_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
Each one of the principal combatants in Europe seems to be anxious to
prove that it is not responsible for this cruelest, most extensive, and
most destructive of all wars. Each Government involved has published the
correspondence between its Chief Executive and other Chief Executives,
and between its Chancellery or Foreign Office and the equivalent bodies
in the other nations that have gone to war, and has been at pains to
give a wide circulation to these documents. To be sure, none of these
Government publications seems to be absolutely complete. There seems to
be in all of them suppressions or omissions which only the future
historian will be able to report--perhaps after many years. They reveal,
however, the dilapidated state of the Concert of Europe in July, 1914,
and the flurry in the European Chancelleries which the ultimatum sent by
Austria-Hungary to Servia produced. They also testify to the existence
of a new and influential public opinion, about war and peace, to which
nations that go to war think it desirable to appeal for justification or
moral support.
These publications have been read with intense interest by impartial
observers in all parts of the world, and have in many cases determined
the direction of the readers' sympathy and good will; and yet none of
them discloses or deals with the real sources of the unprecedented
calamity. They relate chiefly to the question who struck the match, and
not to the questions who provided the magazine that exploded, and why
did he provide it. Grave responsibility, of course, attaches to the
person who gives the order to mobilize a national army or to invade a
neighbor's territory; but the real source of the resulting horrors is
not in such an order, but in the Governmental institutions, political
philosophy, and long-nurtured passions and purposes of the nation or
nations concerned.
German Desire for World Empire.
The prime source of the present immense disaster in Europe is the desire
on the part of Germany for world empire, a desire which one European
nation after another has made its supreme motive, and none that has once
adopted it has ever completely eradicated. Germany arrived late at this
desire, being prevented until 1870 from indulging it, because of her
lack of unity, or rather because of being divided since the Thirty
Years' War into a large number of separate, more or less independent,
States. When this disease, which has attacked one nation after another
through all historic times, struck Germany it exhibited in her case a
remarkable malignity, moving her to expansion in Europe by force of
arms, and to the seizure of areas for colonization in many parts of the
world. Prussia, indeed, had long believed in making her way in Europe by
fighting, and had repeatedly acted on that belief. Shortly before the
achievement of German unity by Bismarck she had obtained by war in 1864
and 1866 important accessions of territory and leadership in all
Germany.
With this desire for world empire went the belief that it was only to
be obtained by force of arms. Therefore, united Germany has labored with
utmost intelligence and energy to prepare the most powerful army in the
world, and to equip it for instant action in the most perfect manner
which science and eager invasion could contrive. To develop this supreme
military machine universal conscription--an outgrowth of the conception
of the citizens' army of France during the Revolution--was necessary; so
that every young man in Germany physically competent to bear arms might
receive the training of a soldier, whether he wished it or not, and
remain at the call of the Government for military duty during all his
years of competency, even if he were the only son of a widow, or a
widower with little children, or the sole support of a family or other
dependents. In order to the completeness of this military ideal the army
became the nation and the nation became the army to a degree which had
never before been realized in either the savage or the civilized world.
This army could be summoned and put in play by the Chief Executive of
the German Nation with no preliminaries except the consent of the
hereditary heads of the several States which united to form the empire
in 1870-71 under the domination of Prussia, the Prussian King, become
German Emperor, being Commander in Chief of the German Army. At the word
of the Emperor this army can be summoned, collected, clothed, equipped
and armed, and set in motion toward any frontier in a day. The German
Army was thus made the largest in proportion to population, the best
equipped, and the most mobile in the world. The German General Staff
studied incessantly and thoroughly plans for campaigns against all the
other principal States of Europe, and promptly utilized--secretly,
whenever secrecy was possible--all promising inventions in explosives,
ordnance, munitions, transportation, and sanitation. At the opening of
1914 the General Staff believed that the German Army was ready for war
on the instant, and that it possessed some significant advantages in
fighting--such as better implements and better discipline--over the
armies of the neighboring nations. The army could do its part toward the
attainment of world empire. It would prove invincible.
A Great German Navy.
The intense desire for colonies, and for the spread of German commerce
throughout the world, instigated the creation of a great German navy,
and started the race with England in navy building. The increase of
German wealth, and the rapid development of manufactures and commercial
sea power after 1870-71, made it possible for the empire to devote
immense sums of money to the quick construction of a powerful navy, in
which the experience and skill of all other shipbuilding nations would
be appropriated and improved on. In thus pushing her colonization and
sea-power policy Germany encountered the wide domination of Great
Britain on the oceans; and this encounter bred jealousy, suspicion, and
distrust on both sides. That Germany should have been belated in the
quest for foreign possessions was annoying; but that England and France
should have acquired early ample and rich territories on other
continents, and then should resist or obstruct Germany when she aspired
to make up for lost time, was intensely exasperating. Hence chronic
resentments, and--when the day came--probably war. In respect to its
navy, however, Germany was not ready for war at the opening of 1914;
and, therefore, she did not mean to get into war with Great Britain in
that year. Indeed, she believed--on incorrect information--that England
could not go to war in the Summer of 1914. Neither the Government nor
the educated class in Germany comprehends the peculiar features of party
government as it exists in England, France, and the United States; and,
therefore, the German leaders were surprised and grievously disappointed
at the sudden popular determination of Great Britain and Ireland to lay
aside party strife and take strenuous part in the general European
conflict.
The complete preparation of the German Army for sudden war, the
authority to make war always ready in the hands of the German Emperor,
and the thorough studies of the German Staff into the most advantageous
plans of campaign against every neighbor, conspired to develop a new
doctrine of "military necessity" as the all-sufficient excuse for
disregarding and violating the contracts or agreements into which
Prussia or the new Germany had entered with other nations. To gain
quickly a military advantage in attacking a neighbor came to be regarded
as proper ground for violating any or all international treaties and
agreements, no matter how solemn and comprehensive, how old or how new.
The demonstration of the insignificance or worthlessness of
international agreements in German thought and practice was given in the
first days of the war by the invasion of Belgium, and has been continued
ever since by violation on the part of Germany of numerous agreements
concerning the conduct of war into which Germany entered with many other
nations at the Second Hague Conference.
Sanctity of National Contracts.
This German view of the worthlessness of international agreements was
not a cause of the present war, because it was not fully evident to
Europe, although familiar and of long standing in Germany; but it is a
potent reason for the continuance of the war by the Allies until Germany
is defeated; because it is plain to all the nations of the world, except
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey at the moment, that the hopes of
mankind for the gradual development of international order and peace
rest on the sanctity of contracts between nations, and on the
development of adequate sanctions in the administration of international
law. The new doctrine of military necessity affronts all law and is
completely and hopelessly barbarous.
World empire now, as always, is to be won by force--that is, by conquest
and holding possession. So Assyria, Israel, Macedonia, Athens, Rome,
Islam, England, and France have successively believed and tried to
accomplish in practice. United Germany has for forty years been putting
into practice, at home and abroad, the doctrine of force as the source
of all personal and national greatness and all worthy human
achievements. In the support of this doctrine, educated Germany has
developed and accepted the religion of valor and the dogma that might
makes right. In so doing it has rejected with scorn the Christian
teachings concerning humility and meekness, justice and mercy,
brotherhood and love. The objects of its adoration have become Strength,
Courage, and ruthless Will-power; let the weak perish and help them to
perish; let the gentle, meek, and humble submit to the harsh and proud;
let the shiftless and incapable die; the world is for the strong, and
the strongest shall be ruler. This is a religion capable of inspiring
its followers with zeal and sustained enthusiasm in promoting the
national welfare at whatever cost to the individual of life, liberty, or
happiness, and also of lending a religious sanction to the extremes of
cruelty, greed, and hate. It were incredible that educated people who
have been brought up within earshot of Christian ethics and within sight
of gentle men and women should all be content with the religion-of-valor
plan. Accordingly, the finer German spirits have invented a supplement
to that Stone Age religion. They have set up for worship a mystical
conception of the State as a majestic and beneficent entity which
embraces all the noble activities of the nation and guides it to its
best achievements. To this ideal State every German owes duty,
obedience, and complete devotion. The trouble with this supplement to
the religion of valor is that it dwells too much on submission,
self-sacrifice, and discipline, and not enough on individual liberty and
self-control in liberty. Accordingly, when the valiant men got control
of the Government and carried the nation into a ferocious war, they
swept away with them all the devotees of this romantic and spiritual
State. The modern German is always a controlled, directed, and drilled
person, who aspires to control and discipline his inferiors; and in his
view pretty much all mankind are his inferiors. He is not a freeman in
the French, English, or American sense; and he prefers not to be.
What German Domination Would Mean.
The present war is the inevitable result of lust of empire, autocratic
government, sudden wealth, and the religion of valor. What German
domination would mean to any that should resist it the experience of
Belgium and Northern France during the past three months aptly
demonstrates. The civilized world can now see where the new German
morality--be efficient, be virile, be hard, be bloody, be rulers--would
land it. To maintain that the power which has adopted in practice that
new morality, and in accordance with its precepts promised Austria its
support against Servia and invaded Belgium and France in hot haste, is
not the responsible author of the European war, is to throw away memory,
reason, and common sense in judging the human agencies in current
events.
The real cause of the war is this gradually developed barbaric state of
the German mind and will. All other causes--such as the assassination of
the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, the sympathy of Russia with
the Balkan States, the French desire for the recovery of
Alsace-Lorraine, and Great Britain's jealousy of German
aggrandizement--are secondary and incidental causes, contributory,
indeed, but not primary and fundamental. If any one ask who brought the
ruling class in Germany to this barbaric frame of mind, the answer must
be Bismarck, Moltke, Treitschke, Nietzsche, Bernhardi, the German
Emperor, their like, their disciples, and the military caste.
Germany Never Dreaded Russia.
Many German apologists for the war attribute it to German fear of
Russia. They say that, although Germany committed the first actual
aggression by invading Belgium and Luxemburg on the way to attack France
with the utmost speed and fierceness, the war is really a war of
defense against Russia, which might desirably pass over, after France
has been crushed, into a war against Great Britain, that perfidious and
insolent obstacle to Germany's world empire. The answer to this
explanation is that, as a matter of fact, Germany has never dreaded, or
even respected, the military strength of Russia, and that the recent
wars and threatenings of war by Germany have not been directed against
Russia, but against Denmark, Austria, France, and England. In her
colonization enterprises it is not Russia that Germany has encountered,
but England, France, and the United States. The friendly advances made
within the last twenty years by Germany to Turkey were not intended
primarily to strengthen Germany against Russia, but Germany against
Great Britain through access by land to British India. In short,
Germany's policies, at home and abroad, during the last forty years have
been inspired not by fear of Russia, or of any other invader, but by its
own aggressive ambition for world empire. In the present war it thinks
it has staked its all on "empire or downfall."
Germany Should Be Defeated.
Those nations which value public liberty and believe that the primary
object of Government is to promote the general welfare by measures and
policies founded on justice, good-will, and respect for the freedom of
the individual cannot but hope that Germany will be completely defeated
in its present undertakings; but they do not believe that Germany is
compelled to choose between a life of domination in Europe and the world
and national death. They wish that all her humane culture and her genius
for patient and exact research may survive this hideous war and guide
another Germany to great achievements for humanity.
If the causes of the present immense catastrophe have been have
correctly stated, the desirable outcomes of the war are, no world empire
for any race or nation, no more "subjects," no Executives, either
permanent or temporary, with power to throw their fellow-countrymen
into war, no secret diplomacy justifying the use for a profit of all the
lies, concealments, deceptions, and ambuscades which are an inevitable
part of war and assuming to commit nations on international questions,
and no conscription armies that can be launched in war by Executives
without consulting independent representative assemblies. There should
come out from this supreme convulsion, a federated Europe, or a league
of the freer nations, which should secure the smaller States against
attack, prevent the larger from attempting domination, make sure that
treaties and other international contracts shall be public and be
respected until modified by mutual consent, and provide a safe basis for
the limitation and reduction of armaments on land and sea, no basis to
be considered safe which could fail to secure the liberties of each and
all the federated States against the attacks of any outsider or
faithless member. No one can see at present how such a consummation is
to be brought about, but any one can see already that this consummation
is the only one which can satisfy the lovers of liberty under law, and
the believers in the progress of mankind through loving service each to
all and all to each.
Extreme pacificists shrink from fighting evil with evil, hell with
hell, and advise submission to outrage, or at least taking the risk of
being forced into resigned submission. The believers in the religion of
valor, on the other hand, proclaim that war is a good thing in itself,
that it develops the best human virtues, invigorates a nation become
flaccid through ease and luxury, and puts in command the strong,
dominating spirit of a valid nation or race. What is the just mean
between these two extremes? Is it not that war is always a hideous and
hateful evil, but that a nation may sometimes find it to be the least of
two evils between which it has to choose? The justifiable and indeed
necessary war is the war against the ravager and destroyer, the enemy of
liberty, the claimant of world empire. More and more the thinkers of the
world see, and the common people more and more believe instinctively,
that the cause of righteous liberty is the cause of civilization. In the
conference which will one day meet to settle the terms of peace, and
therefore the future conditions of life in Europe, the example of the
American Republic in regard to armaments and war, the publicity of
treaties, and public liberty, security and prosperity may reasonably
have some influence.