ment — To them political liberty means public incapa- city and weakness — The War a conflict between free and autocratic institutions — The exceptional position of Russia — Can the freer nations develop an eflSciency CONTENTS XV equal to the German — no liberty in German education — The German estimate of the intellectual and social influence of women — The limitations of German "aca- demic freedom" — German efficiency depends on the subjection of the individual — All the freer nations be- lieve in liberty as an essential element in the development of the individual, and therefore of national efficiency — The improvements in industries have proceeded from the freer countries, and not from the countries despotically governed — Germany cannot claim leadership in useful inventions or in literatvu-e, science, philosophy, or poetry — The War will test this theory of national efficiency. CHAPTER XIV Lessons of the Wab to March Ninth . . . 206 APPENDIX I. President Eliot's address at the special academic session called to confer the degree of Doctor of Laws on Prince Henry of Prussia, March 6, 1902 221 II. President Eliot's address at a banquet given March 6, 1902, by the City of Boston to Prince Henry of Prussia 225 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE CHAPTER I THE COMPETITIVE ARMING OF THE NATIONS A WAY OF ESCAPE^ I TOOK a very serious subject for my few minutes' talk to you to-day, when I wrote to your Secretary that I should like to speak about " The Way of Escape from the Compet- itive Arming of the Nations." Secretary Root alluded to what is to be my text when he spoke before you a few weeks ago. There is, in the history of the United States and Canada, a most extraordinary act, which, I believe, prophe- sies a way of escape from this monstrous and shameful evil, the competitive arming of the civilized nations against each other. Secretary Root alluded to it as a convention, a conven- tion made in 1817 by the Government of Great Britain and the Government of the United States, to limit the armaments on the Great Lakes for both nations. That was a very ex- 1 An address before the Canadian Club of Ottawa on the 23d of February, 1907. 2 THE ROAD TOWABD PEACE traordinary document in its form. It was not a treaty ; it was not a law ; it was, as described in the proclamation of James Monroe, Presi- dent of the United States, an " arrangement " — that was all. The two countries agreed that they would only maintain on the Great Lakes each one vessel of not exceeding one hundred tons and carrying one eighteen-pounder on Lake Ontario, two other vessels on the " Upper Lakes," as they were described, each of the same size and with the same gun, and one other on Lake Champlain. That was to be the abso- lute limit of the armaments of these two na- tions on the Great Lakes. Now that "arrange- ment," as President Monroe called it, was made under very extraordinary circumstances. It was the invention of John Quincy Adams. It was presented by him to our then Secretary of State, James Monroe, who, in the following year, be- came President. But the person who negotiated it on the part of the United States was only Deputy or Under-Secretary of State — it did not attain even the dignity of an "arrange- ment" by the Secretary of State. It was the simplest possible agreement for an heroic and monumental purpose. "^ What was the condition of things on the APPEAL TO PUBLIC OPINION BEFORE WAB 3 Great Lakes at that time? The British Govern- ment then had in commission on the Lakes vessels mounting over three hundred guns, and was building at that moment two seventy-four- gun ships on the Lakes — actually building them at the time this arrangement was made. And what was the state of mind of the two na- tions, calm or excited ? They had just come out of a war, and a war in which fighting on the Lakes bore a great part. Were not these ex- traordinary conditions under which to make a simple "arrangement" which does not cover twenty lines of printed paper, to secure a per- fect peace of ninety years already without once transgressing this extraordinarily low limit of armament upon these Lakes on our borders ? I say that this act prophesies the way of escape from competitive armaments. If we consider the means of navigation in those days, the time required for voyages across the Lakes, and the dangers on the way, with only wind to propel the vessel, shall we not see that the Atlantic Ocean offers no greater obsta- cles to such an " arrangement " as this than the Lakes did then? We cross the Atlantic Ocean in six or seven days, with the greatest facility. We mount on what may be called platforms 4 THE EOAD TOWABD PEACE heavy armaments, which are yet capable of pro- ceeding through the roughest ocean in com- parative steadiness. Our means for naval fight- ing on the instant are much greater, relatively to the Atlantic Ocean, than the means of these two peoples were for fighting on the Lakes in 1817. I say, therefore, that in this act of our two Governments there is a prophecy, a hopeful prophecy for the future. What is the essence of this regulation ? It is simply a self-denying ordinance which secures equal force to the two Governments on the Lakes, and prevents any surprise of one power by the other. And that is just what needs to be done on an international scale. Moreover, this little armament on the Lakes on either side is nothing but a police force. Now, that is ex- actly what we want all over the world — a self- denying ordinance and a police force furnished by all the civilized nations, combined to main- tain a common force. What is the difference between the police function and the soldier's or the sailor's func- tion in war? I think the chief difference is that in the main the first is protective and the other destructive. Both imply the use of force ; and we are a long way from the time when APPEAL TO PUBLIC OPINION BEFORE WAR 6 government will not rest on force. At the bot- tom, the most civilized governments need force as the basis of their power and the means of executing their will. But there may be a great difference between force and force. A police force is, in the main, a protective force. Now and then, to be sure, it proceeds energetically against a criminal, an offender, a disturber of the peace. But far the greater part of the func- tion of the police is protection. It goes quickly to the scene of any catastrophe ; it preserves order on the highways, in crowds, and in indus- tries ; it maintains the peace. You have in Canada a splendid example of the legitimate, the indispensable, the omnipresent police force in your Northwest Mounted Police. There is a force eminently superior to that of the soldier. Any one of these police officers can arrest, — that is a very wholesome power, and it is just what we want between the nations ; we want a force that can arrest the disturber. We want that bulwark for peace — a police force that can prevent disturbance, and deal effectively and finally with the disturber of the peace, whoever he is. He is probably a person tempo- rarily out of his mind. He needs protection from himself, and all the rest of us need to be 6 TEE BO AD TOW ABB PEACE protected from him. That is the true function of a police force, and that is what the civilized world greatly needs. But then, you will say, police officers ordi- narily act under the direction of a court, if there be an accessible court. It is quite con- venient in the wilderness to have a pohce offi- cer who is himself a magistrate, and that is just what you have provided. But, as a rule, an effective poHce acts under the orders of a court. There again, we have at The Hague a momentous prophecy of the reorganization of the civilized world to preserve peace, and to protect the productive industries. It is but the shadow, the ghost, you may say, of an effective court as yet ; for behind every effective court must lie force — the police force. That is what the international tribunal will need and must have, to be an effective tribunal. Should we shrink from the prospect of such control, under the findings of an international court with force behind it to compel obedience? We are used to all that in the organization of every one of the civilized nations. In the structure and de- velopment of every nation that process, that habit of obedience to the mandate of a court enforced, marks the gathering growth of civil- APPEAL TO PUBLIC OPINION BEFORE WAR 7 ization. And that is what the group of nations which is to make up the civilized world needs to create — the habit, as a group of nations, of submitting to the mandate of an international court enforced. Now, we people who have come into this new land, out of the older nations that loved liberty and slowly gained it, always shrink from new submissions. But if we look back upon our own past — and that is the only way to look forward with insight into the future — do we not learn by our own experiences that here lies the way of peace and good-will ? As I survey the numer- ous experiments of free government on the earth, the whole question of success in free government seems to resolve itself into the amount of good- will which can be developed under free govern- ment between the governors and the governed, and between the different classes of men who live together under one form of government. That is the test of success in free government — the total amount of good-will which it develops. Now, our Governments, the United States on one hand and Canada on the other, have been more successful than any other free governments in the world, so far as I know, in developing just that good-will among men. 8 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE We have great new strifes in both our coun- tries, new strifes which have grown out of the astounding social and industrial changes of the last forty years. I see at this table one whom I am proud to claim as a graduate of Harvard University, whose business seems to be, as far as I understand it, to get in between the striv- ers in industrial contests. Now, these strifes have something to teach concerning international strifes. We have had such at their worst in the United States within the last fifteen years, and you have had them here in very serious form. We are both likely to have them in the future ; because not all men on either side of these con- troversies are men of good-will — and so we are going to encounter this new form of struggle and contention. What is the way out of that? I believe that your House of Commons has been taking some action to-day which looks toward providing the most hopeful way out of these strifes, namely, through publicity — nothing but publicity. In the United States we are in the habit of complaining very much and very often about the publicity which our newspapers give to every fair and every foul happening in the United States. But, gentlemen, in that pub- licity lies the great hope of the world. It is the APPEAL TO PUBLIC OPINION BEFORE WAB 9 hope of peace ; it is tlie guaranty of peace ; it is the way we are to find not only industrial peace, but peace between the civilized nations of the world. We are going to see the limita- tion of armaments, the international court, the international police force, and the compelled ap- peal to public opinion before war. That, as I understand it, is just what you are going to do with regard to industrial strifes — to compel ap- peal to public opinion before war. And there I find the promise of a better day in regard to competitive arming. What a hideous waste that arming is ! Some eminent authorities maintain that the way to preserve peace is to make your- self formidable for war. Gentlemen, that is not the way of the United States and Canada since the year 1817. And is there a more completely successful example to be found anywhere of the way to escape competitive arming? CHAPTER II IS FORCE THE RIGHTFUL RULER ? INTERNA TIONAL PLANS TIONAL ACTION TIONAL PLANS MUST PRECEDE INTERNA- 1 We have heard a great variety of suggestions this morning concerning the furtherance of this cause in institutions of education. Some of them have been practical suggestions as to what may be taught and done in schools and colleges. But I think most of them have been really sug- gestions that this holy cause is best to be fur- thered in educational institutions by a steady improvement in what Professor Willoughby called their moral climate. That change of moral climate is sure to bring about a state of public opinion which will mitigate the violence of na- tions. Now, there are a good many hopeful signs as to a change of moral climate in our institu- tions of education. I have personally seen sev- eral most encouraging changes in this respect. For instance, when I was a boy in the best public school of the city of Boston and the oldest ^ A speech to the Lake Mohonk Conference on Interna- tional Arbitration in May, 1907. IS FORCE THE RIGHTFUL RULER? 11 school in Massachusetts, the control used was physical force, the application of torture — that is the long and short of it ; the control was force. Now that has disappeared from the American school system, and with it has gone the teach- ing that force is the rightful ruler. That change runs through the American family as well as the American school. There has been a wonderful improvement in home discipline in that respect, and that improvement goes our way, ladies and gentlemen. It goes toward the abandonment in all human affairs of the exercise of force as final control. There is another climatic change which has been wrought in schools and colleges quite within the period of my observation. There used to be all through our school system and our col- lege system a large element of prescription, — « Thou shalt " and " Thou shalt not ! " There was a deplorably small element of cultivation of freedom of the will, of self-control in the individual. The implicit obedience inculcation is another way of expressing subjection to force in gov- ernment. It is essentially military in quality; and there again we have a change in all our educational institutions which goes the way of 12 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE this Conference. We cultivate now in the young, — that is, the wise teacher cultivates in the young, from the beginning and all through school life, the power of self-direction, self- control; and, after all, to acquire self-control is the supreme object in education. Here again is a broad change in education which goes the way of this Conference toward international self-control. But are we to expect that the element of force is now going out of government ? By no means. It must remain, as Commissioner Draper said, the ultimate appeal. But what kind of force is going to continue in the world ? Not the force of army and navy, but the force we call police power, a force nineteen twentieths of the applications of which are protective. Force as protection is an entirely different thing from force as aggression. What the world is going to preserve as abiding force is the force we call police force, which keeps peace, preserves order, and brings help. Universities and colleges illustrate, I believe, — at least in our country, — the coming form of government all over the world. The coming form — not to-morrow, not in the next decade, but we may fairly hope in the next century. IS FOBCE TEE BIGHTFUL BULEB? 13 What is the characterization of college and university government ? No force whatever, no penalty except exile — and that is enough — in all these college and university administra- tions of our country. In that condition they teach freedom, they teach self-government ; and there is another thing they teach — good-will. Good-will among men results from all teaching which can be called world-wide, all teaching of the nature of different peoples, of their laws and customs, and of their religions. The great- est development in teaching that I know of during the last ten years in our institutions is the development of what is called comparative teaching : — comparative anatomy, comparative physiology, comparative psychology, and com- parative pathology. This comparative teaching goes right into moral questions as well as physi- cal questions. Much of the teaching of law has become comparative and much of the teaching of religion. In all these ways the colleges and universi- ties are widening out human sympathies, and bringing in a new epoch of good-will. The universities, it was said this morning, live to seek and to teach truth. Very true. Now, my present teachers in Biblical criticism have 14 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE taught me that the angels' song over the plains of Bethlehem is not rightly translated in the common version. It is not "Peace on earth, good-will to men " ; the real meaning is, " Peace on earth to men of good-will." That is what the universities are helping to bring about, the increase of good-will ; and then force will only be appUed to men who lack good-will. There will always be some such men, therefore there will always be some force needed, so far as we can see ; but the policies of the American uni- versities as forms of government indicate that before very long the free governments of the world will find it necessary to use but little force and that a police force. UNTIMELY PEACE PROPOSALS* I suppose we are all agreed that both these objects are very desirable. They are elements in the great reform to which this Conference is committed ; — no doubt about that. But the platform this year is drawn in a somewhat new manner. It urges that the Second Conference 1 Remarks at the same Conference on proposals tltat tbe Conference recommend action at the Second Conference of The Hague on the Neutralization of Ocean Trade Routes, and on the Immediate Reduction of Armaments. UNTIMELY PEACE PROPOSALS 15 of The Hague take certain action. Is there a person in this room who can suppose for a mo- ment that the Second Conference of The Hague can take action on either of these propositions ? Our platform, as reported, urges positive, af- firmative action at the Second Conference of The Hague on five important points. We must all agree that the neutralization of routes of commerce is impossible until there is a real court at The Hague, and a force to carry out its orders. A force must see to the execution of the neutralization of routes. We have examples of neutralization in the world already — admirable examples — Switzerland and the Suez Canal; — and how are those neutralizations enforced? When Swiss territory is to be held neutral, Switzerland puts an army of a hundred thou- sand men into the field ; when the Suez Canal is to be held neutral, the whole navy of Great Britain enforces the order. Shall we forward the reforms we have in mind by urging action on either of these two proposals, when we all know that it is impossible for The Hague to take action? We might reasonably say, per- haps, that we ask The Hague to begin the study of a plan for the reduction of armaments. That looks possible; that looks feasible. Nothing 16 THE BOAD TOWABD PEACE else is feasible. Is there a person in this room who would advise Germany to consent to an arbitration on the reduction of armaments? Germany, as Mr. Smiley has said, is surrounded by alien armies which can be rushed on to her territory at a week's notice. Can the United States, off here across the ocean, in a position of singular security, propose even that Germany shall consent to a discussion of the reduction of armaments until there is an international court and a force behind the court ? It seems to me, from all my experience in carrying on reforms, that the first rule for a reformer is never to urge action toward a reform till he has prepared an adequate plan of action. We have no plan of action with regard to the reduction of armaments or the neutralization of ocean trade routes. Nobody has such a plan. We ought to have an international plan before we urge international action. CHAPTER m THE FEARS WHICH CAUSE THE INCREASING ARMAMENTS^ All peace promoters have been cheered by the progress made since Russia called the first Hague Conference toward the substitution of arbitration for war, and this meeting in partic- ular has been greatly encouraged and stimu- lated to-day. It is plain, however, that much remains to be done before a permanent inter- national supreme court is established with some adequate force behind it, whether control of credit, or armed police, or effective world-opin- ion, and that the race for armaments is hotter than ever. There must, then, be some very strong rea- sons for the slow progress made toward an ef- fective system of international arbitration, and for the continuance of the extraordinarily waste- ful competition in providing armaments; for all the competing nations feel keenly the well- nigh intolerable burden of taxation which mod- 1 A paper read at the Lake Mohonk Conference of May, 1910. 18 TEE ROAD TOWABD PEACE ern preparations for war on the instant, offen- sive or defensive, impose. I find these reasons in two chronic apprehen- sions felt by all the civilized nations ahke, — although the two are not equally felt by the different peoples, because of geographical and commercial diversities. The first of these chronic apprehensions is the fear lest the nation's exte- rior supplies of food or of the raw materials of its industries should be cut off. The second is the fear lest an immense hostile army should be thrown into the national territory with only a few days', or even a few hours', warning. Either of these chronic apprehensions may be suddenly exalted to panic by occurrences of a really trivial nature. The speech of a minister before a legislature, a note from a ruler, or even a short series of articles in an influential news- paper may raise either of these chronic appre- hensions to the dimensions of a panic. These fears are not fairly to be described as dreams, or illusions, or fantastic nightmares. They are not created, though they may be aggravated, by unscrupulous manufacturers, tradesmen, or newspapers. They are founded on historical facts, borne clearly in mind by the present gen- erations, and on generally accepted axioms con- FEABS CAUSE COMPETITIVE ARMING 19 cerning national well-being, as likely to be di- minished by being conquered, or even invaded, and increased by any successful conquering. These axioms may be as absurd as the duel- ling code now seems to most Anglo-Saxons, but like that code of so-called honor they are gen- erally accepted in continental Europe and among large portions of the population of North and South America, and Great Britain. It is a solid fact that an overwhelming majority of the Eng- lish people feel it to be for them a matter of life and death that they keep ready for instant action fleets capable of preventing invasion and the cutting-off of the food suppHes and the raw materials which come to them over seas ; and so long as they seriously dread catastrophes of that nature they will keep on building prepon- derant fleets. They must have security against such ruinous calamities. England and Japan are the two nations which may reasonably feel most intensely the appre- hension about their food and raw materials; but nations whose territories are not insular may also feel it to a high degree. Thus, Italy must import by sea both food and coal, France would suffer much if deprived of sea-borne cot- ton, and Germany needs to import by sea not 20 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE only mucli food, but a great variety of materi- als for her expanding industries. The territory of the United States is so vast, and extends through so many climates, that it is difficult for us to realize how formidable to any nation which cannot raise on its own soil all its food and most of the important materials of the indus- tries by which it lives, is the dread of the cut- ting-off of a large portion of its food or its raw materials, or both. During far the greater part of the year England is not supposed to have in stock at any one time more than six weeks' sup- ply of food for her population. In view of such a fact we Americans ought to be able to realize that this dread of the cut- ting-off of essential supplies must be calmed and disposed of before the incessant preparations for war now going on can possibly be checked or stopped. A very important question, there- fore, to be considered by those who wish to take effective measures to promote peace is this: What generally accepted rule of international action would give relief from this intolerable apprehension, and what new police forces would be necessary to secure the observance of that rule? Confining our thoughts in the first place to FEARS CAUSE COMPETITIVE ARMING 21 operations on the oceans, we easily see that the adoption by a decided majority of the great maritime powers of the principle of the immu- nity of private property at sea would in itself go far to relieve from this great apprehension the nations that suffer most from it. If during a naval war all merchant vessels were free to come and go on the open seas without danger of capture or of any interference, a nation at war would have little reason to dread the inter- ruption of its supply of either food or raw ma- terial. To affect dangerously its supplies, its adversary would have to establish a real block- ade of its ports, which is a difficult and costly operation in these days of high-speed vessels independent of wind. It may be observed in passing that changes in the definitions of block- ade and contraband decidedly advantageous to neutrals were made by the Naval Conference in which Germany, the United States, Austria-] Hungary, Spain, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the Netherlands participated at London in 1908-09.1 This Conference did 1 The Declaration issued by the Conference by Article 1, Chapter 1, limits blockade to ports and coasts belonging to or occupied by the enemy, which is a restrictive definition of high value- In Article 28, Chapter 2 the following articles are declared 22 THE BO AD TOW ABB PEACE work of high value, although only ten selected nations joined in it. The precedent may prove a very useful one. The adoption on paper of this doctrine of the immunity of private property on the sea would not suffice, however, to relieve the intense anx- iety of the civilized peoples about their essen- tial supplies. They must see in readiness a po- lice force capable of securing the execution of such an agreement in all parts of the globe. Can we imagine the creation of such a force? It must, of course, be an overwhelming inter- national force, which no single nation would have a fair chance of successfully resisting, and it must be available in all the oceans. These conditions would be fulfilled if the group of nations which took part in the Naval Confer- ence at London, or even a smaller group of na- not to be contraband of war : Raw cotton, wool, silk, jute, flax, hemp, and the other raw materials of the textile industries, rubber, resins, gums and lacs, hops, raw hides, natural and ar- tificial manures, ores, clays, lime, stone, bricks, slates and tiles, porcelains and glassware, paper, soaps, colors, varnishes, chem- icals like soda, ammonia, and sulphate of copper, machines used in agriculture, mining, the textile industries and printing, precious stones, clocks and watches. It is obvious that this list, which is not the complete enumeration of Article 28, covers articles of great value to every manufacturing nation, and that this clear declaration that they are not contraband marks a decided advance in the law of maritime war. FEARS CAUSE COMPETITIVE ARMING 23 tlons having extensive seacoasts like England, France, Italy, the United States, Brazil, Chile, and Japan, would agree to the immunity of private property at sea, and to the use of their combined fleets, or any adequate portion thereof, to enforce that immunity in every part of the world. The combinations mentioned would possess available ports in all the great divisions of the ocean. Several of the nations named have al- ready expressed willingness to accept the doc- trine of immunity for private property at sea. The United States has advocated it for many years. Other nations would probably wish to join such a league ; but their adhesion would not be indispensable, though desirable. Coin- cident with this agreement there would have to be another, in order to check competition in naval armaments. The nations entering such a league would have to make an agreement — subject to peri- odical revision — not to increase their fleets be- yond their present limits, and to build new vessels, class by class, only in substitution for vessels past service. Limitation on the size as well as the number of vessels of each class would also be needed, and each nation would 24 THE ROAD TOWABD PEACE have to be kept informed of the naval con- structions undertaken by every other member of the league. Such agreements as these and such publicity seem not only possible but well worth while, if through such action that formi- dable dread of the cutting-off of food supplies and raw materials can be done away with. It is a hopeful fact that experienced public men in various countries are beginning to mention such novel agreements as not inconceivable. The immunity of private property on the seas does not seem so remote as it once did, partly because the recent comparative immu- nity of private property on land during active warfare has not impaired the decisiveness of successful campaigns, and partly because the destruction of its mercantile marine has not proved to be in recent times, if indeed in any times, an effective mode of bringing a vigor- ous enemy to terms. During the Civil War of 1861-65 the United States lost nearly all its sea-going merchant vessels, and has never re- covered its former position in the carrying trade of the world ; but this fact has had no appreciable effect on the prosperity of the coun- try. Nowadays any nation can easily get all its exports and imports carried in foreign bottoms FEARS CAUSE COMPETITIVE ARMING 25 at low competitive prices. Moreover, looting on land and privateering at sea are no longer con- sidered respectable. An agreement of this nature with regard to naval forces and their international use might have a large incidental value. It might show the way to organize an international naval po- lice force, subject to the orders of a permanent arbitral court of justice at The Hague. Other kinds of force can be imagined to secure the execution of the decrees of the court, as, for instance, the refusal of credit to a disobedient government ; but all experience seems to testify that some adequate force must lie behind an international supreme court, as it always has behind every other court. Otherwise it may be feared that the court will not command in prac- tice the confidence of civilized mankind. The other chronic apprehension which pre- vents the progress of arbitration methods and the reduction of armaments is the apprehension of sudden and overwhelming invasion of na- tional territory by hostile land forces. This in- cessant apprehension is extremely vivid, and is liable to explosive increment ; and yet in this matter the civilized world has certainly made no inconsiderable progress. To be sure, modern 26 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE means of transportation by land and water have quickened the apprehension, and spread it over wider areas ; but, on the other hand, the press, frequent mails, and telegraphs and telephones have developed effective means of dispelling ignorance, correcting misunderstandings, and giving warning of storms of passion. Certain distinct gains in respect to danger of invasion are plainly to be seen. First, no part of the civilized world is now subject to sudden invasion by hordes of bar- barians, armed as well, or nearly as well, as the people whose territory they invade. In all conflicts with barbarians civilization has now an immense advantage in respect to equipment for fighting. Secondly, it seems probable that dynastic wars will never occur again in the civ- ilized world. Thirdly, certain small European states have maintained themselves successfully as to their territory for nearly one hundred years in the presence of much more powerful neighbors, and if the judgment of impartial money-lenders is to be accepted, the stable per capita wealth of the small states is greater and safer than that of the larger states. In a few instances, to be sure, the generation now pass- ing off the stage has witnessed the forcible tak- FEABS CAUSE COMPETITIVE ABMING 27 ing of parts of the territory of a small state by a larger one, and the surrender to the victors of portions of conquered territory. Fourthly, the great costliness of modern warfare in both blood and treasure tends to prevent the out- break of actual war. Indeed, the costliness of mere preparation for war has increased by leaps and bounds during the past twenty years; and recently aviation has started expenditure of a new sort. The masses of the people begin to realize that they pay the costs of war; and they are not so dumb and helpless as they used to be. Hence, perhaps, the encouraging fact that huge armies, ready for instant action, have faced each other in Europe for forty years without once coming into collision. Fifthly, republican Switzerland has shown how the entire male population capable of bearing arms may be trained, and held in readiness for defensive warfare, without abridging seriously the indus- trial activities of the people, and without main- taining any standing army which could be used for offensive purposes outside the national ter- ritory. These are all good omens for peace ; but they afford no effectual security to any Euro- pean people whose territory has not been de- 28 THE BO AD TOWABD PEACE clared neutral against the sudden invasion of their territory by a formidable alien force ca- pable of inflicting immense losses and of ex- torting a vast ransom. The Swiss experience, however, is more than an omen, for it shows one way of changing Europe from a group of fully armed camps, always ready for hostilities abroad, into a group of peace-expecting states, each maintaining a strong protective force, but no aggressive force. Civilized society is still founded on force, but that force should be a protective force. In practice it would be easier for a large state than for a small one to adopt this excellent Swiss method. Moreover, the ter- ritories of large states might be " neutralized " by agreement as well as the territories of small states. On the whole, the only way in which pro- moters of peace can at this moment make head against the apprehension of invasion is to urge the making of arbitration treaties which con- tain no exceptions, and the establishment of a permanent court of arbitral justice. The reduc- tion of armaments on land must await the es- tablishment of such a supreme court, unless, indeed, neighboring nations by twos or threes can make local agreements for reduction analo- FEABS CAUSE COMPETITIVE ABMING 29 gous to the invaluable arrangement made in 1817 between the United States and Great Britain concerning armaments on the Great Lakes. CHAPTER IV PRESENT AND FUTURE CAUSES OP WAR, ESPE- CIALLY IN THE ORIENT ALIEN GOVERN- MENT CHINESE UNITY — JAPANESE AMBI- TIONS — THE DOMINATION OF THE PACIFIC* Advocacy of these slow-acting means of preventing wars in the East implies that within the superintended areas the probable causes of international war have changed within fifty years. Dynastic and religious wars, and wars in support of despotic government are no longer probable; and racial antipathies are held in check by the superintending European powers in all the countries to which that super- intendence extends. Thus, the Pax Britannica has practically put an end to the racial and re- ligious warfare which from time to time deso- lated the Asiatic countries over which British influence now extends. Small outbreaks of racial antipathy or religious fanaticism occur locally ; but these are insignificant exceptions ^ Extracts from a report made by Charles W. Eliot to the Trustees of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1913. PBESENT AND FUTURE CAUSES OF WAR 81 to the prevailing tranquillity. The fighting Great Britain has done to establish and main- tain this quieting influence has been fighting on a small scale compared with that which went on among European nations during the nine- teenth century, or among Oriental peoples in many earlier centuries, and the Pax Britannica has therefore been a great contribution to the peace of the world. It is not only in the East that the probable causes of international war have lately changed. All over the world, it is reasonable to suppose that wars for dynastic motives will occur no more, and that religious motives for warfare will hereafter be incidental or secondary in- stead of primary. It is also reasonable to be- lieve that wars in support of absolute monarchs and despotic government will henceforth be unknown, so general is the world-wide move- ment toward constitutional government and free institutions — a movement from fifty to three hundred and fifty years old among the different nations of the West, but compara- tively recent in the East. What, then, will be the probable causes of international war in the future ? The causes of war in the future are likely to 32 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE be national distrusts, dislikes, and apprehen- sions, which have been nursed in ignorance, and fed on rumors, suspicions, and conjectures propagated by unscrupulous newsmongers, un- til suddenly developed by some untoward event into active hatred, or widespread alarm which easily passes into panic. While the Eastern peo- ples — Far and Near — will have some causes of their own for war, because in some instances neither their geographical limits nor their gov- ernmental institutions are as yet settled, among the Western peoples the most probable future causes of war, in addition to national antipa- thies, will be clashing commercial or industrial interests, contests for new markets and fresh opportunities for profitable investment of capi- tal, and possibly, extensive migrations of la- borers. All modern governments, in which life, liberty, and property are secured by public law, desire to extend the commerce and trade of their people, to develop their home industries by procuring markets for their products in foreign lands, to obtain in comparatively un- occupied or undeveloped parts of the earth opportunities for the profitable employment of their accumulated capital, and to gain room for a possible surplus of population in the fu- PBESENT AND FUTUBE CAUSES OF WAR 33 ture. Eastern and Western peoples alike feel the desire for a large, strong governmental unit, too formidable to be attacked from with- out, too cohesive to be disintegrated from •within. Both East and West exhibit the mod- ern irrepressible objection to alien rule, espe- cially when such rule, like that of the Manchus or the Turks, produces poverty and desolation, denies liberty, and prevents progress. Several Western nations, which have the sav- ing, or accumulating, habit, are eager to make loans to remote and comparatively poor na- tions which are in great need of money to pay for costly public works of transportation, con- servancy, public health, and public security. In making such loans the bankers of each Western nation expect the support and protec- tion of their own government. As security for such loans the borrowing government, national, provincial, or municipal, pledges some of its resources; and if the expected interest or divi- dend is not paid, the lender forecloses. Hence serious international complications. In this lending business the Western powers come into competition with each other, and stimu- lated by mutual jealousies, engage in aggres- sive operations against the Oriental peoples, 34 TEE BOAD TOWARD PEACE who have been as a rule helpless in their hands, until Japan adopted and improved on the West- ern military organization and methods of fight- ing, and succeeded for a short time in borrow- ing the money needed to pay the heavy costs of modern warfare. The penetration of Oriental territories by traders and missionaries has given occasion for many attacks by Western powers on Oriental governments and peoples, on the theory that the citizen or subject of a Western govern- ment is to be protected by his own govern- ment, wherever he may wander or settle in Oriental communities. If any such adventurous citizen is harmed, there follows a "punitive expedition " with wholesale destruction of in- nocent property and life, and often an exten- sion of the "sphere of influence" of the punisher. This protection of missionaries, trad- ers, and travellers has often been the cause, or in many cases the excuse, for attacks by West- ern powers on Oriental communities, for the seizure of valuable ports and of territory adja- cent thereto, and for the enforced payment of exaggerated indemnities which heavily burden later generations. Hence long-continued inter- national dislikes and distrusts. PRESENT AND FUTURE CAUSES OF WAR 35 A people which has for centuries been under despotic rule will not have accumulated any considerable masses of capital, because pri- vate property will not have been safe from arbitrary seizure, and cannot have been trans- mitted safely from generation to generation. Throughout the East, therefore, the capital which is seeking investment in mines, planta- tions, factories, transportation companies, and so forth, is Western capital, and is likely to be for at least another generation, or until Japan and China can reap the full benefit of the se- curity of capital under constitutional govern- ment. The Orient as a whole, and China in particular, will need for many years the con- tinuous investment of Western capital in great public works, such as roads, railroads, defenses against flood, drought, and pestilences, schools, universities, and a civil service which lives on salaries, and collects and expends honestly a stable public revenue. As soon as the Republic of China can provide itself with a stable public revenue, it will come into the markets of the world for an indefinite series of large loans ; and all the Western peoples will be eager to share in the lending. Japan, too, will need for many years large amounts of capital for the 36 THE EOAD TOW ART) PEACE furtherance of its governmental and industrial changes. Through all the Oriental countries the mass of the people maintain a lower standard of liv- ing than that of any civilized Western people, whether European or American. This is partly a matter of climate and of density of popula- tion ; but it is also a matter of tradition and custom. When the standard of living is close to the limits essential to the maintenance of health and bodily vigor, natural catastrophes like droughts, floods, earthquakes, and pesti- lences cause recurrent periods of immense hu- man misery, from which recovery is slow. The misery of these masses in turn seriously de- presses the courage or enterprise of the suffer- ing nation, and commerce, trade, and manu- facturing industries throughout the world, particularly in those Oriental countries where modern means of transportation and communi- cation have not been adequately developed. Hence, frequent interruptions of trade, and dis- orders both interior and exterior ; and hence, also, troublesome migrations. The chronic pov- erty of multitudinous Oriental peoples hinders the desired development of Western industries and commerce ; because the poverty-stricken PRESENT AND FUTURE CAUSES OF WAR 37 millions cannot afford to buy the Western goods. To prevent such widespread miseries and such chronic poverty would be to remove the cause of many of the violences which break out from time to time in Oriental communities, and provoke or promote the intrusion of the stronger Western powers. Successful preven- tion would imply sound legislation, efficient local administration, and the liberal expenditure of money. Advocacy of such measures and help in executing them would promote peace and good-will. Here is a great field for West- ern benevolence, skilfully applying private en- dowments to public uses. Some of the worst dissensions between East- ern and Western peoples have been caused in recent years by the dense ignorance and gross superstitions of Oriental populations. A good example of the contentions due to these causes is the Boxer insurrection in China, against which several Western powers took arms — when their Legations were attacked — with success so far as subduing the insurrection and procuring huge indemnities from China went, but with deplorable effects on the disposition of the Chinese people toward Japan and all the Western powers that sent troops to Peking, 38 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE with the single exception of the United States. The only real cure for ignorance and supersti- tion is universal education, and that cure will take time. Although the causes of war tend to become commercial and industrial, two other world- wide causes of war remain which are liable to take effect at any time in both the East and the West. The first is the fear of sudden in- vasion by an overwhelming force. This fear is as keenly felt in China and Japan as it is in Germany, France, and England ; and there are no better defenses against it in the East than in the West. The neutralization of territory which protects some of the small European na- tions, like Switzerland and Belgium, rests rather upon the mutual jealousy of the greater powers than on any established practice among the European peoples, or any trustworthy sense of expediency and justice. The nearest approach in the East to the practice of neutralizing ter- ritory is the respect paid by the larger European powers to the Eastern possessions of smaller powers. Thus, England and France are respect- ing the Oriental possessions of The Netherlands and of Portugal ; and all nations are now re- specting the outlying possessions of Japan. PBESENT AND FUTURE CAUSES OF WAR 39 Whether the Eastern possessions o£ Western powers will in the future be transferred from one nation to another as a consequence of the issue of European conflicts — as they have been in the past — is a problem for the future. The only hope in the East, as in the West, for re- lief from this terrible apprehension of invasion lies in the progress of international law, and in the spreading opinion among publicists that there are better ways than war to settle inter- national questions about territory, commercial intercourse, and sovereignty. This is a region in which all three divisions of the activities of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace are nearly concerned — Intercourse and Edu- cation, Economics, and International Law. The other apprehension which may at any time become the cause of war is the fear lest the supplies of food and raw material which come to a country over seas should be cut off. Such insular countries as Great Britain and Japan are peculiarly subject to this apprehension ; for either of them would be seriously distressed by even a short interruption of its supplies of food and raw material. Both these nations are therefore obliged to maintain navies more powerful than any likely to be brought against them. Hence the immense 40 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE butdens of competitive naval armaments. A rem- edy for this apprehension is, however, in sight. The doctrine that private property should be exempt from capture at sea, as it is already ex- empted from seizure without compensation on land, will, when adopted by a few nations which maintain strong navies, relieve the nations adopt- ing it from the dread lest their food supplies and the supply of raw materials for their manufactur- ing industries should be cut off, and the export of their manufactured goods be made impossible or unsafe. To secure relief from this recurrent apprehension which prompts such exorbitant expenditure on navies, it would not be neces- sary that all the nations of the world should adopt the doctrine of the exemption of private property at sea from capture. Five or six of the stronger nations, adopting it and enforcing it against all comers, could immediately secure re- lief for themselves, and for any other nations that chose to join them in the adoption of the policy. The United States has advocated this doctrine for many years; but an effective adop- tion of it has been prevented by the reluctance of Great Britain to abandon the practice of seiz- ing upon the ocean private property belonging to the subjects of her enemy. There are some PRESENT AND FUTURE CAUSES OF WAB 41 signs that Great Britain is approaching the con- clusion that she has more to gain than to lose by the adoption of the policy of exemption. A common reason for the aggressions of Western powers in Eastern countries has been their desire to possess or control ports in the East through which Western trade with the teeming Oriental populations could be safely conducted. Great Britain, France, Germany, and The Netherlands all possess some ports, and in China the first three powers exercise a strong control over other ports by means of treaties and leases forced upon China. Russia's keen desire for better ports in Eastern waters than she now possesses has been a leading motive in her Eastern policy for many years. The statesmen of Japan felt that it was absolutely necessary for her to possess the ports of the Korean peninsula. When once a nation gets possession of ports which originally and prop- erly made part of another nation's territory, the possessing nation feels that it must defend them against all comers ; hence incessant preparations for war and ever-increasing armaments. The peace of the world would be promoted if no nation, Occidental or Oriental, possessed or con- trolled a port on another nation's territory. 42 THE BO AD TOW ABB PEACE The peace of the world is also threatened by the constant efforts of most of the trading nations to enlarge their territories, or " spheres of influence," in remote parts of the world, whether sparsely or densely populated. It seems to make little difference whether these enlarge- ments are hkely to be profitable or not ; they will be acquired at a venture. In Europe and America, the creation of new and large units of government went on actively during the last half of the nineteenth cen- tury, and is still in progress by natural growth and new affiliations. Among political theorists doubts begin to be expressed about the expedi- ency of these very large units of national terri- tory and government. Evidence has been pro- duced that the smaller nations in Europe are more prosperous than the larger ; perhaps be- cause they waste less on armies, navies, and arma- ments. There are those who think that China would be better off if Thibet, Mongolia, and Manchuria should be absorbed respectively by Great Britain, Russia, and Japan, leaving the eighteen provinces of China proper as a com- pact and manageable whole. These objections to exaggerated size still remain in the region of speculation and not of practice ; and the desire PRESENT AND FUTURE CAUSES OF WAR 43 of trading nations for more and always more territory remains a threatening source of inter- national contests. Kecent events, however, in both the Near and the Far East indicate clearly that the govern- ment of large populations by an alien race is getting increasingly difficult, and may in time become impossible. The unrest in India, the abdication of the Manchus in China, and the Balkan war all illustrate the fact that the govern- ment of large populations by an alien authority is likely to be more and more resented and ulti- mately resisted ; and that no amount of good will and good works by an alien government will be able to overcome the opposition of native races to such a government, just because it is alien. Because of the strength and vitality of this racial sentiment against alien government, it is likely that the task of governing and supervising large native populations from a distance by rulers, judges, and administrators of a very different race will prove to be increasingly troublesome and costly ; so that freedom of commerce and trade will come to be sought by other means. Against these formidable difficulties, what forces could the Provisional Government bring to bear to unify China, and construct a strong, 44 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE stable government for the eighteen federated provinces? These forces were only sentiments ; but they were just such sentiments as have brought into being on other continents firm and enduring governments. The first was the senti- ment of Chinese nationality; the second was the objection to an alien government, that of the Manchus, which was only a sham government ; and the third was the sentiment of common re- sistance to the aggressions which the Western powers had been committing for a hundred and fifty years on Chinese soil. The sentiment of nationality is vast, vague, and hard to define ; but the history of Europe and America is full of instances of its tremen- dous potency. It does not seem to need a com- mon language, or a pure race, or a smooth blend of somewhat different races, or the same climate, or identity of the sources of livelihood. It is not necessarily based on similar histories, common traditions, or even the same religion. If we may judge from European and American experience, the sentiment of nationality is based on similar social standards or needs, on common ideals, on like passions good and bad, on a love of inde- pendence and liberty, on a preference for a large, comprehensive governmental unit over a small THE SENTIMENT OF NATIONALITY 45 one, and on the desire to resist common dan- gers, wrongs, or aggressions from without. This last desire is very unifying the world over. Ex- perience of misgovernment tends to unite the misgoverned, just as an earthquake, a destruc- tive storm, a conflagration, or a flood always brings out in many of the sufferers a very prac- tical brotherliness. Such seem to be the sources of the present development among the Chinese of a potent sentiment of nationality. When several races live side by side on the same soil and form a community, it often hap- pens that the ideals of one of these races domi- nate the development of all. This result has often been conspicuous in history, and is still exemplified in the present life of certain nations to which several different racial elements have contributed without being blended. The most essential element in the modern idea of nation- ality is identity of ideals, and of customs which are the offspring of ideals. I have already mentioned in this report the growth in many regions of the world of the ob- jection to alien government as such. It appears on a small scale and a large, in barbarous and semi-barbarous countries, and in countries which have long been civilized. It may be successfully 46 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE repressed for long periods, though recognized. It may be long concealed by multitudes who feel it hotly ; but it tends more and more through- out the world to break out at last, and win the day. The motive of resistance to foreign oppression works wonders toward the formation of new national units, as has been forcibly illustrated in Europe during the past year. All China has had such bitter experience of oppression and robbery on the part of Western nations, that she inevitably possesses a strong unifying force in this common sense of unjust suffering. All the enterprising Occidental nations are interested in determining accurately what the desires and ambitions of the Japanese people really are. The Japanese have proved by their achievements during the past forty-five years that as a race they possess fine physical, mental, and moral qualities. They possess in high de- gree intelligence, inventiveness, commercial and industrial enterprise, persistence, and the moral qualities which bring success in industries and commerce. They have learnt and put into prac- tice all the Occidental methods of warfare on sea and land, and have proved that they can face in battle not only the yellow races, but the THE DESIBES AND AMBITIONS OF JAPAN 47 white. Are they then a dangerous or a safe ad- dition to the world's group of national industrial and commercial competitors? Is their demon- strated strength dangerous to the peace of the world and to the white race? To answer these questions, it is indispensable to form a clear and just idea of Japanese desires and ambitions. The Japanese are not a numerous people ; for they number less than one half the population of the United States. They are not a colonizing people. The Japanese Government has had great difficulty in inducing Japanese to settle in Formosa, and at the present moment it has similar difficulties in Korea and Manchuria. To be sure, the climate of Formosa is too hot for the Japanese ; but that of Korea and Man- churia resembles that of Japan. They are com- mercially adventurous, and will travel far and wide as pedlers, or in search of work and trade ; but they are not colonists. They are a homing people, like the French. They have no more use for the Philippines than Americans have. If a Japanese trader makes money in a foreign country, he will take his family and his money back to Japan as soon as he can. They do not intermarry with women of any foreign race, affording thus a strong contrast to the white 48 THE BO AD TOW ABB PEACE race when in foreign parts. The inexpedient crossing of unlike races will not be promoted by them in any part of the world. The Japanese are not a warlike people, al- though within a few years they have waged two defensive wars, one with China and the other with Russia. They possess, indeed, admirable martial qualities, and make obedient, tough, and courageous soldiers in their country's ser- vice. Their fundamental motive in fighting, however, is not a natural love of it, such as is exhibited, or used to be exhibited, by some Occi- dental peoples, but a simple, profound loyalty to their country, and to the authoritative repre- sentatives of their country's power and will. In their intense patriotism pride, loyalty, and love are fused into a sentiment which completely dominates the private soldier, the of&cer, and the whole military and naval service. Still they are not an aggressive, conquering people ; and they feel no motive for acquiring new territory, except near-by territory which they believe to be necessary to the security of their island empire. The Japanese are accused, chiefly by Occi- dental army and navy men, of intending to " dominate the Pacific " ; but Japan has no such THE DESIBES AND AMBITIONS OF JAPAN 49 intention. All Japanese statesmen and political philosophers recognize the fact that Japan is, and always will be, unable to "dominate the Pacific." No one nation in the world could pos- sibly control the Pacific Ocean. For that pur- pose a combination of at least four powers hav- ing strong navies would be necessary. Five or six powers combined, such, for example, as Great Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Japan, and Russia or Italy, could do it; and could at the same time dominate all the other oceans and seas. Such a group would possess ports and coaling stations on all the seas and oceans. It would be convenient, though not indispensable, if one strong South American government on the Atlantic Coast and one on the Pacific Coast joined the group. There are many who think a control of the oceans by such a combination would be desirable ; because it would tend to remove some of the apprehen- sions which cause war and preparation for war, and to check in their early stages offenses com- mitted or contemplated by one nation against another. All Japanese leaders are fully aware that it would be impossible for either Japan or the United States to send an army of a hundred 60 THE BO AD TOWABD PEACE thousand men with their baggage, animals, stores, and munitions, across the Pacific Ocean in safety, although the fleet should be convoyed by scores of battleships and armored cruisers. The means of attack at night by almost invisible vessels on a wide-extended fleet in motion are quite adequate to arrest or destroy any such expedition, if the attacking force were even tol- erably alert and vigorous. If by miracle such an army should effect a landing on either shore, it could achieve nothing significant, unless the first expedition should be immediately followed by a second and a third. The scale of modern warfare between nations is too large for such remote expeditions, — no matter what the re- sources of the nation that should be rash enough to attempt them. Japan, being heavily burdened with debts in- curred in carrying on her wars with China and Russia and making internal improvements, could not borrow the money necessary in these days for waging aggressive war on a large scale at a distance, although she might fight success- fully on the defensive at or near home. That much she could doubtless do, as many other poor nations have done ; but her financial con- dition is such that she will be prevented from THE DESIBES AND AMBITIONS OF JAPAN 51 engaging in offensive war for at least a genera- tion to come. Moreover, all the capital which Japanese merchants, manufacturers, and finan- ciers can possibly accumulate during the next thirty years, is urgently needed for the execution of public works and the expansion of industrial undertakings at home. The industrial and com- mercial interests of Japan require peace with all the other nations of the world. As Count Te- rauchi said to me at Seoul, " There is no interest of Japan which could possibly be promoted by war with the United States or any other nation; and conversely, there is no interest of the United States which could possibly be promoted by war with Japan . ' ' Such, as I have said before, was the opinion of every Japanese statesman and man of business with whom I talked in the summer of 1912; and many of these gentlemen said that they had never met any Japanese political or commercial leader who was not of that opin- ion. The entire commerce between Japan and the United States is for the mutual advantage of each country, and the United States is Japan's best customer. War between the two countries is not to be thought of; and to suppose that Japan would commit an act of aggression against the United States which would necessarily cause 52 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE war is wholly unreasonable, fantastic, and fool- ish, — the product of a morbid and timorous imagination. Japanese statesmen are not in favor of any extensive migrations of Japanese people to other lands. They want Japanese emigrants from their native islands to settle in neighboring Japanese territories. They hold that the Japanese home industries need all the labor the population can furnish. Japanese economists greatly prefer to the planting of Japanese capital or labor in for- eign lands the recent methods of planting foreign capital in Japan. When an American corpora- tion, which is conducting at home a successful industry, sells its patents and methods to a body of Japanese capitalists, and then takes a con- siderable portion of the stocks and bonds of the Japanese company, American capital finds a profitable investment, the Japanese laborers re- main at home, and the product of Japanese in- dustry is sold to advantage in the markets of the world. Japan wants foreign markets for its manufactured products. War, or any other ac- tion or event which interrupts commercial re- lations with other countries is adverse to Japan- ese interests. The right state of mind of Americans towards THE DESIBES AND AMBITIONS OF JAPAN 53 Japan is one of hearty good-will and cordial admiration. Japan should receive every privi- lege in the United States which the "most favored nation" possesses j and that is all Japan wants from the United States, except the respect due to its achievements, and to the physical, intellectual, and moral qualities which have made these achievements possible. All classes in Japan, the uneducated as well as the educated, the poor as well as the rich, are sensitive about being treated, or thought of, as if they were a backward, semi-civilized, untrustworthy people. They wish to be regarded as a worthy member of the family of civilized nations. Wars and preparations for war continue, be- cause many of the causes of war in time past continue to exist. The Occidental peoples have for several centuries fought oftener and harder than the Oriental ; and the Christianity which prevails among them has little, if any, tendency to prevent their fighting among themselves, sometimes with ferocity, or to prevent them from attacking non-Christian peoples, if they think it their interest to do so. The Eastern peoples. Far and Near, as has been already mentioned, will have some causes of their own for war; because in some important instances 54 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE neither their geographical limits nor their gov- ernmental institutions are as yet settled. One Eastern people has recently acquired the whole of the Occidental art of war with its subsidiary sciences, and other Eastern peoples are on the way to the same acquisition. War will last until its causes are rooted out, and that extirpation will prove a slow and hard task. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is just enter- ing, therefore, on labors which will last for gen- erations. Its reliance must be on the slow-acting forces of education, sanitation, and conservation, on the promotion of mutual acquaintance and advantageous commercial intercourse with the resultant good-will among nations, and on the steady, patient use of the civilizing agencies which humane democracy and applied science have invented and set at work within the past hundred years. From the observations recorded in the above Report, certain inferences may be drawn con- cerning profitable expenditures for the promo- tion of international peace by the Division of Intercourse and Education of the Carnegie En- dowment for International Peace. It may be safely inferred that action in any of the follow- ing directions will bring nearer the coming of HOW TO BEING PEACE NEARER 55 peace: — (1) Create or support agencies compe- tent to reduce, relieve, or prevent, so far as is each day possible, the wrongs, miseries, and illusions which have caused, and are still causing, wars. (2) Strengthen public opinion in favor of publicity in governmental and commercial trans- actions. (3) Suspect and probe all secrecies and hidings in the family, in industries, in legis- lation, and in administration. Oppressions and robberies are generally concocted in secret. It is one of the worst consequences of long-continued and severe oppression, that the resistance to it and revolution must be nursed in secret. In- quire, bring light, and publish. (4) Cultivate in all nations trusteeship, public spirit, and the application of private money to public uses. (5) Create or foster, in addition to universal elementary education, permanent educational agencies such as libraries, hospitals, dispensa- ries, training-schools for nurses, and technical and professional schools in countries which lack these instrumentalities. (6) Recognize frankly the present necessity of maintaining in all coun- tries armed forces for protective duty against aggression from without, or disintegration from within. (7) Strengthen international public opinion in favor of an international naval force 66 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE to secure peace and order on the seas, and a freedom that cannot be interrupted for water- borne commerce. (8) Foster those religious sentiments and those economic, industrial, and political principles which manifestly tend to purify and strengthen family life, and to secure liberty, domestic joys, public tranquillity, and the people's health, morality, and general well- being. CHAPTER V THE GREAT EUROPEAN WAR ITS CAUSES, SCOPE, AND OBJECTS WHAT GAINS FOR MANKIND CAN COME OUT OF IT^ The American people without distinction of party are highly content with the action of their National Administration on all the grave prob- lems 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, neu- trality, aid to Americans in Europe, discour- agement of speculation in foods, and, with the exception of extreme protectionists, admission to American registry of foreign-built ships ; although the legislation on the last subject, which has already passed Congress, is mani- festly inadequate. Our people cannot see that the war will nec- essarily be short, and they cannot imagine how it can last long. They realize that history gives ^ A letter published in the New York Times of September 2, 1914. 68 THE BOAD TOWABD PEACE 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 neces- saries of life as this war threatens. They shud- der at the floods of human woe which are about to overwhelm Europe. Hence, thinking Americans cannot help re- flecting 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 pur- poses 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 mili- tary 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 sum- EARLY LESSONS FROM THE WAR 59 moned more slowly than that of Austria-Hun- gary 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, indus- trial, 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 chances of getting some gains for man- kind out of this gigantic struggle will be some- what 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. 60 THE EOAD TOWABD PEACE When one begins, however, to reflect on the probable causes of the sudden lapse of the most civilized parts of Europe into worse than primi- tive savagery, he comes at once on two old and widespread evils in Europe from which America has been exempt for at least one hundred and fifty 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 na- tion to this side or that without consulting the people or their representatives. The actual catastrophe proves that secret ne- gotiations, 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, can- not 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 voli- tions. Autocratic institutions have no such ne- cessity for publicity. This Government secrecy as to motives, plans, and purposes must often be maintained by disregarding truth, fair deal- EABLY LESSONS FROM THE WAR 61 ing, and honorable obligations, in order that, •when the appeal to force comes, one Govern- ment 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, Ger- many, and Austria-Hungary — have long suf- fered and still suffer, is the permanent na- tional executive, independent of popular control through representative bodies, holding strong views about rights of birth and religious sanc- tions 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 Ameri- cans 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 three hundred years. Pilgrim and Puritan, Covenanter and Quaker, Lutheran 62 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE and Catholic alike left the feudal system and autocratic government behind them when they crossed the Atlantic. Americans, therefore, can- not help hoping that two results of the present war will be : (1) The abolition of secret diplo- macy and secret understandings, and the sub- stitution therefor of treaties publicly discussed and sanctioned, and (2) the creation of national executives — emperors, sultans, kings, or presi- dents — which cannot use the national forces in fight until a thoroughly informed national assembly, acting with deliberation, has agreed to that use. The American student of history since the middle of the seventeenth century sees clearly two strong though apparently opposite ten- dencies 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 ex- ecutive. This second tendency was illustrated strongly in the case of both Germany and Italy, although the Prussian domination in Germany EARLY LESSONS FBOM THE WAR 63 has no parallel in Italy. Somewhat earlier in the nineteenth century the doctrine of the neu- tralization 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 prin- ciple, and new security for small states which are capable of guaranteeing to their citizens " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness " — a secu- rity which no citizen of any European country seems to-day to possess. Some of the underlying causes of the horri- ble catastrophe the American people are now watching from afar are commercial and eco- nomic. 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 1864-65 had the com- mercial motive ; and it is with visions of ports 64 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE 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 ^Egean and the Bosphorus, and eastward to good harbors on the Pacific. Lately they pushed into Mon- golia and Manchuria, but were resisted success- fully 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 -^Egean, and is now trying to seize Serbia with the same ends in view. With similar motives Italy lately de- scended 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 Mex- ico — this democratic objection. They believe that extensions of national territory should be brought about only with the indubitable con- sent of the majority of the people most nearly concerned. They also believe that commerce should always be a means of promoting good- EARLY LESSONS FROM THE WAR 65 will, and not ill-will, among men, and that all legitimate and useful extensions of the com- merce of a manufacturing and commercial na- tion may be procured through the policy of the ** open door " — which means nothing more than that all nations should be allowed to com- pete on equal terms for the trade of any foreign people, whether backward or advanced in civil- ization. No American Administration has ac- cepted a " concession " of land in China. They also believe that peaceable extensions of terri- tory 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 Amer- ican 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 com- mercial and industrial methods. 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 pro- cess of competitive armaments, the enlistment 66 THE ROAD TOWAED PEACE of the entire male population in national armies, and the incessant planning of campaigns against neighbors, is not a trustworthy method for pre- serving 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 estab- lished, 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 Ger- EABLY LESSONS FBOM THE WAR 67 many and Austria-Hungary are now using can only be overcome by brute force of the same sort in larger measure. It is only when negotia- tions for peace begin that the great lesson o£ 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 cooperate to prevent the recurrence of such losses and woes ? Should Germany and Austria- Hungary succeed in their present undertak- ings, the civilized nations 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 peace- able intentions would offer the least security. It must be admitted, however, that the whole military organization, which has long been com- pulsory on the nations of continental Europe, is inconsistent in the highest degree with Amer- ican ideals of individual liberty and social prog^ ress. 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 68 THE BOAD TOWAED PEACE 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, simul- taneous stirring of the passions of the people on behalf of their own ideals. This stirring re- quires 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 interna- tional disputes. 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 peo- ple," or " My loyal subjects " ; for there is im- plied 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." EARLY LESSONS FROM THE WAR 69 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 cannot be, neutral or indifferent as to the ulti- mate outcome of this titanic struggle. It already seems to them that England, France, and Rus- sia 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 hun- dred 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 self- ishly, and in so barbarous a spirit. Most edu- cated Americans hope and believe that by de- feating the German barbarousness the Allies will only promote the noble German civilization. The presence of Russia in the combination against Germany and Austria-Hungary seems to the average American an abnormal phenom- enon ; because Russia is itself a military mon- archy 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 70 THE BOAD TOWABD PEACE that Russia submitted to the " Concert of Eu- rope " when her victorious armies were within seventeen miles of Constantinople, that she emancipated her serfs, proposed the Hague Conferences, initiated the " Douma," 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 multitudi- nous population a large minority which is seeth- ing with high aspirations and a fine idealism. For the clarification of the public mind on the issues involved, it is important that the limits of American neutrality should be dis- cussed and understood. The action of the Gov- ernment must be neutral in the best sense ; but American sympathies and hopes cannot possi- bly be neutral; for the whole history and pres- ent 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. CHAPTER VI TRUE NATIONAL GREATNESS ARE ITS FOUN- DATIONS IMPERIALISM OR DEMOCRACY, FIGHT- ING POWER OR SOLEMN PUBLIC COMPACTS?* 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 ef- fective defence 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 proposi- tion. Indeed, Sir Francis Bacon says explicitly * A letter published in the New York Times of Sept. 22, 1914. 72 TEE ROAD TOWAED PEACE 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 belong- ing 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, pa- tient, 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, rest- less, and oversensitive France, seems to me the hopefuUest public fact that has occurred in my time." How did Germany attain to this posi- tion of " Queen of the Continent " ? By creat- thue national gbeatness 73 ing 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 tran- scendent 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 vio- lence on the part of the French nation, both at home and abroad ; and it led on to the Napo- leonic wars, which were tremendous physical struggles for mastery in Europe. In a recent public statement two leading philosophical writers of modern Germany, Pro- fessors 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 un- morality, pursues only its own advantage "; and 74 THE EOAD TOWARD PEACE 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 Ger- man commerce and wealth; and to these ends the firm establishment of her military suprem- acy 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 ac- cepted, 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, — Macedo- nian, 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 look- ing for better foundations of national greatness than force and fighting. TRUE NATIONAL GREATNESS 75 The partial successes of democracy in Eu- rope have much increased the evils of war. Sir Francis Bacon looked for a fighting class ; un- der the feudal system when a baron went to war he took with him his vassals, or that por- tion of them that could be spared from the fields at home. Universal conscription is a mod- ern invention, the horrors of which, as now exhibited in Kussia, Germany, Austria-Hun- gary, and France, much exceed those of earlier martial methods. There has never been such an interruption of agricultural and industrial pro- duction, or such a rending of family ties in con- sequence 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 sci- ence has much increased the potential destruc- tiveness 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 76 THE BOAB TOWARD PEACE Balkan wars were as ferocious as those of Alex- ander. The German aviators drop aimless bombs at night into cities occupied chiefly by non- combatants. The North Sea is strewn with float- ing 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 Alexan- dria Library have ever since been called fanat- ics and barbarians. The German army tries to compel unfortified Belgian cities and towns to pay huge ransoms to save themselves from de- struction — a method which the Barbary States, indeed, were accustomed to use against their Christian neighbors, but which has long been held to be appropriate only for brigands and pirates — Greek, Sicilian, Syrian, or Chinese. How can it be that the Government of a civ- ilized 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. TBUE NATIONAL GREATNESS 77 In North America there are two large com- munities — heretofore inspired chiefly by ideals of English origin — which have never main- tained conscripted armies, and have never forti- fied 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 battle- fields 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 Em- pire, such as Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. They, too, have a better ideal of na- tional greatness than that of military suprem- acy. What are the real ambitions and hopes of the 78 THE BOAD TOWABD PEACE 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 collec- tive 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 gov- ernment under the control of the deliberate pub- lic 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. They believe that the chief object of govern- ment should be the promotion of the public wel- fare by legislative and administrative means ; that the processes of government should be open and visible, and their results be incessantly pub- lished for approval or disapproval. They believe TRUE NATIONAL GREATNESS 79 that a nation becomes great through industrial productiveness and the resulting internal and external commerce, through the gradual in- crease of comfort and general well-being in the population, and through the advancement of science, letters, and art. They believe that edu- cation, free intercourse with other nations, and religious enthusiasm and toleration are means of national greatness, and that in the develop- ment 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 dis- covery, and the fine arts, of cooperation for mutual benefit among nations different in size, natural abilities, and material resources, and of federation among nations associated geograph- ically 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 sol- 80 THE ROAD TOWABD PEACE emn public compacts between peoples — not princes or cabinets — compacts made to be kept, strengthened by mutual services and good of- fices, and watched over by a permanent inter- national judicial tribunal authorized to caU 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 con- stitute the rational substitute for the imperial- istic 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 interna- tional, 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, jus- tice and mercy. ^ CHAPTER Vn SOME GEOUNDS FOR AMERICAN SYMPATHY WITH MODERN GERMANY WHY AMERICAN OPIN- ION FAVORS THE ALLIES IN THE GREAT WAR THE MOST FAVORABLE ISSUE OF THE WAR^ The numerous pamphlets which German writ- ers are now distributing in the United States, and the many letters about the European war which Americans are now receiving from Ger- man and German-American friends, are con- vincing 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 Ger- man 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 ^ A letter published in the New York Times of October 2, 1914. 82 THE ROAD TOWABD PEACE Germany, or fail to recognize the immense ob- ligations under which she has placed all the rest of the world ; although they now feel that the German nation has been going wrong in theo- retical and practical politics for more than a hundred years, and is to-day reaping the conse- quences of her own wrong-thinking and wrong- doing. There are many important matters concern- ing which American sympathy is strongly with Germany: (1) The unification of Germany, which Bismarck and his co-workers accom- plished, naturally commended itself to Ameri- cans, 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 accom- pHshment of German unification. (2) Americans have felt unquahfied admiration for the com- mercial and financial growth of Germany during the past forty years, believing it to be primarily the fruit of well-directed industry and enter- prise. (3) All educated Americans feel strong gratitude to the German nation for its extraor- dinary achievements in letters, science, and edu- cation within the last hundred years. Jealousy GROUNDS FOR SYMPATHY WITH GERMANY 83 of Germany in these matters is absolutely for- eign 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 educa- tional administration recognize the fact that German administration — both in peace and in war — is the most ef&cient in the world ; and for that efficiency they feel nothing but respect and admiration, unless the efficiency requires an inexpedient suppression or restriction of indi- vidual 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 mo- ment, and irremediable in the future ; and they believe that the German people are inspired to- day by just such an overwhelming sentiment. How is it, then, that, with all these strong American feelings tending to make them sym- pathize 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 84 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE 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 to-day. These reasons have come out of the past, and are entrenched 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 pub- lic 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 : — (1) 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 represen- tatives 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 AMERICAN OPINION AND THE ALLIES 85 affairs they utterly distrust secrecy, and are accustomed to demand and secure the utmost publicity. (2) They object to placing in any ruler's hands the power to order mobilization or de- clare war in advance of deliberate consultation with a representative assembly, and of coopera- tive 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 the ex- ecutive authority. (3) The secrecy of European diplomatic in- tercourse 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 ne- gotiated 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. (4) The reliance on military force as the foundation of true national greatness seems to thinking Americans erroneous, and in the long 86 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE run degrading to a Christian nation. They con- ceive 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 edu- cation, public health and order, agriculture, manufacturing, and commerce, and the result- ing 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 seacoasts. There is nothing in the history of the American peo- ple to make them believe that the true greatness of nations depends on military power. (5) 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 AMERICAN OPINION AND THE ALLIES 87 that contiguous country was distracted by fac- tional fighting. This objection applies to long- past acts of the German Government, as 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 annexation of Belgium. (6) Americans object strenuously to the vio- lation of treaties between nations on the alle- gation of military necessity, or for any other reason whatever. They believe that the prog- ress 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 inter- national 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 inter- national wars by means of agreements deliber- ately made in time of peace. The United States has proposed and made more of these agree- ments than any other power, has adhered to them, and profited by them. Under one such 88 TEE ROAD TOWARD PEACE agreement, made nearly a hundred years ago, Canada and the United States have avoided forts and armaments against each other, al- though they have had serious differences of opinion and clashes of interests, and the fron- tier is three thousand 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 Belgium neutral- ization treaty as nothing but a piece of paper which might be torn up on the ground of mili- tary 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 terri- tory of Belgium — would have determined American opinion in favor of the Alhes, 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. (7) American public opinion, however, has AMERICAN OPINION AND THE ALLIES 89 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 in- habited 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 hold- ing 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 un- justifiable 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 wag- ing in Belgium and France. They have sup- posed that war was to be waged in this century 90 THE BOAD TOWAED PEACE 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 hundred and twenty-five 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, be- lieve that this reliance is unsound both theo- retically and practically. The wars in Europe AMERICAN OPINION AND THE ALLIES 91 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 explo- sions of destructive warfare. They think, too, that preparation for war on the part of Ger- many 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, tele- graphs, and telephones which make rapid mo- bilization 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 92 TBE ROAD TOWARD PEACE actual development of weapons and munitions, and of the art of quick entrencbing, the attack- ing force in battle on land is at a great disad- vantage in comparison vrith 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 exhaus- tion 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 quick capital of the Southern States was wiped out. 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 per- sistent peoples have decided to use all their spiritual and material forces in cooperation 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- AMERICAN OPINION AND THE ALLIES 93 Hungary in their present undertakings, and the abandonment by both peoples of the doc- trine that their salvation depends on militarism and the maintenance of autocratic executives entrusted 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 constitu- tional government, with the military power subject to the civil power. The American people grieve over the fruit- less sacrifices of life, property, and the natural human joys which the German people are mak- ing to a wrong and impossible ideal of national power and welfare. The sacrifices which Ger- many 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 knowl- edge makes them careful not to form judg- ments about details until the events and deeds tell their own story. They cannot even tell to which side victory inclines in a long, far- 94 TEE ROAD TOWARD PEACE 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 Gov- ernments send hither of&cial reports on current events more frequently than the German Gov- ernment 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. 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 igno- rance 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 mis- information about the attack of Austria-Hun- gary on Serbia, the diplomatic negotiations and the correspondence between the sovereigns which immediately preceded the war, and the state of mind of the Belgian and English peo- AMERICAN OPINION AND TEE ALLIES 95 pies. American believers in the good sense and good feeling of the common people naturally imagine, when an awful calamity befalls a na- tion, that the people cannot have been warned of its approach, else they would have avoided it. In this case they fear that the German Em- peror, Chancellery, and General Staff have themselves been misinformed in important re- spects, have made serious miscalculations which they are proposing to conceal as long as possi- ble, 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-Hun- gary, except so far as irrational panic can be said to be an explanation. Against possible, though not probable, Russian aggression, a firm 96 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE 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 treat- ment of France in 1870-71. The great success of Germany in expanding her commerce during the past thirty years makes it hard for Ameri- cans to understand the hot indignation of the Germans against the British because of what- ever 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, per- haps, 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 Ger- man 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 en- joyed twenty years of real peace. CHAPTER VIII America's duty in regard to the European WAR^ Duties often grow out of sentiments and beliefs, and in this instance they clearly do ; so that I propose in the first place to speak of the great disappointments which this war and the second war in the Balkans have brought to thoughtful Americans and to all persons, indeed, who hoped that the human race was making some progress toward humane, just, and merci- ful conditions of life. We have been startled by the outbreak, the apparently sudden outbreak, of the worst fight- ing that the world has ever seen in regard to .destruction of life and property, and of pre- cious treasures of letters and art. That is the literal fact. No war of former times has been so destructive of things that we imagined the human race in its civilized parts held to be pre- cious and inviolable. Then, most Americans believed that one of 1 An address before the Businesswomen's Club of Boston, October 15, 1914. 98 TEE ROAD TOWARD PEACE the chief methods of progress in civilization ■was expressed in the phrase, " the sanctity of contracts." You are all business women. You have known that modern business absolutely depends on the sanctity of contracts. It de- pends also upon the faith of man in man. All the commercial and financial agencies of the modern world are built on credit ; and what is credit but the faith of man in man that all will observe the sanctity of a contract or agree- ment? Lately, we saw in the Balkans that a bond of union, under which a considerable war had been fought against an alien ruler, suddenly broke to pieces ; and on the rupture came one of the most ferocious wars that the world has ever seen, a war as savage as that of the Greek revolution of 1822, which at the time was sup- posed to be characterized by unusual ferocity. And then we were brought to this sudden out- burst of warlike fury in Europe ; and one of the most civilized nations in Europe immediately declared by its acts — not in words, though a declaration in words was not altogether lacking — that a solemn treaty, only a few years old, was to signify for that nation nothing whatever, absolutely nothing. The treaty of neutrality AMERICA'S GRIEFS, DUTIES, AND DEBTS 99 ■wMch protected Belgium was violated in the first moments of the war. These things have brought to Americans a desperate disappoint- ment. The whole structure of our government rests on a single contract entered into by thirteen parties, the Constitution of the United States. We are thoroughly accustomed to the principle of federation, the joining together of distinct independent States in a common union for common purposes ; and we regard that union, that federation, as the very foundation of our national life. Are such contracts, such conven- tions, such agreements, to be regarded in Eu- rope as of no effect, as " pieces of paper," as the German Chancellor said, to be torn up be- cause of what he called military necessity, which only meant that a nation going to war may take the easiest, shortest, quickest way of attacking its opponent, no matter what neutral territory may stand in the way ? This total dis- regard of the sanctity of a contract is the heavi- est of our many serious disappointments within the last two months and a half. And then we Americans had fondly hoped that the conception of chivalry was to be pre- served in the modern world, that the chival- 100 THE EOAD TOWARD PEACE rous man was still to exist, that a chivalrous knighthood might continue to exist, that the chivalrous principle of the strong defending and protecting the weak would develop, not dwindle, in the civilized world. Americans il- lustrate this state of mind, this chivalrous habit, in their treatment of women and children ; and they have done so for many generations. Sud- denly we find a strong nation which claims the highest degree of civilization absolutely disre- garding all considerations of chivalrous action towards weaker powers. The attack by Ger^ many on Belgium was a violent attack of a sudden on an army and a nation that was infi- nitely weaker than Germany, — no comparison whatever between little Belgium and great Germany in any sort of power or force j and to-day Belgium has been devoured, is extinct, if Europe shall permit her to be extinguished. We had hoped that the methods of war and the ethics of war had been shown to be capable of amelioration, of improvement. Both Confer- ences of the Hague labored much over amelio- rations of the practices in war. This present war has blown all those efforts to the winds. Americans, as a rule, have believed that the human race was really making a slow progress AMERICA'S GBIEFS, DUTIES, AND DEBTS 101 toward justice between man and man, and be- tween nation and nation, and was making a slow progress toward the development of indi- vidual liberty. We said in our Declaration of Independence that all men are entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness " ; and now we see that there is not a man or woman in Europe that has any title to life, or liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. This is another heavy disappointment to the American people. We had hoped that the world was making some J)rogress toward the Christian ideal of mercy, gentleness, and love as the supreme mo- tives in human conduct ; and suddenly we dis- cover that in the most advanced nation in Europe as regards science, pure and applied, there is during war no mercy, no humanity, and that hatred quickly takes the place of friendliness, and is developed with an astonish- ing speed and amplitude into a fierce and abid- ing passion. These disappointments weigh upon us the more because we see no issue possible of the present struggle except after long months or years of desperate warfare. The prevailing Ger- man philosophy of government and of national greatness is built upon the dogma — " Might 102 THE ROAD TOWABD PEACE m makes Riglit." It seems to be a new religion among the leading Prussians that force is the only basis of national greatness and of moral dignity, and valor the highest virtue, no matter in what cause valor is displayed. You are all women. Do you believe that might makes right? Have you ever believed it ? Has the history of the human race, up from savagery to what we call civilization, suggested to you that might is the real source of right, is the only foundation of just relations between man and woman? In savage life the greater strength, power, and endurance of the man gives him absolute control over the woman; and he has always exercised it. Here in this most fortunate and blessed country we have had a totally different conception of right rela- tions between man and woman, between adults and children, between the state and its citizens. We absolutely deny that might makes right. We believe that the foundations of the family and of the state are mOral, and that these moral foundations have superseded in some measure the ancient tenet that the strong have the right to dominate the weak. You perceive that the American objection to the political philosophy of Germany at the AMERICA'S GRIEFS, DUTIES, AND DEBTS 103 present day, and to its militarism, is absolutely fundamental. Our objections go to the roots of the matter, and we are irreconcilable to the whole philosophy which prevails in Germany, apparently without denial or exception in any class of society. I say "apparently," because none of us feel that at present we have access to the fundamental sentiments of the mass of the German population. We have access to the expressed views of the philosophers, poets, and historians. We, of course, have access to the expressed views of their military authorities, ac- tive or retired. We have access to the archaic conceptions which the German Emperor cher- ishes of his function, and of the God-given powers of himself and his family. But we have not access at this moment to the underlying sentiments of the masses of the German peo- ple ; and it will probably be years before we learn them. So, thinking of these things, we have to qualify our use of the word " prevail " with the word " apparently," or the phrase " so far as we can see " ; and we are permitted to hope that we do not see far enough. Such being the gulf between American sen- timents and German sentiments as they appear to-day, and this gulf being a matter of political 104 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE and religious conviction, how are our duties as a nation to be determined in the present crisis and catastrophe for mankind? We have no difficulty in recognizing the jus- tice, indeed the indispensable quality of the action of our Government, the official action of the nation, in the present horrible conditions. We all believe that our Government has been right in declaring neutrality in the actual com- bat for the United States. We all believe that at present we must deal equally with the com- batants on the two sides — that if we sell food to one group, we must also sell food to the other ; that we must pay our debts, no matter to which side. So much we are doing. We are paying our debts, no matter whether the debt is due to a German, an Austrian, a Frenchman, or an Englishman. We also keep open the lines of traffic, whether those lines run into English or French ports, or into any other port of Europe not blockaded. Our surplus food is going to all the combatants at this moment ; because neutral ports give access to Germany and Austria as well as to England, France, and Russia. But this neutrality is official or legal, as it were. It must be maintained until new con- ditions determine new actions. But it is, of AMERICA'S GRIEFS, DUTIES, AND DEBTS 105 course, quite impossible for us to be neutral as regards our feelings and beliefs, our sentiments and hopes ; quite impossible, because the cause in which Germany and Austria-Hungary are fighting is the cause of imperialism, of militar- ism, of governments by force, using against other nations the extreme of skilfully directed, highly trained force. We see upon the other side the two freest large nations in Europe combined with a military empire. These two freest nations — England and France — are na- tions to which we of this country are deeply indebted for our own safety, freedom, and faith in liberty under law. Therefore, neutrality in our hearts is quite out of the question. But under these conditions what can we do, what can you do to help agonized Europe? You can do everything in your power, and ad-' vise all persons over whom you have influence, to do everything in their power to keep our own industries going, to maintain the business, the work, the productiveness of this country; to restore the lines of exchange suddenly rup- tured after a careful building up which has taken at least three centuries ; and to restore the lines of transportation for the international exchange of goods. You can do everything in 106 THE BOAD TOWABD PEACE your power to prevent all kinds of hoarding "within our country, within our domestic circles, hoarding of money, goods, or provisions — flour, for example, and sugar — and of pur- chasing beyond the usual demands of the fam- ily. All these things hurt. They hurt because they tend to an unreasonable rise of prices im- mediately, and on the spot. Discourage all such selfish precautions. Every man who employs other persons should now continue to employ as many as possible of the people he has been accustomed to employ. To reduce unnecessarily expenditures on the employment of labor is an unwise and unpatri- otic thing at this moment. Are there no expenditures that we may prop- erly reduce ? Certainly there are. But at this moment I think of only one class of expendi- tures which might well be reduced, namely, ex- penditures on luxuries, particularly on luxuries which are, to say the least, silly or injurious. There are a good many such luxuries in the American community on which serious savings might be made; but those are the only ex- penditures which it is even justifiable to reduce at this time, unless the money to meet normal expenditures is actually lacking. No fear of AMERICA'S GBIEFS, DUTIES, AND DEBTS 107 future loss of income justifies retrenchment now. I have been speaking of our own expendi- tures and the employment of labor in our own country; but can we not do something for other countries in similar directions ? We can continue to supply to the utmost the industries of all other countries, and particularly the in- dustries of the European countries, with the raw materials they need for their own factories. We shall be truly neutral in so doing, if the conditions permit us to supply the raw mate- rials of their industries, or parts of them, to all the combatants. We may not be able to serve all the nations that are at war ; but should do it so far as it is possible. This is one of the neutral duties. The prospect is that the war will last until one or other of the combatants is thoroughly exhausted. One cannot conceive of Germany submitting to defeat until she has exhausted her supplies of men, money, and food. And I am sure we shall have equal difficulty in con- ceiving that England will stop until she is thoroughly exhausted. Fortunately, from our point of view, there is no more resolute or dogged people in the world than the English, 108 THE BOAT) TOWARD PEACE and we remember in that connection with satis- faction that many of us are of English extrac- tion. As to France — a new thrill of feeling and sentiment has gone through France. Every one that returns from France says that the peo- ple seemed changed, externally and internally. They are sober and serious, and they go about their daily work with a grave determination to prevent by any sacrifices the extinction, or the reduction in power, of the French nation. But what shall I say of Eussia ? It is the momentary, yes, the rather permanent belief in Germany, that the Russians may be justly de- scribed as barbarians, semi -civilized people, Oriental people, incapable of that high degree of organization, and that practice of individual liberty under law which characterize the prom- ising Occidental peoples. And it is true that the Russians are an immense mass of people only lately risen from the condition of serfs, and that they are ruled by a despotic ruler who is surrounded by an autocratic group of high public officials. But we Americans have learnt in recent years a good deal about the Russians ; and we find in them some qualities which give us hope for the huge nation, which often seems AMERICA'S GRIEFS, DUTIES, AND DEBTS 109 slumbering or half-awake as regards both com- mercial and political activity. We have had a large number of Russians poured in upon us of recent years, and vre have found them to be an industrious, intelligent, romantic people, capable of all the highest sentiments of human nature, and having at heart a great ambition toward liberty and an expanding and improv- ing life. I had occasion to observe while I was President of Harvard College that there were no more intelligent students in the University than the Russians. They had the defects of peoples that have been for generations under despotic rule, and doubtless on an immense scale they still exhibit those defects. Many Americans have made acquaintance within the last fifteen years with modern Rus- sian literature. It is in high degree imaginative, hopeful, and pathetic, though often revolution- ary in the proper sense of that word — that is, looking to great changes in family and social life, and in the life of the Government. Tolstoy represents an immense movement of the Rus- sian mind. It was the Czar of Russia that called the first Hague Conference. The Czar insti- tuted the Douma, which has had already an inter- esting and truly remarkable career, considering 110 TEE ROAD TOWARD PEACE that none of its members had any experience of political liberty. I admit that none of these things may go very deep, except the Russian literature. That goes deep into the heart and mind of the nation. That makes a deep impres- sion on the heart and mind of the whole civil- ized world. We have further to observe that three im- portant steps have already been taken by Russia since this war broke out, all of them of a highly progressive nature. One is the offer to the Poles to reconstitute the Kingdom of Poland; an- other is to give Jews full civic rights in Russia ; and the third is the imperial order prohibiting the manufacture and use of the strong alcoholic spirit that the Russians have been in the habit of drinking. That last outcome of this sudden war is a very striking one. What if an immense temperance reform should date from August, 1914, all over Russia? We must not, therefore, accept the German view that this war is really waged to resist a new irruption of the barbarians into Europe. It is more than doubtful whether the Russians are barbarians. It is more than doubtful whether the spirit in which the Russians are now fight- ing be not more accordant with the American AMERICA'S GBIEFS, DUTIES, AND DEBTS 111 spirit than the spirit which animates the Ger- man Empire. We must bear in mind — indeed, we are not in danger of forgetting — the deep obligations which this American nation lies under to Eng- land and France. The obligations are so deep that it is quite in vain to expect us to be in our hearts neutral during the development of this fearful catastrophe. The American people is ordinarily accused of being materialistic, of seeking the dollar, and not caring much about anything else, except the luxuries or comforts that the dollar can buy. How often we have heard that of late. It is a total misconception with regard to the f undamantal beliefs and prac- tices of the American people. We are an ideal- istic people. When our ideals are attacked and seem to us to be in danger, there is no people in the world that more promptly throws to the winds all material interests. When our ideals are seriously attacked, we are absolutely reck- less with regard to our property, national or in- dividual, and we care for our material resources only as means of defending our moral theories and our hopes for mankind. We must hope and pray that we shall not be drawn into this most horrible war of all time. 112 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE But that escape will be due to the fact that Russia, England, and France have succeeded in defeating Germany and Austria-Hungary. Prophecy as to issues is impossible under such conditions as those we are now witnessing; but it is not impossible to prophesy that the American people will be true to their quality, true to their history, true to their obHgations to England and to France. We all know that the American ideals came from England across the Atlantic with the Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritans, and have since moved majestically across the conti- nent; and we all know that that "celestial- infernal phenomenon," as Carlyle called the French Revolution, carried all about the civil- ized and half -civilized world the fundamental conceptions concerning the rights of man, and the uplifting power of liberty. The French na- tion, after that " celestial-infernal phenome- non," wandered in the wilderness for more than two generations ; but at last they have attained to a republican form of government, which has already lasted more than forty years. Can we think of giving no aid to France if she comes to the end of her resources ? Can we think of bringing no aid to England if she be reduced to like straits ? Happily we do not need to an- AMERICA'S GBIEFS, DUTIES, AND DEBTS 113 ticlpate so direful an issue. But let us not confuse our minds and wills by failing to see whither the German policies lead, whither the teachings of Bismarck, Treitschke, and Bern- hardi have led Germany. Let us not dream of abandoning our faith that human relations should be, nay, shall be, determined, not by arrogant force, but by considerations of justice, mercy, love, and good-will. CHAPTER IX THE CAUSES OF THE WAR ARE AUTOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS, NATIONAL DESIRES FOR EM- PIRE, DISREGARD FOR TREATIES AND CON- VENTIONS, AND FALSE PHILOSOPHIES WHY GERMANY MUST BE DEFEATED^ Each one of the principal combatants in Eu- rope seems to be anxious to prove that it is not responsible for this cruelest, most extensive, and mostdestructiveof all wars. Each Government in- volved has published the correspondence between its chief executive and other chief executives, and between its Chancellery or Foreign Of&ce 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 seem to be in all of them suppressions or omissions which only the future historian will be able to report — perhaps after many years. They re- veal, however, the dilapidated state of the Con- ^ A letter published in the New York Times on November 17, 1914. THE CAUSE OF THE WAR — ITS OUTCOME 115 cert 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 desir- able to appeal for justification or moral sup- port. These publications have been read with in- tense 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 pur- poses of the nation or nations concerned. The prime source of the present immense disaster in Europe is the desire on the part 116 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE 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. Ger- many arrived late at this desire, being pre- vented until 1870 from indulging in it, be- cause 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 in- dependent 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 be- lief. Shortly before the achievement of German unity by Bismarck, she had obtained by war in 1864 and 1866 important accessions of terri- tory, 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 THE CAUSE OF THE WAR — ITS OUTCOME 117 equip it for instant action in the most per- fect manner which science and eager foresight could contrive. To develop this supreme mihtary 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 train- ing 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 sup- port 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 com- mander-in-chief of the German army. At the word of the Emperor this army can be sum- 118 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE moned, 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 prin- cipal 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 imple- ments 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. The intense desire for colonies, and for the spread of German commerce throughout the world, instigated the creation of a great Ger- man navy, and started the race with England in navy building. The increase of German wealth, and the rapid development of manufac- tures and commercial sea-power after 1870-71, made it possible for the Empire to devote im- THE CAUSE OF THE WAB — ITS OUTCOME 119 mense 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 push- ing her colonization and sea-power policy, Ger- many 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 early have acquired 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 — prob- ably 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 ex- ists in England, France, and the United States ; and, therefore, the German leaders were sur- 120 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE prised and grievously disappointed at the sudden popular determination of Great Britain and Ire- land 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 Em- peror, and the thorough studies of the German Staff into the most advantageous plans of cam- paign against every neighbor, conspired to de- velop 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 ad- vantage 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 con- duct of war into which Germany entered with THE CAUSE OF THE WAB — ITS OUTCOME 121 many other nations at the Second Hague Con- ference. This German view of the worthlessness of international agreements was not a cause of the present war, because it was not fully evi- dent 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 Ger- many, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey at the mo- ment, that the hopes of mankind for the gradual development of international order and peace rest on the sanctity of contracts between na- tions, 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 hope- lessly barbarous. World-empire now, as always, is to be won by force — that is, by conquest and holding possession. So Assyria, Israel, Macedonia, Ath- ens, 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 122 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE all personal and national greatness and all worthy human achievements. In the support of this doctrine, educated Germany has de- veloped 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 in- spiring its followers with zeal and sustained en- thusiasm 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 TEE CAUSE OF THE WAR — ITS OUTCOME 123 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 com- plete devotion. The trouble with this supple- ment to the religion of valor is that it dwells too much on submission, self-sacrifice, and dis- cipline, 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 Ger- man is always a controlled, directed, and driUed person, who aspires to control and discipline his inferiors ; and in his view pretty much all man- kind are his inferiors. He is not a freeman in the French, English, or American sense ; and he prefers not to be. The present war is the inevitable result of lust of empire, autocratic government, sudden wealth, and the religion of valor. What Ger- man domination would mean to any that should resist it the experience of Belgium and North- ern France during the past three months aptly demonstrates. The civilized world can now see 124 THE BOAB TOWARD PEACE 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 assas- sination of the heir to the throne of Austria- Hungary, the sympathy of Russia with the Balkan States, the French desire for the recov- ery of Alsace-Lorraine, and Great Britain's jeal- ousy 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. Many German apologists for the war attribute it to German fear of Eussia. They say that, al- I THE CAUSE OF THE WAB — ITS OUTCOME 125 though Germany committed the first actual aggression by invading Belgium and Luxem- burg 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 threat- enings of war by Germany have not been di- rected against Russia, but against Denmark, Austria, France, and England. In her coloni- zation enterprises it is not Russia that Ger- many 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 Ger- many against Great Britain through access by land to British India. In short, Germany's policies, at home and abroad, during the past 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 126 THE BO AD TOWARD PEACE present war it thinks it has staked its all on " empire or downfall." 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, can- not 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 hid- eous war, and guide another Germany to great achievements for humanity. If the causes of the present immense catas- trophe have been correctly stated, the desirable outcomes of the war are, no world-empire for any race or nation, no more ^^ subjects," no ex- ecutives, 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 inter- national questions, and no conscription armies THE CAUSE OF THE WAR — ITS OUTCOME 127 that can be launched in war by executives with- out consulting independent representative as- semblies. There should come out from this su- preme 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 modi- fied by mutual consent, and provide a safe basis for the limitation and reduction of arma- ments on land and sea, no basis to be consid- ered 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 consum- mation 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 un- der law, and the believers in the progress of mankind through loving service each to all and all to each. Extreme pacifists 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, pro- 128 THE ROAD TOWABD PEACE - claim 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-em- pire. More and more the thinkers of the world see, and the common people more and more be- lieve instinctively, that the cause of righteous liberty is the cause of civilization. In the con- ference which will one day meet to settle the terms of peace, and therefore the future con- ditions 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. CHAPTER X CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN CHARLES W. ELIOT AND JACOB H. SCHIFF ABOUT THE WAR, BE- TWEEN NOVEMBER 24 AND DECEMBER 14, 1914 Cambridge, Mass., November 24, 1914. Dear Mr. Sohiff : — It was a great relief to me to read just now your interview in the New York Times of No- vember 22, for I have been afraid that your judgment and mine, concerning the desirable outcome of this horrible war, were very dif- ferent. 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 lead- ing 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 agree- ment among the leading nations which shall prevent competitive armaments. I entirely agree 130 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE "with you that it is in the highest degree unde- sirable 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 enough weight to induce Germany to abandon her intense de- sire for Belgium and Holland and extensive colonial possessions ? To my thinking, without the abandonment of that desire and ambition COBBESPONDENCE WITH MB. SCHIFF 131 on the part of Germany, there can be no lasting peace in Europe and no reduction of armaments. Sincerely yours, Chables W. Eliot. New Yokk, November 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 desir- able 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 re- sult toward European order and peace may be brought about out of the chaos which has be- come 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 132 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE peace without either side becoming first ex- hausted, and it was my purpose in the inter- view 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 destruc- tion may continue for a very, very long time. , Yours most faithfully, Jacob H. Schifp. Cambkidge, Mass., November 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 COBBESPONDENCE WITH MB. SCEIFF 133 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-em- pire by militarism. Have you any means of getting into the minds of some of the present rulers of Germany the idea that no such alter- native 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. The Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. December 1, 191i. Dear Dr. Eliot : — I have received to-day 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 134 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE what might be done to bring to cessation this horrible and senseless war. I beheve you are mistaken — though in this I am stating nothing, absolutely, but my per- sonal 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 coun- try to prevent public opinion being aroused in favor of the stoppage of hostiHties and reestab- lishment 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 enclose 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 to-day on the subject of my recent Times interview, be the very men to carry out the suggestions made by my correspondent ? Perhaps no other two men in the entire country are so greatly looked up to by its peo- COBBESPONDENCE WITH MB. SCHIFF 135 pie 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 Amer- icans 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 war- ring nations come together, and, with the expe- rience 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 de- serve and receive the blessing of this and of coming generations ! Yours most faithfully, Jacob H. Sohiff. Cambbidge, Mass., December 3, 1914. Deak Mr. Schiff: — I thank you for your letter of December 1 and its interesting enclosure. 136 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE Although every thoughtful person must ear- nestly 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 com- batants, 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, auto- cratic bureaucracy, and the use of force in in- ternational 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 hor- rors. I cannot but think that Europe now has a COBBESPONDENCE WITH MB. SCHIFF 137 chance to make a choice between the Grerman 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 cor- respondent 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 con- sider terms of settlement, I cannot but feel (1) that such a conference would have no assured status ; (2) that the combatants would not Hsten ; and (3) that the effort would, therefore, be un- timely now, though perhaps useful later. One idea might possibly bring about peace, if it fructified in the mind of the German Em- peror — 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 Ger- many 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, how- 138 THE BOAB TOWARD PEACE ever, on an international agreement to be main- tained by an international force j whereas, the example which Germany has just given of the reckless violation of international agreements is extremely discouraging in regard to the possi- bility of securing the peace of Europe in the future. Although this war has already made quite im- possible 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 Ameri- can advice, or imitate American example. Presi- dent Wilson seems to think that this country will be accepted as a kind of umpire in this for- midable contest ; but surely we have no right to any such position. Our example in avoiding aggression on other nations, and in declining COBBESPONBENCE WITH MB. SCHIFF 139 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 democ- racy 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 educa- tion, finance, commercial development, a pagan philosophy, and government have been prepar- ing this war since 1860. To stop it now, before these forces have been overwhelmingly defeated, and before the whole German people is con- vinced that they are defeated, would be to leave humanity exposed to the certain recurrence of the fearful convulsion 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, 140 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE New York, December 6, 1914. Dear Dr. Eliot: — Your letter of December 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 nought better than to sit at the feet of a master like you and be in- structed. 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 jus- tice of the position you have taken from the start you would not be so determined in hold- ing 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 ap- palling than anything we have seen yet since COBBESPONDENCE WITH MB. SCHIFF 141 the war began. So you are willing that, with all the human life that has already perished, prac- tically 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 deplor- able conflict can be once and forever eradi- cated ? 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 estab- lishment of the international poHce 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 Uto- pian and likely impracticable for many years to come. War could be made Qnly 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 142 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE 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 my- self quite clear in my recent New York Times interview, which has called forth this corre- spondence 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 beHeve that the German na- tion, 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 COBBESPONDENCE WITH MB. SCHIFF 143 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 to-day, 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 pro- phet 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 ac- quisition and possession by 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 can- not be withstood. What this will mean to the American people in lavish expenditures and in in- creased taxation I need not here further go into. 144 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE 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 to-day or to-morrow, 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 happi- ness and prosperity ; a Russia with its vast nat- ural 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 COBBESPONDJENCE WITH MB. SCHIFF 145 the nearer future, but certainly in the long run, England's Nemesis. Before closing I want to correct the impres- sion you appear to have received that I have meant to suggest a conference of private per- sons 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 terrible 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 146 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE to the belligerents, and with which the wounds the Red Cross and other relief societies en- deavor to assuage are inflicted. Yours most faithfully, Jacob H. Schiff. Cambridge, Mass., December 8, 1914. Dear Mb. Schiff; — Your letter of December 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 grat- ified, 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 inter- CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. SCHIFF 147 national problem which, unsolved, has led down to this horrible pit of general war. I have just finished another letter to the JVew 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 be- cause 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 fed- eration 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 for- ward 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 passed for world-empire ? Very sincerely and cordially yours, Charles W. Eliot. 148 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE New York, December 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 I^ew York Times, to which you had made reference, and, like every- thing emanating from you, the contents of your last Times letter have evoked my deepest in- terest. Had our recent correspondence not already become more extended than you likely had in- tended 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 argu- ments 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 do- minion over the trade of the world she possesses COBBESPONDENCE WITH MB. SCHIFF 149 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 term- ination of the present conflict ? ; I repeat, with all my attachment for my na- tive 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 the public opinion of the two Americas or other- wise, to bring these warring Governments to- gether 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 unneces- sary as they are undesirable in the future — a basis cannot be found upon which disarmament can be effectively and permanently brought about. 150 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE This, at some time, they will have to come to, in any event, and must there first more hu- man 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 condi- tion 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 proba- bly 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 merci- less 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. ScmFF. CHAPTER XI THE WAR AN UNPRECEDENTED CALAMITY, DUB TO AUTOCRACY, MILITARISM, SECRET BU- REAUCRACY, AND LUST OP EMPIRE SHALL IT BRING FORTH A COUNCIL OF EUROPE, AN INTERNATIONAL FORCE, ABOVE-BOARD DI- PLOMACY, AND REDUCTION OF ARMAMENTS ?* The great war has now been going on long enough to enable mankind to form approxi- mately 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 bur- dens 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 ex- 1 A letter published in the Neva York Times December 11, 1914. 152 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE posedo 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 enthrone- ment 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 Govern- ment has issued a statement to prove that some other Government is responsible for the out- break. This discussion, however, relates almost entirely to actions by monarchs and cabinets between July 23 and August 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 assassina- tion of the Archduke and Duchess of Hohen- berg, 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 aggres- sions of Austria-Hungary against her south- eastern neighbors. Neither was Russian mobil- SHALL THE WAR BRING LASTING PEACE? 153 ization 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 to- ward 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 August 4 a true cause of the war, or even the cause, as dis- tinguished from the occasion, of Great Britain's becoming involved in it. By that action, Ger- many was only taking the first step in carrying out a long-cherished purpose, and in executing a judicious plan of campaign prepared many years in advance. The artificial panic in Ger- many 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 na- tion, but very clumsy and dull in war. The real causes of the war are all of many years' standing; and all the nations now in- volved in the fearful catastrophe have contrib- uted to the development of one or more of these effective causes. The fundamental causes are: (1) The maintenance of monarchical Govern- 164 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE ments, each sanctioned and supported by the national religion, and each furnished with a cabinet selected by the monarch, — Govern- ments which can make war without any previ- ous consultation of the peoples through their elected representatives ; (2) the constant mainte- nance of conscript armies, through which the entire able-bodied male population is trained in youth for service in the army or navy, and re- mains subject to the instant call of the Gov- ernment 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 bureau- cracy 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 mili- tary 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. SHALL THE WAB BBINQ LASTING PEACE? 155 Of all the nations taking part in the present war, Great Britain is the only one which does not maintain a conscript army ; hut, on the other hand. Great Britain is the earHest modern claim- ant 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 ex- isted 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 156 THE BOAB TOWARD PEACH 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 de- gree. 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 de- sire 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 ear- lier 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 war- like spirit of her people. This instruction, given year after year by teachers, publicists, and rulers, was first generally accepted in Prussia, SHALL THE WAR BBING LASTING PEACE? 157 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 the 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 patri- otism. Mass-fanaticism and infectious enthusi- asm seem to have deprived the leading class in Germany, for the moment, of all power to see, reason, and judge correctly — no new phenome- non in the world, but instructive in this case because it points to the grave defect in German education — the lack of liberty and, therefore, of practice in self-control. 168 THE BOAD TOWABD PEACE 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 Uttle 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 sixty millions hold- ing 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 destroy- ing 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. SHALL THE WAR BRING LASTING PEACE? 159 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 skilful use of all the forces of nineteenth-cen- tury applied science for the destructive pur- poses 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 de- vastating effects of this war, there can be no lasting peace until Europe as a whole is ready to make some serious and far-reaching deci- sions in regard to governmental structures and powers. In all probability the sufferings and losses of this widespread war must go farther 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 fu- ture to any of the smaller nations of Continen- tal Europe. There can, indeed, be no security 160 THE BOAD TOWABD PEACE for future peace in Europe until every Euro- pean nation recognizes the fact that there is to be no such thing in the world as one dominat- ing nation — no such thing as world-empire for any single nation — Great Britain, Ger- many, 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 ar- mies are kept constantly ready for instant use. There can be no secure peace in Europe until a federation of the European states is estab- lished, capable of making public contracts in- tended to be kept, and backed by an over- whelming international force subject to the orders of an international tribunal. The pres- ent convulsion demonstrates the impotence toward permanent peace of secret negotiations, of unpublished agreements, of treaties and cov- enants that can be broken on grounds of mili- tary 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 interna- tional force. When that international force has been firmly established it will be time to con- SEALL THE WAR BEING LASTING PEACE? 161 sider what proportionate reductions in national armaments can be prudently recommended. Until that glorious day dawns, no patriot and no lover of his kind can expect lasting peace in Europe or wisely advocate 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 com- ing European conference can profit by the ex- perience of the three prosperous and valid coun- tries in which public liberty and the principle of federation have been most successfully de- veloped — Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States. Switzerland is a democratic fed- eration which unites in a firm federal bond three different racial stocks speaking three un- like languages, and divided locally and irreg- ularly between the Catholic Church and the Protestant. The so-called British Empire tends strongly to become a federation ; and the meth- ods of government both in Great Britain itself and in its affiliated commonwealths are becom- 162 THE BO AD TOW ABB PEACE mg more and more democratic in substance. The war has brought this fact out in high re- lief. As to the United States, it is a strong fed- eration of forty-eight heterogeneous States which has been proving for a hundred years that freedom and democracy are safer and hap- pier for mankind than subjection to any sort of autocracy, and afford far the best training for national character and national efficiency. RepubKcan France has not yet had time to give this demonstration, being encumbered with many survivals of the Bourbon and Napoleonic regimes, and being forced to maintain a con- script 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 calcu- lated destructions and wrongs and the accom- panying moral and religious chaos. Ardent proposals to remake the map of Europe, recon- struct 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. SHALL THE WAR BEING LASTING PEACE? 163 The immediate duty of the United States is presumably to prepare, on the basis of its pres- ent army and navy, to furnish an effective quota of the international force, servant of an inter- national tribunal, which will make the ultimate issue of this most abominable of wars, not a truce, but a durable peace. In the mean time, 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?" CHAPTER XII THE pilgrims' IDEALS A FREE CHURCH IN A FREE STATE IN 1620^ Recent events in Europe have satisfied many Americans that the essential difference between nations is a difference of ideals. Thus, the prin- cipal ideals of Germany are national efficiency through a forceful discipline, and domination over other peoples as the result of that effi- ciency, while the governmental or political ideals of Great Britain since Cromwell's Common- wealth have always contained a large element of public liberty and individual independence. The fundamental cause of the European war is the difference in the ideals of government, na- tional greatness, and national welfare of Ger- many and Austria on the one hand, and France and Great Britain on the other. The principal difference between the people of the United States and the nations of Europe is a difference of ideals concerning human welfare and the means of promoting it, the ideals of the United ^ An address on Forefathers' Day, 1914, before the New England Society in the City of New York. A FREE CHUBCH IN A FREE STATE IN 1620 165 States containing a much larger element of lib- erty and independence for the individual, and of public confidence in the fruits of individual liberty, than any European nation exhibits, ex- cept Switzerland. In order that different races or stocks should live peacefully and helpfully beside each other under the same free govern- ments, conjoined but not commingled, as in the United States of to-day, it is only necessary that they should all come to cherish the same ideals of public liberty, public justice, and cooperative management. That is the true assimilation of different stocks or races, and none other is needed. As a matter of fact, the present ideals of the people of the United States are in a large meas- ure identical with the ideals which were dear to the Pilgrim First-comers or Forefathers, who, to the number of 233, landed at Plymouth be- tween December, 1620, and July, 1623. These were the Separatist immigrants, who had sufr fered severely in England for conscience' sake, and had dared the perils of the ocean and the wilderness to found a new commonwealth where they might enjoy freedom to worship God in the way they preferred. I wish to review this evening the ideals of the Pilgrims, and to point 166 THE BO AD TOWARD PEACE out in what measure their ideals have become those of the American people. The most precious of the Pilgrim ideals was that of civil and religious liberty. It was a re- ligious bond which held them together in their flight from Scrooby at great loss and under many hardships, and during their twelve years* exile in Holland, where by great industry and frugality a few of them repaired somewhat their broken fortunes. It was a religious motive which governed the adult males of the Mayflower com- pany, only forty-one in number, in signing a compact, just before they landed on the Massa- chusetts shore, by which they set up a govern- ment that rested exclusively on the consent of those to be governed and on manhood suffrage. These few plain men then and there did an im- mortal deed, the sudden fruitage of the experi- ence of their church in England and in Hol- land, and of the doctrines taught them by their pastor and elders. The words of that compact cannot be too often quoted : " We, whose names are under written, . . . having undertaken for the glory of God and advancement of the Chris- tian faith, and honor of our King and country, to plant the first colony in the northern parts A FREE CHUBCH IN A FEES STATE IN 1620 167 of Virginia, do, by these presents, solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and of one another, covenant and bind ourselves together into a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid." That is the ideal origin for a free state. By following that ideal, town, city, and state governments have been firmly planted all across the American continent. By how many generations were the signers of that compact in advance of their times ? Let the Schleswig- Holstein of 1864 answer ; let the Alsace-Lor- raine of 1870 answer ; let the Belgium of to-day answer. More than two hundred years later Cavour, struggling for Italian unity, cried out for a free church in a free state. Nearly three hundred years later a French republic broke with a great church long established in France. In both cases the doctrine of the Mayflower Pilgrims found new applications ; for the Pil- grims brought with them to Plymouth the con- ception not only of a free state, but also of a free church. Pastor E-obinson's church was called Separatist, and later Independent ; and later still its polity was known as Congregational. It had no bishop and no synod. There was no ecclesiasticism and no mysticism about it. The 168 THE EOAD TOWARD PEACE congregation elected their pastor and elders, their church welcoming to the communion service members of the Anglican, Genevan, Lutheran, Dutch, and Presbyterian churches. From these Separatists, transplanted to the Mas- sachusetts wilderness, sprang, therefore, a gov- ernment founded on civil and religious liberty, and a complete toleration of all religions by the state. John Robinson's doctrine, that God had never yet revealed his whole will, and that more truth and light were yet to break forth, is now the doctrine of all liberals the world over. The advance of natural science within the last one hundred and fifty years has made this doctrine of expectation familiar to all thinking people; but the Pilgrims accepted and practised it as a religious doctrine, and gave it practical expres- sion in the church and the state they organized in 1620. After the compact or covenant had been signed in the cabin of the Mayflower by the forty-one adult males, these same men proceeded to elect a governor for the commonwealth thus constituted ; and every year thereafter they elected their chief executive to serve for the term of one year. This short-term, elected ex- ecutive was maintained in the old colony until A FBEE CHURCH IN A FBEE STATE IN 1620 169 1692, when, to their great regret, the descend- ants of the Forefathers found themselves ab- sorbed into the Royal Province of Massachu- setts, which extended from Nova Scotia to the Vineyard Archipelago, and was provided with a royal governor. To liberals the world over this achievement of the Pilgrims seems more significant to-day than it ever has before ; be- cause a prime cause of the fearful catastrophe which has lately befallen Europe is the retention there of hereditary, permanent executives over whom the mass of the people have no control whatever, and who can make war without con- sulting anybody but a cabinet they have them- selves selected, or a few other hereditary ex- ecutives. In 1620 this small band of English Non-Conformists gave the first example in the world of a free and progressive church in a state created and controlled by free men, both church and state being led and served by elected offi- cers. The Pilgrims were plain, laboring people, who all worked with their hands, and expected to get their living as " Planters " on the wild shores of northern Virginia. As a matter of fact, they made their living by farming, fish- ing, hunting, and practising the elementary 170 THE BOAD TOWABD PEACE trades of a new settlement. A few of them were good writers and intelligent business men ; but many of their leaders and officers found it more convenient to make their mark than to write their signature on deeds or records ; and it is probable that few of the women could write, though more could read. They could all, however, take in and appreciate the exhorta- tions of their ministers orally communicated. Such being their quality, it is remarkable that the Articles of Agreement under which the Pil- grims set sail from England contained sound principles affecting the relations of capital to labor which have not secured wide adoption in the industrial and commercial world of to-day. The Pilgrims sailed from England under articles of agreement which were to govern the proceedings of a stock company, — the shares of which were held by two classes of persons, one called "Adventurers," and the other '^Planters." The adventurers were inen who merely put capital into the outfitting of the expedition. The planters were persons who crossed the ocean, and were to bear the hard- ships and the labors of the expedition. The planters might, or might not, put capital into the venture. Some did acquire shares in the A FREE CHURCH IN A FREE STATE IN 1620 171 stock company as adventurers by putting in money or money's worth in goods ; but the greater part did not hold shares, except as planters. Every planter being aged sixteen years and upwards, received on going a single share in the stock company, rated at ten pounds. A planter who carried with him his wife and children or servants was allowed for every per- son sixteen years old and upward a share in the company and a share for every two chil- dren between ten and sixteen years old. Every child under ten who went in the ship was to receive in the ultimate division of the holdings of the company fifty acres of unmanured land. All the planters were to be fed and clothed out of the common stock and goods of the com- pany. Each planter was to work four days in each week for the company, and two for him- self and family. At the end of seven years, each planter, head of a family or a group, should own the house and garden land occupied by him and his. The undertaking entered into on these terms was a strong case of cooperation and cooperative management for a short term of years, with acquisition by every head of a family at the end of that short term of a house and garden. 172 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE The first assignments of land at Plymouth were made by lot, had equal areas, and were supposed to be of very nearly equal value. The family, rather than the individual, was the social unit used in the allotment. When fifteen cattle arrived in 1627 for distribution among the col- onists, with some she goats and swine, these animals were distributed among twelve groups into which the one hundred and fifty-six planter owners of the company's stock were divided for the purpose, each animal to be kept for ten years, and then returned to the public store with one half its increase. Another example of cooperative management intended to encourage individual responsibility and effort ! The Pilgrims thoroughly understood that capital and labor must cooperate, in order to successful production ; and they acted consist- ently on this understanding. Being fed and clothed at the expense of the company, they were willing to work for the company two thirds of their time without wages ; but they obtained shares in the company without payment of cash, in consideration of the risk they ran in putting their lives and capacities at the service of the company in a dangerous venture, and in invest- ing two thirds of their labor for seven years A FBEE CHURCH IN A FBEE STATE IN 1620 173 with the company. Moreover, in return for the assumption of these risks and for their labor, each family would obtain possession at the end of seven years of a house and land, on which, however, they would probably have spent the other third of their working time. This eco- nomic arrangement could not have been brought about, except in a homogeneous community which was thoroughly democratic in principle and practice. Is there any industrial organiza- tion to-day in which democracy and the recogni- tion of the laborers' contribution in risk and work to the cost of production are better recog- nized, or more wisely dealt with, than in the Pilgrims' Stock Company? Ultimately the planters bought out the adventurers, and owned the whole stock. What prophets the Pilgrims were of far-away reforms ! The Pilgrims recognized that they had lead- ers; and the common people selected these leaders with great judgment, and whenever they found a good one were constant toward him ; but the manners and customs of the com- munity were extremely simple, and all men were equal before the law. On the other hand, the Pilgrims never tried to prevent the diversi- ties in regard to possessions which inevitably 174 THE BOAD TOWABD PEACE arise in any free community. Only despotism, autocratic or socialistic, can prevent the diver- sity in men's capacity from producing diversity in possessions. Nothing of the feudal system came across the ocean with the Pilgrims, and nothing of ecclesiastical control. For the protection of the colony, every able- bodied citizen was expected to bear arms. Every youth learnt the use of the simple weapons which were then available for the chase and for war. The Pilgrims started the New England muster and militia system, prototype of the ad- mirable military organization of republican Switzerland which is now suggesting a way out of European militarism. In 1643, after a six years* discussion begun by Plymouth, a confederation called "The United Colonies of New England," was formed by the four colonies of Massachusetts, Plym- outh, Connecticut, and New Haven to make common cause in offensive and defensive war. Each confederate was to choose annually two church-members as its commissioners in the league, each colony having the same number of representatives without regard to popula- tion. No single colony was to make war. The quota which each colony contributed to the A FREE CHURCH IN A FREE STATE IN 1620 175 intercolonial force was proportionate to the num- ber of its able-bodied males between the ages of sixteen and sixty. This confederation was loose and ill-defined ; but it was maintained for forty years, and supplied ideas for several later feder- ations on the American continent. Obviously, it might suggest some clauses in the constitu- tion of the now much-desired United States of Europe, such as the equal representation of the several states in the central council, the quota of each state in the international force propor- tionate to its military population, and the rule that no single state shall make war. In this direction Europe has never got so far as the Pil- grims had in 1643. Down in the spring of 1623, all labor in fish- ing and farming had been in common ; and the product in food had been placed in the public store to be shared equally by all the workers, whether they worked zealously and effectively, or languidly and shiftlessly; otherwise, there had been no community of goods. In the spring of that year the supply of food in the public storehouse was very low; and there was serious apprehension of a famine before a new crop could be gathered. The straits were all the more serious because the colony possessed at the time 176 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE no domestic animals that yielded milk or meat. No cattle were imported until 1624. The gov- ernor under such conditions could not keep the people hard at work ; and it distinctly appeared that the motive of common benefit was inferior in stimulating force to the motive of personal, individual or family possession. The elders of the Pilgrims were practical men, who saw that a new method of dealing with the labor ques- tion was urgently needed, particularly in view of the approaching scarcity of food. They, therefore, assigned a lot for one year to each household, at the rate of an acre for every mem- ber. The lots were to be cultivated at the pleas- ure of the holders, who were to own the crops, after giving a small portion to the public treas- ury. This introduction of the principle of pri- vate ownership, in addition to the well-distri- buted ownership of shares in the stock of the company, produced an important effect, — a much larger area was planted, and men, women, and children worked with a new ardor in the cultivation of their own lots. It took the leaders of the Pilgrims only two years and a half to learn that the institution of private property appeals to a good side of human nature, and that there is no safe substitute for it. To be A FBEE CEUBCH IN A FREE STATE IN 1620 177 sure, they learned this lesson under conditions of severe anxiety and stress. To-day the civil- ized world has to listen to many socialistic prophets and disputants who close their eyes to the patent fact that the mass of mankind need the stimulus of private property in order to maintain a fair degree of industry and frugahty. Two years before the Pilgrims left Leyden, their pastor, John Robinson, and their elder, William Brewster, united in a letter which ended with five reasons for the proposed emi- gration. The fourth reason is as follows : "We are knit together in a body in a most strict and sacred bond and covenant of the Lord, of the violation whereof we make great conscience, and by virtue whereof we do hold ourselves straightly tied to all care of such other's good, and of the whole by every one, and so mutu- ally." It would be hard to find a better state- ment than that of the fundamental conception of modern non-militant socialism — each for all and all for each ; but the Pilgrims were not fore- runners of socialism ; because they fully appre- ciated the advantages of the institution of pri- vate property not only for stimulating industry and frugality, but also for strengthening the family bond. Their unit of social organization 178 THE BOAD TOWABD PEACE was the family; and they had no thought of permitting the lazy and improvident to plant themselves on the backs of the energetic and prudent members of the community. The philo- sophic socialism of the nineteenth century would tend to weaken the family bond, and would sub- ject the individual human being to a harsh col- lective despotism, against which the Pilgrim spirit would have revolted. No sketch of the Pilgrims would be adequate which did not mention the heroism of their women. The women that came to America from that Separatist flock in Leyden washed, cooked, made clothing, bore, nursed, and tended chil- dren, and watched anxiously for the return of the men, who often had to go to distant fields or woods, or on remote fishing expeditions, or on exploring and hunting parties. What the risks were that the women took may be illus- trated by the single fact, that out of the eigh- teen women who were on board the Mayflower, fourteen were buried in unmarked graves within six months of the day that the Mayflower an- chored within the hook of Cape Cod. Nothing daunted, other women of the Pilgrim mind came over from Holland and England to take the places of the dead, and maintain the stag- A FREE CHURCH IN A FREE STATE IN 1620 179 gering colony; and ever since just such women have accompanied the pioneering line of ad- venturous free men, as it has moved slowly across the continent for nearly three centuries. The Pilgrim women deserve, and please God shall have, the same reward which Jesus prom- ised to the woman who hroke over his hody the alahaster box of precious ointment: "whereso- ever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this that this woman hath done be told for a memorial of her." The Pilgrim ideal of woman was the courageous, capable, strong, devoted type, sacrificing self for love and duty, and rejoicing in her work. Is there any better type to-day? Are there not some inferior types in public evidence? Within the last few months, I have been often asked in letters — signed or unsigned — what America owes to England. If I had answered these questions, one element in my reply would have been : America owes to England the ideals of the Pilgrims — a debt never to be forgotten. Another element in my reply would have been : America owes to England John Milton's preach- ing of civil and religious liberty — a preaching contemporaneous with many of the experiences of that group of brave men and women who 180 THE BOAT) TOWARD PEACE risked their all in the little colony on the deso- late coast of Massachusetts, not in search of gold or trade, but only hoping that they and their children might be free. The American people believes, as the Pilgrim Church beheved, that more truth and light are constantly to be made known to man, and that it is truth that makes men free. More truth — scientific, philo- sophical, or religious — more freedom for man- kind. If this faith can now be implanted in the international mind of Europe as the moral issue of the present cataclysm, the huge sorrow and desolation of that Continent may yet be turned into gladness and hope. CHAPTER XIII NATIONAL EFFICIENCY BEST DEVELOPED UNDER FREE GOVERNMENTS^ The causes of this fearful war are often dis- cussed as if they were to be sought in the month before the war actually broke out. We hear men talking as if the exchange of tele- grams and notes between the monarchs just before the war could supply an intelligent understanding of the causes of the outbreak. We hear the conversations between the vari- ous chancelleries of Europe in July spoken of as if the real cause of the war was to be found in them, or, indeed, in the sequence of the orders given for mobilization. I have even read articles in which the cause of the war was found in the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Now, to my mind, all these so-called causes are merely superficial events, which might more properly be called the occasions than the causes of the war. To my thinking, the causes of the ^ An address before the Harvard Club of Boston, Jan- uary 15, 1915, revised and enlarged. 182 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE war are very deep-seated, and have to be traced back through long years, and, indeed, through generations of men. They are states of mind rather than events. They have their sources in racial feelings and to some extent in religious differences; in the ambitions of princes; in long-cherished aspirations and ambitions of peoples ; in continuously developed policies of governments ; and deeper still in great popular emotions. If such are the real causes of the war, we need to consider carefully the historical development of these aspirations, ambitions, and emotions, which have had a national scope. This war has brought out very strongly the sentiment of nationality, — a sentiment the origins and conditions of which are peculiarly difficult to appreciate and understand. Many people think that a common language is neces- sary to the development of the sentiment of nationality ; but how many instances there are in the world in which many languages are used in the territory ascribed to a nation. At this moment there is no country which nourishes a stronger spirit of nationality than little Swit- zerland, the model republic of the world. Now, in that small territory four languages are used, each by thousands of people; and in the legis- EFFICIENCY AND FBEE GOVERNMENTS 183 lative assembly, if a member does not speak at the rostrum in French or German, an inter- preter is placed beside the orator who keeps along with him; so that the two voices are going on at the same time. Belgium is a strong nationality as regards sentiment, but at least two quite different languages are spoken in that country. In the vast territory of China many dialects exist, so different that the people of one section may not understand the people of any other. One almost wishes that a com- mon language could be spoken of as a source or necessary condition of a strong sentiment of nationality; but there are too many cases in the world where a strong national feeling pre- vails, and yet there is no common language. We Americans have been in the habit of think- ing that the use of the English language all over our immense territory has contributed to our sense of national unity and well-being; and, indeed, it probably has. Nevertheless, that test of nationality will not hold in the modern world. The national sentiment in Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Russia is to-day intense, and, so far as we can see, equally in- tense in all these countries. Apparently little 184 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE distinction can be drawn between national sen- timent in an immobile empire like Russia, under an autocratic government like that of Germany, in a sober, experienced, constitutional monarchy like that of England, or in a new republic like France. We do not find the cause or source of this intense popular sentiment in the form of government to which the people are accustomed. And yet one cannot imagine any satisfactory settlement of this terrible world-conflict, which will not take more account than any settlement of a European war has ever done before, of this emotion or sentiment of nationality. The experience of Europe during the last sixty years has been peculiar in one respect, — it has been a period in which peoples who pos- sess a common language, or a common senti- ment of nationality, and are derived from sim- ilar racial stocks, have succeeded in getting together in larger entities. That has been emphatically the case with Germany and with Italy ; and until the Second Balkan War the well-wishers for Europe hoped that it was going to be the case in the whole Balkan region ; but the second war defeated all such hopes. What great changes have been wrought in Europe since the close of the Thirty Years' EFFICIENCY AND FREE GOVERNMENTS 185 War ! That war ended in the recognition and establishment of a large number of separate, independent, small states and principalities. When this present war ends, we may reason- ably expect that it will result in the develop- ment of some new large states in Europe, fed- erations, perhaps, and some new small states, but also in a greater security for the smaller states over against the larger. Several European nations have been infected at various times — England first, since the de- cline of Spain — with a false and dangerous conception of the state as an imperial being, independent of ordinary ethical considerations, entitled to the unquestioning obedience and ser- vice of its subjects, aiming at the development of strong types of men and women without much regard to the freedom or happiness of the individual, and claiming dominion over neighbors, oceans, or remote possessions in other parts of the world. British imperialism had sound commercial and industrial objects, and was qualified by much domestic freedom, and the policy of free trade. Being an island. Great Britain tried to rule the seas, in order that her indispensable supplies of food and raw materials might never be cut off. Her Con- 186 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE tinental imitators bave not had her domestic freedom, her affiliated free commonwealths, her free trade, or her strong reason for possessing mastery of the oceans ; but they have had, and some of them still have, the imperialistic fever in its hottest form. If, then, we must look for the causes of this unprecedented convulsion in these deep-rooted popular aspirations and ambitions, what shall we say about the slow but steady growth of these sentiments in Germany? Some people ascribe this widespread war to the German Emperor or Cabinet, or to some particular German teachers and authors, or to the growth of a strong, united military caste in Germany. All those influences doubtless contributed in some measure to the outbreak ; but the real cause of the successive military aggressions on the part of Germany since 1864 lies in the gradual prev- alence throughout that nation, and particularly throughout its educated classes, of an exagger- ated estimate of the bodily and spiritual merits of the German people, and of a belief that the national greatness and the progress of character- istic German civilization were to be attained through the development of the most tremen- EFFICIENCY AND FREE GOVERNMENTS 187 dous national Force that could possibly be con- trived and brought into being, and through the gratification of the intense German desire for domination in Europe, and later in the world. The Government of Germany is the most autocratic in Europe. It has always been so in Prussia ; and since German unification in 1871 that description applies to the whole of Ger- many. One of the most extraordinary phenom- ena in connection with this ferocious war is the unanimous opinion among German scholars, his- torians, statesmen, and diplomats, and indeed throughout the educated classes, that — as was lately said to me in a letter from a German friend — " We Germans are just as free as you Americans are." They really believe that. This unanimous opinion is a complete demonstration of the effect of the autocratic Government which has long existed in Germany on the spirit and temper of the German people as a whole. They do not know what political and social liberty is. They have no conception of such liberty as we enjoy. They know nothing at all about the liberty England has won through Parliamen- tary government, through party government. Their complete ignorance on that subject is the explanation of the fatal mistake the German 188 THE BOAD TOWABD PEACE Government made in going to war last summer before they knew what England was going to do, or could do. The German Government thoroughly believed that in the existing condi- tion of party government in England, with the Ulster disturbance unsettled, and the trades- union difficulties on hand, England not only would not go to war, but could not. One could not have a better illustration of the complete ignorance of the German people as to what political and social liberty really is. The Ger- man diplomats misinformed their government about the state of Great Britain and Ireland, and of France, in spite of their ample system of resident informers ; because neither they nor their informers understood the political action of a free people. At this moment, the German Government is being misinformed in like man- ner about the state of American public opinion. To the German mind political liberty means public incapacity and weakness — particularly in war. In the earlier steps of the war, Germany met with a series of surprises; because the German Government and the military caste in Germany did not understand what comparatively free peo- ples value, what their ideals are, and what they EFFICIENCY AND FREE GOVERNMENTS 189 are capable of undertaking and enduring in de- fense of their ideals. For instance, the German doctrine about the justifiableness of violating a contract or a treaty on grounds of military ne- cessity was universally accepted in Germany as right. Germans do not know how free peoples regard the sanctity of contract, not only for business purposes, but for political purposes, to say nothing of honorable obligation. Nothing could be franker than the original explanation which the German Chancellor gave of the breaking of the treaties concerning the neu- trality of Belgium ; but his frankness is evidence that he did not understand in the least the free- man's idea of the sanctity of contract — the foundation of all public law and usage in a free country. In a country despotically or auto- cratically ruled, there is no such condition of public opinion. More and more, as time goes on, this war develops into a conflict between free institu- tions and autocratic institutions. Of course, the position of Russia as an ally of France and England somewhat shrouds or complicates this fact ; because the Russian people is by inherit- ance and in some respects by nature a people which submits to despotic government. Her 190 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE exceptional position as an ally of two free countries is due to a long-nourished indigna- tion against Austria-Hungary and Germany for presenting obstacles year after year and generation after generation to the gratification of Russian ambition for aggrandizement in the Balkan countries and the Near East. That ambition and some stirrings toward liberty may have put Russia in its exceptional position by the side of two free countries. If, now, we take it for granted that the question between free and autocratic institu- tions in Europe, the question of more public liberty, the question of civilization developing under the forms of free government rather than under the forms of autocratic govern- ment, is the real issue this war is to decide, it becomes a very interesting study for all the freer peoples how German efficiency is going to turn out in competition with such efficiency as the freer nations develop. The military re- sult of the war is going to turn on the com- parative efficiency of the military and naval forces of the opposing parties, and on the efficiency with which the economic resources of the several nations are used. Numbers are EFFICIENCY AND FREE GOVERNMENTS 191 SO enormous on each side that the result will not be determined so much by mere numbers, as by the efficiency of the armed forces of the combatants, and of their industrial and finan- cial forces. German efficiency has been an object of great admiration, not only in this country, but in England, France, and Eussia, for twenty- five or thirty years. We have all admired it in the recent commercial and industrial develop- ment of Germany — not less remarkable be- cause it started about sixty years ago from a low level. We have admired it, too, in the efficiency of her military and naval develop- ment. It is an extraordinary phenomenon in the history of the nineteenth century — this wonderful efficiency ; but German efficiency is of a peculiar type. It is an efficiency in admin- istration — in business administration, in muni- cipal government strikingly, and in all the national government bureaus. It is an efficiency which takes hold of every child in Germany at birth, and follows every youth and every man and woman through life until death. It is that very efficiency which has prevented the last two generations of Germans from knowing anything about liberty. It is in the highest 192 THE BOAD TOWABD PEACE degree an autocratic efficiency in all walks of German life, including education and the rela- tions between the sexes. The whole course of elementary and secondary education for every German boy or girl is determined by the Gov- ernment, and there is no election by the pupil in it, no choice by the child, except in its later stages the choice between a technical school or a gymnasium; and even that choice is often made not by the child, but for him. A significant illustration of the German re- gard for strength and force, and contempt for ■weakness and gentleness, is to be found in the low estimate they place on the social and intel- lectual influence of women. A German woman at her best is a successful housewife, and dili- gent attendant on husband and children; she is seldom the intellectual and spiritual comrade of her husband and the inspirer of her grown- up children, as a woman is in the freer coun- tries of Europe and in America. The contrast between the status of the German woman and that of the American woman is strong indeed. The German woman of to-day has grown up and lived in an atmosphere of compulsion and discipline which no American woman has had to endure for two centuries past. EFFICIENCY AND FREE GOVERNMENTS 193 The Germans are fond of mentioning their "academic freedom," the freedom of their learned men; but that is much exaggerated in German descriptions of their university life. The German universities are chiefly supported and ruled by the Government; and there are no free endowed institutions to compete with them. The whole world is deeply indebted in unnum- bered ways to the German universities of the last hundred years; but for any vital teaching of civil and religious liberty one must go back to individual German teachers and preachers of an earlier time. The entrance to every learned and scientific profession in Germany, and to the highly trained military and naval caste is strictly guarded and controlled by the Government. German efficiency, however, is a very real and formidable thing in all the competitions of the civilized world; so that the most interest- ing question to be studied as to the probable outcome of the European War is this — is Ger- many with its autocracy more efficient or less efficient than France and England with their liberties? The German way of procuring industrial and commercial efficiency is to make each individual man, in the first place, a man 194 THE BO AD TOWARD PEACE well trained for the exact service lie is to ren- der, and then to keep him under a severe dis- cipline which will result in his doing every time exactly what he has been trained to do. He may also be induced in some measure to a perfect subordination by a bonus, prize, or honorary reward. That is the German method of efficiency all the way through industrial life — giving instruction and training enough to produce the amount of skill needed for the daily task, and then enforcing that subjection of the worker which results in thorough coor- dination and cooperation in the complex pro- cess of production. The efficiency of their mili- tary system is obtained in like manner — by thorough training which leads to the instinctive cooperation of the individual with a mass of comrades, and to an absolute obedience unto death. Now, what have the freer nations to say about their chance in industrial and military com- petition with the German autocratic system? They say in speech and action, " We believe a man or a nation will develop greater mental capacity and moral force with freedom than without it. Our philosophy of life teaches that EFFICIENCY AND FREE GOVERNMENTS 195 doctrine; our history illustrates it; our prac- tice and experience prove it." Seven nations conspicuously illustrate to-day the worth of lib- erty in national development, — Great Britain and her affiliated Commonwealths, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States, and, in addition, the Scandina- vian group of peoples. Italy struggled long under various oppressors. She won at last unity and freedom ; because she brought forth such independent spirits as Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, Savonarola, Galileo, Michael Angelo, Cavour, and Garibaldi. The Dutch were pio- neers in the long fight for liberty. Since Elizabeth's adventurers ran about the oceans, Cromwell marshalled his Independents, and Milton taught civil and religious liberty and freedom for the press, English political, indus- trial, and religious life has been instinct with liberty. The French political philosophers of the eighteenth century set forth eloquently the rights of Man ; and the French Revolution strove boldly, though ignorantly, to win those rights, and, in spite of its violences and crudi- ties, spread through the world the potent con- ceptions of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The mutual jealousy of their neighbors has 196 TEE ROAD TOWARD PEACE permitted Belgium and Switzerland to prosper in comparative freedom. The Pilgrim Fathers planted on American soil the seeds of the best English and Dutch liberties ; and from those seeds there came, in three centuries, a solid growth of liberty under law, — the widest lib- erty, political, industrial, and social that the world has ever known, conceived by free spirits, embodied in legislation, and cherished in the hearts of a multitudinous people. The Scandi- navian peoples have suffered much from more powerful neighbors, but have never lost the ad- venturous spirit of the Norsemen, or failed to exercise that right of private judgment which was the best teaching of the Protestant Refor- mation, or ceased to manifest the sturdy, inde- pendent spirit of their race. The Scandinavian emigrants to America make admirable citizens of the American Republic without any change of disposition or character. The efficiency of all these nations is based on a high degree of personal initiative and of political and industrial freedom, — not on the subjection or implicit obedience of the individ- ual, but on the energy and good-will in work which result from individual freedom, ambition, and initiative. EFFICIENCY AND FREE GOVERNMENTS 197 If this doctrine is correct, the remarkable in- crease of industrial and commercial efficiency during the past one hundred and fifty years should have proceeded from the freer nations, and not from the nations governed autocratic- ally. It is an interesting inquiry, therefore, whether this wonderfully increased efficiency has proceeded from Russia, Germany, Austria, and Turkey, or from England, France, Italy, Holland, Scandinavia, and the United States. A brief review of the sources of the important discoveries and inventions, which have made the industries of the civilized world vastly more effective since 1830 than they ever were be- fore, will convince any impartial person that the means of improvement have come from the free countries, and not from the countries des- potically governed. Going back to the latter part of the eighteenth century, we find that propulsion by steam on land and water was first made commercially successful by English- men and Americans, and that English and French chemists made the fundamental discov- eries in chemical theory. In the early part of the nineteenth century, the development of the factory system with steam-driven machinery was an English achievement, and later an American. 198 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE Coming on in the nineteenth century, it was Americans who developed the telegraph and telephone as industrial implements, and thereby changed in large measure the habits of indus- trial, commercial, and financial life, and in many respects of domestic and family life also. It was an Italian who invented and introduced in prac- tice wireless telegraphy, — a delightful instance of the transmission of a genius for physics in the same nation through centuries. It was Americans who invented and made commer- cially practical electric lighting and the wide diffusion of mechanical power by electricity. The explosive engine was developed as an in- dustrial agent in France; and the gasolene motor and the automobile have been French, English, and American developments. The aeroplane heavier than air was invented by Pro- fessor Langley, when Secretary of the Smith- sonian Institution, and was developed for prac- tical use by two other Americans — the brothers Wright. The cotton-gin, on which the whole cotton textile industry is founded, was the in- vention of an American, as were also the sew- ing-machine, the typewriter, and all sorts of shoe machinery. So was the job printing-press with the type held, not on a horizontal plane, EFFICIENCY AND FREE GOVERNMENTS 199 but at any convenient angle with the paper to be printed — an invention out of which came the rotary press, which is to-day an indispensa- ble instrument for the quick and wide circula- tion of news. It was America that built the first monitor and the first submarine ; and it was England that built the first dreadnought. Turning to a totally different field of discovery, anaesthesia was an American invention ; and its wide usefulness was first demonstrated in an American hospital. Asepsis, a discovery of equal value, was introduced by Lister, a British sub- ject. Another Englishman invented and brought into use inoculation against typhoid fever. It was American surgeons and members of the Army Medical Corps, temporarily serving in Cuba, who showed the world how to prevent the spread of yellow fever. The immense rub- ber industry throughout the world is based on the invention of the American Goodyear, who discovered that the mixing of sulphur with rubber produced an elastic, waterproof mate- rial, capable of innumerable useful applications for which pure rubber was not fit. The great inventions in business organization, have, of course, proceeded from the freer countries, and not from those despotically governed, — such, 200 THE BOAD TOWABD PEACE for example, as the organization of the ocean liners running to all parts of the world, which is in the main an English invention. The or- ganization of the great business of taking pe- troleum out of the earth, piping the oil over ^reat distances, distilling and refining it, and distributing it in tank-steamers, tank-wagons, and cans all over the earth, was an American invention. The conception of the huge and complex business of the United States Steel Corporation, and the putting of that concep- tion into practice, is another American inven- tion of great significance. The legal invention of the corporation with limited liability, which has led to an immense development of indus- trial and commercial productiveness, is English and American ; and this management of indus- tries by corporations set up in free governments has, in turn, become a great reinforcement of free institutions. Obviously, we are not tracing here results of blind chance, or of any sort of coincidence or accident. We are recognizing the legitimate fruits of liberty. It is, of course, true that Ger- many has adopted, adapted, and used with great skill all the inventions that have been men- tioned, and especially in organizing and using EFFICIENCY AND FREE GOVERNMENTS 201 her army and navy. She has also used them all in the remarkable development of her industries during the past fifty years ; but she invented and brought into use none of them ; nor did Russia, Austria, or Turkey. Most of the inven- tions mentioned are indispensable to the carry- ing on of the present war in Europe ; and many of them were indispensable to the preparations for that war, carried on through long years be- fore; but all of them, except the distinctly naval inventions, were made for peaceful uses — to promote the industrial productiveness and the well-being of the human race. It is an interesting observation that universal education, to the lower grades of which all chil- dren are compelled, seems to have but slight effect on the kind of national efficiency here considered. For one hundred years past, sys- tematic education for the whole people has been better planned and carried on in Germany than it has been in any of the freer countries. Large portions of the Italian population have had no access to schools until lately. England had noth- ing that could be called a system of popular education until 1870-71 ; France began to put universal education into force under the present Republic ; and to this day millions of American 202 THE EOAD TOW ABB PEACE children have scant access to elementary educa- tion, and none at all to secondary. The plain fact is that the German system of education and government has not had freedom enough in it; and that the free peoples, among whom there exists a large amount of social and indus- trial mobility, are the peoples that have pro- duced all the great applied-science inventions of the last century and this. The facts of the case are unquestionable. The explanation of them is, — that under free governments, and in communities which have a fair amount of social mobility, the rare men are surer to come forward into vigorous action, — the men who are competent, not only to invent or imagine the thing or the method that is next wanted, but to put their inventions into practical form, and make them useful in the actual industries of their nations and the world. Among a free people the remarkable human specimen is more likely to get his most complete and powerful development than among a people subject to autocratic government. We may reasonably be- lieve, therefore, that there is a power in free institutions which leads straight to efficiency in the industries of the country, and, in the long run and after many experiments and failures, EFFICIENCY AND FBEE GOVERNMENTS 203 to the efficient management of its governmental concerns, and that this efficiency can be brought to a higher condition in a republic or a con- stitutional monarchy than in any despotic or autocratic government. There is another field of human activity — the development of great pioneers in thinking and imagining — in which the Germans are ac- customed to claim leadership j but that claim is ■without warrant. In the first place, German lit- erature and philosophy are, like German indus- trial development, comparatively young. That they should become preeminent so soon was not to be expected. In the next place, the German race has not yet developed leaders of thought in literature, philosophy, poetry, and statesman- ship who can bear comparison with the supreme personages in England, France, and Italy. Ger- many has produced no men that can be placed beside Dante, Michael Angelo, and Cavour in Italy ; Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, Farraday, and Darwin in England, or Pasteur in France. As to America, it seems to a native American profane to mention Bismarck and the German Emperor in the same breath with Washington and Lincoln. 204 THE BOAD TOWARD PEACE The present war in Europe is going to put to a supreme military test this theory concerning the surest sources of national ef&ciency. The war ought to demonstrate in the end that Ger- man efficiency in war is not so great as that of England and France, if we include in the defini- tion of military efficiency the management of the supporting industries, and skill in sum- moning and applying financial resources, as well as the management of troops in actual fight- ing. The war should demonstrate that a volun- teer soldier is, on the whole, more effective than a conscript; because he has more personal initi- ative, more power of independent action, and more sense of individual responsibility. The first year of the war ought to prove that large and effective armies can be put into the field after the training of only a few months, if the volun- teer recruits come from occupations which call for intelligence and cooperative good-will, and are inspired by ethical motives which strongly appeal to them as individuals. The war ought also to prove that the freer a people is, and the more accustomed to the exercise of a self-con- trolled liberty the more warmly and resolutely they will respond to calls on their courage, en- durance, and love of country. EFFICIENCY AND FREE GOVERNMENTS 205 The only issue of the war that can possibly be satisfactory to the freer nations of Europe, or to Americans, is an issue which will further in Europe the cause of essential freedom — the freedom which can be developed under any con- stitutional form of government, but cannot be developed under an autocratic form. Therefore, we look forward with hope to a diminution in Europe of the autocratic forms and an increase of the constitutional forms, as well as to better security for both large and small states against sudden invasion. This better security implies a federal council of a few powerful states, the re- duction of national armaments, and the creation of a federal force competent to impose peace. A precious lesson of the war will be — towards every kind of national efficiency discipline is good, and cooperation is good ; but for the highest efficiency both should be consented to in liberty. CHAPTER XIV LESSONS OF THE WAB TO MARCH NINTH The observant world has now had ample opportunity to establish certain conclusions about the new kind of war, and its availability as means of adjusting satisfactorily interna- tional relations ; and it seems desirable in the interest of durable peace in Europe that those conclusions should be accurately stated, and kept in public view. In the first place, the destructiveness of war waged on the scale and with the intensity which conscript armies, the new means of transporta- tion and communication, the new artillery, the aeroplanes, the high explosives, and the con- tinuity of the fighting on battle fronts of un- exampled length, by night as well as by day, and in stormy and wintry as well as moderate weather, make possible, has proved to be be- yond all power of computation, and could not have been imagined in advance. Never before has there been any approach to the vast kill- ing and crippling of men, the destruction of all LESSONS OF THE WAB TO MARCH NINTH 207 sorts of man's structures, — buildings, bridges, viaducts, vessels, and docks, — and the physi- cal ruin of countless women and children. On the seas vessels and cargoes are sunk, instead of being carried into port as formerly. Through the ravaging of immense areas of crop-producing lands, the driving away of the people that lived on them, and the dislocation of commerce, the food supplies for millions of non-combatants are so reduced that the rising generation in several countries is impaired on a scale never approached in any previous war. In any country which becomes the seat of war an immense destruction of fixed capital is wrought ; and at the same time the quick capi- tal of all the combatants, accumulated during generations, is thrown into the furnace of war and consumed unproductively. In consequence of the enormous size of the national armies and the withdrawal of the able- bodied men from productive industries, the in- dustries and commerce of the whole world are seriously interrupted, whence widespread, in- calculable losses to mankind. These few months of war have emphasized the interdependence of nations the world over 208 THE BOAB TOWARD PEACE with a stress never before equalled. Neutral nations far removed from Europe have felt keenly the effects of the war on the industries and trades by which they live. Men see in this instance that whatever reduces the buying and consuming capacity of one nation will probably reduce also the producing and selling capacity of other nations ; and that the gains of com- merce and trade are normally mutual, and not one-sided. All the contending nations have issued huge loans which will impose heavy burdens on fu- ture generations ; and the yield of the first loans has already been spent or pledged. The first loan issued by the British Government was nearly twice the national debt of the United States ; and it is supposed that its proceeds will be all spent before next summer. Germany has already spent $1,600,000,000 since the war broke out — all unproductively and most of it for destruction. She is now issuing her second great loan. In short, the waste and ruin have been without precedent, the destruction of wealth has been enormous, and the resulting dislocations of finance, industries, and com- merce will long afflict the coming generations in all the belligerent nations. LESSONS OF THE WAR TO MARCH NINTH 209 All the belligerent nations have already dem- onstrated that neither urban life, nor the factory system, nor yet corroding luxury has caused in them any physical or moral deterioration which interferes with their fighting capacity. The soldiers of these civilized peoples are just as ready for hand-to-hand encounters with cold steel as any barbarians or savages have ever been. The primitive combative instincts remain in full force and can be brought into play by all the belligerents with facility. The progress of the war should have removed any delusions on this subject which Germany, Austria-Hungary, or any one of the Allies may have entertained. The Belgians, a well-to-do town people, and the Serbians, a poor rural population, best illustrate this continuity of the martial qualities ; for the Belgians faced overwhelming odds, and the Serbians have twice driven back large Austrian forces, although they have a transport by oxen only, an elementary commissariat, no medical or surgical supplies to speak of, and scanty mu- nitions of war. On the other hand, the principal combatants have proved that with money enough they can all use effectively the new methods of war administration and the new implements for destruction. These facts suggest that the war 210 THE BOAD TOWABD PEACE might be much prolonged without yielding any results more decisive than those it has already yielded ; indeed, that its most probable outcome is a stalemate — unless new combatants enter the field. Fear of Russian invasion seemed at first to prompt Germany to war ; but now Germany has amply demonstrated that she has no reason to look with any keen apprehension on possible Bussian aggression upon her territory, and that her military organization is adequate for defense against any attack from any quarter. The mili- tary experience of the last seven months proves that the defense, by the temporary intrenchment method, has a great advantage over the attack ; so that in future wars the aggressor will always be liable to find himself at a serious disad- vantage, even if his victim is imperfectly pre- pared. These same pregnant months have also proved that armies can be assembled and put into the field in effective condition in a much shorter time than has heretofore been supposed to be possible ; provided there be plenty of money to meet the cost of equipment, transportation, and supplies. Hence, the advantages of maintaining huge active armies, ready for instant attack or LESSONS OF THE WAB TO MARCH NINTH 211 defense, will hereafter be less considerable than they have been supposed to be — if the decla- ration of war by surprise, as in August last, can hereafter be prevented. These considerations, taken in connection with the probable inefficacy against modern artillery of elaborate fortifica- tions, suggest the possibility of a reduction throughout Europe of the peace-footing armies. It is conceivable that the Swiss militia system should satisfy the future needs of most of the European States. Another important result has been achieved in these seven months of colossal war. It has been demonstrated that no single nation in any part of the world can dominate the other nations, or, indeed, any other nation, unless the other principal powers consent to that domination ; and, in the present state of the world, it is quite clear that no such domination will be consented to. As soon as this proposition is accepted by all the combatants, this war, and perhaps all war between civilized nations, will cease. It is ob- vious that in the interest of mankind the war ought not to cease until Germany is convinced that her ambition for empire in Europe and the world cannot be gratified. Deutschland ueber alles can survive as a shout of patriotic enthu- 212 TEE ROAD TOWARD PEACE siasm, or as an expression of an ardent desire for German unity ; but as a maxim of international policy it is dead already, and should be buried out of the sight and memory of men. It has, moreover, become plain that the prog- ress in civilization of the white race is to de- pend not on the supreme power of any one nation, forcing its peculiar civilization on other nations, but on the peaceful development of many different nationalities, each making con- tributions of its own to the progress of the whole, and each developing a social, industrial, and governmental order of its own, suited to its territory, traditions, resources, and natural capacities. The chronic irritations in Europe, which con- tributed to the outbreak of the war, and the war itself have emphasized the value and the toughness of natural national units, both large and small, and the inexpediency of artificially dividing such units, or of forcing natural units into unnatural associations. These principles are now firmly established in the pubHc opin- ion of Europe and America. No matter how much longer the present war may last, no set- tlement will afford any prospect of lasting peace in Europe which does not take just account of LESSONS OF THE WAR TO MARCH NINTH 213 these principles. Already the war has demon- strated that just consideration of national feel- ings, racial kinship, and common commercial interests would lead to three fresh groupings in Europe : one of the Scandinavian countries, one of the three sections into which Poland has been divided, and one of the Balkan States which have a strong sense of Slavic kinship. In the case of Scandinavia and the Balkan States the bond might be nothing more than a common tariff with common ports and harbor regulations ; but Poland needs to be recon- structed as a separate kingdom. Thoroughly to remove political sores which have been run- ning for more than forty years, the people of Schleswig-Holstein and Alsace-Lorraine should also be allowed to determine by free vote their national allegiance. Whether the war ends in victory for the Allies, or in a draw or deadlock with neither party victorious and neither hu- miliated, these new national adjustments will be necessary to permanent peace in Europe. All the wars in Europe since 1864 unite in dem- onstrating that necessity. Again, the war has already demonstrated that colonies or colonial possessions in remote parts of the world are not a source of strength 214 THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE to a European nation when at war, unless that nation is strong on the seas. Affiliated com- monwealths may be a support to the mother country, but colonies held by force in exclusive possession are not. Great Britain learned much in 1775 about the management of colonies, and again she learned in India that the policy of exploitation, long pursued by the East India Company, had become undesirable from every point of view. As the strongest naval power in the world. Great Britain has given an admira- ble example of the right use of power in mak- ing the seas and harbors of the world free to the mercantile marine of all the nations with which she competes. Her free-trade policy helped her to wise action on the subject of commercial extension. Nevertheless, the other commercial nations, watching the tremendous power in war which Great Britain possesses through her wide, though not complete, con- trol of the oceans, will rejoice when British control, though limited and wisely used, is re- placed by an unlimited international control. This is one of the most valuable lessons of the great war. Another conviction is strongly impressed upon the commercial nations of the world by LESSONS OF THE WAB TO MARCH NINTH 215 the developments of seven months of extensive fighting by land and sea, namely, the impor- tance of making free to all nations the Kiel Canal and the passage from the Black Sea to the JEgean. So long as one nation holds the Dardanelles and the Bosporus, and another na- tion holds the short route from the Baltic to the North Sea, there will be dangerous restric- tions on the commerce of the world — danger- ous in the sense of provoking to war, or of causing sores which develop into malignant dis- ease. Those two channels should be used for the common benefit of mankind, just as the Panama Canal or the Suez Canal is intended to be. Free seas, free interocean canals and straits, the "open door," and free competition in international trade are needed securities for peace. These lessons of the war are as plain now as they will be after six months' or six years* more fighting. Can the belligerent nations — and particularly Germany — take them to heart now, or must more millions of men be slaugh- tered and more billions of human savings be consumed before these teachings of seven fear- ful months can get accepted? For a great attainable object such , dreadful 216 THE BOAD TOWABD PEACE losses and sufferings as continuation of the war entails might, perhaps, be borne ; but the last seven months have proved that the objects with which Austria-Hungary and Germany went to war are unattainable in the present state of Europe. Austria-Hungary, even with the active aid of Germany and Turkey, cannot prevail in Serbia against the active or passive resistance of Serbia, Russia, Rumania, Greece, Italy, France, and Great Britain. Germany cannot crush France supported by Great Britain and Russia, or keep Belgium, except as a subject and hostile province, and in defiance of the public opinion of the civilized world. In seven months Great Britain and France have made up for their lack of preparedness, and have brought the military operations of Germany in France to a standstill. On the other hand, Great Britain and France must already realize that they cannot drive the German armies out of France and Belgium without a sacrifice of blood and treasure from which the stoutest hearts may well shrink. Has not the war already demonstrated that jealous and hostile coalitions armed to the teeth will surely bring on Europe not peace and ad- vancing civilization, but savage war and an ar- LESSONS OF THE WAR TO MABCH NINTH 217 rest of civilization ? Has it not already proved that Europe needs one comprehensive union or federation competent to procure and keep for Europe peace through justice ? There is no al- ternative except more war. THE END APPENDIX APPENDIX PRESIDENT ELIOT'S ADDRESS AT THE SPECIAL ACADEMIC SESSION CALLED TO CONFER THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF LAWS ON PRINCE HENRY OF PRUSSIA, MARCH 6, 19021 After a short greeting, the Prince was escorted into Sanders Theatre. At his entrance the audience rose and remained standing until he had taken his seat on the platform at the right of President Eliot. On the platform were seated the Governing Boards, the members of the Faculties, the invited guests, and the Prince's suite. President Eliot, sitting in the an- cient President's chair, read the following address, at the close of which he conferred upon the Prince the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws : — " This occasion is unique. Twice in the history of the University has a special academic session been held to do honor to the President of the United States, making a progress through the country ; but never before has this democratic University been called together on purpose to do honor to a foreign prince. Weighty reasons must have determined such unprecedented action on the part of this Society of Scholars. 1 From the Harvard Graduates^ Magazine, June, 1902. 222 APPENDIX " These are the reasons : — *' Our students of history know the Teutonic sources, in the dim past, of many institutions and public customs which have been transmitted through England to this New England. " The Puritan origin of the University makes us hold in grateful remembrance the heroes of Protes- tantism — Luther, Melancthon, Erasmus, and their kindred spirits — and the German princes who up- held that precious cause through long years of con- fused alarms and cruel warfare. The Puritan gov- ernment of Massachusetts followed anxiously the vicissitudes of the Thirty Years' War, and was in the habit of ordering Public Thanksgiving to God for ' good news from Germany.' " In watching the social and ethnological phenom- ena of our own times we have seen that the largest contribution which a European people made in the nineteenth century to the population of the United States came from Germany, and that the German quota was not only the most numerous but the best educated. "As University men we feel the immense weight of obligation under which America rests to the tech- nical schools and universities of the German Father- land. From them thousands of eager American stu- dents have drawn instruction and inspiration, and taken example. At this moment hundreds of Amer- ican teachers who call some German university their foster-mother are at work in schools, colleges^, and APPENDIX 223 universities all the way from this icy seacoast to the hot Philippines. " Our men of letters and science know well the unparalleled contributions Germany has made since the middle of the nineteenth century to pure knowl- edge, and also to science applied in the new arts and industries which within fifty years have so marvellously changed the relations of man to nature. " Our whole people have the profoundest sympa- thy with the unification of Germany. We all believe in a great union of federated states, bound together by a common language, by unrestricted mutual trade, by common currency, mails, means of communica- tion, courts of justice, and institutions of credit and finance, and inspired by a passionate patriotism. Such is the venerable American Union ; such the young German Empire. " We gladly welcome here to-day a worthy repre- sentative of German greatness, worthy in station, profession, and character. We see in him, however, something more than the representative of a superb nationality and an imperial ruler. Universities have long memories. Forty years ago the American Union was in deadly peril, and thousands of its young men were bleeding and dying for it. It is credibly re- ported that at a very critical moment the Queen of England said to her Prime Minister : ' My Lord, you must understand that I shall sign no paper which means war with the United States.' The 224 APPENDIX grandson of that illustrious woman is sitting with us here." Here President Eliot rose, bowed to the President and Fellows, and to the Board of Overseers, and re- mained standing. Prince Henry rose when his name was pronounced. " Now, therefore, in exercise of authority given me by the President and Fellows and the Board of Overseers, and in the favoring presence of the friends here assembled, I create honorary Doctor of Laws Albert William Henry, Prince of Prussia, and ' Admiral, and in the name of this Society of Scholars, I declare that he is entitled to the rights and privileges pertaining to this degree, and that his name is to be forever borne on its roll of honorary members." II PRESIDENT ELIOT'S ADDRESS AT A BANQUET GIVEN MARCH 6, 1902, BY THE CITY OF BOS- TON TO PRINCE HENRY OF PRUSSIA Mb. Mayor, Your Royal Highness, Your Ex- cellency 1 The nation's guests — Boston's this evening — have just had some momentary glimpses of the ex- temporized American cities, of the prairies and the AUeghanies, of some great rivers and lakes, and of prodigious Niagara ; and so they have perhaps some vision of the large scale of our country, although they have run over not more than one thirtieth of its area. But now they have come to little Massa- chusetts, lying on the extreme eastern seacoast — by comparison a minute commonwealth, with a rough climate and a poor soil. It has no grand scenery to exhibit, no stately castles, churches, or palaces come down through centuries, such as Europe offers, and for at least two generations it has been quite unable to compete with the fertile fields of the West in pro- ducing its own food supplies. What has Massachu- setts to show them, or any intelligent European visitors? Only the fruitage — social, industrial, and * The Governor. 226 APPENDIX governmental — of the oldest and most prosperous democracy in the world. For two hundred and eighty years this little Com- monwealth has been developing in freedom, with no class legislation, feudal system, dominant church, or standing army to hinder or restrain it. The period of development has been long enough to show what the issues of democracy are likely to be; and it must be interesting for cultivated men brought up under another regime to observe that human nature turns out to be much the same thing under a demo- cratic form of government as under the earlier forms, and that the fundamental motives and objects of mankind remain almost unchanged amid external conditions somewhat novel. Democracy has not dis- covered or created a new human nature ; it has only modified a little the familiar article. The domestic affections, and loyalty to tribe, clan, race, or nation still rule mankind. The family motive remains su- preme. It is an accepted fact that the character of each civilized nationality is well exhibited in its univer- sities. Now Harvard University has been largely governed for two hundred and fifty years by a body of seven men called the Corporation. Every member of that Corporation which received your royal high- ness this afternoon at Cambridge is descended from a family stock which has been serviceable in Massa- chusetts for at least seven generations. More than one hundred years ago Washington was asked to APPENDIX 227 describe all the high officers in the American army of that day who might be thought of for the chief command. He gave his highest praise to Major- General Lincoln of Massachusetts, saying of him that he was "sensible, brave, and honest." There are Massachusetts Lincolns to-day to whom these words exactly apply. The democracy preserves and uses sound old fami- lies ; it also utilizes strong blood from foreign sources. Thus, in the second governing board of Harvard Uni- versity, — the Overseers, — a French Bonaparte, a member of the Roman Catholic Church, sits beside a Scotch farmer's son, Presbyterian by birth and education, now become the leader in every sense of the most famous Puritan church in Boston. The democracy also promotes human beings of remark- able natural gifts who appear as sudden outbursts of personal power, without prediction or announce- ment through family merit. It is the social mobility of a democracy which enables it to give immediate place to personal merit, whether inherited or not, and also silently to drop unserviceable descendants of earlier meritorious generations. Democracy, then, is only a further unfolding of the multitudinous human nature, which is essentially stable. It does not mean the abolition of leadership, or an averaged population, or a dead-level of society. Like monarchical and aristocratic forms of govern- ment, it means a potent influence for those who prove capable of exerting it, and a highly diversified 228 APPENDIX society on many shifting levels, determined in lib- erty, and perpetually exchanging members up and down. It means sensuous luxury for those who want it, and can afford to pay for it ; and for the wise rich it provides the fine luxury of promoting public ob- jects by well-considered giving. Since all the world seems tending toward this somewhat formidable democracy, it is encouraging to see what the result of two hundred and eighty years of democratic experience has been in this peaceful and prosperous Massachusetts. Democracy has proved here to be a safe social order — safe for the property of individuals, safe for the finer arts of living, safe for diffused public happiness and well- being. We remember gratefully in this presence that a strong root of Massachusetts liberty and prosperity was the German Protestantism of four centuries ago, and that another and fresher root of well-being for every manufacturing people, like the people of Mas- sachusetts, has been German applied science during the past fifty years. We hope, as Your Royal High- ness goes homeward-bound across the restless Atlan- tic, — type of the rough " sea of storm-engendering liberty," — you may cherish a cheerful remembrance of barren but rich, strenuous but peaceful, free but self-controlled, Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A Deacidified using the Bookkeeper procesi Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: ...y 2001 PreservationTechnologiei A WORLD LEADER 1M PAPER PRESERVATIO 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111