_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
The great war has now been going on long enough to enable mankind to
form approximately correct views about its vast extent and scale of
operations, its sudden interference with commerce and all other helpful
international intercourse, its unprecedented wrecking of family
happiness and continuity, its wiping out, as it proceeds, of the
accumulated savings of many former generations in structures, objects of
art, and industrial capital, and the huge burdens it is likely to impose
on twentieth century Europe. From all these points of view, it is
evidently the most horrible calamity that has ever befallen the human
race and the most crucial trial to which civilization has been exposed.
It is, and is to be, the gigantic struggle of these times between the
forces which make for liberty and righteousness and those which make
for the subjection of the individual man, the exaltation of the State,
and the enthronement of physical force directed by a ruthless collective
will. It threatens a sweeping betrayal of the best hopes of mankind.
Each of the nations involved, horrified at the immensity of the
disaster, maintains that it is not responsible for the war; and each
Government has issued a statement to prove that some other Government is
responsible for the outbreak. This discussion, however, relates almost
entirely to actions by monarchs and Cabinets between July 23 and Aug.
4--a short period of hurried messages between the Chancelleries of
Europe--actions which only prove that the monarchs and Ministers for
Foreign Affairs could not, or at least did not, prevent the
long-prepared general war from breaking out. The assassination of the
Archduke and Duchess of Hohenberg on the 28th of June was in no proper
sense a cause of the war, except as it was one of the consequences of
the persistent aggressions of Austria-Hungary against her southeastern
neighbors. Neither was Russian mobilization in four military districts
on July 29 a cause of the war; for that was only an external
manifestation of the Russian state of mind toward the Balkan peoples, a
state of mind well known to all publicists ever since the Treaty of
Berlin in 1878. No more was the invasion of Belgium by the German Army
on Aug. 4 a true cause of the war, or even the cause, as distinguished
from the occasion, of Great Britain's becoming involved in it. By that
action Germany was only taking the first step in carrying out a
long-cherished purpose and in executing a judicious plan of campaign
prepared for many years in advance. The artificial panic in Germany
about its exposed position between two powerful enemies, France and
Russia, was not a genuine cause of the war; for the General Staff knew
they had crushed France once, and were confident they could do it again
in a month. As to Russia, it was, in their view, a huge nation, but
very clumsy and dull in war.
The real causes of the war are all of many years' standing; and all the
nations now involved in the fearful catastrophe have contributed to the
development of one or more of these effective causes. The fundamental
causes are: (1) The maintenance of monarchical Governments, each
sanctioned and supported by the national religion, and each furnished
with a Cabinet selected by the monarch--Governments which can make war
without any previous consultation of the peoples through their elected
representatives; (2) the constant maintenance of conscript armies,
through which the entire able-bodied male population is trained in youth
for service in the army or navy, and remains subject to the instant call
of the Government till late in life, the officering of these permanent
armies involving the creation of a large military class likely to become
powerful in political, industrial, and social administration; (3) the
creation of a strong, permanent bureaucracy within each nation for the
management of both foreign and domestic affairs, much of whose work is
kept secret from the public at large; and, finally, (4) the habitual use
of military and naval forces to acquire new territories, contiguous or
detached, without regard to the wishes of the people annexed or
controlled. This last cause of the war is the most potent of the four,
since it is strong in itself, and is apt to include one or more of the
other three. It is the gratification of the lust for world empire.
Of all the nations taking part in the present war, Great Britain is the
only one which does not maintain a conscript army; but, on the other
hand, Great Britain is the earliest modern claimant of world empire by
force, with the single exception of Spain, which long since abandoned
that quest. Every one of these nations except little Servia has yielded
to the lust for empire. Every one has permitted its monarch or its
Cabinet to carry on secret negotiations liable at any time to commit the
nation to war, or to fail in maintaining the peace of Europe or of the
Near East. In the crowded diplomatic events of last July, no phenomenon
is more striking than the exhibition of the power which the British
people confide to the hands of their Foreign Secretary. In the interests
of public liberty and public welfare no official should possess such
powers as Sir Edward Grey used admirably--though in vain--last July. In
all three of the empires engaged in the war there has long existed a
large military caste which exerts a strong influence on the Government
and its policies, and on the daily life of the people.
These being the real causes of the terrific convulsion now going on in
Europe, it cannot be questioned that the nation in which these complex
causes have taken strongest and most complete effect during the last
fifty years is Germany. Her form of government has been imperialistic
and autocratic in the highest degree. She has developed with great
intelligence and assiduity the most formidable conscript army in the
world, and the most influential and insolent military caste. Three times
since 1864 she has waged war in Europe, and each time she has added to
her territory without regard to the wishes of the annexed population.
For twenty-five years she has exhibited a keen desire to obtain colonial
possessions; and since 1896 she has been aggressive in this field. In
her schools and universities the children and youth have been taught for
generations that Germany is surrounded by hostile peoples, that her
expansion in Europe and in other continents is resisted by jealous
powers which started earlier in the race for foreign possessions, and
that the salvation of Germany has depended from the first, and will
depend till the last, on the efficiency of her army and navy and the
warlike spirit of her people. This instruction, given year after year by
teachers, publicists, and rulers, was first generally accepted in
Prussia, but now seems to be accepted by the entire empire as unified in
1871.
The attention of the civilized world was first called to this state of
the German mind and will by the triumphant policies of Bismarck; but
during the reign of the present Emperor the external aggressiveness of
Germany and her passion for world empire have grown to much more
formidable proportions. Although the German Emperor has sometimes played
the part of a peacemaker, he has habitually acted the war lord in both
speech and bearing, and has supported the military caste whenever it has
been assailed. He is by inheritance, conviction, and practice a
Divine-right sovereign whose throne rests on an "invincible" army, an
army conterminous with the nation. In the present tremendous struggle he
carries his subjects with him in a rushing torrent of self-sacrificing
patriotism. Mass fanaticism and infectious enthusiasm seem to have
deprived the leading class in Germany, for the moment, of all power to
see, reason, and judge correctly--no new phenomenon in the world, but
instructive in this case because it points to the grave defect in German
education--the lack of liberty and, therefore, practice in self-control.
The twentieth century educated German is, however, by no means given
over completely to material and physical aggrandizement and the worship
of might. He cherishes a partly new conception of the State as a
collective entity whose function is to develop and multiply, not the
free, healthy, and happy individual man and woman, but higher and more
effective types of humanity, made superior by a strenuous discipline
which takes much account of the strong and ambitious, and little of the
weak or meek. He rejects the ethics of the Beatitudes as unsound, but
accepts the religion of valor, which exalts strength, courage,
endurance, and the ready sacrifice by the individual of liberty,
happiness, and life itself for Germany's honor and greatness. A nation
of 60,000,000 holding these philosophical and religious views, and
proposing to act on them in winning by force the empire of the world,
threatens civilization with more formidable irruptions of a destroying
host than any that history has recorded. The rush of the German Army
into Belgium, France, and Russia and its consequences to those lands
have taught the rest of Europe to dread German domination, and--it is to
be hoped--to make it impossible.
The real cause of the present convulsion is, then, the state of mind or
temper of Germany, including her conception of national greatness, her
theory of the State, and her intelligent and skillful use of all the
forces of nineteenth century applied science for the destructive
purposes of war. It is, therefore, apparent that Europe can escape from
the domination of Germany only by defeating her in her present
undertakings; and that this defeat can be brought about only by using
against her the same effective agencies of destruction and the same
martial spirit on which Germany itself relies. Horrible as are the
murderous and devastating effects of this war, there can be no lasting
peace until Europe as a whole is ready to make some serious and
far-reaching decisions in regard to Governmental structures and powers.
In all probability the sufferings and losses of this widespread war must
go further and cut deeper before Europe can be brought to the decisions
which alone can give securities for lasting peace against Germany on the
one hand and Russia on the other, or to either of these nations, or can
give security for the future to any of the smaller nations of
Continental Europe. There can, indeed, be no security for future peace
in Europe until every European nation recognizes the fact that there is
to be no such thing in the world as one dominating nation--no such thing
as world empire for any single nation--Great Britain, Germany, Russia,
Japan, or China. There can be no sense of security against sudden
invasion in Europe so long as all the able-bodied men are trained to be
soldiers and the best possible armies are kept constantly ready for
instant use. There can be no secure peace in Europe until a federation
of the European States is established, capable of making public
contracts intended to be kept, and backed by an overwhelming
international force subject to the orders of an international tribunal.
The present convulsion demonstrates the impotence toward permanent
peace of secret negotiations, of unpublished agreements, of treaties and
covenants that can be broken on grounds of military necessity, of
international law if without sanctions, of pious wishes, of economic and
biological predictions, and of public opinion unless expressed through a
firm international agreement, behind which stands an international
force. When that international force has been firmly established it will
be time to consider what proportionate reductions in national armaments
can be prudently recommended. Until that glorious day dawns, no patriot
and no lover of his kind can wisely advocate either peace in Europe or
any reduction of armaments.
The hate-breeding and worse than brutal cruelties and devastations of
the war, with their inevitable moral and physical degradations, ought to
shock mankind into attempting a great step forward. Europe and America
should undertake to exterminate the real causes of the catastrophe. In
studying that problem the coming European conference can profit by the
experience of the three prosperous and valid countries in which public
liberty and the principle of federation have been most successfully
developed--Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States.
Switzerland is a democratic federation which unites in a firm federal
bond three different racial stocks speaking three unlike languages, and
divided locally and irregularly between the Catholic Church and the
Protestant. The so-called British Empire tends strongly to become a
federation; and the methods of Government both in Great Britain itself
and in its affiliated Commonwealths are becoming more and more
democratic in substance. The war has brought this fact out in high
relief. As to the United States, it is a strong federation of
forty-eight heterogeneous States which has been proving for a hundred
years that freedom and democracy are safer and happier for mankind than
subjection to any sort of autocracy, and affords far the best training
for national character and national efficiency. Republican France has
not yet had time to give this demonstration, being incumbered with many
survivals of the Bourbon and Napoleonic régimes, and being forced to
maintain a conscript army.
It is an encouraging fact that every one of the political or
Governmental changes needed is already illustrated in the practice of
one or more of the civilized nations. To exaggerate the necessary
changes is to postpone or prevent a satisfactory outcome from the
present calculated destructions and wrongs and the accompanying moral
and religious chaos. Ardent proposals to remake the map of Europe,
reconstruct European society, substitute republics for empires, and
abolish armaments are in fact obstructing the road toward peace and
good-will among men. That road is hard at best.
The immediate duty of the United States is presumably to prepare, on the
basis of its present army and navy, to furnish an effective quota of the
international force, servant of an international tribunal, which will
make the ultimate issue of this most abominable of wars not a truce, but
a durable peace.
In the meantime the American peoples cry with one voice to the German
people, like Ezekiel to the House of Israel: "Turn ye, turn ye from your
evil ways; for why will ye die?"