Columbia ©niticm'tp intl)ei£ttpofMfttjgork LIBRARY GIVEN BY The President BY THE SAME AUTHOR True and False Democracy — Charles Scribner's Sons (First Edition, Tke Macmillan Co., 1907) — xii + III pp. ..... net 75 cents Tke Americaa as He la — Charles Scribner's Sons (First Edition, The Macmillan Co., 1908) — x ■+- 97 pp. ngt 75 cents Philosophy — Columbia University Press, 191 1 — vii + 51 pp net $1.00 Why Should We Change Our Form of Govern- ment ? — Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912 — xv + 139 pp. net 75 cents The International Mind — Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913 — X + 121 pp. . . . net 75 cents The Meaning of Education — Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915 — xiii 4- 385 pp. . . . net $1.50 A WORLD IN FERMENT INTERPRETATIONS OF THE WAR FOR A NEW WORLD A WORLD IN FERMENT INTERPRETATIONS OF THE WAR FOR A NEW WORLD BY NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1917 G:^^ -MVte President CoPYSaCHT, 1917, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published August, 1917 COPTRIGHT. 1914. 1913. BY THE NEW YORK TIMES CO. 3 511 u TO THOSE MEN AND WOMEN OF WHATEVER LAND WHO PRIZE INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY, WHO DISTINGUISH TRUE DEMOCRACY FROM FALSE, AND WHO WISH TO LIVE IN A WORLD WHICH IS AT PEACE BECAUSE IT IS BOTH FREE AND JUST CONTENTS PAGE I I Introduction II The Onrush of War ^i III The United States of Europe . . 25 IV The United States as a World Power ^^ V Patriotism "7 VI The Changed Outlook ^S I VII Higher Preparedness loi j \ VIII The Building of the Nation ... 115 1 IX Nationality and Beyond 131 ; ■ X The Present Crisis HS I I XI Is America Drifting? iS^ ! j XII Looking Forward i/i | XIII The Russian Revolution 205 | VU I • * • viii CONTENTS PA 9 •^ XV The Envoys at the University . . 227 PAGE XIV The Call to Service 2i< ^XVI The International Mind: How to Develop It 233 / XVII A World in Ferment 243 Index 251 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION Since August i, 1914, no American has been quite free to speak in public on the issues and the consequences of the war without bearing constantly in mind the attitude of the Govern- ment of the United States. That attitude, which began as neutrality and which on April 6, 1917 passed over into participation in the conflict, has in its various stages of develop- ment probably marked with substantial cor- rectness the state of American public opinion in relation to the war. When one looks back, however, from participation to neutrality, he cannot help seeing how imperfectly, even from the very beginning, neutrality reflected the actual relations of the war to the present and the future of the people of the United States. Nevertheless, it takes time and events of a compelling character to aff'ect the controlling opinion of a nation of more than one hundred millions whose traditions are of detachment from world politics in general and from Euro- pean controversies in particular. It seems quite certain that the future historian will 3 4 INTRODUCTION dwell with more emphasis upon the complete transformation which the war has effected in the feeUngs and policies of the people of the United States than upon the fact that it took nearl^hree years to effect that transformation. It may well be that the war would have been differently conducted and more quickly ended had the Government of the United States an- nounced immediately on the first declaration of war that, as a co-signatory of the Hague Conventions, it would deem it a duty to pro- test against the violation by any belligerent of the Hague Conventions, of the laws and cus- toms of civilized warfare, or of the rules of international law. Such a declaration would not have prevented the invasion of Belgium; that had been planned too long and was too essential a part of the contemplated attack to be so easily checked. But it might well have prevented some of the shocking outrages that followed in Belgium, in northern France, in Poland, in Serbia, and in Roumania, as well as have held in leash the dogs of submarine war- fare. Whether this be true or not, such a declaration would have marked an epoch in the history of nations, for it would have pointed INTRODUCTION 5 with the utmost energy and directness to law at a time when resort to force was being had on a scale hitherto unheard of in history. As the war has proceeded, it has become so plain that even he w^ho runs may read, that it is essentially a war for a new world. It is a war for a new international world, and a war for a new intranational world. It requires no great gift of prophecy to fore- see that the new international world that will \ almost certainly arise upon the ruins of this war \ will be one in which the nations of the earth ; will band themselves together more closely than / ever before, not to enforce peace but to se- cure peace. The dreams of seers and the long- cherished projects of statesmen are likely soon to be fulfilled in many of their essential parts. This appears to be a safe prediction, for the reason that there seems to be no other way in which human foresight and human capacity can make highl}^ improbable the recurrence of any such holocaust as is now consuming civili- zation. Some suggestions as to ways and means by which this new international world may be achieved and estabHshed are offered in the pages that follow. 6 INTRODUCTION The war is also a war for a new intranational world. The political developments in Great Britain, in France, and in the United States, to say nothing of the stupendous revolution in Russia, indicate the character of this new world. It will be a world in which democracy will be more secure, more effective, more just and better estabhshed. It is to be hoped that it will be a world in which there will be a larger measure of co-operation between government and private enterprise than has heretofore been usual, but in which government will not stifle and suppress private enterprise with its clumsy and costly hand. It will not be a world from which vagaries and vice can be excluded, be- cause vagaries and vice accompany humanity on its progress; but there is every reason to believe that it will be a world purified and strengthened by the tremendous trials to which the world of to-day is being subjected. The new world will be one in which inter- national policies will play a greatly increased part. Perhaps the greatest enemy of true inter- nationahsm is false internationalism. Move- ments to advance international interdependence and international understanding are of two INTRODUCTION 7 distinct kinds. One of these is both mislead- ing and harmful, and by its methods and proc- esses would make the achievement of its de- clared aim quite impossible. The other is wise and statesmanlike, and follows the path by which such progress as has already been made has been achieved. Of these two methods of promoting what may be called internationalism the former would proceed by denouncing all nationalistic and patriotic feeling whatsoever in order to exalt the supernational brotherhood of man, and to lay stress upon a world-wide community without national ties or national ambitions. To use a figure drawn from chem- istry, this might be called colloidal internation- alism. It is hopelessly impractical as an ideal, and hopelessly unsound and unstable as a public policy, whether for individuals or for nations. The second method of promoting internationaHsm would strengthen and develop nationalistic and patriotic sentiments and aims, in order that when so strengthened they may be used without impairment or weakening as elements in a larger human undertaking of which each nation should be an independent and integral part. Pursuing the same figure, 8 INTRODUCTION this might be called crystalline international- ism. The strength and beauty of the whole international structure when complete would then depend upon and reflect the strength and beauty of each of its national elements. The colloidal internationalism of the type of per- son who insists that he knows no country but humanity, and that he is a citizen of no state but only of the world, is hopeless nonsense. It prevents the development of true internation- alism by affronting common sense. It is hoped that the new world will also come to an understanding with itself about peace. It will perhaps understand, w^hat some excellent persons are not now able to see, that peace is not an ideal at all; it is a state atten- dant upon the achievement of an ideal. The ideal itself is human liberty, justice, and the honorable conduct of an orderly and humane society. Given this, a durable peace follows naturally as a matter of course. Without this, there is no peace, but only a rule of force until liberty and justice revolt against it in search of peace. It is Tacitus who records the British chieftain Calgacus as saying of the invading Romans of his day, Solitudinem faciunt, pacem INTRODUCTION g appellant. If Imperium be read for Solitudi- neniy this pregnant sentence is a true description of the political philosophy and the military policy of the twentieth century Teutons. To regard peace as an end in itself and as something to be achieved at all hazards, is in effect to labor for the indefinite continuance of war. The new world of which we are in search will insist upon justice, liberty, and righteousness- as its foundation, and it will welcome durable peace as their accustomed companion and friend. Nicholas Murray Butler. Columbia University In the City of New York July 14, 19 17 II THE ONRUSH OF WAR An Address at the Opening of the i6ist Academic Year of Columbia University, September 23, 1914 THE ONRUSH OF WAR Our usual Interests however great, our usual problems however pressing, all seem petty and insignificant in view of what has befallen the world while we were seeking rest and refresh- ment in the summer holiday. The murky clouds of cruel, relentless war, lit by the light- ning flash of great guns and made more terrible by the thunderous booming of cannon, hang over the European countries that we know and love so well. The great scholars that we would have so gladly w^elcomed here, have not come to us. They are kilHng and being killed across the sea. Friends and colleagues whom we honor are filled with hate toward each other, and toward each other's countrymen. The words that oftenest come to our lips, the ideals that we cherish and pursue, the progress that we fancied we were making, seem not to exist. Mankind is back in the primeval forest, with the elemental brute passions finding a truly fiendish expression. The only apparent use of science is to enable men to kill other men more 13 14 THE ONRUSH OF WAR quickly and in greater numbers. The only apparent service of philosophy is to make the worse appear the better reason. The only ap- parent evidence of the existence of religion is the fact that divergent and impious appeals to a palpably pagan God, have led him, in per- plexed distress, to turn over the affairs of Europe to an active and singularly accom- plished devil. What are we to think .? Is science a sham .? Is philosophy a pretense .? Is religion a mere rumor .? Is the great international structure of friendship, good will, and scholarly co-operation upon which this University and many of its members have worked so long, so faithfully, and apparently with so much success, only an illusion } Are the long and devoted labors of scholars and of statesmen to enthrone Justice in the place of Brute Force in the world, all without effect .^ Are Lowell's lines true — ** Right forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne " ? The answer is No; a thousand times, No! Despite all appearances, even in this wicked and unprovoked assault on the liberties of THE ONRUSH OF WAR 15 peace-loving men and nations which is decimat- ing the flower of European manhood, multiply- ing by the million the widows, the orphans, the suffering, and the distressed, wrecking the com- mercial and industrial progress of a century, impoverishing alike the belligerents and the neutrals, closing the exchanges from New York to Buenos Aires, ruining the cotton-planter of the South as well as the copper-miner of the Far West, loosing in the frenzied combatants the primitive instincts of savagery and lust — even here there is to be found something on which this University may continue to build the temple of wisdom, of justice, and of true civilization to which its hand was laid when George II was king, when Louis XV still reigned in France, and when Frederick the Great was at the height of his fame in Prussia. We are a neutral nation, and the President has enjoined us all to observe neutrality in speech and in deed; but neutrality is not indif- ference. Ours is not the neutrality of the casual passer-by who views with amused care- lessness a fight between two street rowdies; it is the neutrality of the just judge who aims, with- out passion and without prejudice, to render 1 6 THE ONRUSH OF WAR judgment on the proved facts. We cannot if we would refrain from passing judgment upon the conduct of men, whether singly or in na- tions, and we should not attempt to do so. In the first place, the moral judgment of the American people as to the aggressors in this war and as to the several steps in the declara- tion and conduct of it, is clear, calm, and prac- tically unanimous. There is no beating of drums and blowing of bugles, but rather a sad pain and grief that our kin across the sea, owing whatever allegiance and speaking whatever tongue, have been led to engage in public mur- der and destruction on the most stupendous scale recorded in history/ This of itself proves that the education of public opinion has pro- ceeded far, and, whatever he who extols war for its own sake may say, it shows that the heart of the American people is sound and its head well-informed. The attitude of the American press is worthy of the highest praise; in some notable instances the very high-water mark of dignity and of power has been reached. When the war-clouds have lifted, I believe that the moral judgment of the American peo- ple as to the responsibihty for this war v/ill THE ONRUSH OF WAR 17 prove to be that of the sober-minded and fair- minded men in every country of Europe. Next, it must not be forgotten that this war was made primarily by kings and by cabinets; it was not decreed by peoples. We can all tes- tify that the statement that kings and cabinets were forced into the war by public sentiment is absolutely untrue so far at least as several of the belligerent nations are concerned. Cer- tainly in not more than two cases were the chosen representatives of the people consulted at all. A tiny minority in each of several coun- tries whose conduct was hostile and provoked hostilities may have desired war, but the mili- tarist spirit was singularly lacking am^ong the masses of the population in Germany, in Aus- tria-Hungary, and in Russia. There the people generally have simply accepted with grim resig- nation and reluctant enthusiasm the conflict which in each case they are taught to believe has been forced on them by another's aggression. The most significant statement that I heard in Europe was made to me on the third day of August last by a German-speaking railway ser- vant, a grizzled veteran of the Franco-Prussian War. In reply to my question as to whether 1 8 THE ONRUSH OF WAR he would have to go to the front, the old man said: '*No; I am too old. I am seventy-two. But my four boys went yesterday, God help them ! and I hate to have them go. For, sir," he added in a lowered voice, **this is not a people's war; it is a kings' war, and when it is over there may not be so many kings." Again, a final end has now been put to the contention, always made with more emphasis than reasonableness, that huge armaments are themselves an insurance against war and an aid in maintaining peace. This argument was invented by those who really believe in war and in armaments as ends in themselves. Sundry politicians, many newspapers, and not a few good people who are proud to have their thinking done for them, accepted this dictum as a profound poHtical truth. Its falsity is now plain to every one. Guns and bullets and armor are not made to take the place of postage stamps and books and laboratories and other instruments of civilization and of peace; they are made to kill people. Their only other pos- sible use is to excite terror, and terror, national or international, is not a safe foundation on which to attempt to build a civilization. THE ONRUSH OF WAR 19 It seems pretty clear that when the present huge supplies of guns and ammunition are used up in the contest now going on, no civilized people will ever again permit its government to enter into a competitive armament race. The time may not be so very far distant when to be the first moral power in the world will be a considerably greater distinction than to be the first military power or the first naval power, and when the several nations will band them- selves together to repress the rule of force and to advance the rule of law. How any one, not a fit subject for a madhouse, can find in the awful events now happening in Europe a rea- son for asking the United States to desist from its attempts to promote a new interna- tional order in the world, is to me wholly in- conceivable. Another great gain is to be found In the fact that no one is willing to be responsible for this war. Every combatant alleges that he Is on the defensive, and summons his fellow country- men who are scientists and philosophers to find some way to prove it. The old claim that war was a part of the moral order, a God-given In- strument for the spreading of enlightenment. 20 THE ONRUSH OF WAR and the only real training-school for the manly virtuesj is just now in a state of eclipse. Each one of the several belligerent nations insists that it — and its government — are devoted friends of peace, and that it is at war only be- cause war was forced upon it by the acts of some one else. As to who that some one else is, it has not yet been possible to get a unani- mous agreement. What we do know is that no one steps forward to claim credit for the war or to ask a vote of thanks or a decoration for having forced it upon Europe and upon the world. Everybody concerned is ashamed of it and apologetic for it. It may well be, moreover, that the desper- ately practical and direct education which this war is already affording will hasten very much the com.ing of the day when the close economic and intellectual interdependence of the nations will assert itself more emphatically and more successfully against national chauvinism and the preposterous tyranny of those who w^orship at the shrine of militarism. The armed peace which preceded this war and led directly to it, w^as in some respects worse than war itself; for it had many of the evils of war without war's THE ONRUSH OF WAR 21 educational advantages. We are not likely to return again to that form of wickedness and folly, unless perchance the continent of Europe is able to produce another generation of public men as self-centred and of as narrow a vision as those who have generally been in control of public policy there for forty years past. The whole card-house of alliances and ententes, to- gether with the balance of power theory, has come tumbling heavily to the ground. Some- thing far different and much more rational will arise in its stead. In the Europe of to-morrow there will be no place for secret treaties and understandings, for huge systems of armed camps and limitless navies, for wide-spread in- ternational enmity and treachery, for carefully stimulated race and religious hatred, or for wars made on the sole responsibility of monarchs and of ministers. Moral, social, and political progress will refuse longer to pay the crushing tolls which a conventional diplomacy and an unenlightened statesmanship have demanded of them. It is not the Slav or the Teuton, the Latin or the Briton, the Oriental or the Ameri- can, who is the enemy of civilization and of culture. Militarism, there is the enemy ! 2 2 THE ONRUSH OF WAR The first notable victim of the Great War was the eloquent and accomplished French parliamentarian, M. Jaures. He was murdered by a war-crazed fanatic. In the course of a long and intimate conversation with M. Jaures shortly before his tragic death, he dwelt much on the part that America could play in binding the nations of Europe together. He spoke of the success of the policies that had been worked out here to make the United States and Ger- man}^ and the United States and France better known to each other, and he thought that through the agency of the United States it might eventually be practicable to draw Ger- many and France together in real trust and friendship. As we parted, his last words to me were: "Do not leave off trying. No matter what the difficulties are, do not leave off try- ing." To-day the words of this great socialist leader of men seem like a voice from beyond the grave. They are true. We must not leave off trying. When exhaustion, physical and economic, brings this war to an end, as I believe it must, the task of America and Americans will be heavy and responsible. It will be for us to TEE ONRUSH OF WAR 23 bind up the war's wounds, to soften the war's animosities, and to lead the way in the colossal work of reconstruction that must follow. Then if our heads are clear, our hearts strong, and our aims unselfish — and if our nation continues to show that it means always to keep its own plighted word — we may gain new honor and imperishable fame for our country. We may yet live to see our great policies of peace, of freedom from entangling alliances, of a world concert instead of a continental balance of power, of an international judiciary and an in- ternational police, of international co-operation instead of international suspicion, generally assented to, and, as a result, the v/orld's re- sources set free to improve the lot of peoples, to advance science and scholarship, and to raise humanity to a level yet unheard of. Here lies the path of national glory for us, and here is the call to action in the near future. It is often darkest just before the dawn, and the hope of mankind may lie in a direc- tion other than that Europe toward which we are now looking so anxiously. Arthur Hugh Clough's noble verses are an inspiration to us at this hour: 24 TEE ONRUSH OF WAR " Say not the struggle naught availeth. The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been they remain. 4c 4: 4: 4: * * 4: For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main. And not by eastern windows only. When daylight comes, comes in the light; In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly! But westward, look, the land is bright!** Ill THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE An Interview with Edward Marshall printed in the New York Times y October i8, 1914 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE What will be in substance a United States of Europe, a more or less formal federation of the self-governing countries of Europe, may be the outcome of the demonstrated failure of the existing national system to adjust government to the growth of civilization. The ending of the present war may see the rising of the sun of democracy to light a new day of freedom even for those of our transatlantic neighbors who now seem most remote from it. Thinking men in all the contending nations are beginning seriously to consider such a con- tingency, to argue for it or against it; in other words, to regard it as an undoubted possibility. The European cataclysm puts the people of the United States in a unique and tremendously important position. As neutrals we are able to observe events and to learn the lessons that they teach. If we learn rightly we may gain for ourselves and be able to confer upon others benefits far more important than any of the material advantages which may come to us 27 28 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE through a shrewd handling of the new possi- bilities in international trade. Prophecy is always hazardous, and never more so than now, but it seems clear that the v/orld is at the crossroads and that everything may depend upon the United States, which has been thrust by events into a unique posi- tion of moral leadership. Whether the march of the future is to be to the right or to the left, up hill or down, after the war is over, may well depend upon the course this nation shall now take, and upon the influence which it shall exercise. If we keep our heads clear there are two things that we can bring insistently to the attention of Europe — each of vast import at such a time as that which will follow the end- ing of the war. The first of these is the fact that race antag- onisms tend to die away and disappear under the influence of liberal and enhghtened political institutions. This has been proved in the United States. We have huge Celtic, Latin, Teutonic, and Slavonic populations all living here at peace and in harmony; and as years pass they tend to merge, creating new and homogeneous types. The Old World antago- THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 29 nisms have become memories. This proves that such antagonisms are not mysterious attri- butes of geography or of cHmate, but that they are the outgrowth chiefly of social and political conditions. Here a man can do about what he likes, so long as he does not violate the law; he may pray as he pleases or not at all, and he may speak any language that he chooses. The United States is itself proof that most of the contentions of Europeans as to race an- tagonisms are ill-founded. We have demon- strated that racial antagonisms need not nec- essarily become the basis of permanent hatred and an excuse for war. If human beings are given the chance they will make the most of themselves, and by liv- ing happily — which means living in justice and at peace — they will avoid conflict. The hyphen tends to disappear from American ter- minology. The German-American, the Italo- American, the Irish-American all become Amer- icans. So, by and large, our institutions have proved their capacity to amalgamate and to set free every type of human being which thus far has come under our flag. There is in this a lesson which may well be taken seriously to 30 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE heart by the leaders of opinion in Europe when ' this war ends. The second thing which we may with pro- priety press upon the attention of the people of Europe after peace comes to them, is the fact that we are not only the great exponents, but the great example, of the success of the principle of federation as a basis of unity in political life regardless of local, economic, and racial differences. If our fathers had attempted to organize this country upon the basis of a single, closely unified State, it would have gone to smash almost at the outset, wrecked by clashing economic and personal interests. In- deed, this nearly happened in the civil war, which was more economic than political in its origin. But, though we had our difficulties, we did find a way to make a unified nation of a hundred million people and forty-eight com- monwealths, all bound together in unity and in loyalty to a common political ideal and a common political purpose. Why is not this principle of federation, not in all its details but in its fundamentals, applicable to a group of European States that wish to achieve a com- mon purpose ? THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 31 There might readily be a federation into the United States of Europe. When one nation sets out to assert itself by force against the will, or even the wish, of its neighbors, disaster must inevitably come. Dis- aster would have come here if, in 1789, New York had endeavored to assert itself against New England or Pennsylvania. As a matter of fact certain inhabitants of Rhode Island and of Pennsylvania did try something of the sort after the Federal Government had been formed, but, fortunately, their effort w^as a failure. The leaders of our national life had established so flexible and so admirable a plan of government that it was soon apparent that each State could retain its identity, form its own ideals and shape its own progress, and still remain a loyal part of the whole nation; that each State could make a place for itself in the new federation and not be destroyed thereby. There is no reason why each nation in Europe should not make a place for itself in the sun of unity which I feel sure is rising there behind the war-clouds. Europe's stu- pendous economic loss, which already has been appalling and will soon be incalculable, will 32 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE give us an opportunity to press this argument home. True internationalism is not the enemy of the nationahstic principle. On the contrary, it helps true nationalism to thrive. The Ver- monter is more a Vermonter because he is an American, and there is no reason why Hun- gary, for example, should not be more than ever before Hungarian after it becomes a mem- ber of the United States of Europe. Europe, of course, is not without examples of the successful application of the principle of federation within itself. It so happens that the federated State next greatest to our own is the German Empire. It is only forty-three years old, but there federation has been nota- bly successful. The idea of federation is per- fectly famiHar to German publicists. It is familiar, also, to the English, and has lately been pressed as the probable final solu- tion of the Irish question. It has insistently suggested itself as the solution of the Balkan problem. In a lesser way it already is repre- sented in the structure of Austria-Hungary. This principle of nation-building, of interna- tional building through federation, certainly TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE ^2> has in it the seeds of the world's next great development — and we Americans are in a posi- tion both to expound the theory and to illus- trate the practice. This may be the greatest work which America will have to do at the end of this war. The cataclysm is so awful that it is quite within the bounds of truth to say that the world can never again be the same as it was. This conflict is the birth-throe of a new European order of things. The man who at- tempts to judge the future by the old standards or to force the future back to them will be found to be hopelessly out of date. The world will have no use for him. The world has left behind forever the international policies of Palmerston and of Beaconsfield and even those of Bismarck, which were far more powerful. When the war ends, conditions will be such that a new kind of imagination and a new kind of statesmanship will be required. This war will prove to be the most effective edu- cation of 500,000,000 people which could pos- sibly have been thought of, although it is the most costly and most terrible means which could have been chosen. The results of this 34 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE education will be shown In the process of general reconstruction which will doubtless follow. All the talk of which so much is heard about the peril from the Slav or from the Teuton or from the Celt is unworthy of serious attention. It would be quite as reasonable to discuss seri- ously the red-headed peril or the six-footer peril. There is no peril to the world in the Slav, the Teuton, the Celt, or any other race, provided the people of that race have an op- portunity to develop as social and economic units, and are not so bound and confined by tyranny as to force an explosion, or so deluded by militarism and national chauvinism as to become a public danger. It is not races but wrong ideas that are dangerous. No form of government will long be toler- ated which does not set men free to develop in their own way. The international organization of the world already has progressed much farther than is ordinarily understood. Ever since the Franco- Prussian w^ar and the Geneva Arbitration, both landmarks in modern history, this organi- zation has advanced inconspicuously, but by THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 35 leaps and bounds. The postal service of the world has been internationalized in its control for years. The several Postal Conventions have given evidences of an international ad- ministrative organization of the highest order. Europe abounds in illustrations of the interna- tional administration of large things. The very laws of war, which are at present the subject of so much and such bitter discussion, are the result of international organization. They were not adopted by a Congress, a Parliament, or a Reichstag. They were agreed to by many and divergent peoples, who sent representatives to meet for their discussion and determination. In the admiralty law we have a most striking example of uniformity of practice in all parts of the world. If a ship is captured or harmed in the Far East and taken into Yokohama or Nagasaki, damages will be assessed and col- lected precisely as they would be in New York or Liverpool. The world is gradually develop- ing a code for international legal procedure. Special arbitral tribunals have tended to merge and to grow into the international court at The Hague, and that in turn will develop until it becomes a real supreme judicial tribunal. 36 TUE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE Of course the analogy between the federated State and a federation of nations fails at some points, but the time will come when each nation will deposit in a world federation some portion of its sovereignty for the general good. When this happens it will be possible to estab- lish an international executive and an inter- national police, both devised for the especial purpose of enforcing the decisions of the inter- national court. Here, again, the United States offers a per- fect object-lesson. Its central government is one of limited and defined powers. Its history can show Europe how such limitations and definitions may be established and interpreted, and how they may be modified and amended when necessary to meet new conditions. There will be annotated reports of the decisions of the several international arbitration tribunals and of the international court of justice, in order that the governments and jurists of the world may have at hand, as they have in the United States Supreme Court reports, a record of de- cided cases, which, when the time comes, may be referred to as precedents. It will be through gradual processes such as these that the great TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 37 end will be accomplished. Beginning with such annotated reports as a basis for prece- dents, each new case tried before this tribunal will add a farther precedent, and presently a complete international code will be in exist- ence. It was in this way that the English com- mon law was built, and such has been the his- tory of the admirable work done by our own judicial system. The study of such problems as these is at this time infinitely more impor- tant than the consideration of how large a fine shall be inflicted by the victors upon the van- quished. There is the probability of some dislocation of territory and some shiftings of sovereignty after the war ends, but these will be of com- paratively minor importance. Dislocation of territory and the shifting of sovereigns as the result of International disa- greements are mediaeval practices. After this war the world will want to solve its problems in terms of the future, not in those of the out- grown past. The important result of this great war will be the stimulation of interna- tional organization along some such lines as those suggested. 38 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE Conventional diplomacy and conventional statesmanship have very evidently broken down in Europe. They have made a disas- trous failure of the work with which they were intrusted. They did not and could not pre- vent the war because they knew and used only the old formulas. They had no tools for a job like this. A new type of international statesman is certain to arise, a statesman who will have a grasp of new tendencies, a new outlook upon life. Bismarck used to say that it would pay any nation to wear the clean linen of a civilized State. The truth of this must be taught to those nations of the world which are weakest in morale, and it can only be done as similar work is accomplished with individuals. Courts, not killings, have accom- plished it with individuals. One more point ought to be remembered. We sometimes hear it said that nationalism, the desire for national expression by each indi- vidual nation, makes the permanent peace and good order of the world impossible. It seems absurd to believe that this is any truer of na- tions than it is of individuals. It is not each nation's desire for national expression which THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 39 makes peace impossible; it is the fact that thus far in the world's history such desire has been bound up with militarism. The nation whose frontier bristles with bayonets and with forts is like the individual with a magazine pistol in his pocket. Both make for murder. Both in their hearts really mean murder. The world will be better when the nations invite the judg- ment of their neighbors and are influenced by it. When John Hay said that the Golden Rule and the Open Door should guide our new diplo- macy, he said something which should be ap- plicable to the new diplomacy of the whole world. The Golden Rule and a free chance are all that any man ought to want or ought to have, and they are all that any nation ought to want or ought to have. One of the controlHng principles of a demo- cratic State is that its mihtary and naval establishments must be completely subservient to the civil power. They should form the po- lice, and not be the dominant factor of any nation's life. As soon as they go beyond this simple function in any nation, then that nation is afflicted with militarism. It is difficult to make predictions as to the 40 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE war's effect on us. Our position will depend a good deal upon the outcome of the conflict, and what that will be no one at present can tell. If a new map of Europe follows the war, its permanence will depend upon whether or not the changes are such as will permit nation- alities to organize as nations. The world should have learned through the lessons of the past that it is impossible permanently and peacefully to submerge large bodies of aliens if they are treated as aliens. That is the op- posite of the mixing process which is still building a nation out of varied nationalities in the United States. The old Romans un- derstood this. They permitted their outlying vassal nations to speak any language they chose and to worship whatever god they chose, so long as they recognized the sovereignty of Rome. When a conquering nation goes beyond that and begins to suppress religions, languages, and customs, it also begins, at that very mo- ment, to sow the seeds of insurrection and revolution. A true nation has been defined as an ethno- graphic unit inhabiting a geographic unit. That is an illuminating definition. If a nation THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 41 is not an ethnographic unit, it tries to become one by oppressing or amalgamating the weaker portions of its people. If it is not a geographic unit, it tries to become one by reaching out to a mountain chain or to the sea — to something which w^ll serve as a real dividing-line between it and its next neighbors. The accuracy of this definition can hardly be denied, and we all know what the violations of this principle have been in Europe. It is unnecessary to point them out. Races rarely have been successfully mixed by conquest. The mihtary victor in a war is not always the real conqueror in the long run. The Normans conquered Saxon England, but Saxon law and Saxon institutions worked up through the new power and have dominated England's later history. The Teutonic tribes conquered Rome, but Roman civilization, by a sort of capillary attraction, went up into the mass above and presently dominated the Teu- tons. The persistency of a civilization may well be superior in tenacity to mere military conquest and control. The smallness of the number of instances in which conquering nations have been able sue- 42 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE cessfull}' to deal with alien peoples is extraordi- nary. The Romans were usually successful, and England has been successful with all but the Irish; but perhaps no other peoples have been successful in high degree in an effort to hold alien populations as vassals or as fellow subjects and to make them really happy and comfortable as such. One of the war's chief effects on us will be to change our point of view. Europe will be more vivid to us from now on. There are many American public men who have never thought much about Europe, and who have been far from a realization of its actual impor- tance to us. It has been a place in which to pass a summer holiday. But suddenly Americans find the}^ cannot sell their cotton in Europe or their copper, that they cannot mar- ket their stocks and bonds there, that they can- not send money to their families who are trav- elling there, because there is a war. To such men the war must have made it apparent that interdependence among nations is more than a mere phrase. Our entire trade and all our economic and social policies must recognize this fact. The world has discovered that money THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 43 without credit means little. One cannot use money if one cannot use one's credit to draw it whenever and wherever needed. Credit is intangible and volatile, and may be destroyed overnight. International credit implies na- tional interdependence. This realization of national interdependence will elevate and refine our patriotism by teaching men a wider sympathy and a deeper understanding of other peoples, nations, and languages. I sincerely hope it will educate us up to what I have called **the international mmd. There are hopeful signs, even in the midst of the gloom that hangs over us. Think what it has meant for the great nations of Europe to come to us, as they have done, asking our favorable public opinion. We have no army and no navy worthy of their fears. They can have been induced by nothing save their con- viction that we are the possessors of sound political ideals and are a great moral force in the world. In other words, they do not now want us to fight for them, but they do want us to approve of them. They want us to pass judgment upon the humanity and the legality 44 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE of their acts, because they feel that our judg- ment will be the judgment of history. There is a lesson in this. If we had not repealed the Panama Canal Tolls Exemption act in June, 1914, the Euro- pean nations might not have come to us as they are doing now. Who would have cared for our opinion in the matter of a treaty viola- tion if, for mere financial interest or from sheer vanity, we ourselves had violated a solemn treaty ? When Congress repealed the Panama Canal Tolls Exemption act it marked an epoch in the history of the United States. This did more than the Spanish War, more than the building of the Panama Canal or than any- thing else I can think of to make us a true world power. As a nation we have kept our word when sorely tempted to break it. We made Cuba independent, we have not exploited the Philippines, we have stood by our word as to Panama Canal tolls. In consequence we are the first moral power in the world to-day. Others may be first with armies, still others first with navies. But we have made good our right to be appealed to on questions of national and international THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 45 morality. That Europe Is seeking our favor Is the acknowledgment of this fact by the Euro- pean nations and their tribute to it. IV THE UNITED STATES AS A WORLD POWER An Interview with Edward Marshall printed in the ' New York Times ^ May i6, 191 5 I 1 THE UNITED STATES AS A WORLD POWER When one speaks of the United States as a world power, and of its future opportunities as such, one must stop to ask whether he is using the term "world power'' in the military sense with reference to the rule of force, or in the moral sense with reference to the rule of ideals and of law. The history of the world makes it pretty plain that there is a distinction be- tween the two. Our present-day philosophy of life makes it equally plain that it is world power resting on ideals and on law that the United States should aim at — the world power of the future — and not the sort of world power which rests on force — the world power of the past. With the passing of the years, with the increase in area and the multiplication of population, the United States has become at once the largest, the richest, and the most powerful exemplar of democratic institutions on the globe. Any claim which it may have to being a world 49 so THE UNITED STATES power to-day and any hope which it may have of increasing or extending this world power in future must rest upon its being true to the ideals and aims of democracy, not only in form but in spirit and in fact. The very just in- dignation of the American people at the de- struction of the Lusitania, involving, as it did, the loss of hundreds of lives of neutrals and non-combatants, including many women and children, as well as the inexplicable attack upon the American ship Gulflight, only empha- size the necessity of maintaining our purpose to enforce the rights which attach to neutrals. To do this successfully will of itself be a mani- festation of world power on a great scale. The present situation is very acute and very diffi- cult, but it ought not and I think will not be beyond the power of the American government and the American people to deal with it in a spirit of justice that will both emphasize and enforce our position as a neutral nation and resist any effort to cloud the issue by irrelevant appeals. It is a fact that the way in which the neu- trality of the United States has been mani- fested in the present war has not wholly com- AS A WORLD POWER 51 mended us as a people to any one of the belligerent powers. This, perhaps, was to be expected, but it would be unfortunate if any feeling of criticism of the United States for having done some things and for having omit- ted to do others, should extend to the point of weakening European confidence in the abil- ity and willingness of the American people to do justice between the belligerents and the policies they represent when this war shall come to an end, or in their capacity to grasp the real underlying issues of the war itself. The notion that the present struggle is merely a European war, in which no one has any interest except the governments and citi- zens of the several belligerent powers is gro- tesque. It is a world war in which every neu- tral power is more or less involved, and the huge cost of which every neutral power will be called upon to share more or less heavily. It may be safely predicted that when the bills are all in and receipted a generation or two hence, the cost to the people of the United States will prove to have been stupendous. All these are reasons why the world power of the American democracy ought of right to be exerted and 52 THE UNITED STATES should, as a matter of policy and of national interest, be exerted when hostilities shall end, to compose the differences and the difficulties out of which this war has grown, and to remove their causes; and they are also reasons why nothing should be done which will weaken our world influence. It is a very difficult and delicate matter to suggest to another people that one's own form of government is better than that which, at the moment, others enjoy. This is something which the United States could not formally or officially do. Nevertheless, it would be sheer hypocrisy to conceal the fact that the public opinion of the United States is substantially unanimous In holding that the peace of the world Is more secure when foreign relations and foreign policies are determined and con- trolled by representatives of the people, than when these are wholly confided to dynasties or to diplomats, however beloved or however talented. The democratic principle cannot be said to insure international peace, but with equal certainty it can be said to make im- possible certain kinds of war. It makes Im- possible all those numerous wars that grow out AS A WORLD POWER 53 of dynastic ambitions and policies, out of se- cret alliances and out of confidential under- standings of one sort and another between monarchs and foreign offices. The democratic principle for which the United States stands and which, after allowing for all mistakes and inequities, it has done so much to advance, diminishes the chance of conflict based upon difference in religion and difference in race, by insisting that neither of these differences be given any recognition before the law. It is obvious that if the United States is to achieve and to exercise a world power based upon its sincere democracy, we must have a care that 3Z home these principles are always kept clearly in mind and are not departed from in our own political practice. We have among us a good many persons, and some groups of importance and considerable size, that are not inclined to be any too particular about insisting upon the application of these fundamental democratic principles, if, by overlooking them, they them- selves can gain some immediate political or personal end. To all such it may be pointed out that while, of course, a nation must protect itself, morally, intellectually, and physically, 54 THE UNITED STATES yet it must protect itself by the application of its fundamental principles and not by the denial or forgetfulness of them. One trait the people of the United States possess to an extent that never before has been recorded in the history of any nation, and that is the admirable trait of generosity and of sym- pathy for the distressed, the afflicted, and the stricken in any part of the world. Recognition of this fact must add greatly to our world in- fluence. At the very time that some European observers have been denouncing the American people as mere traders, making money and gain out of the distressful conflict in Europe, those same American people have been pour- ing out not only milHons of dollars, but life, energy, and service in the effort to carry food and clothing to the starving and ill-clad Bel- gians, to eliminate the fearful plague of typhus in Serbia, and to aid in giving the best medical and surgical service to the sick and wounded in the armies of Germany, Austria, Russia, France, and Great Britain. It may very well be doubted if anywhere in history there is re- corded an equal displa}^ prompt and over- whelming, of generous aid and tender human AS A WORLD POWER 55 sympathy, regardless of the station, rank, na- tionality, or opinions of those who needed help. These facts reveal a people playing the Good Samaritan on a huge scale, and they illustrate what is meant by w^orld leadership based on ideals. The nation whose people render ser- vices like these will never be forgotten in tens of thousands of villages and farm firesides all the way from the North Sea to the Cau- casus. If one is asked what power the United States can exert at the conclusion of this war, no defi- nite answer can be given at the moment, be- cause everything will depend upon which of the combatants is victorious. In any case, however, the United States ought to direct the attention of the nations now belligerent to these specific points: First, that the various Hague Conventions, solemnly entered into in 1899 and in 1907, have been violated frequently since the outbreak of hostilities, and that, obviously, some greater and more secure sanction for such Conventions must be provided in the future. Second, that in not a few instances the rules and usages of international law have been 56 TUE UNITED STATES thrown to the winds, to the discredit of the belligerents themselves and to the grave dis- tress, physically and commercially, of neutral powers. Of course every one understands that inter- national law is merely a series of conventions without other than moral sanction. If, how- ever, the world has gone back to the point where a nation's pHghted faith is not moral sanction enough, then that fact and its impli- cations ought to be clearly understood and appropriate punitive action provided for. Third, that any attempt to submerge na- tionalities in nations other than their own is certain to result in friction and conflict in the not distant future. Any attempt to create new nations, or to enlarge or diminish the area of nations, without having regard to national- ity, is simply to organize a future war. Fourth, that the transfer of sovereignty over any given district or people without their con- sent is certainly an unwise and probably an unjust action for any government to take, having regard for the peace and happiness of the world. Fifth, that the international organization AS A WORLD POWER 57 which had been carried so far in such fields as maritime law, postal service, railway service, and international arbitration, should be taken up anew and pursued more vigorously, but upon a sounder and a broader foundation, and made a certain means of protecting the smaller and the weaker nations. Sixth, that competitive armaments, instead of being an assurance against war, are a sure cause of war and an equally certain preventive of those policies of social reform and advance that enlightened peoples everywhere are eager to pursue. Everything would depend upon the sincer- ity, the good temper, and the sympathy with which suggestions such as these were made and followed up. A first step toward the ac- complishment of these ends is to create what some of us have long hoped for and felt to be possible, and what Mr. Asquith, in one of the greatest speeches made since the war began, clearly indicated to be within the range of practical statesmanship — namely, a method by which the nations of Europe may be so or- ganized as to develop a common will. When that step is taken then the United States can 58 THE UNITED STATES point out the lessons which the history of our own federal sj^stem so clearly teaches. No one in his senses could suppose that Europe, with its varied races and languages, could ever be welded into such a national unit as the United States, where a diverse popula- tion rests on a common English speech and the English common law; but the principle w^hich the United States Government exempli- fies is applicable, in my judgment, mutatis mu- tandis, to a United States of Europe. The be- ginnings of the central organ of the common will would probably be very simple and very slight. They might be chiefly judicial in char- acter; if so, then so much the better. It will not be forgotten that some of the justices of the first United States Supreme Court wanted to resign because no case came before the Court for a year after it was organized. They said there was apparently no need for such a court and that there was nothing for it to do. The world could very well afford to have Europe begin in the same simple way and trust to the force of ideas and the interest of nations in co-operation — their financial, their commer- cial, their intellectual interest — to strengthen AS A WORLD POWER $9 m and to develop whatever organ they chose to create at the outset. The greatest achievements of the United States have always tended toward peace, even when they have been warlike. The Spanish War was not an attack upon a people at peace, but a war for the purpose of stopping war. The events of the early spring and the summer of 1898 are sometim.es spoken of as the Span- ish-American War. To me they have always seemed more like the doing of such work as the police and fire departments combined might be called upon to perform In a great city. What was done then by the United States was, to all intents and purposes, to suppress a riot and to put out a conflagration. If the United States had enriched itself as a result of that action by annexing the island of Cuba, the action itself would have lost all its moral significance. Through the action taken at the instance of Senator Teller of Colorado and that taken at the Instance of Senator Piatt of Connecticut — although in fairness to both the living and the dead it ought to be said that the strongest in- fluence in drafting the Piatt Amendment was that of EHhu Root — the United States made it 6o THE UNITED STATES plain that what it was doing was done in the interest of the people of Cuba and in the inter- est of humanity. In the large sense, therefore, this whole undertaking was a policy making for peace, for good order, for human happiness. In the same wa}^ it was to a President of the United States and to his Secretary of State that the governments of Japan and Russia turned, in the spring of 1905, with a view to securing assistance in bringing the costly and bloody conflict in Manchuria to an end. Both through its action in regard to Cuba and its action in regard to the Russo-Japanese War, to say nothing of its consistent attitude toward the government and the people of China, the United States has won the regard and the respect of thoughtful and liberal-minded men in all parts of the globe. It is such acts as these which promote world confidence in us and assure world power for us. It is not possible to touch upon these topics without some mention of Mexico, where condi- tions are extremely difficult and very perplex- ing. There is no use now in discussing what might have been done three years ago or two years ago that would have led to an improve- AS A WORLD POWER 6i ment in the existing situation. The undisputed facts are that chaos rules in Mexico, that American lives have been sacrificed and others are in danger, and that much property belong- ing to Americans has been damaged or de- stroyed, and more of it is still threatened with damage or destruction. Is it quite clear that the people of the United States have no duty whatever In regard to this matter, but should merely stand aside and let the various armed bands of Mexicans kill each other indefinitely, as well as destroy the lives and property, not only of Americans, but of citizens of European nations ^ Are we or are we not our brothers' keepers I These questions are not to be Hghtly answered, for anything that would plunge us into war with the Mexican people, or anything that might possibly lead to an extension of our territory or increase of our wealth at their ex- pense, would be deplorable, and perhaps dis- astrous to us. Nor could we take any line of action that would expose us to suspicion in the minds of other American republics on the ground that the United States, as an Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Celtic nation, was oppressing a Latin people or aggrandizing itself at their expense. 62 THE UNITED STATES The policy which most commends itself to my judgment, if a task similar to that performed seventeen years ago in Cuba ultimately be- comes necessary, is to communicate our plans and policies to the governments of the other American republics and to ask the co-opera- tion of at least some of them — for example, that of Argentina, Brazil, Chili, Uruguay, and Peru — in putting into effect whatever policies of a police character were jointly determined to be necessary in the interest of civilization and that of the Mexican people themselves. If it be objected that no one of these American republics has any direct interest in Mexico, the answer is that we have a very direct inter- est in having them have a sufficient interest in Mexico to protect us from misunderstanding and unfriendly criticism on their own part. It is earnestly to be hoped that the Mexican people will speedily find some way of restoring orderly government for themselves, but it must be confessed that every week that passes makes the prospect of this seem less likely. Of course, it is not possible for a policeman or a fireman to attempt to settle a row in the street with- out running some risk of getting hurt, but that AS A WORLD POWER 63 risk would be reduced to a minimum if the con- fidence and co-operation of a half-dozen other American republics were secured before the task was undertaken at all. Such an act would, of itself, be an illustration of what is meant by exercising world power. It would illustrate the value of bringing other free and enlightened peoples to our side to perform a public-spirited act, and it would illustrate and emphasize the moral purpose of performing that act in the interest of Mexico and the Mexican people without any thought or purpose of self-aggran- dizement. It would give a new and generous interpretation to the Monroe Doctrine. Our people have not yet appreciated how much we need, and would profit by, closer friendship and fuller understanding with the peoples of the other American republics. Every one of the efforts now being made to bring those peoples nearer to us, to understand more completely their point of view, their history, their literature, their institutions, and every effort to break down the barrier of language which separates us, deserve the heartiest sup- port. The relation we seek with them is not a relation in which we are to exercise power, but 64 THE UNITED STATES one in which we and they together are to exer- cise an influence that is higher and better than mere power, because it is the outgrowth of our common devotion to democratic institutions and our complete and sympathetic understand- ing of what the very word America typifies and signifies. There are other things which indicate a growth of such world power in the hands of the United States. Robert College at Con- stantinople on the banks of the Bosporus, and the American Protestant College at Beirut in Syria, are two of the most extraordinary exam- ples of American influence anywhere in the world. Practically every leader of the liberal movement in Bulgaria has been educated in Robert College, which is supported entirely by American money, and the most enlightened young Turks, Arabs, and Greeks are to be found among the 400 or 500 students in the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut. These institu- tions represent the New England college trans- ferred to the shores of the Mediterranean and to the banks of the Bosporus, and they are teaching, not only the usual letters, science, and philosophy, but American ideals, American AS A WORLD POWER 65 thought, American institutions to the young men who are shaping or are going to shape the civilization of the Eastern Mediterranean coun- tries. A great many of our European friends be- lieve, as I myself believe, that a concomitant and necessary element of international peace is industrial peace, and there has recently been sent to Europe all the information obtainable regarding Mr. Henry Ford's profit-sharing un- dertaking at Detroit, and also that regarding the United States Steel Corporation's capital plan for caring for and helping its workers. All this helps to build up world power for the United States. This is what is meant by the peaceful infiltration of ideas. It goes much further than the work of the diploma- tist; it works away down under the surface of life. V PATRIOTISM An Address delivered before the Newport Historical Society, Newport, R. I., August i6, 191 5 PATRIOTISM A society like this — one of many score, many hundred, in this country and in other lands — is a very hearthstone of patriotism. It is by labors and by sacrifices such as yours that careful, affectionate, and accurate record Is made of men and women, of happenings, of events, of undertakings, of movements of opinion and of action that are worth remember- ing. Your Society and other societies like- minded bring these records together, and make of them a hearthstone on which the fire of pa- triotism begins to burn; for the beginning of patriotism is love of home and all that home means, and through it comes the entering into the hopes and ideals and purposes of that larger home which constitutes our country. Perhaps you have not all reflected upon what this thing called patriotism is and how recently it has come into the history of man. There was nothing corresponding to what we mean by patriotism in the older w^orld. There was loyalty to race; there was something ap- 69 70 PATRIOTISM preaching patriotism, perhaps, in the hfe of the Greek or Roman city; there was loyalty to rul- ing monarchs or dynasties; there was pride of origin or opinion; but so long as the nations of Europe and America were in the making, so long as life was fluid, and men were moving uneasily and rapidly over the face of the earth, without fixed habitat or permanent institutions, there was nothing corresponding to what we know as patriotism. Nor is patriotism com- patible with any ambition for world-empire or dominion. So long as there was hope of bring- ing the whole world under the dominion of a single form of religion or under the control of a single governing power — so long as those dreamiS flitted before the eyes and minds of men — there was nothing corresponding to what we know as patriotism. Patriotism began to rise when the modern nations took on their form; when each group of men found itself in a separate and substan- tially fixed habitat; w^hen unity of language began to develop; w^hen literature sprang up on the wings of language; when institutions and achievements began to appear and to organize themselves; and when men began to convene PATRIOTISM 71 and to feel the need of a social and political life that had an end or a purpose of its own which they could understand and teach to their chil- dren. When there was something that could be handed down, some theory of life, some the- ory of social relationship, some theory of the status which each man bears to his fellow, then there began to emerge the materials out of which patriotism is made. But only a hundred and fifty years ago, more or less, the word had a very sinister and ugly meaning. I remember once reading in the letters of Horace Walpole the statement that the most helpful declaration that could be made upon the hustings in England, was that the speaker was not then and never had been a patriot. For in the seventeenth century and in the early part of the eighteenth, the word patriot was almost synonymous with dis- turber, with revolutionist — almost synony- mous with anarchist, as we use the term so frequentl}^, and often so incorrectly, to-day. Later, particularly in connection with the beginning of the life of this nation, the words *' patriot'' and ** patriotism" began to take on a healthier, a more sympathetic, and a finer 72 PATRIOTISM meaning, and those healthier, more sympa- thetic, and finer meanings have attached them- selves to these words, until now the idea they convey and represent is one to which we are all glad to do honor. A patriot is a man who stands to his country in the relation of a father to his child. He loves it; he cares for it; he makes sacrifices for it; he fights for it; he serves it; he tries to shape its course of thought and action, that it may most perfectly adhere to its purpose and its ideal. We do not know — and no history, no sci- ence, no philosophy is yet wise enough fully to instruct us — the significance and meaning of each of the great civilizations of the modern world; but despite the present desperate and fearful clash of arms, we may be sure that there is a place for each one of them — that each serves some purpose, makes some contribution, casts some reflection from the facet of its racial nature and national organization. Some pur- pose is fulfilled by each one of them, and each contributes its single beam, to help make the full, white fight of civifization. We may be certain that to strike out from modern fife any PATRIOTISM 73 one of the great national elements which enter into it would be to make it poorer, and would be to disarrange and to throw out of harmony the ever-moving plan of that civilization which has been built up by such hard and long work over so many centuries. Therefore we must have a care that we do not define patriotism as a cynic once defined it, as dislike of another country masked in the guise of love for our own. There is no necessary conflict in the mind of the wise, well-instructed patriot, between the cause and purpose and aim of his nation and the cause and purpose and aim of the whole great group and family of nations. A patriot is not a termagant; he is not a destroyer of the peace; he is not one who treats with contempt or dislike his fellow who speaks another tongue or who owes allegiance to another flag or who loves another literature; but he is one who understands and appreciates how these various aspects of civilized life can better serve the common purpose by better serving each its own. If a man or a woman is to rise to a true ap- preciation of patriotism and wishes to be a 74 PA TRIOTISM real patriot, then he or she must reflect upon the purpose of organized community Hfe. I think it was Bishop Berkeley — whose name is so closely associated with this colony and this settlement — who said in substance that those w^io never reflect upon the great problems of the end and aim and purpose of life might be suitable to belong to a colony of industrious animals, but never could rise to the height of being men and women. Instead of rhetoric, a patriot needs philoso- phy; instead of noisy and tumultuous expres- sion of high feehng, he needs serious purpose, insight into the significance of his own country, a knowledge of its history, of its great person- alities, of its policies, of its achievements, and above all, a knowledge of its aim. He must ask himself not only, ''From what origin and by what steps has it come?*' but more insis- tently and more emphatically, "Toward what end and toward what purpose is it moving .? What is the reason of it all ?" We Americans are fortunate above all peo- ples, in that those searching questions have been answered for us in two great classic docu- ments, written in language so simple that the PATRIOTISM 75 mass of the people can read and understand them — documents which should be familiar, word by word, sentence by sentence, para- graph by paragraph, to every reflecting and educated American. I mean, of course, George Washington's Farewell Address, and the great Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln. When George Washington was asked to per- mit his name to be used for the third time as candidate for the presidency, he declined in a noteworthy document, addressed to his fellow citizens. He not only set forth the reasons — the personal reasons — which actuated his de- clination of a third term as President, but he went further, and expounded and commended to his countrymen the principles of the country whose father he truly was. That document — one of the most precious in American history or American literature — should be a veritable guide-book for the American patriot. And then, nearly three-quarters of a century later, w^hen the epoch-making civil struggle was near- ing its end, the great heart of Abraham Lincoln poured itself out in words whose simple, com- pelling eloquence have rarely been equalled, when he for the second time ascended the steps 76 PATRIOTISM of the Capitol to take the oath of office as Presi- dent of the United States. He, too, from an- other point of view, but in no less practical ways and with no less generous purpose, pressed home upon his countrymen the prin- ciples to which their loyalty was due. The American patriot will inform himself upon those two great documents. He will like to read them, to quote them, to think upon them, to turn to them and to their principles, to seek their instruction in determining his own position in regard to the thousand and one practical questions of the moment, which are simply the old questions of human ambition, human greed, and human folly, dressing them- selves up in new forms, and joining the never- ending procession of progress toward human excellence, that goes to make up human his- tory. The Farewell Address of Washington, and the Second Inaugural of Lincoln, are for the American a corner-stone upon which to build a sure and abiding structure of true patriotism. Our country is unique, not as we so often think and say because of its size, not because of its population, not because of its wealth, not PATRIOTISM 77 because of its variety of products and climates, not because of its temperaments and racial elements — though they all enter into its great- ness, and will form subjects for the future his- torian to analyze and interpret — but it is unique in that we have managed for now more than a century and a quarter, to build into permanence principles of government and of life which had been the ideal of dreamers for more than a thousand years. Very few of those dreamers ever supposed that in the nineteenth and twen- tieth centuries there would arise on this earth a great nation, built upon those principles, dedicated to them, and successfully exemplify- ing their operation and practice over this amaz- ing extent of territory. No one would have supposed this to be possible. We need not stop to dwell upon our short- comings; we need not stop to analyze and to explain our feelings of difficulty and of doubt or to make lists of the things we should like to do, but have not done. All that is known and admitted by us, by our friends, and by our critics; but at a moment like this, when the whole world appears to be in a state of flux, when all old standards seem to be thrown to 78 PATRIOTISM the winds, It Is worth while to dwell upon the permanent and progressive forward movement in American life, and to take account and make measure of its achievements and its tri- umphs. This country is, in a peculiar sense, the keeper of the conscience of democracy. There may be nations — we know there are nations of the firs-t rank — not committed as we are to the demo- cratic principle. We need find no fault with them for preferring, temporarily at least, some other form of social and political organization; but we must bear in mind that we are the keep- ers of the democratic conscience of the world. We are the keepers of the open door of oppor- tunity in democracy; and we are the keepers of the great principle of federation as a means of securing domestic freedom and national unity, and of permitting liberty under law in ways with which we have now been familiar for nearly a century and a half. The greatest proble'm of men in all hlstoiy has been the question how to secure both gov- ernment and liberty. How to preserve order without suppression of the individual, how to promote the common good without depriving PATRIOTISM 79 the individual of initiative, how to weld men into a mass, into a new and higher order, with- out destroying personal identity — that problem in its most serious sense is ours. The true American patriot will never permit himself to lose sight of the fact that the line be- tween government and liberty is the line upon which he must keep his eye, and the line toward which he must hew, let the chips fall where they will. If all individual initiative be transferred to the realm of government, we have no oppor- tunity for that individual life which has been the glory of our modern world. If we transfer all the fundamental elements of a well-ordered government over to the realm of liberty, we have national dissolution and political death. The American patriot, keeping his heart open and his mind free from prejudice, seeking friendships everywhere in this world and en- mities nowhere, keeping his eye fixed on this line between government and liberty, will ask himself how, as one of the keepers of the demo- cratic conscience, can he act in a given crisis, in the presence of a given problem, before a given issue — how can he act, my friends, so as 8o PA TRIOTISM to protect the aim and the ideals of the Ameri- can RepubHc ? He is a poor American who is without a pas- sionate love of home; who does not feel a pecu- liar drawing at the heart and a choking of the voice when his mind goes back in after-years to the home where his first associations were made, where his father and mother lived, where his childhood friends and associates, his school- teachers and schoolmates dwelt, where he got his first outlook on Hfe and began to stretch his wings and try to fly. No temporary abid- ing-place, no working-place or office or house can ever be substituted for the home in the heart of the true patriot. Just so the patriot's feeling for his fafherland or motherland is the feeling he has for the nation to which he be- longs, the ideal to which he owes allegiance, the language he speaks, the literature he loves, and the law that determines the patriot's rela- tion to all of these — his intelligence, reflections, and emotions — the relation of the individual to his larger home. It is out of the home that the nation is built. It is out of the home's purposes and ideals that the nation gains aim and substance, and it is PATRIOTISM 8 1 in the home that the controlHng moral and in- tellectual principles that shape government and organization take form and gain their truest significance. There is no subject fuller of meaning than this age-old subject of a man's relation to his fathers. Now that we have learned in these modern days to cast it into the form of this patriotism which I am trying briefly to describe, now that we have learned to see it in the moral and intellectual and relig- ious relation, we can look forward to the day when we shall learn to see in it no place for enmity, national or international. We may justly hope to look out upon that future day, when the patriots of every nation will find their greatest satisfaction in co-operating and com- bining toward the perfection of the great hu- manitarian ideal throughout the world. We dare not close our eyes in pessimism be- cause to-day we hear the thunder of guns and the cries of the wounded and the dying. Ter- rible as that is, terrible as the reason for it is, I beg you to believe that it is only an episode — a dismal, tragic episode, but an episode — in the forward march of an idea and a purpose which no armaments can permanently check. This 82 PA TRIOTISM is not a purposeless world. This is not a ball, plunging through space, with no orbit, subject to no law of control, existing as part of no sys- tem, serving no purpose. The physicist tells us that if we disturb in the very slightest degree any physical element in the universe, we affect its remotest circumference. What of the hu- man elements .? What of the importance and the balance which they have, the ideas, the feelings, and the acts of will which are the em- bodiments of ideas, that are carried forward into the making of institutions } Those are the great things in history. We see them spring into life and enter one nation after another. There is a place for the Oriental; there is a place for the Occidental; there is a place for the European; there is a place for the American; just as there is a place in the great stout strand that binds the ship to the boat that tows it, for every one of the little threads that wound together make it what it is. Take that great strand apart and a child could snap each thread. Wind them tight together so that every one supports the other, and it would take a superman to tear that rope apart. This problem of institution building — whether Pyl TRIOTISM ^i, by the people of one nation or by the peoples of all nations of the world together — is the one that will be supremely important when the curtain falls upon the tragedy that now moves its slow course to the pain and distress and grief of every patriot in every land. VI THE CHANGED OUTLOOK An Address delivered at the One Hundred and Forty- Seventh Annual Banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, November i8, 191 5 THE CHANGED OUTLOOK Four years ago I had the privilege of speak- ing in this presence. At that time I chose as my subject, *' Business and PoHtics." We were then approaching the end of a presidential term and facing a national election; we were concerned, gravely concerned, with domestic problems, particularly with those manifold and important questions which arise out of the relations between government and business. To-night I have chosen as the topic on which to speak to you, quite informally and briefly, *'The Changed Outlook"; for in the interval of those four years there has been a revolution in our thinking and a complete change in the prospect that opens out before us. Once again we are approaching the end of a presidential term and once again we are facing a national election, but the outlook to-day is strangely and solemnly different from what it was four years ago. It is not easy for one who lives in the midst of onrushing events to judge calmly and accu- 87 88 THE CHANGED OUTLOOK rately either of their significance or of their direction. The man who is borne helplessly down-stream by a roaring torrent has Httle opportunity to observe the foliage that may adorn the banks, or to determine with certainty whether he is to be dashed to pieces by the cataract of Niagara or borne harmlessly into the peaceful waters of a mountain lake. So it is with ourselves. The wild onrush of events in a world at war; the sudden and startling changes in finance, in commerce, in industry; the quick movement of armies and of navies by which some of the hopes and ambitions of two generations are gratified; the dazed per- plexity of the world's most trusted leaders — all these are characteristic of the days through which we are living. When the midsummer sun set on the eve- ning of Friday, July 31, 1914, it set upon a world upon which it was never to rise again. Never again was that sun to rise upon the same world. As if by magic, transportation and communication stopped; the wells of credit were dried up; commerce and industry were brought to a standstill; men leaped to arms and to the assembling of the devilishly in- THE CHANGED OUTLOOK 89 genious instruments of destruction; science which had been caring for the health, the com- fort, and the prosperity of man was instantly bent with amazing ingenuity and skill to the wholesale slaughter of human beings and to the destruction and waste of property on a scale unprecedented in all recorded history. This is neither the time nor the place to inquire why these strange and startling things took place. It is sufficient to observe that they did take place and that the whole world order was changed in a night. The peoples who are engaged in this titanic struggle are not untamed barbarians or w^ild Indians of the virgin forest. They are the /^est-trained and most highly educated peoples in the world. They have had every advantage that schools and universities can offer, and they have been associated for generations with literature and science and art and everything that is fine and splendid in what we call civili- zation. What we now know, even those of us who were most loath to believe it, is that under this thin veneer of civilization the elementary human passions of jealousy, envy, hatred, and malice were so lightly confined that at the go THE CHANGED OUTLOOK touch of a magic spring they burst forth to overwhelm everything that seems to make Hfe worth Hving. Moreover, it is now so plain that even the dullest can see that the nations of Europe had been psychologically, politically, and even strategetically, at war for many years. In the guise of an armed peace they were really in conflict, and jealousy, suspicion, and in- trigue were abroad on every hand. Plans of instant mobilization and of quick attack were all in readiness, and the more ardent spirits were tugging hard at the bonds of convention- ality that restrained them from overt acts. Europe had been at war for years. What hap- pened on August I, 1914, was that the cur- tain was Ufted so that all men might see; and the physical conflict of armies and navies fol- lowed as a final and dramatic incident in a contest which was on that day made evident, but which was not on that day begun. If I read history aright, only once before since the beginning of man's records has any similar catastrophe occurred in the Western world. With the downfall of the Roman Empire and the inrush of the barbarian hordes from the forests and plains of the North there was a THE CHANGED OUTLOOK 91 wiping out of Greek and Roman civilization and of their evidences that was as complete as it was terrible. From that day to this there has been no similar cataclysm in Europe. There have been wars, many and severe. There have been revolutions devastating and terrible. There has been the spectacle of the great Napoleon defying the whole of Europe, but finally succumbing to the power of his ad- versaries. But not since the break-up of Roman civilization has the world seen anything that can compare with what is now going on before our eyes. Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia are being tramped by contending armies or are held in the grip of the laws of war. It is Idle to say, quite idle to say, that the American people are on the other side of the world and that these clashings and crashings are no concern of theirs. Ask the cotton grower in the South, or the copper miner in the far West, or the lumberman on Puget Sound, or the shipper in New York, in Baltimore, or New Orleans, or the banker in Wall Street, in State Street, or In La Salle Street, whether he knows that there is a war in Europe, and get 92 THE CHANGED OUTLOOK his answer. Ask the student of international law, or the expounder of political ethics and the sanctity of treaties, or the devoted believer in civil liberty, whether the United States has any interest in this conflict, and get his answer ! It is no longer possible for the United States, ostrich-like, to plunge its head into the sands of a supposed isolation and to assume that its policies, its influences, and its ideals are not part of the wider world. The outlook has wholly changed. The future, and in particu- lar the immediate future, is charged with seri- ous international interest and with heavy in- ternational responsibility. Of this interest we cannot divest ourselves, and of this responsi- bility we dare not, without proving false to our trust as keepers of the faith in civil liberty as the highest poHtical aim and object of mankind. There are reasons, good and sufficient and easily understood by the reader of history, why America's interest in international conditions is now much greater and much more important than ever before. In the history of peoples, it is a well-known fact that internal national de- velopment must precede international influence THE CHANGED OUTLOOK 93 and direction. Not until a nation has unified itself, perfected reasonably well its instruments of government and become conscious of an ideal and of a mission which that ideal serves, can it be ready to take its place at the council table of nations and to exercise a shaping in- fluence in the formulation and carrying out of world policies. That time has now come in the history of the United States. We have ex- panded across the continent, and have settled and developed the waste places. We have es- tablished, after a long debate, and by an epoch-making military struggle, the unity of the nation and the supremacy of the national ideal. We have developed great systems of transportation and manifold industries, and we have accumulated vast national wealth. We have made creditable contributions to science, to literature, and to the arts. The question now to press upon ourselves is, Are we ready and equipped to bear the responsibilities that the close of this war will place upon the Ameri- can people .? Are we prepared ? In one of the noblest orations of antiquity Pericles used these words in speaking to his fellow citizens of the Athenians who had died 94 THE CHANGED OUTLOOK in the war with Sparta: "The whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men; and their glory is not graven only on stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's Hves. For you it now remains to rival what they have done, and, knowing the secret of happiness to be freedom and the secret of free- dom to be a brave heart, squarely to face the war and all its perils/' Surely these sonorous words sounding across the centuries seem al- most to have been meant for our ears to hear. We are to weave our lives, our aspirations, and our ideals into the stuff of other men's lives; we are to remember that the secret of happi- ness is freedom and that the secret of freedom is a brave heart, and then we are squarely to face this war and all that it brings in its train. There is much earnest speech among us in regard to national preparedness, and it is urged by many and influential voices that we must beware lest the calamity that fell so suddenly upon Europe should be forced against our wish or will upon us. Surely we must reckon with facts as they are, and not as we would wish them to be. We may turn our faces to the TUE CHANGED OUTLOOK 95 stars, but we must have a care to keep our feet on the firm ground. Nevertheless, there is a more serious and a more important aspect of national preparedness that has not yet been so much dwelt upon. Our chiefest task is to prepare our hearts and our minds to do our full duty as Americans to bind up the wounds of a stricken world and to lead the way to that new construction of the overturned political fabric which, if it is to endure, can rest upon no other principles than those of democracy, of freedom, of civil liberty, of international re- sponsibility and honor, to which we profess such earnest allegiance and through faith in which our nation has grown great. It is true of nations, as of men, that we are our brothers' keepers. Their interests are in- creasingly our interests, and our interests are increasingly theirs. We have no wish or will to interfere with problems that belong to Europe alone; but surely non-interference does not mean absence of interest in them or an absence of influence upon them or over them. In the Monroe Doctrine, in the policy of the Open Door, and in the wide-spread objection to Oriental immigration, we have given concrete 96 THE CHANGED OUTLOOK evidences of a developed and developing inter- national view-point and international policy. We must, by taking counsel together, by study and by reflection, prepare ourselves to say to a listening world what our international policy is and what it is to be; what influence we aim to exert and why, and what ideals we propose to hold aloft in the hope that they may guide and help other peoples. Before we can hope to influence others we must be sure of ourselves. We must without delay undertake the better conservation and organization of our own national resources of every kind. We must make it plain that, by voluntary eff*ort and without sacrificing our traditional American principles to the demands of a bureaucratic organization, we too can eff'ec- tively mobilize the industrial resources of a great nation. It is for American democracy to prove that It can secure the highest type of national preparedness and the highest type of national eff'ectiveness without ceasing to be either American or democratic. In the recently established Trade Commission and in the Tariff" Commission, whose quick establishment is so strongly supported, we shall have governmental THE CHANGED OUTLOOK 97 instrumentalities which might readily be made the centre for co-operative industrial effort and for the more complete equipment of this nation in respect to all the great basic industries. The problem of labor must be faced with courage, with frankness, and with sympathy; for industrial peace and satisfaction is as neces- sary a prerequisite of international peace and contentment as it is of national security and happiness. Moreover, it behooves us to cultivate a be- coming national modesty. It was Mr. Bryce who pointed out to us in the American Com- monwealth that the enormous force of public opinion is a danger, a danger to the people themselves as well as to their leaders, because it fills them with an undue confidence in their own wisdom, their own virtue, and their own freedom. In order to guard ourselves against the vice of self-complacency we must constantly re-examine and restate our moral and our political ideals, and we must not fail to give due weight to the moral and poHtical ideals of other people. The world mission that we might have waited for through another centuiy has come to us 98 THE CHANGED OUTLOOK to-day from the hand of fate. We can remain true to the injunction of Washington that we steer clear of permanent aUiances with any portion of the foreign world, and yet do our full international duty; for what we should seek is not an alliance, entangling or otherwise, with any portion of the foreign world, but rather relations with the whole of that world and with every part of it, in order that in a spirit of friendship and good temper and con- structive statesmanship we may do our full share in raising that world to a higher plane. No one dares predict just what the end of this world war will be or when that end will come. It is possible, of course, that this cataclysm marks the end of centuries of progress, and it is possible that man in 1914 crossed over the watershed of civilization and is now to descend on the other side toward steadily growing bar- barism and the steadily extending rule of force. That I say is possible; but I for one am an un- conquerable optimist. I prefer to read history differently and to see in this appalling catastro- phe what the Greek called a katharsis, or cleans- ing of the spirit. I prefer to think of it as his- tory's way of teaching beyond peradventure or THE CHANGED OUTLOOK 99 dispute the fallacy and the folly of the old ways and the old policies. Surely that strug- gle for the balance of power which the historian Stubbs described as the principle which gives unity to the plot of modern history— surely that struggle has proved its futiUty. Surely we can see the vanity of Ententes and Alliances and of a division of the world into heavily armed camps, each waiting for an opportunity or for an excuse to pounce upon the other. A democratic federated people can teach the world democracy and the use of the federative principle. A people devoted to civil liberty and to international honor, no less lightly held than the honor of an individual— that people can teach the world the foundations upon which to rebuild the shattered fabric of inter- national law and of broken treaties. The outlook before the people of the United States has changed. When Joseph Chamber- lain returned from South Africa his message to the people of Great Britain was: "You must learn to think imperially." The message which any American alive to the world's situation to- day must bring to his fellow citizens is, you must learn to think internationally ! Domestic lOO TEE CHANGED OUTLOOK policies and problems are perhaps no less im- portant than they have been in the past, but by their side and for the immediate future sur- passing them in interest and in importance are the international problems and the international policies of the people of the United States. For those problems and for those policies we must prepare — prepare thoughtfully, seriously, speed- ily; for when the war shall be ended, we may truly say, as Gambetta said to the French people forty-five years ago: "Now that the danger is past, the difficulties begin." VII HIGHER PREPAREDNESS An Address delivered before the Union League of Philadelphia, November 27, 1915 HIGHER PREPAREDNESS It was my lot to be born after the Civil War had begun and for me the name, the face, and the repute of Abraham Lincoln belong not to memory but to imagination. Yet I was brought up under the very shadow of his name, of his fame, and of his work. The events and cir- cumstances of his Hfe were among the earliest lessons that it was my fortune to learn. It seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, that Abraham Lincoln left to every American born after him a legacy in the form of a direct injunction to love his country, to study its needs, to make himself familiar with its poli- cies and its problems, and to labor with those Hke-minded with himself for the advancement of all of these. The era of Lincoln, of the Civil War, and of nation-building — that great classic era in the history of the western world and of all mankind — is closed. The problems that confronted the founders and the builders of our nation are still our problems, but they are presented to us in 103 I04 HIGHER PREPAREDNESS a different form. We are no longer a young people, but a comparatively old and well- established one. We are, thank God, a united people. We have solved, let us hope forever and finally, the problem of building a single great nation out of a group of federated States v^ith diverse populations, with conflicting eco- nomic needs and desires, and we have opened our arms to the whole wide world that it may enter in and share with us and with our children the shelter and the protection of this noble structure. When so much has been done we find ourselves confronted with the problems of an older people and of a better-established civ- ilization. It is no longer necessary for us to find men of energy and ambition to explore a continent, to bridge rivers, to fell forests, or to build railways across the desert; those are the problems of a new people, and we solved those problems in the generation that followed 1850 and i860. Then came the problems incident to a more concentrated political and economic life — the problems of capital and labor, the problems of the growth of great corporate wealth, of the organization of business and of the development of public utilities, as well as HIGHER PREPAREDNESS 105 the relation of all these to government, both State and national. During all this second period, which was shorter than the first, very intense and tremendously important, abound- ing in problems that touched the interests and convictions of every citizen, we were still a sel^ centred people. We had foreign relations, but they were of minor importance. They occupied the attention of the President, of the Depart- ment of State, and of the Senate, but beyond that they hardly existed for the great mass of our American population. But now, in a twinkling of an eye, the outlook that confronts America has changed and we are about to enter, perhaps it would be correct to say we have already entered, upon a new and third period of our political development and of our intellectual and moral preoccupation. We are now confronted with the fact, borne in upon us in a thousand ways, that steam, electricity, the use of the air, the development of modern industry and finance, have conspired to destroy distance and to eliminate time, and that these have bound the whole world together in a new and hitherto unsuspected sort of interdepen- dence. Out of that interdependence of the io6 HIGHER PREPAREDNESS nations an interdependence of our nation with other nations of the world, comes the new series of problems for the consideration and the solution of which this nation must insis- tently and thoughtfully prepare. The old world order changed when this war- storm broke. The old international order passed away as suddenly, as unexpectedly, and as completely as if it had been wiped out by a gigantic flood, by a great tempest, or by a volcanic eruption. The old world order died with the setting of that day's sun and a new world order is being born while I speak, with birth-pangs so terrible that it seems almost in- credible that life could come out of such fear- ful suffering and such overwhelming sorrow. What has America to do with it all .? All these terrible clashings and crashings are on the other side of the world, from which we are separated by a great ocean. How do these matters affect us, secure in our protection across three thousand miles of sea, living under other political institutions and under the domi- nance of other political ideas and with different economic and social interests ? To make an- swer to these questions our hearts guide our HIGHER PREPAREDNESS 107 heads. We first feel, and then we see, the community of our interest with those peoples in Europe who are struggling against aggression for the maintenance of their own national life, their own undisturbed territory, and their own free institutions. The world cannot be cut in two any longer by an ocean or a mountain range. The several peoples of the earth are fellows and comrades and they cannot, if they would, isolate themselves completely from each other. In this new outlook that confronts us we are not called upon, as I see it, to depart in princi- ple or in practice from sound American policy, but we are called upon to consider whether new occasions do not teach new duties and whether new problems do not bring new opportunities and new obligations. I would not have the people of these United States forget the injunc- tion of Washington. I would not have them depart from the path of established poHcy that has been trodden so long and on the whole so wisely. I would not have them make an alli- ance, entangling or otherwise, with any single nation or any group of nations on the globe. But I would have them enter into such rela- io8 HIGHER PREPAREDNESS tions of intimacy and influence with every na- tion that the spirit and convictions which ani- mate and permeate the American people might be made a contribution to the world's civiliza- tion when this war ends. I would endeavor to show to Europe how here across the sea we have solved and are solving some problems that are in kind their problems..^ I would try to show to Europe that whatever may be the diffi- culties and the conflicts which grow out of dif- ferences of race and of creed and of language, those difficulties are only increased by political repression, while they are decreased by an ex- tension of civil and political liberty. I would try to show that on the whole, and despite the dangers and difficulties and the many and obvious embarrassments which accompany it, a national policy of freedom, of hospitality, and of equal opportunity solves more problems than it leaves unsolved, and that on the whole it solves more political problems than any other alternative policy that has yet been presented for the government of men. I would not inter- fere for a moment with the internal concerns of any European nation or with their just ambi- tions, their alliances, and their rivalries, but at HIGHER PREPAREDNESS 109 a time like this I would not throw away the lesson of a hundred and twenty-five years of Jife and government under the Constitution of the United States. I would make a world fig- ure of Washington. I would make world fig- ures of Hamilton and Jefferson, of Marshall and Webster. I would make a world figure of Abraham Lincoln. I would make their names, their faces, their public acts, and the great ten- dencies and institutions that they organized and represented the property of the whole civilized world for the benefit of all mankind. For this or for any such poHcy of international influence this nation must prepare. We have been speaking much of late of pre- paredness, and properly so; but there is an aspect of this important question that has hardly been touched upon, and as to which the public mind is as yet almost completely uninformed. That question is this: What is to be the object of your preparedness ? What are to be the policies that you are going to teach, to defend, and to extend over the earth .? What are to be the ideals that you are going to hold up before yourselves and then before the other nations of the earth ? Armies and no HIGHER PREPAREDNESS navies are not ends; they are means. But means to what end ? For what are we going to prepare ? Are we going to prepare to make this nation first a model nation at home and then a model nation abroad ? If we are going to do this, then wx have a policy. If we are not going to do this, then we have no policy but only a proposal for expenditure. Our American ideals are not vague or un- certain. They have been stated for us In lan- guage that the whole w^orld can read, in words that will remain forever familiar where the history of freedom is read and studied. They have been written for us particularly in four great historic documents. You will find them in the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. You will find them in the pre- amble to the Constitution of the United States. You will find them in Washington's farewell address to the American people. You will find them put with all the terseness of classic litera- ture in the immortal address of Abraham Lin- coln on the battle-field of Gettysburg. Those great documents have stated for us the aims, the ideals, and the purposes of this government, as well as the aims, the ideals, and the purposes HIGHER PREPAREDNESS iii I of the people in founding and in maintaining ! this government. It is for a fuller comprehen- \ sion of those aims, those ideals, and those pur- : poses, for a more complete carrying out of ' them at home, and for a more effective teach- I ing of them abroad that we must prepare. We must prepare under the leadership of those who by experience, by training, by discipline, and by conviction are able to help us set our feet in ; these new paths. For it is as true to-day as it j was when the prophet first said it, that where there is no vision the people perish. . The time has come when the American people ]/ m.ust learn to think internationally. We must learn to think in terms of our relations with the , whole world, and we must learn to think of other peoples than ourselves with such sym- i pathy, with such kindliness, and with such un- derstanding as will enable us to appreciate the ; point of view, the opinions, and the institutions ! of those whose experiences have been different ' from our own. I like to think that the hand ' of fate has brought to us out of this terrible \ war a new and unexpected call to achievement; j first at home in putting our own house in order, , and next abroad in teaching the peoples of the , 112 HIGHER PREPAREDNESS world a lesson that the founders and the fathers have taught us. In all this, however, we must walk circumspectly and without either pride or arrogance. We ourselves have still too much to learn to justify us in attempting the task of imposing, single-handed, new ideals upon the world. We can, however, and we should participate, with the open-minded and broad-minded of every land in the perpetual and persistent re-examination of our own prin- ciples, our own aims, our own purposes, and by conferring and consulting together as to how best we can advance this nation and every nation in paths of justice and of liberty. We have great economic problems that are in part internal and that are in part interna- tional. There are signs that this new inter- national era of which I speak is going to help us to solve some of our internal economic prob- lems. We have got to face under these new condi- tions the world-old problem of how to provide justly for equal opportunity, and how to pro- vide an economic basis for individual existence in order that men may be able to live at all. It is hardly worth while to preach ideals of HIGHER PREPAREDNESS 113 government to a starving man. We must pro- vide, first, wisely, justly, and securely for our internal economic organization, in order that we may be able to do these new international deeds of which I speak. In other words, while our whole problem, national and international, is bound up together, it becomes immensely larger and immensely more important than it has ever been before, because we have now discovered these innumerable points of con- tact with other nations and we see the meanmg and significance on one side of the world of some public act or economic policy that has its origin on the other. This is all a part of the task that I call learning to think internation- ally. It will affect our domestic problems and our domestic poKcies, as well as our foreign problems and our foreign policies. Unless I mistake the signs of the times, this nation is crying out for leadership. It is cry- ing out for a voice that will give expression to its political conviction and to its moral purpose in tones that every American will understand. Unless I mistake the signs of the times, the American people would Hke a leadership whose ear is not continually fastened to the ground. 114 HIGHER PREPAREDNESS We wish, we need, we long for a determined, clear, and sympathetic voice that will do for our day and generation what Abraham Lincoln did for his. A voice that will look down into the hearts of the plain people, that will know the conditions that influence their lives, that will understand the motives that guide their action, that will sympathize with their ambi- tions, with their difficulties, and with their fail- ures, and that will call them up to the high places of the earth as did those voices that called our fathers up to their great achievement. Give us leadership. Give us a mind to seek, a heart to feel, and a voice to proclaim what the American people of this day and this gen- eration aspire to do at home and abroad. VIII THE BUILDING OF THE NATION An Address delivered at the Annual Luncheon of the Associated Press at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York, April 25, 1916 THE BUILDING OF THE NATION If any significance be attached to what I shall briefly say in your presence, it can only be because it represents the attempt of one American who feels keenly the responsibility of his country and of its entire citizenship at this moment when the world stands at a cross- roads in its path of progress. If we stand at that crossroads irresolute, paralyzed of word and will, history will have one story to tell. If we turn to the right and take the path that leads upward to new achievement and to last- ing honor, it will have a very different story to tell. If we should turn to the left and follow the winding and rocky road that leads down to a darkening gloom — we know not where — history will have yet another record to make of the American people and of their capacity to represent civilization. It is just about twenty years ago since George Meredith, writing to the London Daily News, said that since the benignant outcome of the greatest of civil wars he had come to 117 Ii8 THE BUILDING OF THE NATION look upon the American people as the leaders in civilization. That is a proud and ennobling judgment, and we may well search our minds and our hearts to ascertain whether it be true, and whether we are competent for the high honor that so distinguished an observer of his kind proffered to us as his personal judgment. The question which I ask in your presence this afternoon is this: Have we an American nation } If so, is that nation conscious of a unity of purpose and of ideals ? If so, what is to be the policy of that nation in the immediate future } Familiar as nations seem to us, they have not alwaj^s existed in their present form. The new consciousness of unity that makes a nation is in part the outgrowth of unity of race origin, in part the outgrowth of unity of language, in part the outgrowth of unity of institutional life, in part the outgrowth of unity of military and religious tradition. It seized hold of the minds of men in most practical fashion. The result is that from the time of the death of Charlemagne to the time of the present Ger- man Emperor the history of the world is the history of nation-building and of the by-prod- THE BUILDING OF THE NATION 119 ucts of nation-building. Nation-building has proceeded usually by seeking out natural bound- aries in order to gain the protection of lofty mountains, or of broad rivers, or of the sea it- self. One war after another is to be explained in terms of a nation's definite purpose to pos- sess itself of a geographic unity as its home. There has been by no means equal care taken by the nations to establish and to protect an ethnic unity. A strong people has usually felt confident that it could hold an alien element in subjection and yet preserve national integrity and unity of spirit. So one after another of the greater nations of the world has, in seeking for geographic unity, insisted on incorporating in its own body politic alien and often discor- dant elements and holding them in stern sub- jection. The examples are too famiHar to be recited here. This process of nation-building has gone on until the nation has come to be conceived as an end in itself, as superior to law, to the con- ventions of morality, and to the precepts of religion. A form of patriotism has been devel- oped all over the world which finds in the na- tion itself the highest human end. The logical I20 THE BUILDING OF THE NATION result, and indeed the almost necessary result, of this type of thinking is the war which is now creeping over the world's civilization and destroying it with the sure pitilessness of an Alpine glacier. This war is the nemesis of nation-building conceived as an end in itself. Unless a nation, like an individual, have some purpose, some ideal, some motive which lies outside of and beyond self-interest and self-aggrandizement, war must continue on the face of this earth until the day when the last and strongest man, superb in his mighty loneliness, shall look out from a rock in the Caribbean upon a world that has been depopulated in its pursuit of a false ideal, and be left to die alone with none to mourn or to bury him. In the history of nations the story of our America has a place that is all its own. The American nation came into being in response to a clear and definite purpose. A theory of human Hfe and of human government was con- ceived and put into execution on a remote and inaccessible part of the earth's surface. The moving cause of the American nation was the aspiration for civil and political liberty and for THE BUILDING OF THE NATION 121 individual freedom which was already stirring in the minds of western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This aspiration gained in force as the art of printing multiplied books, and as the periodical press came into existence. The high-minded, the courageous, the venturesome were drawn across the wide ocean toward the west, carrying with them for the most part the liberal ideas and the advanced thought that were steadily increasing their hold upon the people of western Europe. Great Britain, Holland, France, were responding in steadily increasing measure to the same ideals that led the Puritan to Massachusetts Bay and the Cavalier to Virginia. On this Atlantic shore distances were great and communication difficult. In addition there were social, economic, and religious differences that kept the struggling colonists apart. The result was that there grew up here not a na- tion, but the material out of which a nation could be made. There is a sense, a deep and striking sense, in which the same remains abso- lutely true to-day. There is not yet a nation, but the rich and fine materials out of which a true nation can be made by the architect with 122 THE BUILDING OF THE NATION vision to plan and by the builder with skill adequate to execute. When a common oppression forced the sep- arate colonists together they still sadly lacked that devotion to a unity higher than any of its component parts which would have saved so much loss and so much suffering during the days of revolution and of the first steps toward a National Government. An enormous step forward was taken when the National Govern- ment was built. In the adoption of the Con- stitution of the United States, the corner-stone was laid for one of the most splendid structures in all the history of nations. Then quickly fol- lowed sharp political divergence. There were those who would lay stress upon the new na- tional unity; there were still more who thought it important to emphasize the separate ele- ments out of which that unity had been com- posed. The judicial logic of Marshall and the convincing eloquence of Webster were the chief unifying and nation-building forces in the gen- eration that followed. Meanwhile sharp dif- ferences of economic interest were manifesting themselves, and the fatal question of slavery pressed forward both as an economic and as a THE BUILDING OF THE NATION 123 political issue. The new nation, which had al- ready made such progress upon the foundations laid by the fathers, fell apart, and only after one of the most terrible and destructive of civil wars were the ruins of the disaster cleared away and the ground prepared for the next step in construction. Here again mistakes were made so numerous and so severe that the unifying and nation-building process was checked and held back for many years. Then two new sets of separating and disin- tegrating forces began to make themselves strongly felt. First, the economic differences which must of necessity manifest themselves over so large and so diverse a territory now re- vealed themselves with new force — in part as a result of the industrial revolution and in part as a result of purely American conditions — as involving a class conflict between capital and labor. Soon there were signs that citizenship, with its compelling allegiance to the common weal, was to be subordinated in discouraging fashion, not once but often, to the immediate interests and policies of an economic class. Second, the immigration from other coun- tries, which had been for a long time substan- 124 THE BUILDING OF THE NATION tially homogeneous became increasingly and rapidly heterogeneous. New nationalities, new languages, new racial affinities were drawn upon for the recruitment of the population of the United States. The hopes and the ambitions which one hundred and two hundred years before had been the peculiar property of the people of Western Europe had now spread far away to the East and to the South. With this heterogeneous immigration there came, in no inconsiderable measure, the echo of the Old World animosities and feuds and hates. These did not manifest themselves in any direct sense as anti-American, but they did manifest them- selves with sufficient strength to deprive Amer- ica of a unity of attitude, of feeling, and of policy in dealing with the international rela- tions which every day grow in importance and in significance. So it is that at this moment, with a world war raging about us, with years full of fate stretched out for us to walk in, we are not sure of our national unity of thought and feeling and purpose because of the presence of disin- tegrating elements and forces which weaken our sense of unity at home and which deprive THE BUILDING OF THE NATION 125 us of the influence abroad which attaches to unity at home. The grave problem before the American people to-day is that of completing the process of nation-building. It is the prob- lem of setting our house in order. It is the problem of integrating America. It is the problem of subordinating every personal ambi- tion, every class interest and policy, every race attachment, to the one dominant idea of an America free, just, powerful, forward-facing, that shall stand out in the history of nations as the name of a people who conceive their mission and their true greatness to lie in service to mankind. We are the inheritors of a great tradition. What poets and philosophers have dreamed, that we are trying day by day to do. Our stumblings, our blunders, our shortcom- ings are many; but if we keep our hearts clean and our heads clear he who a thousand years from now writes the history of liberty and jus- tice and happiness among men will be able to tell to those far-off generations a proud story of the rise and influence of the American nation. We find here everything which is needed for a great nation. The task before us to-day is to make it. The task before the American 126 TEE BUILDING OF THE NATION people is nothing more or less than a speedy continuation, and, if it be practicable, the completion of the process of nation-building. It is the problem of the integration of America about those great fundamental principles and purposes which the very name America itself brings to our minds and which this flag stirs to expression on every lip. We know in our heart what America means. The problem is to teach it to our fellows; to share w^th them an understanding and an appreciation of it; to unite with them in an expression of it. We wish to build a nation fit to serve; a nation that does not find its end in its own aggrandizement, however great that be; a nation that cannot find its purpose com- plete in amassing all the wealth of Golconda, but that can only achieve its aim by carrying a message to mankind of what has been found possible on this continent. Saxon and Celt, Teuton and Slav, Latin and Hun, all are here not as aliens but as citizens; not as immigrants but as members of a body politic w^hich is new in conception in human history, as it is new in its own thought of its high purpose. Can America integrate itself at this crisis; can it TUE BUILDING OF THE NATION 127 show that here is a nation which, out of vari- ous and varied ethnic elements, can be brought into a genuine unity by devotion to high prin- ciple and by moral purpose before the face of all mankind ? Can we make an America that shall go down the corridors of time with a proud place on the pages of history ? We must remember that the greatest em- pires have fallen as well as risen. We must remember that the most powerful dynasties have passed away as well as come into exist- ence. There is no reason to suppose that our America is going to escape the everlasting law of change. We know its history and its origin. We have seen its rise. We know its present state. Who can predict how many hundreds or thousands of years it will take before the forests will be felled and the streams will be dried, and this great fertile continent of ours, like the plains of ancient Iran, where civiliza- tion began, will become a desert, fit only for the exploring parties of the archaeologist ^ When that time comes, what do we want to have written on the pages of history of those who lived for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years on this continent ? What do we want 128 THE BUILDING OF THE NATION to have said about the way in which America met the greatest crisis of the world's so-called modern history in 1916 ? Do we wish a nation weak, broken to pieces, Irresolute, filled with conflicting and discordant voices, or do we wish a nation unified, strong, sympathetic, and ready to respond to the cause of a common purpose to serve all humanity, even though the rest of humanity be at war with itself? The year 1916 is but one member of an infi- nite series. Countless eons have gone before it and countless eons will come after it. The physical forces of nature will go their way through indefinite time, performing their al- lotted functions, obeying their peculiar laws, and undergoing those manifold changes and transmutations which make up the heavens and the earth. Not so with the reputation and the influence of a nation. Opportunity will not knock forever at any door. It is knocking now at the door of the American people. If they are able to rise to an appreciation of their own part in the world, of their own controlling principles and policies; if they are able to put aside every self-seeking, every distracting, every brutal appeal, then no one can tell what light THE BUILDING OF THE NATION 129 may illumine the page on which the history of our nation will yet be written. It is nearly sixty years since Abraham Lin- coln in his debates with Senator Douglas made much use of the Scriptural saying that '*a house divided against itself cannot stand"; and he added, "I do not expect the house will fall, but I do expect the house will cease to be divided." So I say to-day to this influential company of Americans, we do expect, every one of us, that our house will cease to be divided. We do expect that our America will come to full consciousness of its purpose; that the serene courage of Washington, the con- structive genius of Hamilton, the keen human insight and sympathy of Jefferson, the patient wisdom of Lincoln, will not have been in vain in teaching us what our country is and may become. Shall we catch sight of that some- thing higher than selfishness, higher than ma- terial gain, higher than the triumph of brute force, which alone can lead a nation up to those high places that become sacred in his- tory, and from which influence descends in a mighty torrent, to refresh, to vivify, and to inspire all mankind .^ I30 THE BUILDING OF THE NATION It is as true to-day as it was in ancient times that where there is no vision the people perish. We can make an America with a vision. We cannot make it without. IX NATIONALITY AND BEYOND An Address delivered before the Commercial Club, San Francisco, Cal., August 8, 1916 NATIONALITY AND BEYOND It is no small satisfaction to be able to stand for a few moments this afternoon in the pres- ence of this great company of busy men, in order to discuss with them, however im- perfectly, a matter which ought to be upper- most in the minds of every one of us. Some weeks ago I was surprised and shocked to read in the public press the statement, attributed to a person of high importance, that with the causes and the outcome of the Euro- pean War we Americans were not concerned. I am bound to assume that the w^ords must have been used in some strange and unusual manner, for I find myself unable to beheve that any intelligent American, in high station or in low, could hold the view which these words, interpreted literally, would appear to express. I should as soon expect one to say that we Americans were not interested in the revival of learning, or in the causes or outcome of the French Revolution, or in the invention of print- ing, or in the harnessing of science to industry, 133 134 NATIONALITY AND BEYOND or in any one of the great, significant events in the history of free men. For unless I am wholly mistaken in the significance of these years through which we are passing, we are living in one of the great epoch-marking crises of the history of the world. We are standing at one of the watersheds from the heights of which streams of tendency and of influence will flow for generations, perhaps for centuries to come, now this way and now that. What we are witnessing is not an ordinary international war. We are not spectators of a contest between Guatemala and Honduras over a boundary; we are standing before a struggle so stupendous, involving such incalculable sums of human treasure that all the great contests with which history is strewn fade into insignifi- cance before it. This contest is not between savage and barbarous and untutored and back- ward peoples. It is not a strong barbarian who is emerging from the jungle to extend his reach over the less powerful. This war is a clash between ideals. It is a controversy over ideals and national purposes, and it takes rank with the most magnificent events in all history; and I use the word magnificent in its literal sense NATIONALITY AND BEYOND 135 of great-making, a great making-over of issues and tendencies. What we are witnessing is the end of the old notions of Nationality. We are standing at the bloody grave of an ideal that is a thousand j^ears old, one that has made the history of Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. And we are witnessing the birth of a new ideal, an ideal of Nationality with new human significance, new human service, and new human helpfulness — an ideal of Nation- ality higher than mere self-aggrandizement, or economic wealth, or military power. This is an ideal which calls to the heart and to the mind of every American, and stirs his soul with the hope and the desire that his nation may participate in the upbuilding of a new concep- tion of national purpose that shall call upon us to see something in a nation that is beyond population and wealth and trade and influence, and that, whether the nation be great or whether it be small, shall give it an honorable place in the great structure which is civiliza- tion. Just so long as every nation is regarded as an end in itself, just so long will the world be 136 NATIONALITY AND BEYOND faced with the possibility of a recurrence of this soul-stirring tragedy. Just so long will the time come, at more or less frequent intervals, when national ambition, national zeal, national selfishness even, will find themselves struggling for new and forceful expression, for new and greater extension of influence, for new accom- pHshment and new grandeur. I take it that the dream of one world-empire has passed away forever. It was a dream that came to the ancient Persians; it was a dream that sent Alexander the Great with his troops out over the deserts of Asia; it was a dream that stirred the Roman conquerors; it was a dream that gave Charlemagne his name; it was a dream that showed us the magnificent spec- tacle of Napoleon trying to turn back the hands of the clock of progress only a century ago. That dream, I take it, has passed forever, and we have now to deal not with the conception of a world-empire, but with the conception of clashing, conflicting, mutually antagonistic na- tionalities. " International war at intervals is the necessary accompaniment of that stage of national politics. But magnificent as was the diplomacy and the statecraft of those who NATIONALITY AND BEYOND 137 bullded the present nations of Europe, that statecraft and the ideal of nationahty which it pursued, have passed away forever. We are now coming to that state of international policy where, whether a nation be democratic or monarchical, informed public opinion matters mightily, and little by little is becoming the responsible controller of policy. An instructed and conscientious public opinion is reaching out to take the control of international policy out of the hands of monarchs and their irre- sponsible ministers, and to put that control in the hands of representative ministers of gov- ernment who are responsible to their several peoples and who will no longer wage wars for personal, dynastic, or merely individual aims. As that democratizing of international relations, of foreign policy, takes place, the ground will be ploughed and harrowed and seeded and prepared for the crop of a new ideal. This is the ideal of a great community of nations each standing, as international law says it shall stand, as the equal of every other, whether great or small, powerful or weak, engaged in the common co-operative task of advancing the world's civilization, of extending its commerce 138 NATIONALITY AND BEYOND and trade, of developing its science, its art, and its literature; all aiming to increase the standards of comfort, and to lift the whole great mass of mankind to new and higher planes of existence, of occupation, and of en- joyment. In that co-operative family of na- tions whose institutions are now in the making, there will be a place for every people, for every race, and for every language, and there will be a place for us. The compact of the Pilgrim Fathers on the Mayflower, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettys- burg Address, and Lincoln's Second Inaugural are all one great series of steps in the develop- ment of our national purpose and of our inter- national position and influence. We are constantly reminded that George Washington counselled this nation to beware of entangling aUiances that would carry us into the martial conflicts of Europe. We have wisely maintained that policy from his day to our own; but nothing was further from his thought than to counsel us against partici- pation with every other nation in the solution of the great political problems common to all nations. We know, because their very names NATIONALITY AND BEYOND 139 recall the knowledge to our minds, what the great nations of the ancient world and of mod- ern times meant and still mean. We know what Italy means, what Germany means, what France means, what Holland means, what Great Britain means. We see with the eye of imagination their accomplishments, their ser- vice, and their great leaders of human influence and of action for centuries past. The question that now presses heavily upon our American people is. What shall we make America to be ^ Shall America come to be merely the symbol for a busy hive of industrious bees, or a sym- bol for a great hill of intelligent ants .^ Shall it mean only a nation absorbed in daily toil, in accumulation, in individual satisfaction, or shall it mean a nation so intelligent as to its purposes, so secure in its grasp upon its ideals and so devoted to them, that it will not rest until it has carried all round this world an American message that will raise and help and succor the stricken and conflicting family of peoples } Shall we keep to ourselves the great fundamental American accomplishments that have in them lessons for the whole w^orld, or shall we use our influence to teach to others I40 NATIONALITY AND BEYOND those accomplishments and to spread them abroad ? I mean, first, our Hterally stupendous achieve- ment in federation. We have shown for the first time in history on a large scale that there may be flexibility in government combined with a single unit of ultimate control. We have shown how we can retain personal liberty and local self-government while building up a strong, powerful, united nation. Believe me, the world outside of the United States is wait- ing to profit by that experience. If there can be a common unity between Maine and Cali- fornia, Washington and Florida, uniting local self-government with membership in a great federated nation, why is not some part of that principle and why is not some part of that experience to be made ready for use and appli- cation by Great Britain, and Italy, and France, and Hungary, and Russia, and the rest .^ Then, so many human conflicts arise out of diff'erences of language, differences of religion, diff^erences of institutional life, and so often the attempt has been made to suppress and to oppress the weak by the stronger. Men and women are told that they may not worship NATIONALITY AND BEYOND 141 according to their faith; that their children may not be educated in schools where the ver- nacular is taught; and that there must be vari- ous differences between races and creeds and languages and types. Have we not proved to a watching world that the cure for that form of conflict is Liberty ? Have we not shown that freedom of religion, freedom of education, equality of race and of language, letting all work out their several conflicts and controver- sies as they please subject only to the law, is the best policy ? Have we not shown that out of these diff*erent elements, a strong, united nation can be built ? And are we not ready and anxious to teach that to those who would still try to unify by suppression and by perse- cution ? Are we not ready as Americans first to set in order our own house, first to make sure that we ourselves are living at home in accordance with our ideals, with our best purposes, and are learning the lessons of our own experience ? And then, shall we not be ready to say to Europe, to Asia, and to Africa, and to our sister republics to the South, that we feel our sense of international obligation ? We have 142 NATIONALITY AND BEYOND gained some information; we have proved some things. This information and this experience we offer them. We offer it in persuasiveness, in friendship, and in kindness. We offer this as our contribution to the great temple of civ- iHzation that we all would join to build. What a day it will be, my fellow Americans, when we can take our Washington, our Jeffer- son, our Hamilton, our Marshall, our Webster, and our Lincoln out of the restricted class of merely American voices and American figures and American heroes, and give them to the world, to take their first place by the side of the great statesmen, the great artists, the great poets, the great seers of all time, as our contri- bution to a new civilization in which every nation shall find its place ! Understanding this, let us press forward to a single goal for all men, the goal described and written in our own American Declaration of Independence. That is the goal that lies beyond NationaHty conceived as an end in itself. X THE PRESENT CRISIS An Address delivered at a General Assembly of Columbia University, February 6, 191 7 THE PRESENT CRISIS There have been solemn and impressive mo- ments in the life of this University, and there is a solemn and impressive moment now. When the farmers at Concord Bridge fired **the shot heard round the world," the men of old King's College offered their services and their lives to the cause of national indepen- dence, and Hamilton, Jay, and Livingston went out of that little college to lay the foundations of a nation. In 1861, when Abraham Lincoln, patient, long-suffering, devoted to humanity, issued his call for 75,000 volunteers to repel the attack upon the integrity of the United States that was made in the firing on Sumter, the halls of Columbia College were almost vacant because of the company of students of that day who, with scores of the younger alumni, turned their faces toward the light. We are now facing a crisis in the history of our nation and in the history of mankind which will take its place by the side of the great crises that those who came before us met and faced, and 145 146 THE PRESENT CRISIS so gave this ancient college a reputation £or public service and for patriotic devotion that justifies the splendid inscription on yonder Library that it exists "for the advancement of the public good." The President of the United States, in formal statement to the Congress, and through the Congress to a Hstening world, has said that he deemed it his duty to suspend diplomatic rela- tions with the government of a great people to whom we have long been bound by many and close personal and intellectual relationships, and to say that if there be an overt attack in violation of public law upon an American right he will have to ask the Congress for full author- ity to protect and to defend those rights by whatever means may be found necessary. I feel that I may with perfect confidence promise to the President of the United States the unani- mous support of Columbia University in that great duty. This is no light enterprise which we contem- plate. Our people are sincerely devoted to peace and would wish to walk in its happy and fruitful paths with all their neighbors. But there is something that they value more — and THE PRESENT CRISIS 147 that is libert}^, justice, righteousness, and obe- dience to public law. Upon those foundations rest everything we are, everything we have been, everything we hope to become, and every service that we can render to mankind. Upon those foundations rests the hope of the very people who are now so madly warring against them. In defending those great principles of public order we are serving not the cause of America alone, not alone the cause of those who have so long and so valiantly carried on the struggle on the battle-fields of this war, but we are really serving the cause of those who, for the moment, are bhnded to the significance of what they do. Let no one say that if the President asks us for service he is dragging us into a European war and into conflicts as to national ambition and national policy that are no concern of ours. Nothing could be further from the fact. There was no European war after the fateful hour on the morning of August 4, 1914, when enemy troops crossed the line of unoffending, innocent, peace-loving Belgium. At that moment this contest was lifted out of the area of a mili- tary struggle between dynasties and com- 148 THE PRESENT CRISIS mercial systems and ideas of government, and became a great epoch-marking world struggle as to whether public law and public right were or were not to be held superior to military necessity and to military ambition. That event made this war an American war, a South American war, a Chinese war, a Span- ish war, an African war, a war on every man and every woman who hopes to live in free- dQm, in liberty, and in peaceful progress. And now, after a patience so long continued and so unexampled that it has been doubtless misunderstood on both sides of the Atlantic, the President has summed up in clear phrase that can escape no intelligence just what is the situation on this fateful day. He will attack no one. He will voluntarily take no human life. He v/ill voluntarily destroy no man's property. But if it comes to be a question as to the farther invasion of the people of the United States and their rights, then that people must act as one man in their defense- or cease to exist as other than a vassal state. It may be — God grant it ! — that this im- pending crisis may be avoided. But if it is not, the duty of everv member of this University, THE PRESENT CRISIS 149 man or woman, is perfectly plain. It is to say to the constituted authorities: "I am an Ameri- can citizen; I am a son or daughter of Colum- bia; where can I be of use ? What can I do ? Where are my capacities, my strength, my training available ? Can I use my skill on land, 'or on sea ? Can I use it in civil adminis- tration, can I use it in supporting the needy, in relieving the suffering of those who are taken by military necessity from their occupations and their homes ? Can I serve anywhere in the great army of peace-loving Americans who would only use force in order that right may speedily come to rule?" Men and women of Columbia, let no one of you hesitate. Let no one of you draw back from this great obligation if it shall be laid upon you by our government. Remember that the stirring words of Mr. LowelFs verses upon "The Present Crisis,'' written before most of us were born, have direct and appealing appli- cation to you and to me to-day: "Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, I Jn the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; I50 THE PRESENT CRISIS Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or bHght, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light." The opportunity to decide upon your patri- otic duty will go as quickly as it may come. Seize it for yourselves, seize it for your coun- try, seize it for Columbia ! XI IS AMERICA DRIFTING? An Address delivered at the Annual Dinner of the Chamber of Commerce, Pittsburgh, Pa., February lo, 1917 IS AMERICA DRIFTING? He must be a poor and an unworthy Ameri- can who is not stirred by the European War and its lessons to serious reflection upon prob- lems affecting government and the future of civilization itself. This is no time to take things for granted. The great historic nations of the western world, those which have for two thousand years given shape and form and meaning to civilization and human progress, are shaken to their very depths. Experiences which might, under ordinary conditions, have extended over centuries, are being compressed into a few anxious and massively important years. No belligerent nation will emerge from this war on the same plane as that on which it was when the storm of war broke with such startling suddenness. Political institutions are being reshaped under the pressure of impera- tive national necessity with a speed and com- pleteness that have no precedent in history. Economic and industrial relationships of long standing and great authority have already been 153 154 !S AMERICA DRIFTING? overturned and revolutionized. New and grave seriousness of purpose, new and severe national self-examination, have taken possession of hun- dreds of millions of highly civilized people, who in the midsummer of 1914 were walking nonchalantly along the paths of history as un- concerned, as gay, and as self-centred as a maiden singing on a country road in summer- time. The war has changed everj^thing. Mi- nor differences have fallen into insignificance. Even larger differences have been pressed into the background by the unifying force of stern national necessity and conscious national pur- pose. Despite their tremendous losses in men, in treasure, and in irreparable monuments, the chief belligerent nations will be found to have gained much from the terrible experiences of this devastating war. Their gain will be in the larger matters of national poHcy and in matters of the mind, of the spirit, of individual and national character. How is it with our neutral and aloof America ? When we turn our eyes from the battle-fields and council chambers of Europe to our own land, abounding in material prosperity and spared the terrible cost of military participa- IS AMERICA DRIFTING? 155 tion In the war, what do we find that in any way corresponds to the changes that have come over European opinion and European policy ? Are we Americans learning the great lessons that the war has to teach, or are we so self- confident, so self-centred, and so self-opinion- ated that we think Europe has nothing to teach ? Are we conscious of a distinct national purpose which commands our universal loyalty and devotion, or are we drifting on a sea of irresolution, divided counsels, and conflicting policies ? It is worth while to examine this question from several different points of view. Our representative men and our organs of opinion, both In high places and in low, are speaking and writing much of American par- ticipation in international affairs, of American guidance in shaping world policy, and of Ameri- can aid In securing and in fixing the peace of the world. Are we prepared for these great undertakings ? Are we so sure of our own ground, so firm and so clear in our opinions, and In our policies, so fortified in spirit and In material preparation, that we can confidently accept the challenge which the history of 156 IS AMERICA DRIFTING? Europe is making to our purpose and our com- petence as a nation ? It is a commonplace that democracies find it difficult to engage eflPectively in international intercourse. This is less true of a democracy like the French Republic, which has behind it a long national tradition, than of one like our own, which is even yet a newcomer in the family of nations that lead the world. Our form of government, with its division of power and responsibility between executive and legis- lature, between the nation and the constituent States, makes difficulties for the formulation and execution of a consistent international pol- icy such as no other government in the world has to confront. Indeed, there are foreign nations that look upon the United States as in high degree irresponsible in international rela- tions, so great are the obstacles which our tem- perament and our governmental forms put in our path as a nation. We do not generally recognize the fact that our form of government makes possible and our poHtical habits make increasingly frequent the modification or repeal of explicit treaty provisions by a subsequent act of Congress, without any notice to the IS AMERICA DRIFTING? 157 other high contracting power. We do not appear to take account of the fact that our form of government permits and our tempera- ment encourages the denial by a State legisla- ture or other local authority of rights secured to aliens by the solemn act of the treaty-mak- ing power. The government of the United States has bound itself by numerous treaties to give rights to aliens and to protect those rights. Despite this fact, the personal and property rights of aliens have been repeatedly violated in the United States, and our friendly relations with foreign countries have thereby often been put in jeopardy. The list of unfor- tunate happenings of this kind in recent years is a disagreeably long one. Within the mem- ory of the generation now living, there have been outrageous attacks on aUens who were entitled by treaty to our protection, in Wyo- ming, in Washington, in Idaho, in Montana, in Oregon, in Alaska, in California, in Louisiana, in Texas, In Colorado, in Mississippi, and in Florida. It has been asserted that in the pas- sage of the so-called La Follette Shipping Bill by the Congress at its last session, more than twenty treaties were rudely violated. So long 158 IS AMERICA DRIFTING? as these conditions continue to prevail, we Americans live in far too much of a glass house to make it wise to throw stones at other nations who refer to a treaty as a scrap of paper. There are orderly and proper ways to modify or even to abrogate a treaty whose provisions are no longer sustained by American public opinion, and it is this orderly and proper way that should invariably be taken if we are to have and to exert permanent and beneficial influence in the council of the nations. A treaty is part of the supreme law of the land and must be respected and enforced as such. If it be asked how are conditions to be bet- tered, the answer is, by a more intense, a more virile, and a more loyal nationalism. We must be Americans first, and citizens of a State or residents of a particular community afterward. We must give to the government of the United States, through the passage of legislation that has been recommended by Presidents Harrison, McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, the power which it does not at present possess, to protect the treaty rights of aliens through direct action in the federal courts. At the present time the federal officers and their courts have no power IS AMERICA DRIFTING? 159 to intervene, either for the protection of a foreign citizen or for the punishment of those who commit an outrage against him. We must learn again for this generation and for the twentieth century the lessons of the Consti- tution and "The Federalist," the lessons of the Civil War and reconstruction. Americans must give up their increasing tendency to think in terms of classes, or groups, or sections, or States, and learn to think nationally in terms of the whole United States, its aims, its inter- ests, and its honor. When America speaks or when America acts, the whole world should know that it speaks and acts as a nation and not as a series of conflicting and antagonistic groups or sections. When this comes to pass we shall have ceased to drift in our interna- tional policies and relationships. If America is drifting in regard to matters of foreign policy, it is drifting, too, in regard to critically important matters of domestic concern. Our whole industrial system will be overturned with immense loss and damage to every interest unless we can agree upon a policy to reconstruct and remodel it on new i6o IS AMERICA DRIFTING? and sounder lines. Our present habit is to let things drift until some acute crisis occurs, and then to meet it by surrender or by compro- mise, without any regard to the future, but with eyes fixed only on the immediate present. The greater part of the pubHc seem to be utterly oblivious to the critical position in which the great railway systems of the United States have been put, not by constructive regu- lation or governmental supervision, but by policies of competing, conflicting, and unrelated persecution and pin-pricking. The great rail- ways of the United States are national assets and they constitute the arterial system of our commercial and industrial life. They are ask- ing and they should quickly receive, single, consistent, and well-ordered constructive over- sight and regulation from the national govern- ment and from the national government alone. It was local interference with commerce that led directly to the formation of the Constitu- tion of the United States. It is local interfer- ence with commerce that now constitutes per- haps our most difficult domestic problem. Then, too, the time has come for us to ac- knowledge the primary obligation to the gen- eral public that rests upon every participant in IS AMERICA DRIFTING? i6i any enterprise which is recognized as being invested with a pubKc interest and which is to that extent under pubhc supervision and con- trol. If our national sovereignty is not to be surrendered to a group or an economic class, we must insist upon it that no public service shall be crippled or paralyzed by the concerted act of a group of individuals, taken without inquiry on the part of public officials into any alleged grievance, and carried on without regard to the overmastering public interests. In a peaceful and orderly economic state there are other modes of rebellion than insurrection in arms. It is for public opinion to recognize and to define these modes of rebellion against public authority and to find ways and means, just, kindly, and considerate, of dealing with them. When any individual citizen enters the service of the state, either directly or through some form of public service that the state regulates, he does so not through compulsion, but of his own accord, and he thereby assumes a kind and strength of obligation which does not necessarily rest upon his fellow, whose oc- cupation lies outside of government or of gov- ernment-regulated activity. We should no longer hesitate to recognize i62 IS A Kf ERIC A DRIFTING? that every great industry and every great cor- porate undertaking is primarily something hu- man, and not merely something mechanical, or material, or financial. It is not first of all an undertaking for gain, but it is first of all an undertaking in which human beings work to- gether for purposes of joint and common inter- est. The traditional dogma of economists that the ultimate agents in production are land, labor, and capital, and the usual corollary that labor and capital have conflicting and mutually exclusive interests in the carrying on of an industry, have done an immense amount of practical harm. Leaving land aside, the essen- tial elements in the production of w^ealth are all human beings and not dead abstractions to be spelled with a capital letter and treated as if they had neither flesh nor blood. It would be more accurate and more helpful if we were to classify the elements that enter into pro- ductive industry in threefold fashion: the man who works with his hands, the man who works with his head, and the man who works with his accumulations. Sometimes there is an overlapping of two of these classes, or in ex- treme cases even of all three of them, but, in IS AMERICA DRIFTING? 163 general, each class represents a separate group in the industrial system. Each member of every such group should be made to have a common interest in their joint product. It is sound economic and industrial policy so to organize industry that every co-operating element shall have a personal interest in its success and a personal share in its gains. There is, of course, a standard or prevailing rate of wage for the man who works with his hands, a standard or prevailing rate of salary for the man who works with his head, and a standard or prevailing rate of interest for the man who works with his accumulations. The man who works with his accumulations takes the great- est chance, because wages and salaries must of necessity be paid before his interest can be provided for. With a view to humanizing the great industries and to binding every worker more closely and more loj^ally to his undertak- ing, to giving him back some of that joy in the job that was characteristic of the hand-worker in the past, why should it not be agreed that, when the stockholders of a great corporation receive more than a fixed minimum of interest upon their investment, a similar distribution i64 IS AMERICA DRIFTING? shall be made in terms of wages and of salaries to those who work with their hands and with their heads ? Instead of an occasional bonus given as a favor at the end of a successful year, why should there not be a fixed percentage of salaries and of wages paid as a matter of right when the gains of an industry make it prac- ticable ? When there is an extra one per cent dividend to stockholders, might there not be an extra one per cent paid to those who re- ceive wages and salaries ? Under such a sys- tem every member of an industry, from the highest to the lowest, would feel a new pride in its increased productiveness, a new loyalty to it, a new interest in devices for saving time and eliminating waste, and a new satisfaction in increased profits. Why should we not leave ofF living on the edge of an economic* and in- dustrial volcano, waiting in fear and trembling until the next destructive and uncontrollable eruption shall occur, and settle down in relative peace and quiet, through the substitution of some such definite industrial aim as the one I suggest, conceived in human terms, for the policy of drifting which now governs so many of our economic and industrial relationships ? IS AMERICA DRIFTING? 165 Such an aim would involve questions of hous- ing, of health, of education, of recreation, of credit for long service, and those other attri- butes of decent living and good citizenship which are already so much on the mind of many great corporate organizations and their managers. There Is still another question that is divid- ing our people on which it would be easy to keep silent. It Is, however, in my judgment, more honorable and more courageous for one who has convictions to speak them out. I refer to the question of preparation for national service under national control. No one can possibly hate the state of mind and the spirit that are mlhtarism more than I do, and no one would resist more actively and emphatically any movement to change the peace-loving In- dustrial spirit and temper of our people for any of the older forms of militarism that are now slowly going to their death, let us hope never to be resurrected, on the battle-fields of Europe. But there is a call to national service and a preparation for it which, so far from sharing the spirit of militarism, are only the voice of democracy conscious of its obligations 1 66 IS AMERICA DRIFTING? and its duties, as well as of its rights and op- portunities. We speak in general terms of the obligation which every citizen owes to his country, but what have we done to make that obligation precise and to fit each citizen to dis- charge it ? What have we done to render more than lip-service to the democratic principle ? Compulsion is not foreign to the spirit of democ- racy, although democracy uses it sparingly. Democracy lays its hands on the child, and for its own protection as well as for his good, says that he and his parents must discharge a certain obligation through attendance upon the elementary school. Social, economic, and po- litical conditions are so varied throughout our land that the results of this policy are widely different and are in some ways far from satis- factory. This is not due to the fact that the poUcy itself is unsound, but because we have not yet learned how most wisely to administer it. Through compulsory attendance upon the elementary school the state endeavors to pro- tect itself and each individual citizen from the dangers and Hmitations that attend illiteracy and the lack of all intellectual and moral disci- pline. In the light of our present experience, IS AMERICA DRIFTING? 167 why should not the nation say to every youth approaching manhood: **We beheve it to be in your interest and in ours that you should be required for a limited period in one year, or in each of two successive years, to subject your- self to definite, intensive, continuous training under national supervision and control, in order that you may first gain a new and vivid sense of the meaning and obligations of your citizenship, and in order that you may, in the second place, be physically and intellectually prepared to take part in your country's service, physical or military, should occasion for that use of your powers ever arise" ? In our recent discussions we have been thinking too largely of national service and of preparation for such service in purely military terms. This is easy to understand, for the history of the past three years has forced it upon us as a people; but, if there were no war in Europe, and if there were no thought or need of preparation for war else- where, this need for the preparation of every male citizen for national service would be just as real and just as pressing as I believe it to be to-day. This question goes to the very roots of an effective and loyal and continuing democ- 1 68 IS AMERICA DRIFTING? racy. It can be shirked if you will, it can be compromised if you will, it can be postponed if you will, but it can be neither shirked nor compromised nor postponed without damage to the life of the people of the United States. Why not leave off drifting and have a definite, conscious aim in our preparation for the full duties of citizenship ? We are drifting, too, in matters of public ad- ministration. Taking it all in all, our govern- ment is probably the most incompetent and most costly on earth. This is because it is so largely a government by those who talk, and that we have been so successful in excluding from it those who think and those who do. We pay enough in taxes, and far more than enough, to get thoroughly satisfactory admin- istration of the public business; but we do not get this because competent administrators so rarely concern themselves with government or are chosen to responsible legislative or execu- tive office. If the government of the United States were run in accordance with those prin- ciples which control the activity of any great non-governmental undertaking, from a steel IS AMERICA DRIFTING? 169 corporation to a university, it would be the envy and the admiration of the world. I do not recall that any great administrator has ever been chosen to be President of the United States, and few governors or mayors seem to take any interest in the improvement of ordi- nary administration, such as every manager of an industrial or business undertaking concerns himself with every day and every hour. A man who had in his own person been successful and competent in the administration of a great business, whether it be a railroad, or a bank, or a manufacturing corporation, or a steamship company, or anything else, might, if elected to the presidency of the United States, accompHsh a really wonderful service for our people. Four years, or even eight years, would be all too short to cleanse the Augean stables of waste and incompetence, duplication and inefficiency, which make Washington notorious, but eight years, or even four years, might be enough to make a beginning which would so appeal to the people of the United States that they would compel its continuance at the hands of any party which might happen to be successful in a subsequent election. I70 IS AMERICA DRIFTING? We are so concerned with our personal affairs, with our personal undertakings, and with our immediate interests that we are letting America drift. We give the feeblest possible support to the able and conscientious men who, here and there in the executive departments and in the national legislature, are doing their best to bear the heavy burden that has been put upon them. When such a man is sent to Washing- ton, we leave him alone to fight our battles and his as best he can, and to face unaided the forces of stagnation, routine, and selfishness. Once every four years we arouse from our leth- argy for a few weeks, and give more or less emotional expression to our aspirations and convictions; but when once the presidential election is over, we return to our several ploughs and America drifts again. What is everybody's business is nobody's business. Until every American feels his personal respon- sibility for the formulation of definite public policy at home and abroad, and for the busi- nesslike administration of public affairs, Amer- ica will continue to drift, and the rest of the world will continue to treat her as the spoiled child of the goddess of good fortune. XII LOOKING FORWARD An Address delivered before the Commercial Club, Cincinnati, Ohio, April 21, 191 7 I LOOKING FORWARD This is a time when any one who rises to speak in public to his fellow Americans must do so with a feeling of heavy responsibility. There never was a time when there was so much that might be said; there perhaps never was a time when it was so difficult to say it freely, because the issue of the great struggle in which this world is engaged, despite all ap- pearances, still trembles in the balance. An unfortunate or an unhappy sentiment publicly expressed even by a private citizen might be found to do great damage to the precious cause which every American and every citizen of the world has so closely at heart. I remember the description which my father gave to me, such as your fathers must have given to many of you, of the state of feeling in this nation when Fort Sumter was fired on, and when the existence of this government, the integrity of the institutions that had been builded by the fathers, was suddenly put at stake. I confess to having had that kind of 173 174 LOOKING FORWARD feeling when I read that enemy troops had in- vaded Belgium; and I confess to having had it in redoubled measure, and in a way that stirred every feeHng and sentiment that I possess, when I read with you the awful news of the sinking of the Lusitania. There will not be years enough left in my life to dim the memory of the feelings which those events stirred in me, of the trains of thought which they opened, of the lines of policy which they suggested, of the great series of problems which from that day to this have been unrolled before the world. There is no use just now in looking back. The past has made its own record. It belongs to history. In the generations that are to come careful students of the documents will extract from the record, and put where all mankind may forever see, the precise story of the events that mark the cataclysm which began on August I, 1914, and the end of which is not yet in sight. That, I say, belongs to history; but we as Americans, as lovers of liberty, as citizens of the world, as lovers of our kind of every race and every speech, are concerned with w^hat lies in front of us. We are concerned not alone LOOKING FORWARD 175 with the national task but with the interna- tional happenings; and we are concerned not alone with the winning — the prompt, complete, and decisive winning — of this war; but we are concerned with the reconstruction of the politi- cal organization of the world that shall make place, ample place, for those people who are to-day our enemies, and at the same time pre- vent so far as human power and human fore- sight can prevent, the happening again of any- thing to be compared with this. If we could imagine ourselves equipped with the modern press, the telegraph, the telephone, steam, and electricity, we might have been present at the fall of the Roman Empire and yet have witnessed nothing equal to this. We might under similar circumstances have been present over three hundred years at the Revival of Learning and yet have witnessed nothing comparable to this. Every great struggle in this world is a strug- gle of ideas. Mere brute force is only the sym- bol of a wrong idea, or of a paucity of ideas. The struggle is in essence between ideas, and not always do those who are conducting it ap- preciate or realize that they are the bearers of 176 LOOKING FORWARD the hopes or the hates of men. But when we look back to interpret the happenings of the past two thousand years, we see that in so far as the battle-fields of the world and the great military contests have not been purely dynas- tic, or personal, or predatory in character, they represented a conflict of ideas and of ideals. Several times the history of this world has hung on the point of a spear. Each time the overruling Providence which guides and makes history has seen to it that the solution was toward the greater freedom, the greater prog- ress, the greater liberty, the greater enfran- \chisement of man. "Tt was a very small group of men, compara- tively, that landed from Persian ships on the immortal plains of Marathon; but if that little battle had gone differently the philosophy, the civiKzation, and the institutions of Asia would have made western Europe their own, and this continent would have been colonized fifteen hundred years afterward, if at all, by men who professed the philosophy, the politics, and the religion of those Asiatic peoples. Time and time again, sometimes on a nar- row field, sometimes in a mountain pass, some- LOOKING FORWARD 177 times at a Gettysburg, men have been thrown against each other in larger or in smaller mass, and the stake of victory was the world's pohcy or the life of a nation. This controversy was apparently so simple m its origins — an ultimatum to Serbia, an answer, a declaration of war, a Russian mobilization, a German mobilization, a French mobilization, an invasion of Belgium, an English mobiliza- tion, and the world was in flames. Because that contest was apparently so simply begun, what was involved was hidden from the people of this nation. It has taken us two long years and a half to see that behind those struggling heroes that wear the uniform of France, and behind that great, silent, powerful British navy, were protected the Constitution and the laws of these United States. No war was being made on the Constitution and the laws of these United States; but vv^ar was being made on the ideas upon which that Constitution and those laws are based, and upon which alone they could be based and survive ! This is therefore a war of high principle and in no sense a war of conquest. Let us never sing a hymn of hate to those who are for the moment worship- 178 LOOKING FORWARD ping a false god. A hymn of hate is just as unlovely when sung in English as in German. It is too solemn, it is too stupendous a con- troversy for hate; because if its issue be as we would have it, we shall Hft another people to this high plane — a people at this moment in mighty arms against us. Then we see what, at bottom ? It is said that we see a conflict between autocracy and democracy, between despotism and liberty. We do; but we see something far more subtle than that. We see a conflict between two the- ories of politically organized man, one written in undying words in our own Declaration of Independence, that all governments derive *'their just powers from the consent of the governed"; and the other based on the theory of a state all-powerful, unrestrained, superior to the limitations of law and morality, having a high end of its own which no power can re- strain except by force, and which must sustain and extend itself by force. What is challenged in this contest is the Preamble to the Declara- tion of Independence of the United States. That is why this has never been a European war. It began in Europe; but it never was a LOOKING FORWARD 179 European war. It might have been a Euro- pean war if this country were a desert; but it could not be a European war so long as this country is concerned with ideas of government. The slow process of a glacier takes time; but you have seen in the heights of the Alps, or in our own northwestern mountains, its slow, creeping progress toward the overwhelming destruction of everything that stands in its way. This theory of an all-powerful, non- moral state, having its own rights self-given, not dependent on the just consent of the gov- erned, armed with force and proceeding by might, would in time, unrestrained and unre- stricted, like the glacier, have crept down the valleys of this western world and reduced them to sterile subjection to its might. I blame no individual human being for this war. I seek to bring no individuals to the bar of judgment, because I believe that ideas are so much more powerful than individuals that when they get those individuals in their grasp the latter are simply instruments of those stupendous forces struggling for the mastery of the mind and the conscience of man. It is that which we have been looking out upon. It is that which by i8o LOOKING FORWARD one happening and one act after another, here a little, there a Httle, has brought this glacier more and more close to the land on which we stand, until finally the eyes of our people are opened and they see that they are concerned, deeply, nationally, and individually concerned in this contest, because their ideals are at stake. Why should we have taken so long ? Why should it have been hidden from us for two years and a half, that this war was ours, was all the world's; was a war on democracy and liberalism in Japan; on the rising movement of democracy and liberalism in Spain and the South American republics, as well as on the United States and every land where these ideals are cherished; why should it have taken so long ? The answer hurts one to give. It took so long because for a generation, with all our changes and chances, we as a people have been living in the lap of material luxury and gain, and we had almost forgotten our soul. We had almost forgotten the soul of this nation. Turn back, when opportunity serves, to the congressional and public debates and orations of the first forty years of our nation's life. There you will find the record of the spoken LOOKING FORWARD i8i words of men of every party, of every section, of all shades of opinion and belief; and through all their sentences and paragraphs there shines a soul. They knew that the body of this na- tion needed a soul to make it live. They had a clear conception of that soul, and they saw to it that this nation's body was given a soul. We had almost forgotten our soul. We had apparently gotten to a point where we seemed to think that the world would go on no matter what we did; that somebody else would take care of liberty, somebody else would take care of justice, somebody else would take care of freedom, somebody else would take care of the open sea, somebody else would take care of the world's peace; and that we individually could go about our several businesses and let that ''somebody" run the world! It cannot be done ! No way has been found in a democ- racy of hiring Hessians to govern us; we must either govern ourselves, or drift on the tide of helpless serfdom to those peoples and those nations which are willing, as well as able, to govern. Finally we have seen this vision; and now, thank God ! the American people, conscious of i82 LOOKING FORWARD their soul, are hurrying to points of vantage from which they can look forward. They are sure of the past, and they are eagerly question- ing the future, each according to his kind, as to what it holds in store for men and for na- tions, and particularly for this dear nation of ours. I said a moment ago that even after these two years and a half, and despite the happen- ings of recent weeks, the event still hangs in the balance. It does. It hangs in the balance for two reasons: first, no adequate means has yet been found by any belligerent, or group of belligerents, effectively to cope with the de- struction of tonnage by the submarine. Sir Edward Carson, the First Lord of the Admi- ralty, stated, speaking in the House of Com- mons the other day, that in the time under review forty combats with submarines had taken place, and he left it to be inferred that most or all of them had been successful; but the fact of the matter is, as every man inter- ested in the world's shipping knows, that with the withdrawal of tonnage from commerce for the customary purposes of war, with the lock- ing up of tonnage owing to internment, high LOOKING FORWARD 183 rates of insurance, and danger from submarine attack, and with the actual destruction of tonnage which goes on week by week. It is not yet certain that that particular mode of war- fare will not prove even more powerful than has been supposed. Let me give one illustra- tion. There has been comment and discussion as to the relation of Italy to this war. Why has not Italy, populous, well to do, with a large and well-trained army, made more contribu- tion to the allied cause through effective mili- tary operations ? There are political explana- tions into which I shall not enter; but I will give you one economic explanation. Italy is paralyzed from the mountains to the sea from the lack of coal. Italy Imports In normal times ten million tons of coal a year. When the war broke out the EngHsh government agreed to furnish five million tons; and at once Italy had to reduce by 50 per cent its coal consumption, even at a time when an enormous increase was demanded for the manufacture of munitions. Now England has had to serve Italy notice that no more coal can be delivered unless Italy can provide the bottoms. That Is a situation 1 84 LOOKING FORWARD which does not He on the surface, but is one of the economic facts out of which the problems of this war have so largely arisen. I have cited that as one illustration, to which others might be added. A second matter relates to Russia. If the provisional government of Russia is able to maintain itself, and if its army holds firm on the eastern front, there is every reason to be- lieve that the war may be ended successfully within a reasonable time, say within the pres- ent calendar year. But if the morale of the Russian army is broken, or if by communistic outbreak such as took place in Paris in the winter and spring of 1871 following the Ger- man occupation, the hand of the provisional government should be paralyzed; if the Central Powers were to obtain possession of the agri- cultural and manufacturing resources of Rus- sia, this war might go on for years. To sit here in comfort and suppose that be- cause these magnificent men of whose efforts we read with such anxious and joyous care every morning and every night, are doing such splendid things along the western front that there is nothing for us to do, that we can sim- LOOKING FORWARD 185 ply ride upon the field at the eleventh hour and share in the acclaim of the victors, is abso- lutely false. Nothing if persisted in could be more disastrous. This one hundred millions of people has got to go to war. It will not do to saunter into war. It will not do simply to increase the in- come tax, to make a huge loan, and to read about war. War, with all its terrors, with all its horrors, with all its obligations, is on in this country, and our country's existence hangs in the balance. The American who cannot see that cannot read the plainest signs of the times; for even ideas, however powerful, however splendid, however noble, however uplifting — even ideas will not walk alone ! Even ideas will not provide Italy with coal; even ideas will not cover the ocean with ships; even ideas will not grow a food supply adequate for this na- tion and for export; even ideas and speeches will not fulfil our obligations to those nations and those men who in darkness and in daylight have been fighting for your property and mine, for your government and mine, for your ideas and mine ! It is essential to the soul of the United States i86 LOOKING FORWARD that it should express itself in terms that his- tory will not misunderstand. It is essential to the soul of the United States that we should make use, in the aid and interest of our fellows as well as of ourselves, of the great experience, the great opportunit}^, the great blessings, of the past century and a half. We are trustees of a great and sacred trust. We have been given by Providence out of the womb of time this government with all its potentiality, with all its accomplishment, and with all its promise; and the question that comes home at this hour with burning force to every American is, how am I discharging my trusteeship ? Not what is somebody else do- ing ! — not what is somebody else doing! Not what is the President doing, not what is the Congress doing, not what is the French army doing, not what is the British navy doing — but what am I as trustee doing to preserve, to protect, and to perpetuate those ideals of government in which we not only believe as unassailable truths, but which we in our heart of hearts are convinced give the largest measure of promise to every people on this earth who will embrace them and make them their own. / LOOKING FORWARD 187 We look, then, into the future clothed with a heavy and a solemn obligation; an obligation not simply to support the government — for that is conventional and banal — but with an obligation for personal service with head and heart and hand, in each and every one of those ways that shall contribute to the establishment of a just peace, durable because based on sound and lasting principles, a peace which will sup- press and oppress no man and no nation, how- ever it may be defeated in this war. There are som^e things that follow from that argument as necessary corollaries. I should like to address myself for a moment or two to a contention frequently mxade in public that we have no concern with Europe, that we are isolated from its controversies and its contests, and that Washington himself, our most august American, specifically warned us against ** en- tangling alliances." He did. But the most entangling alliance this nation could make would be an alliance with itself to cut itself off from the whole wide world ! George Washing- ton warned us against entangling alhances with individual nations against other nations — and he was right ! We have never departed from i88 LOOKING FORWARD that counsel, and I see no reason in the history of the intervening years, or in the outlook for the future, to suppose that we should so depart. But an alliance with one nation against another nation is quite a different thing from standing upright among our fellow men to bear our full responsibihty for the perpetuity of the world's freedom and civilization. What sort of figure should we cut in history if a thousand years from now some far-off scholar looks back upon us with his telescope and writes the history of the twentieth century A. D., and finds a stu- pendous struggle for liberty, for the rights of small nations, for the maintenance of public law and treaty obHgations, going on in Europe, and a hundred millions of contented, self-sat- isfied people sitting away across three thousand miles of sea, and saying hke the Pharisee of old: "I am not as these men are, I am relieved from any responsibility for what they may say or do"? Our fathers came to this continent to achieve something not for themselves alone. Read every word they ever wrote. Read the Declaration of Independence, read the Consti- tution, read those immortal words that can be printed on the palm of the hand that were LOOKING FORWARD 189 spoken to you yonder at Gettysburg, and see whether that program of American policy is a selfish program, or whether it is a program of service to mankind ? No; steam, electricity, conimerce, travel, fi- nance, literature, science, the spread of ideas, the zeal for the very things that we believe in, have unified this round world into one family of nations, into one human society; and, as Mazzini said a generation ago: "Thank God, the philosophy of Cain has passed out of this world forever ! We are our brothers' keepers." We are with them the keepers of an idea; and we can no more, in honor or in conscience or consistently with our history, shirk this respon- sibility than we can give the lie to our spoken word or written bond; far less so, for that would be a personal failing and a personal crime or sin, while this would be a great public crime committed in the forum of human history and in the full sight of every immortal soul that has gone before, and would continue to be so regarded by every human being that remains to be born upon this earth. We dare not, gen- tlemen, we dare not ! We have ourselves in our earlier public policy I90 LOOKING FORWARD done nobler things than that. Our fathers, and our fathers' fathers, were in the closest relation with the political and international happenings of Europe. What about the influ- ence of Benjamin FrankHn, of Thomas Jeffer- son, of John Quincy Adams, of Chancellor Liv- ingston, of Henry Clay, and of the whole series of great men who laid the foundations on which we are building bit by bit the superstructure '^. Do not forget that the name that has most enchained the hearts of the people of the United States next only to Washington and Lincoln themselves, is the name of La Fayette. When he came back, an aging man, to visit the country that he had helped to save and to make, his was a triumphal progress from capital to capital and from city to city. I venture to say that at this moment there are probably more counties, towns, and villages in the United States that bear the name of La Fayette than bear the name of any other human being. That testifies to the relationship a century ago. When Kossuth, the Hungarian liberal and revolutionist, came to this country, everything was done to welcome him to the United States because he was rebelling against a tyrannical LOOKING FORWARD 191 government at home. Those fathers felt the electric spark of sympathy with an idea; and they did not hesitate to give it expression in the written and the spoken word. No, gentlemen, what cut us off from our just relations to the civilized world was our own unhappy division over slavery, and the result- ing war between the States. That was the knife which severed the bond that had from the very beginning united us in sympathy and in understanding to the older civilization. What we are doing now is not for an instant anything new, not for an instant anything revolutionary. We are repairing the damage wrought by that great civil dissension; we are going back to our just place as lovers and recog- nizers of liberty, and showing ourselves ready and willing to stretch a hand across any sea to those who battle for our ideas, and therefore for us ! That is traditional American policy. Let no man who has only read fifty years of American history, who has only seen the cur- tain that we let fall between the two acts, at- tempt to introduce us to the subject-matter of the drama. The drama, the great world drama, goes on everlastingly. Our relation to it is a 192 LOOKING FORWARD matter for our intelligence and our conscience and our sense of high principle. Do you realize that the world owes to us — looking now to the credit side of the account for a moment — do you realize that the world owes to us very much of the progress which had already been made toward international organization when this war broke out ? The great importance in history, in American history, of the two Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907 does not seem to be generally recognized. The Conference of 1899 was called by the Tsar of Russia to dis- cuss disarmament. The United States was represented by a distinguished delegation. When the nations assembled at The Hague they soon discovered through interchange of views on the part of their representatives that dis- armament was impossible and impracticable. They discovered what any man, I think, who examines that question candidly will discover, that armaments, while the instruments of war, are not the causes of war, and that to take away the instruments and leave the causes would mean to expose this world to still more dreadful, still more costly, still more inhuman wars. Therefore, they said: "We cannot dis- LOOKING FORWARD 193 arm; let us adjourn/' The American delega- tion said: "No; do not adjourn. Cannot we do something, make some slight progress toward the prevention of war ? Cannot we take some step that will make these tremendous outbursts less likely ?" And the project was brought for- ward for a Court of Arbitration. It was dis- cussed for some time; it was accepted by France and by Great Britain, and by other nations; it was strongly opposed by the representatives of the German Empire. Then happened this: Doctor Andrew D. White, claruvi et venerahile nomen, the senior member of the American delegation, formerl}^ Minister at the Court of Berlin, wrote a personal letter to the German Emperor and pleaded with him for the sake of the future to instruct the German delegates to alter their attitude. That letter was intrusted to the secretary of the American delegation, the late Frederick W. Holls, unfortunately gone from earth all too soon to render the splendid services to the better organization of the world of which he was capable. In a two days' inter- view with the German Emperor and Prince von Buelow, Count von Buelow as he was then, that letter of Doctor White's, aided by the 194 LOOKING FORWARD personal Influence of Mr. Holls, brought about instructions from the German Emperor to the German delegation at The Hague to change their attitude. They did change it; and the first Court of Arbitral Justice was established. The United States made that contribution toward the better organization of the world. Some day that letter of Doctor White's will be seen to have been an epoch-making one in the history of American diplomacy and in the his- tory of international organization. Then the Conference adjourned. There were those who said in America and in Europe: "The Confer- ence has been a failure. Why try to put life into this chimerical idea?" But the President of the United States, Mr. Roosevelt, hurried before that court the Pious Fund case betw^een the United States and Mexico, and gave an impressive lesson to the world of two sovereign nations submitting a claim involving their sov- ereign rights to the decision of five private gen- tlemen in black coats at the Dutch capital. Again the United States had made a powerful contribution to the organization of the world. A few years ago it was my privilege to sit for a time in the Court at The Hague, and I LOOKING FORWARD 195 saw what I shall always remember as one of the most impressive sights of my life. Five gentlemen entered at ten o'clock, as they might in any American appellate court, took their places upon the bench, and without any more ado counsel rose in his place and commenced his argument. The counsel was EHhu Root, Senator from the State of New York, presenting the case of the United States of North America against Great Britain in regard to the New- foundland fisheries; a case which had brought the two countries involved to the verge of war a dozen times in the century. He presented it as quietly, in as lawyer-like fashion, as if he were arguing in the Circuit Court of Appeals or before the Supreme Court of the United States. He was followed after a time by op- posing counsel, the Attorney-General of Eng- land, who rose in his place to present the op- posing argument. Days, weeks, went by; the exhibits and the testimony were submitted, argument was heard, the court rendered its decision, and the Newfoundland Fisheries case between Great Britain and the United States disappeared from the history of trouble-making diplomacy, after having occupied a prominent 196 LOOKING FORWARD place in it for a century. Again the United States had made a powerful contribution to the better organization of the world. And then it was urged that The Hague Con- ference should be convened again. The Reac- tionary party in Russia were in power; they kept the Tsar from calling it. The President of the United States, at that time Pvlr. Roose- velt, gave notice that if the Tsar did not call it, he would. The Tsar called it ! The Second Hague Conference assemibled in 1907; and there this Court of Arbitration, which was really not a court in the strict sense of the word, but a body of diplomatic negotiators not bound by law, but trjang to arrive at an agreement by mutual consent, concession, and yielding, gave way to the idea of a real court, an International Court of Justice. This project was presented on the instructions of the Secretary of State of the United States, Mr. Root, through the American delegation headed by Mr. Choate. When Mr. Choate rose to present that argu- ment before The Hague Conference, he opened by saying: "We have now spent weeks in regu- lating the laws of war; can we not spend a few hours in trying to prevent war ? " And he LOOKING FORWARD 197 brought foi'ward the plan which after weeks of discussion was agreed to as a satisfactory plan. The Hague Conference then adjourned with- out a constituted court only because the small nations and the great could not agree as to how the judges should be appointed in the first instance. That was the condition when the present war broke out. Remember that this proposal for a genuine International Court has been assented to by Great Britain, by Germany, by France, by Austria, by Italy, by Russia, by Japan, and by the United States; and there it stands. And when this war is over, that is the point at which we should begin; we should resume our constructive work at the point at which this war broke it off. We can say, as no other people in the world can say: "We can give you out of the whole of our experience with the one hundred and twenty-odd years of the Supreme Court of the United States, an ex- ample of just how this institution will work, just what problems will arise, just how it has been found satisfactory to settle them between the first thirteen and now forty-eight sovereign States of the American Union." 1 98 LOOKING FORWARD I will not go into detail. The international organization of the world is a most fascinating subject. Few of us know how far it has pro- ceeded. When this war broke out there were about two hundred and fifty international or- ganizations that had their seat of business at Brussels, dealing with every sort and kind of activity, commercial, industrial, scientific, liter- ary, governmental, and behind them all lay this great conception of an international ju- dicial process. Now what is required for the carrying out in the future of that great American policy ? Two things are required: first, the supremacy in the world of the rule of law, and the sup- pression forever, if possible, of the rule of might. There is needed that good-will among men which is the only final sanction of public action. Forms of organization will help, but they alone will not suflRce. Legislation may help, but it will not accomplish. The real problem before America and the world, the problem that stares us in the face as we look forward is, how to secure for ourselves, how to spread abroad among others, that belief in law and order, and that good-will which will LOOKING FORWARD 199 put blood and nerves and life, body and brain, into a great legal organization that the nations may agree to work under. That is your problem and mine; that is the problem of the Frenchman, of the Briton, of the Italian, of the German, of the Russian, of the Bulgarian, of the Japanese, and the rest. Order, peace, prosperity, cannot be imposed on this world by might. A temporary victory of that kind would mean a new outbreak of the irrepressible spirit of liberty as soon as it could catch its breath after its defeat. The tempo- rary triumph of might would mean indefinite wars on this earth : for the mien upon it are fac- ing the front; they are looking for the light; and they are not going because of the fine phrases of a false philosophy to put upon their minds and upon their bodies the shackles that it has taken hundreds of years to strike from the limbs of their ancestors. So, gentlemen, many as are the outlooks upon the future, that is the one which looms largest to me, that is the one which it seems to me has the most significance for each one of us. There are others vitally important. You must have observed with what speed the necessities 200 LOOKING FORWARD of war have caused the complete social, indus- trial, and financial reconstruction of great na- tions. The Great Britain of 1914 does not exist; there is a new Great Britain of 1917. The France of 1914 does not exist; there is a new France of 1917; and the United States of 1914 does not exist, and never will exist again ! There is a new United States beginning to be born. A whole series of economic problems that have been intrusted by us to individual initiative and competition are in these Euro- pean countries already, and in our own country to-morrow, to be cast in a new form where they are to be approached by men in association with each other and with government. That change has in it an element of strength and an element of danger; but whatever ele- ments it has, here it is. If this reorganization in Great Britain, in France, and in America, proves effective, as it bids fair to, in ending this war successfully, the populations of these countries will never wholly desert it even in times of peace. Therefore, we must be pre- pared for a new outlook upon our industrial and commercial life. We must expect to find that we are called on for a far larger measure LOOKING FORWARD 201 of co-operation and subjection to control than ever before. If that can be accomplished with- out destruction of individual initiative, without depriving the individual of the just rewards of his endeavor, without reducing all men to the common level of mediocrity, it will have in it elements of progress, of success, and of happi- ness. If, on the other hand, it proves simply to be a new chain under the guise of an invi- tation to liberty, we shall find ways and means of loosening it; because, gentlemen, the one thing that will not be kept down, the one thing that no power can forever control, is the desire of the human heart to be free; free to think, free to express itself under ordinary and just limitations that fix the equal rights of others; free to labor; free to maintain itself in posses- sion of its just gains. Because wx know that if we surrender that, we again exalt an all- powerful state above the individual, and then it is not long before we shall pay tribute to it as possessing those mysterious powers which are but the symbol of might and tyranny. There are dangers in success; there are dan- gers in the very solutions that are proposed of the problems that will lead to success; but if 202 LOOKING FORWARD we look all these problems in the face, if we understand them, if we keep our heads clear, our tempers in control, we may be able to sur- render what is needed, to do our just part, without impairing those fundamental things in which we all so profoundly believe and which are at stake in this war. There could be no more cynical conclusion of this war than for those of us who are allies to defeat the German army on the field of bat- tle and to surrender in the process to the ideas that have taken the Germans captive and sent them into this contest. It is as necessary for us to defeat the spirit of might and militarism in our own hearts and in our own land, in our own economic industrial organization, as it is to prevent it from conquering on the field of battle. That is the dilemma, that is the diffi- culty, which confronts us. So here we stand, looking out across this troubled and dangerous sea to those who are for the moment protecting us; making ready, let us hope as speedily as may be, and in all possible ways, to give them support, and to join them as we should with our flag, out ships, and our men. LOOKING FORWARD 203 We are looking across the sea, facing not only war but problems of life, problems of con- duct, problems of political and economic organ- ization. It will be a supreme test of the ca- pacity of the American people to rule, not others but themselves, and to control, not de- pendents, but their own interests; to keep their place without losing it, and to take their just place without pushing aside any other human being who is entitled to the same rights that we claim for ourselves. XIII THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION An Address delivered at a Meeting of the National Institute of Arts and Letters at the Hudson Theatre, New York, April 23, 1917 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION I could wish that this honorable and difficult task had fallen into other hands than mine. The story which Mr. Kennan has just recited out of the wealth of his experience, his observa- tion, and his participation is but one chapter in the long record of political and civil crime that so stirs one's blood and so causes one's gorge to rise that it is difficult to speak in this public presence, as one should speak, with re- straint and yet with appropriate feeling and appreciation. For myself, the events of these last months and years are so much the most important happenings in tw^o thousand years of history that I find it difficult not only to speak of them, but to think of them, without constant use of superlatives, without those comparisons and that emphasis which often destroy by their very strength. And of all these events, of all these happenings, what more stupendous than the spectacle of a great national giant, that stretches its huge limbs over a seventh of the earth's surface and includes in its population 207 2o8 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION nearly two hundred millions of human beings, rising to the full stature of a free nation in the midst of a world at war, with every danger internal and external threatening, and yet with the sacrifice of fewer Hves than Mr. Kennan's censor would have sent to the gallows or to prison in a single month ? This is the triumph of an idea ! The men of letters and the artists gathered here, who are devoted to the expres- sion in their several media of an idea and an ideal, are the first and the quickest to recog- nize the significance of what has happened. What has happened is not the framing of a constitution; none has yet been drawn. What has happened is not the success of an armed revolution; there has been none. What has happened is not what happened at Whitehall in January, 1649, or what happened in the Place de la Concorde in January, 1793; for that has not happened. What has happened is that an idea, slowly germinating in the mind of a great people who have been set ofF by lan- guage, by religion, by custom, by barriers of geography from a great portion of the western world, has given birth to a new political era for that people and has moved the boundary THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 209 between East and West from the Vistula nearly to the Yellow Sea- The great Slavic nation has thrown in its lot with the West. It has given expression to the idea which makes the West, the idea which one day will make the newest West out of the whole of the immemorial East. That idea is the product of philosophy and of letters. That idea has called into being the great master- pieces of the poet, of the writer of imaginative prose, of the historian, of the seer, of him who works in plastic materials, bending them to spiritual and intellectual forms. That idea is the idea of human Hberty. There have been attempts — how numerous it would be common- place to mention — to hold it in check, to keep it back; but like a great, all-powerful, slow- moving, fateful glacier it has come down from its fastnesses in the human heart and the human soul, watered by the perpetual snows of human aspiration, until it is conquering, not for destruction but for fruitfulness, all the green valleys which lay spread out before its path. Perhaps the most potent force in this world to-day is the force of a man of letters who has 2IO THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION been dead for one hundred and forty years, a man whose philosophy was absurd, whose knowledge of history was negligible, whose character was grotesque, whose contradictions were almost as numerous as his utterances. But the reason why Jean Jacques Rousseau put force and life into the American, the French, and the Russian revolutions was that with all his limitations, with all his oddities, he preached the gospel of human liberty in ways that ordi- nary men and women could read and under- stand. If we look back across the troubled gen- erations that lie between him and us, we must forgive him for his faults, for his absurdities, for his crudities, and take note only of the fact that the idea which he was moved to put into so many diflPerent literary forms had about it such power, such charm, such immortality, that it is carrying his name at this moment around the earth as one of the effective makers and shapers of this spiritual rebirth of the Slavic people. Rousseau was a man of letters; and we celebrate this far-off genius in this last act, this latest expression, of the current of thought which he did so much to direct. For he had not originality enough to invent or to discover THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 211 it; he had simply the power to make it take hold of men and women of different speech, of different lands, of different race, of different traditions. The centre of gravity of the world's interest has shifted, and we now see as we could not see a year ago the real meaning of the great military struggle that is engaging the manhood and the wealth of the world. As a struggle between autocracy and liberty it was anoma- lous so long as the Tsar and Autocrat of all the Russias was found in the ranks of liberty; but now that his people have thrown off the domino which they have worn for three hun- dred years, they stand out in their true uni- form as another struggling democratic people, marching upward toward the light. Those of us who remember our history must be careful not to let our enthusiasm outrun our judgment. A great thing is happening; but it has only just begun to happen and there are many obstacles, many difficulties, many possibilities of error and delay in the path. See how long it has taken the EngHsh-speaking peoples to build their institutions, and how anxious they still are to improve them. See 212 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION how long it took France, even after her revolu- tion had begun, to establish on firm founda- tion and with common consent a Third Repub- lic that was safe from internal corruption and damage. We must not expect Russia to do at once what it has taken England, America, and France generations and even centuries to accomplish. The very autocracy under which Russians have lived has deprived them of much of the stimulus and the material for swift institution-building. Yet they have come late, and they so have the advantage of the expe- rience, of the errors as well as of the successes, of those of us who have gone before. One lesson the Russians will learn if they look us straight in the face, if they look Eng- land, and France, and America straight in the face; and that is that liberty does not mean ^ license, but discipline. Liberty means self- discipline; it means reaching out with the hand of history and the hand of philosophy and the hand of observation and taking into oneself and making one's own those principles of con- duct, personal and poHtical, those forms of organization, civic and social, which history justifies and which the conscience of mankind THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 213 approves. That is self-discipline, the self-dis- cipline of an individual and the self-discipline of a nation. No nation, old or young, Latin or Slav, Anglo-Saxon or Teuton, will ever be free until it disciplines itself. To insist upon that fact, is perhaps the greatest service we can render our newly emancipated friends across the sea and across the warring lands that lie be- tween. When we welcome them to the sister- hood of free self-governing nations, let us not welcome them without some fair warning as to our difficulties and problems, without some suggestion as to the obstacles that lie in their path, that they may not make the mistake that some have made who have gone before in thinking that a revolution is effected by a single turn of the human wheel. The mere abdication of a Tsar does not constitute a de- mocracy. When the present revolutionary movement took its rise with the general strike and the massacres of twelve or thirteen years ago, an American observer journeyed to Russia to take note of the happenings. In a conversation with Tolstoy he said that he had come to remain a year or two to study the Russian revolution. 214 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Tolstoy said: "Come prepared to stay for fifty years." Tolstoy was right. We are only at the beginning of a great public movement which follows upon a hundred years or more of a preparation which we in the western world have not fully understood. The village com- munity life of the Russian people has long given training, excellent, admirable training, in the affairs of government and domestic economy to thousands and tens of thousands of peasants with whom reading and writing are arts yet to be acquired. The Zemstvos, called into ex- istence fifty years ago, have grown in experi- ence and authority until as provincial assem- blies they have taken on some of the attributes of an American State legislature. During the past two and a half years they have been the most effective single instrument in equipping the Russian people to carry on the war, not only in a military but in an economic sense. There again, thousands and tens of thousands of peasants have been trained in habits of co- operation, in methods of government, in meth- ods of accomplishing public ends through pub- lic acts, all of which are strangely different from passing resolutions and issuing manifes- THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 215 toes. And so when the time came and the domino could be thrown aside, it was not to a wholly untrained and unfamiliar people that this opportunity for self-government came. It was rather to a people already partially tutored in government and to one whose members had long, long been thinking hard about govern- ment. If that under which they lived was government, what could governments be for .? Can you wholly fail to understand the men who could only answer Mr. Kennan's category of crime by violence .^ Among one hundred and seventy millions of people is it strange that there were some who could not wait ? Is it strange that there were some who could not control their passions and who, stirred to the deepest resentment by what they saw and felt and suffered, gave way, human-like, to those passions which could only aggravate although intended to cure .^ It is not strange. There is a point beyond which human nature cannot resist temptation, and that point was reached, long ago reached, under the autocracy of Russia. Now, I repeat, the centre of gravity of the world's interest has changed. We follow with 2i6 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION the greatest anxiety the daily, almost the hourly, movement of those magnificent armies that are standing between the American people and their foes on the western front in Europe. But the future of the new Europe, perhaps the future of humanity, is being worked out to-day while we sit here, on the unfamiliar banks of the Neva, the Volga, and the Vistula. If Rus- sia holds firm, if her new-found political con- sciousness and her new-found political power stand the storms from within and without to which they certainly are exposed, the success- ful end of this war for liberty is in measurable sight. But if Russia gives way and if the whole of the eastern continent is open to those who hold other views and have other aims than ours, this war may last till every head in this hall is gray. On Russia, on free Russia, on democratic Russia, now depends the early and the successful issue of the war. Must we not then, men of letters, artists, citizens, hasten to the highest mountain-top and call out our greeting across land and sea to those who would stand with us for this common cause .^ Should we not hasten to call out to them a word of encouragement and help THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 217 and warning, and to say: "We understand what you have gone through; we know what the past has been. Stand firm, and help us to make a new future that will be a new future for the United States as well as a new future for Russia" ? Years ago, in a striking statement, Count MuraviefF said Russia was coming to bear upon her shoulders the new age. "We are coming," this is his phrase, "to relieve the tired men." The Latins have had their great era; the Anglo- Saxons have had their great era; the Teutons have had their great era; and now the Slav emerges into the full view of modern history and into participation with it to relieve the tired men. The Slav is going to come with all his unknown potentiality, with all his amazing differences from what have hitherto been the western peoples. The Slav is going to come, bound to the west by this new social and po- litical ideal and by this possession of new social and poHtical power. Long ago, three quarters of a century ago, Gogol looking out on his land cried: "Whither art thou speeding, my Russia.?" Now we think we have an answer to the question. 2i8 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Whither art thou speeding, Russia ? Speeding toward the high places that are in possession of those human spirits who love liberty, who love justice, who preach and who practise righteous- ness, and who, with all their faults and stum- blings and imperfections, will labor for the coming of that happy day when this earth shall be a better place to live in because men are all free and just together. That is where we must hope that Gogol's Russia is speeding. XIV THE CALL TO SERVICE An Address delivered at the Service of Farewell to Columbia Students Leaving for the War, St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia Uni- versity, May, 6, 1917 THE CALL TO SERVICE In all the long and honorable history of our University, there has been no hour just Hke this. The world is at war, and this University, in common with the nation that it loves and serves, is about to send of its bravest and Its best to take a share in a struggle on whose re- sult the history of mankind for centuries will hang. On the eve of that going out, we gather to participate in this stately and solemn service to Almighty God, in Whose name this Univer- sity was founded and in Whose name it has labored from generation to generation. This hour, these happenings, this service, bring us face to face with the everlasting values of life, and with a contemplation of those standards by which men measure con- duct and civilization and by which history awards them praise or blame. While we are here in quiet contemplation and prayer, on the other side of the Atlantic, at this very mo- ment, more than twenty million men in arms 221 222 THE CALL TO SERVICE are struggling to determine whether our nation and our University shall live. On the northern and eastern slopes of Vimy ridge, on the uplands of Craonne looking upon the historic fortress of Laon over territory which has been the scene of historic contest since the days of Julius Caesar, your fate and mine is being determined by men whom we have never seen and whose very names we do not know. And then, away over yonder be- yond the Vistula and the Masurian Lakes, on down across the Balkan peninsula to the very gates of the garden of Eden itself, participants in this struggle are face to face in arms. The call for liberty, for righteousness, for justice between men and nations, has filled the ears and stirred the hearts of our nation, and this University has responded in the only way that a university of its traditions and ruling principles could respond. Without boastful- ness, without vaunting, but with quiet and serene courage and determination, our every member will take his place as soldier or civiUan in that great army of the people which is en- listed to bring this war to a speedy and final conclusion on such a basis that just peace may THE CALL TO SERVICE 223 reign in this world, and, in the fine phrase of the President, "the world may be made safe for democracy." Columbia gives all it has, and it is with in- finite pride and brotherly satisfaction that we look into the faces of this youth which has elected to enroll in the mihtary service of the United States and to place its intelligence, its character, its training, at the service, not alone of its country, but of the great fundamental principles on which civilization rests. One of the oldest and subtlest philosophies in the world teaches that the whole of history consists in the struggle between the principle of good and the principle of evil. It teaches that now one, now the other, is uppermost, but that as the good principle overcomes the evil, or as the evil principle overcomes the good, so mankind marches forward to freedom or so it falls back into serfdom and slavery. This great struggle between the good and the evil principle has taken, in this twentieth century, the form of a contest between two political and social principles which cannot live together in this world. And that is why this contest must be settled by force of arms. 224 THE CALL TO SERVICE If those two principles had anything in com- mon, an adjustment between them might pos- sibly be reached; but each principle absolutely excludes the other. As Abraham Lincoln said a generation ago, "This nation cannot exist half slave and half free," so it may be said to-day, "This world cannot exist half despot- ism and half democracy." Democracy must in its way dispose of des- potism or despotism will in its way overcome democracy. Therefore, it is to no ordinary contest that this nation goes forward. It is to no struggle as to which one may be for a mo- ment indifferent. It is to the deepest and most tremendous conflict that all history records, and Columbia answers, Adsum I Columbia stretches forth her hand in preparation to aid those of her sons who are rushing forward to posts of honor and service and danger, and then extends her hand in blessing and benedic- tion upon them and their ideals and their efforts. Wherever the cause of liberty is in danger, there Columbia's hand will be found to help avert it. Wherever the rule of despotism is extending, there Columbia's hand will be found THE CALL TO SERVICE 225 to remove It. Wherever there is need of sci- entific skill and genius to serve, to cure, to in- vent, to construct, there a Columbia hand will be found ready to do its duty for the advance- ment of the public good and for the glory of Almighty God. XV THE ENVOYS AT THE UNIVERSITY An Address delivered at a Special Convocation of Columbia University, May lo, 1917 THE ENVOYS AT THE UNIVERSITY Since In 1861 Columbia University gave Its highest honors to Abraham Lincoln, it has known no such day as this. In the modern democracies, the university — and the univer- sity almost alone — Is able to rise above strife of party or of faction, above difference of religious creed, above official forms and material stand- ards, to speak for the spirit and the mind of the whole people. This University is especially competent so to speak because of its long and noble tradition, because of its unbroken record of distinguished public service, and because of the great army of men who from decade to decade, and now even from century to cen- tury, have gone out through Its gates to serve the State and to play a man's part In the world. To-day this University speaks with no un- certain voice to offer a welcome, finely sym- bolized by the outstretched arms of Alma Mater, to those great men who, as captains of the public policies of democratic peoples, as captains of armies and of navies, and as cap- 229 230 ENVOYS AT THE UNIVERSITY tains of commerce and of finance, have repre- sented with consummate skill and supreme devotion the aspirations and the purposes of the French RepubHc and of the British Em- pire. It is in but a superficial sense that France, Great Britain, and the United States are allies in the conduct of war; in a far deeper sense they are companions in the great enter- prise of democracy, in the spreading of higher hope and broader opportunity among men, and in the upbuilding of a yet finer and fairer and more secure structure of civil and political lib- erty upon the foundations that the fathers have laid. The intellect and the conscience of Amer- ica, speaking so far as they may by this Uni- versity — the University of Alexander Hamil- ton, friend and companion-in-arms of La Fay- ette — cry Hail to these representatives of our brothers, and bid them know how complete and how whole-hearted are our country's under- standing of their aims and our country's appre- ciation of their accompUshments and their sacrifices. Behind the powerful defense of their armies and their navies we have for two and a half years rested secure and undisturbed. The time has fortunately come when the Ameri- ENVOYS AT THE UNIVERSITY 231 can people have declared their purpose to add might to their sympathy and to put determina- tion behind their good will. To this epochal fact full testimony is borne by the city of New- York, the great power-house of the nation's energies, in which is centred so much of Ameri- can activity and from which radiate so many of the directing forces in American life. There can be but one certain end to this war, and there can be but one road to durable peace. Were it possible to contemplate the present victory of those forces that would halt and imperil democracy, there would lie before us, before our children, and before our chil- dren's children, an unbroken series of wars, until those who come after us had gained what we in our day had failed to accomplish. The upward progress of mankind may be delayed or checked, but it cannot forever be prevented. In the whole course of history, no great crisis which involved the forward march of man has been resolved to his disadvantage. Democracy will win this war because the works of men will not fall below the full measure of their faith. To you, M. Viviani, representative of the government and the mind of France; to you, 232 ENVOYS AT THE UNIVERSITY Marshal Joffre, whose name and fame already belong to the ages; to you, Lord CunlifFe, as a tower of national strength; and to you, Mr. Consul-General, representing the Right Hon- orable Arthur James Balfour, consummate flower of British cultivation and British states- manship — I bid sincere and affectionate wel- come to this University, which, as yonder legend reads, was "founded in the Province of New York by Royal Charter in the Reign of George II, perpetuated as Columbia College by the people of the State of New York when they became free and independent, maintained and cherished from generation to generation for the advancement of the pubKc good and the glory of Almighty God." XVI THE INTERNATIONAL MIND: HOW TO DEVELOP IT Introductory Address delivered at the National Con- ference on Foreign Relations of the United States, held under the auspices of the Academy of Political Science, Long Beach, New York, May 28, 191 7 THE INTERNATIONAL MIND: HOW TO DEVELOP IT For two generations it has been a common complaint that the people of the United States took no adequate interest in foreign policy, and were without any but cursory knowledge of international politics. This judgment has been expressed, often publicly, by successive secre- taries of state, by those who have held impor- tant diplomatic posts, and by those who, in the Senate of the United States, have seen long service upon the Committee on Foreign Relations. A sort of national self-centredness together with a feeling of geographic and po- litical isolation have combined to bring about this unfortunate state of affairs. It has been unfortunate for two reasons: first, because it marked a serious break with our earlier national tradition; and second, because it has held back the people and the government of the United States from making the full measure of con- tribution of which they were capable, to the better and closer international organization of the world. 23S 236 THE INTERNATIONAL MIND: One need have but slight acquaintance with the writings and speeches of the fathers and with the records of the early Congresses to know that, when the government of the United States was young, it was the eager ambition of those who most fully represented it to play a large part in the international life of the world, primarily with the view of advancing those ideas and those principles in which the people of the new American republic believed and to which they were committed. Benjamin Frank- lin was our first great internationalist. Alex- ander Hamilton, of whom Talleyrand said that he had divined Europe; Thomas Jefferson, whose public service in Europe was quite ex- ceptional; as well as Chancellor Livingston, John Jay, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, John Quincy Adams, and Henry Clay not only knew western Europe, but were known by it. In making endeavor, therefore, to increase the interest of the American people in foreign rela- tionships and in international policy we are but asking them to return to one of the finest and soundest of national traditions. Our national self-absorption has held us back, too, from playing an adequate part in HOW TO DEVELOP IT 237 the development of that international organi- zation which has long been under way and which the results of the present war will hasten and greatly advance. Despite these facts, and chiefly because of the high character and ability of those who represented the United States at the two Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907, the American contributions to the deliberations and recommendations of those notable assem- blies were most important. Indeed, when the record of history comes to be made up, it may be that those contributions will be judged to mark the beginning of a new epoch in the world's history. The Conference which now assembles to con- sider and discuss the international relations and the international policies of the United States, is a beginning and only a beginning of a campaign of education and enlightenment which is to continue until there has been devel- oped among all parts and sections of our land what I ventured some years ago to describe as the "international mind."^ The international mind is nothing else than that habit of think- iC/. "The International Mind." (New York: Charles Scrib- ner's Sons, 19 13.) 238 THE INTERNATIONAL MIND: ing of foreign relations and business and that habit of dealing with them which regard the several nations of the civilized w^orld as free and co-operating equals in aiding the progress of civilization, in developing commerce and in- dustry, and in spreading enlightenment and culture throughout the world. It would be as inconsistent with the international mind to at- tempt to steal some other nation's territory or to do that nation an unprovoked injury or damage, as it would be inconsistent with the principles of ordinary morality to attempt to steal some other individual's purse or to com- mit an unprovoked assault upon him. The international mind requires that a nation and its government shall freely and gladly grant to every other nation and to every other govern- ment the rights and the privileges which it claims for itself. From this it follows that the international mind is not consonant with any theory of the State which regards the State as superior to the rules and restrictions of moral conduct or which admits the view that to some one State is committed the hegemony of the world's affairs for the world's good. When that doctrine prevails and takes hold of the convic- HOW TO DEVELOP IT 239 tlon and the imagination of a great people, an issue is presented that cannot be settled by vote in conference, that cannot be arbitrated by the wisest statesmen, and that cannot be determined by the findings of any court. The authority and the value of each of these modes of procedure is challenged by the very issue itself. Therefore resort must be had to armed force in order to determine whether the inter- national mind, shared by a score or more of independent and self-respecting nations, shall prevail, or whether the arms of a non-moral, all-powerful, military imperialism shall be stretched out over the whole round world for its government and its protection. It is to determine this issue that the world is now at war. Should the cause of imperialism, by any chance, win this war, the people of the United States would find it quite unnecessary for some time to come to concern themselves with for- eign relations and with foreign policy. Those matters would be taken care of for them by a power that had shown itself strong enough to overcome and to suppress the internationally minded men and nations. On the other hand, 240 THE INTERNATIONAL MIND: if, as we confidently hope and believe, the issue of this war is to be favorable to the free, self- governing democracies of the world, then the people of the United States must address them- selves with redoubled energy and with closest attention to those matters of legislation, of administration, and of general public policy which constitute and determine national con- duct. The first task of this Conference and of every similar conference that may be held here- after is to drive this lesson home. When this task is undertaken it will speedily appear that our government is not well or- ganized at the moment for the formulation and prosecution of effective international policies. The division of authority between the national government and governments of the several States raises one kind of problem. Action un- der the treaty-making power of the national government raises another set of problems, par- ticularly since there is not yet a substantial unanimity of opinion as to the scope and au- thority of the treaty-making power itself, or as to the proper and effective means which should be at the command of the government of the United States for enforcing among its HOW TO DEVELOP IT 241 own people adherence to a treaty obligation into which, through their government, they have solemnly entered. The difficulties with which we shall have to contend are, therefore, not alone difficulties arising from present lack of popular information and present lack of popular interest in international policies, but they are also those which arise from the struc- ture and the operation of our own form of constitutional government. That the old secrecy of diplomatic action has gone forever is a happy circumstance. This secrecy was well suited to the making of con- ventions between ruling monarchs or reigning dynasties, or between governments which rep- resented only very select and highly privileged classes. It has no place, however, in diplomatic intercourse between democratic peoples. The people themselves must understand and assent to international policies and contracts that are entered upon and executed in their name. Otherwise there can be no assurance that these policies will be executed and these contracts observed; for without foreknowledge on the part of the people of that to which they are committed there can be no successful moral 242 THE INTERNATIONAL MIND appeal made to them to keep their word and their bond at a later time when an opposition may arise between principle and immediate self-interest. We are assembled, then, to help begin a movement which must not cease until the en- tire American people are interested in their international relationships, their international position, and their international influence. When that shall have been even measurably accompHshed, the people themselves will be quick to bring about such changes in the form of their governmental structure and in their administrative procedure as will enable them honorably and finely to maintain their place, not as a nation that lives to itself alone, but as a nation that shares with every other like- minded nation the desire and the purpose to improve the lot of mankind everywhere, and to carry into the uttermost parts of the earth those hopes, those principles, and those forms of governmental action that are best adapted to giving man the fullest opportunity to make himself free, and to be worthy of freedom. XVII A WORLD IN FERMENT An Address delivered at the 163d Commencement of Columbia University, June 6, 1917 ^ A WORLD IN FERMENT The hundreds, indeed the thousands, of American youth who pass out from this Uni- versity to-day go into a new and a strange world. It is more than a world at war; it is a world in ferment. From the steppes of Russia all the way across Europe and America and around to Japan and China, men and nations are not only engaged in a titanic military strug- gle but they are also examining and, when necessary, quickly readjusting and reorganiz- ing their customary habits of thought and of action, private as well as public. It is not easy, perhaps it is impossible, to find an Ari- adne who will give us a guiding thread through this labjmnth of change. Presuppositions that have long sustained the solid fabric of personal and of national conduct have been destroyed. Assumptions that have seemed to be made certain by the earlier progress of man have disappeared under the pressure of the latest manifestations of trained human capacity for evil. 245 246 A WORLD IN FERMENT Before such a scene the timid will despair, while the reckless will affect an indifference that they cannot really feel. The wise will follow a different course. They will not be hurried into judging of normal man on the basis of his latest abnormalities, and they will not permit them- selves to forget all that human history teaches because the happenings of the moment seem to teach something quite different. The wise will not lose their sense of proportion in judg- ing of events in time, in space, or in circum- stance. Each individual whose training has really reached the depths of his nature and so has formed his habits of thought and of action, will first examine his own relation to what is going on in the world, and will next inquire how that which is going on is to be judged in terms of everlasting standards of right and of wrong, of progress and of decline. He will first of all find himself to be a member of a politi- cally organized group which is a nation. He will find himself beholden to that group, to its traditions, to its ideals, and to its highest in- terests, not as a parasite but as a strengthen- ing and a contributing force. Recognition of A WORLD IN FERMENT 247 this relationship will be the basis of his loyalty, and the measure of his loyalty will be not lip- service but sacrifice. He will in this way dis- cover that the ends of which his group or na- tion is in search are the ends that he must strive to accomplish. It will not be difficult for him to see that in most cases, in the vast majority of cases, these ends are to be reached by persuasion, by argument, by consent, but that in the last resort if they be ends on which turns the whole future of mankind they must, if need be, find protection and defense in physi- cal and military force. This is a sad but sig- nificant evidence of the incomplete develop- ment of mankind. He will next apply the standards of moral excellence and approval to the present-day conduct of men and of nations, with a view to determining whether the changes that are going forward are making for human progress or for human decline. He will be led to answer this question by the relative importance accorded to ideas and ideals. If men and nations are engaged in a blind struggle for material gain, for mere conquest, for revenge, or for future privileges, then what is going on is in high de- 248 A WORLD IN FERMENT gree a manifestation of bestiality in man. If, on the other hand, the struggle be one for the establishment on the largest possible scale, in the securest possible way, of those institutions and opportunities which make man free, then the contest rises to the sublime. In this latter case every contestant on behalf of such a cause is a hero, and every one who offers his life and his strength and his substance is a sincere lover of his kind. It may therefore well be that it is for the issue of this war to determine whether man- kind is still in progress or has begun his decline. If the moral, the economic, and the physical power of men and of nations that love freedom is adequate to its establishment on a secure basis, then mankind is still in progress and new vistas of satisfaction and of accomplishment are to be spread out before him. If, on the other hand, the strength of men and of nations that love freedom is not adequate to this severe task, then man has crossed the Great Divide of his political history and is to begin a descent into those dark places where force and cruelty and despotism wreak their will. Nothing less than this is the alternative which A WORLD IN FERMENT 249 now confronts not alone the nations of the earth, but every individual in each one of those nations. The responsibility for action and for service cannot be devolved upon some one else, least of all can it be devolved upon government officials and government agencies. These have their great part to play, but in last resort the issue will be decided, not by governments, not even by armies and by na- vies, but by men and women who are the sup- port of all these and whose convictions and stern action are the foundation upon which government and armies and navies rest. Let there be no faltering by any son or daughter of Columbia. The clock of time is about to strike the most portentous hour in all history. May each child of this ancient University take inspiration and courage from Alma Mater herself, who in her long life has in time of trouble never wavered, in time of danger never hesitated, in time of difficulty never doubted. May all her children be for- ever worthy of her! INDEX Adams, John Quincy, 190, 236 Administration, improvement of public, 168 Admiralty, the, 182 Africa, 91, 141; South, 99 AJaska, 157 Alexander the Great, 136 American development, three peri- ods in, 104; international policy, difficulties of, 156, 240; isolation, end of, 92, i8g; Prot- estant College, 64; repubhcs, South, 61, 62, 63, 180; Revolu- tion, 210 Arbitral Justice, Court of, 194 Arbitration, Court of, 193 Argentina, 62 Armaments and peace, 18 Asia, 91, 136, 141, 176 Asquith, Herbert H., 57 Australia, 91 Austria-Hungary, 17, 32, 54,140, 197 Balfour, Arthur James, 232 Balkan peninsula, the, 222 Baltimore, 91 Beaconsfield, Lord, 33 Beirut, 64 Belgium, 4, 147, 174, 177 Berkeley, Bishop, 70 Berlin, 193 Bismarck, 33, 38 Bosporus, 64 Brazil, 62 British Empire, 230; Navy, 177, 186 Brussels, 198 Bryce, Viscount, 97 Buenos Aires, 15 Bulgaria, 64 Biilow, Prince von, 193 Caesar, Julius, 222 Calgacus, 8 California, 140, 157 Caribbean, 120 Carson, Sir Edward, 182 Case, Newfoundland Fisheries, 195; Pious Fund, 194 Caucasus, 55 Central Powers, 184 Chamberlain, Joseph, 99 Charlemagne, 118, 136 Chili, 62 China, 60, 245 Choate, Joseph H., 96 Civil War, 103, 109 Clay, Henry, 190, 236 Clough, Arthur Hugh, 23 College, American Protestant, 64; Columbia, 145, 232; King's, 145; Robert, 64 Colorado, 59, 157 Columbia CoUege, 145, 232; University, 146, 149, 150, 223, 224, 225, 229, 249 Commission, Tariff, 96; Trade, 96 Committee on Foreign Relations, 235 Commons, House of, 182 Concord Bridge, 145 Concorde, Place de la, 208 Congress of the United States, 35, 44, 146, 156, 157, 186 Connecticut, 59 Constantinople, 64 Constitution of the United States, the, log, no, 122, 138, 159, 160, 177, 188 Court of Arbitration, 193; of Arbitral Justice, 194; of the United States, Supreme, 36, 58, 195. 197 Craonne, 222 Cuba, 44, 59, 60, 62 CunliJBfe, Lord, 232 Declaration of Independence, the, no, 138, 142, 178, 188 Democracy and international peace, 52 251 252 INDEX Detroit, 65 Discipline and liberty, 212 Disintegrating forces in American life, 123 Douglas, Senator, 129 Durable peace, the road to, 231 Economic group, interests of an — versus national sovereignty, 161 Economic production, the human element in, 162 Eden, 222 Empire, British, 230; Roman, 90, 13s, 17s England, 41, 42, 70, 183, IQS, 212 Europe, 14, 17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 28, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 54, 57, 58, 6s, 70, 90, 91, 94, 95, 107, 108, 121, 124, 135, 137, 138, 141, 154, 15s, 156, 165, 167, 176, 178, 187, 188, 190, 194, 216, 236, 24s "Federalist, The," 159 Federation and internationalism, 30, 140 Florida, 140, 157 Ford, Henry, 65 Fort Sumter, 145, 173 France, 4, 6, 15, 22, 54, 121, 139, 140, 177, 193, 197, 200, 212, 230 Franco-Prussian War, the, 17, 34 Franklin, Benjamin, 190, 236 Frederick the Great, 15 French RepubHc, the, 156, 230; Revolution, the, 133, 210 Gambetta, 100 Geneva Arbitration, 34 George II, 15, 232 German Emperor, the, 118, 193, 194 Germany, 17, 22, 32, 54, 139, 193 Gettysburg, 177; Address, 138, 189 Gogol, 217, 218 Government and liberty, 78 Great Britain, 6, 54, 99, 121, 139, 140, 193, 195, 197, 200, 230 Guatemala, 134 Gulflight, 50 Hague Conferences, the, 192, 196, i97> 237; Conferences and the United States, the, 192; Con- ventions, the, 4, 55; the, 35, 192, 194 Hamilton, Alexander, 109, 129, 142, 14s, 230, 236 Harrison, President, 158 Hay, John, 39 Holland, 121, 139 Holls, Frederick W., 193, 194 Home and nation, 80 Honduras, 134 House of Commons, 182 Human element in economic pro- duction, the, 162 Idaho, 157 Independence, the Declaration of, no, 138, 142, 178, 188 Industrial and social organization, effect of the war on, 153, 200; peace and international peace. Industry, better organization of, 163 Institution building and time, 211 International mind, the, 43, 237; order, proposals for an, 55; peace and industrial peace, 65; pohcy, difficulties of American, 156, 240 Internationalism, colloidal and crystalline, 7; and federation, 30, 140 Iran, 127 Isolation, the end of American, 92, 189 Italy, 139, 140, 183, 185, 197 Japan, 60, 180, 197, 245 Jaures, 22 Jay, John, 145, 236 Jefferson, Thomas, 109, 129, 142, 190, 236 Joffre, Marshal, 232 Juhus Caesar, 222 Kennan, George, 207, 208, 215 King's College, 145 Kossuth, 190 INDEX 253 La Fayette, 190, 230 La Follette Shipping Bill, 157 Laon, 222 Learning, the Revival of, 175 Liberty and discipUne, 212; and government, 78 Lincoln, Abraham, 75, 76, 103, 109, no, 114, 129, 142, 145, 190, 223, 229; Second Inaugural Ad- dress of, 75, 76, 138 Liverpool, 35 Livingston, Chancellor, 145, 190, 236 Louis XV, IS Louisiana, 157 Lowell, 14, 149 Lusitania, 50, 174 McKinley, President, 158 Magnitude of the war, the, 90, 134, 175 Maine, 140 Manchuria, 60 Marathon, 176 Marshall, John, 109, 122, 142 Massachusetts Bay, 121 Masurian Lakes, the, 222 Mayflower, the, 138 Mazzini, 189 Mediterranean, 64, 65 Meredith, George, 117 Mexico, 60, 61, 62, 194; policy of the United States toward, 62 Militarism, 21, 3^9 Mississippi, 157 Monroe Doctrine, the, 63, 95 Montana, 157 MuravieS, Count, 217 Nagasaki, 35 Napoleon, 91, 136 Nation and home, 80; building, 118; defined, 40; the soul of the, 180 National organization, better, 96; preparation for national ser- vice, 165; sovereignty versus the interests of an economic group, 161 Neva, 216 NewEngland, 31, 64; Orleans, 91; York, 15, 31, 35, 91, 195, 230, 232 Newfoundland Fisheries Case, 195 Niagara, 88 North Sea, 55 Oregon, 157 Organization, better national, 96; of industry, better, 163 Palmerston, ^t, Panama Canal Tolls, 44 Paris, 184 Parliament, 35 Patriotism a modem growth, 69 Peace, 8; and armaments, 18; and democracy, international, 52; road to a durable, 231 Pennsylvania, 31 Pericles, 93 Periods in American develop- ment, three, 104 Peru, 62 Philippines, the, 44 Pilgrim Fathers, the, 138, 236 Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth, 236 Pious Fund Case, 194 Place de la Concorde, 208 Piatt Amendment, 59; Senator O. H., 59 Poland, 4 Postal Conventions, the, 35 Preparation for national service, national, 165 Preparedness, the object of, 109 President of the United States, the, 15, 60, 76, 105, 146, 147, 148, 169, 186, 194, 196, 223 Proposals for an international order, 55 Prussia, 15 Public administration, improve- ment of, 168 Puget Sound, 91 Railways of the United States, needs of, 160 Reichstag, 35 Rhode Island, 31 254 INDEX Roman Empire, go, 135, 175 Rome, 46, 41 Roosevelt, President, 158, 194, 196 Root, Elihu, 59, 195, 196 Roumania, 4 Rousseau, influence of Jean Jac- ques, 210 Russia, 17, 54, 60, 140, 184, 197, 212, 216, 218, 245; responsi- bility (A, 184 Russian revolution, the, 210, 213 Russo-Japanese War, 60 Secretary of State, the, 60 Senate of the United States, the, 105, 23s Serbia, 4, 54, 77 Service, national preparation for national, 165 Soul of the nation, the, 180 South American republics, the, 61, 62, 63, 180 Spain, 180 Spanish War, 44, 59 Sparta, 94 State Department, the, 105; the Secretary of, 60 S^esLcXflifxiration, the United States, 65 Stubbs, 99 Sumter, Fort, 145, 173 Supreme Court of the United States, the, 36, 58, 195, 197 Syria, 64 Tacitus, 8 Taft, President, 158 Talleyrand, 236 Tariff Commission, 96 Teller, Senator Henry M., 59 Texas, 157 Thinking internationally, 99, iii Three periods of American de- velopment, 104 Time and institution building, 211 Tolstoy, 213, 214 Trade Commission, 96 Tsar, the, 196, 211, 213 United States, the Congress of the, 35, 44, 146, 156, 157, 186; the Constitution of the, lOg, no, 122, 138, 159, 160, 177, 188; of Europe, the, 27, 31, 32; the Government of the, 3, 4, 58, 157, 168, 235, 236, 240; and the Hague Conferences, the, 192; needs of the railways of the, 160; the people of the, 3, 4, 27, 54, 61, 99, 100, 168, 169, 190, 235, 239, 240; policy of the, toward Mexico, 62; the President of the, 15, 60, 76, 105, 146, 147, 148, 169, 186, 194, 196, 223; Secretary of State of the, 60; Senate of the, 105, 235; Steel Corporation, 65; Supreme Court of the, 36, 58, 195, 197 Uruquay, 62 Vimy ridge, 222 Virginia, 121 Vistula, 208, 216 Viviani, M. Ren6, 231 Volga, 216 . Wall Street, 91 Walpole, Horace, 70 War a true world war, the, 147; effect of the, on industrial and social organization, 153, 200; the Franco-Prussian, 17, 34; magnitude of the, 90, 134, 175; the Russo-Japanese, 60; the Spanish, 44, 59 Washington, D. C, 169, 170; Farewell Address of, 75, 76 no; George, 98, 107, 129, 138, 142, 187, 190; State of, 140, 157. Webster, Daniel, 109, 122, 142 White, Andrew D., 193, 194 Whitehall, 208 World power, old and new, 49 Yellow Sea, 208 Yokohama, 35 Zemstvos, 214 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIF This bc^k is due ^ ' *^^ or ^^ DATE DUE Ti) ^ ■V ,v:,. ,-, - ^ ■ -** 1 w \ 022003 1 1 M 1 ^ %^\ \ J\jl \ g LvJw^ 1 S- t^~ Printed in US* COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES "" 0022853421 94-0.9\ o 1 • -O 4- 1 o * fH p o [ • h- 1 O f^ ^ >t !> r O 33 ^^Tl