By Hugo Muensterberg.
The subjoined letter from Hugo Muensterberg, Professor of
Psychology at Harvard University, is addressed to Augustus
J. Cadwalader, Secretary of the National Provisional
Committee for the League to Enforce Peace.
Clifton, Mass., June 9, 1915.
Dear Sir: I beg to express my thanks for the courtesy of the
invitation to attend the conference of the League of Peace in
Independence Hall under the Presidency of the Hon. W.H. Taft. I feel
myself, of course, in deepest sympathy with the spirit of justice and
peacefulness which has suggested the foundation of such a league.
Nevertheless, I beg to be excused from attendance, as I am convinced
that this time of international excitement and prejudice is unfit for
the crystallization of new forms for the common life of the nations.
I venture, however, to add that I feel in any case grave doubts of the
value of any plans which aim to secure future peace by the traditional
type of agreements and treaties. We live in the midst of a war in
which one belligerent nation after another has felt obliged to
disregard treaties and to interpret agreements in a one sided way.
Only yesterday Italy, without any reason of vital necessity, annulled
an agreement and a treaty which had appeared the firmest in European
politics, and which yet failed in the first hour of clashing
interests. A psychologist has no right to expect that the national
temper of the future will be different.
Moreover, the Supreme Court of the United States has sanctioned the
idea, which is shared practically by all nations, that treaties are no
longer binding when a situation has changed so that the fulfillment of
the agreement would be against the vital interests of the nation. We
have learned during the last ten months how easily such disburdening
changes can be discovered as soon as the national passions are
awakened.
The new plan depends upon only one new feature by which the mutual
agreement is to be fortified against the demands of national
excitement. The plan of the League of Peace promises the joint use of
military forces in case that one nation is unwilling to yield. But the
world witnesses today the clear proof that even the greatest
combination of fighting forces may be unable to subdue by mere number
a nation which is ready to make any sacrifice for its convictions. One
hundred and fifty millions are attacked by eight hundred and fifty
millions, by joint forces from five continents, which moreover are
backed by the economic forces of the richest country in the world; and
yet after ten months of fighting one million prisoners, but no other
hostile soldiers, stand on German soil. After this practical example
the plan merely to join the military forces will less than ever appear
a convincing argument in an hour in which a nation feels its existence
or its honor threatened. For a long time we heard the claim that the
Socialists and the bankers would now make great wars impossible; both
prophecies have failed. The threat that the warring nation will have
to face the world in arms will be no less futile. But the failure in
this case will be disastrous, as the terms of such an agreement would
draw many nations into the whirlpool which would have no reason of
their own for entering the war.
The interests of strong growing nations will lead in the future as in
the past to conflicts in which both sides are morally in the right and
in which one must yield. We have no right to hope that after this war
the nations will be more willing to give up their chances in such
conflicts without having appealed to force. On the contrary, the world
has now become accustomed to war and will therefore more easily return
to the trenches. The break between England and Russia and finally the
threatening cloud of world conflict between Occident and Orient can
already be seen on the horizon; the battles of today may be only the
preamble. In such tremendous hours the new-fashioned agreements would
be cobwebs which surely could not bind the arms of any energetic
nation.
But, worst of all, they would not only be ineffective--they would
awake a treacherous confidence. The nations would deceive themselves
with a feeling of safety, while all true protection would be lacking.
The first step forward toward our common goal must be to learn the two
lessons of the war of today and to face them unflinchingly; mere
agreements do not and can not bind any nation on the globe in an hour
of vital need, and the mere joining of forces widens and protracts a
war, but does not hinder it. We must learn that success for peace
endeavors can be secured only from efforts to avert war which are
fundamentally different from the old patterns of pledges and threats.
These old means were negative; we need positive ones.
If a psychologist can contribute anything to the progress of mankind,
he must, first of all, offer the advice not to rely on plans by which
the attention is focused on the disasters which are to be avoided.
Education by forbidding the wrong action instead of awaking the
impulses toward the right one is as unpromising for peoples as it is
for individuals. We must truly build up from within. But a time in
which the war news of every hour appeals to sympathies and antipathies
is hardly the time to begin this sacred work, which alone could bring
us the blessed age of our vision, the United States of the World.