Dr. Giddings is Professor of Sociology and the History of
Civilization at Columbia University; author of many works on
sociology and political economy; President of Institut
Internationale de Sociologie, 1913.
By Edward Marshall.
No man in the United States is better entitled to estimate the probable
social and economic outcome of the present European debacle than Prof.
Franklin H. Giddings of Columbia, one of the most distinguished
sociologists and political economists in the United States.
"Today all Europe fights," he said to me, "but, also, today all Europe
thinks."
That is an impressive sentence, with which he concluded our long talk,
and with which I begin my record of it.
He believes that this thinking of the men who crouch low in the drenched
trenches and of the women who tragically wait for news of them will
fashion a new Europe.
He agrees with the remarkable opinions of President Butler, that that
new Europe will be marked by the rise of democracy.
He sees the probability of broadened individual opportunity in it,
accompanied by the breaking down of international suspicions; and he
thinks that all these processes, which surely make for peace, will
surely bring a lasting peace.
In the following interview, which Prof. Giddings has carefully reread,
will be found one of the most interesting speculative utterances born of
the war.
"The immediate economic cause of the war," said Prof. Giddings, "lay in
the affairs of Servia and Austria. Servia had been shut in. She had been
able to get practically nothing from, and sell practically nothing to,
the outside world, save by Austria's permission, while Austria, with
Germany professing fear of Slavic development, for years had been taking
every care to prevent the Balkan peoples from having free access to the
Adriatic.
"Some financial profit arose from this interning of the little States,
but it is probable that the desire for this was all along entirely
secondary to the fear of Balkan, especially Servian, political and
economic development.
"In the larger economic question Germany felt especial interest.
"In a comparatively few years she had made the greatest progress ever
made by any nation in an equal time, with the possible exception of that
made by the United States in a similar period after our civil war, and
it is probable that not even our own advance has equaled hers in
rapidity or extent, if all could be tabbed up.
"She had worked out a great manufacturing scheme, she had developed an
immense internal commerce by means of her railroads and her Rhine and
other waterways, she had built up an enormous trade with Eastern Europe,
Western Asia, South America, and the United States.
"She had highly specialized in and become somewhat dependent on the
production of articles like dyestuffs and the commodities of the
pharmacopoeia.
"Her shipping had advanced until it closely crowded England's; her
finances, on the whole, were well handled and her credit was excellent,
while her wonderful system of co-operation between the Government and
manufacturing producers and commercial distributers of all kinds had
become the admiration of all nations. The extent to which her Government
facilitated foreign trade through obtaining and distributing costly
information might well be taken as the world's model.
"Whatever claims be made or contested about her contributions to culture
and theoretical science, there can be no argument about her material
achievements."
German Achievements.
"Along every line her social organization of co-operation between the
Government and the people successfully handled problems feared by all
the outside world. While, as a result of the development of humane
feeling, England and the United States have been saying that ignorance,
vagabondage, and misery ought to be abolished, Germany has said, 'They
shall be!' And, saying it, she had actually commenced to abolish them.
"She had cut down enormous wastes of human energy and, for the first
time in the history of the world, had established an economic minimum
below which men and families were not permitted to sink.
"The cost of this was large; for insurance, colonies for tramps and
vagabonds, employment agencies, and the like; but Germany made it pay in
the creation of a nation built of loyal and efficient people. Both their
loyalty and their efficiency have been proved and reproved in the course
of the present struggle. They had accomplished marvels, they were ready
for amazing sacrifices.
"Now, one of the principal reasons why Germany was able to do these
things, although, she probably ignored it and possibly would deny it, is
to be found in the free-trade policy of England.
"At any time during the past twenty years England could have checked
German progress effectively by the establishment of a protective tariff
system designed to encourage her own colonies and other nations with
whom she had long been on friendly and influential terms, to the utmost
development of exclusive trade privileges designed to shut out Germany.
Except for the long-established English policy of commercial freedom
Germany could not have accomplished for herself what she has.
"Germany has been growing rapidly. Her birth rate has been high, but of
late it has been falling, and when the war began there were indications
that she soon would approach the low ratio of population increase
already characteristic of France, of New England and the Middle West in
the United States, and lately of England. But Germany's population was
still a growing one and, in a sense, a restive one.
"The Malthusian theory has not worked out in the civilized world as
Malthus supposed it would, for the application of science to
manufacturing, agriculture, &c., has prevented increasing populations
from pressing upon the means of subsistence; but in all parts of the
Western World the standards of living have been raised, the ambitions of
the average man and woman have expanded. They have lived better than
their parents lived, and they have wished their children to live better
still.
"However, we can place no limit upon the probable expansion of human
desires, and it is true that a population unchecked by the intelligent
action of the human will tends to increase at a rate more rapid than
that at which it is possible to raise the actual plane of human living.
"The speed of the working of the two rules is different, perhaps, but
both are dynamic, and the population of Germany tended to grow more
rapidly than betterment of conditions could be provided, even under the
nation's splendid governmental and commercial efficiency.
"The natural yearning of the nation, therefore, was toward colonial
expansion, and, although note that I make no charges against either the
German Government or German people, the nation probably has wished
sovereignty over Western Europe, through Belgium and Holland to the sea.
Its narrow outlet through Hamburg and Bremen was insufficient for its
needs.
"Of course, its trade and economic advance has sometimes conflicted
with that of other nations. It is natural for Germany to suppose that
England tried to block it. However, I think that all the evidence which
Germany has brought forward in proof of this is weak and improbable,
because England's great source of revenue has been her foreign trade,
and, above all, her carrying trade, and I am not partisan but stating
the obvious when I say that England prospers when the rest of the world
prospers, and that she has profited mightily through Germany's
commercial advance.
"These facts point to the conclusion that Germany really had everything
to gain by avoiding war and continuing her prosperous expansion along
commercial lines, increasing the strength of her grip in foreign
countries, as, for example, in South America."
Germany's Prosperous Commerce.
"In South America we Americans were not really competing with her. She
had studied the market and adopted the methods necessary to its
satisfaction; we had not. England was relatively losing her hold there.
In another twenty years Germany surely would have been one of the
greatest commercial and manufacturing nations which the world has ever
known. So it was not economic necessity, nor pressure approaching
economic necessity, which precipitated this war.
"I think the German people, as they professed to do, did become greatly
alarmed over a possibility, magnified into a probability, that Russia,
taking up the cause of the Balkan peoples, would obtain Constantinople,
that Servia would make her way to the Adriatic, and that all possibility
of the expansion of Germany to the southeast would be blocked, and
Germany probably became alarmed over England's intentions--there were
many indications of something close to panic in Germany after it was
generally understood that King Edward figured in the pact with France.
"I, for one, do not believe that the German fears of England were well
grounded; I do not believe that in the excitement the German mind worked
discriminatingly or that it is working with discrimination today. I
think that Germany has presented an extraordinary example of nation-wide
mobmindedness in a situation which offered nothing but ruin through war
and boundless advantages if she sat tight and waited for some one else
to strike the first blow, which, then, probably never would have been
struck.
"So, although I have outlined what I think may fairly be regarded as
some of the economic conditions contributing to the war, I do not think
that it is entirely to be explained by economic causes.
"They fail to account for the actual precipitation of the conflict. I
think that there is no explanation of that, short of recognition of an
abnormal reaction of the German mind to a situation the nature of which
was mistaken, or, at least, exaggerated.
"And, of course, there were other factors concerning which we shall not
know the truth for years, such as the personal influence of individual
minds in the German and other Governments. It will be long before the
complete history of the acts and negligence of diplomats and other
responsible Ministers will be written."
I asked Prof. Giddings if, in his opinion, the struggle is likely to
result in any wide and profound change in the economic life of the
world.
"Yes," he replied, "I think it is sure to. In the first place, for at
least half a generation, and perhaps longer, the producing capital of
the world will be much smaller than it was before the war.
"But in this speculation we must be cautious, because, so far, the
costly war material which has been consumed, such as fortresses
destroyed, guns worn out, ammunition consumed, soldiers' clothing, and
in general food, were principally accumulated and paid for long ago.
They have come out of the world's past production, and their cost
already has been written off.
"The real loss, the new waste, over and above the devastation of Belgium
and other lands, has been of labor, productive activity which would have
been carried on during the period of the war had the struggle been
avoided, the destruction of the lives of men in their economic prime,
the maiming of others to the depletion of their future usefulness and
the loss to European fatherhood.
"But if the war lasts a long time, necessitating the general renewal of
ships, fortresses, weapons, and stores, the waste will be enormous, for
the actual money expenditure will then come out of funds newly
accumulated or charged against the future, and not out of those set
aside in the past for war purposes."
One Great Change Occurring.
"Thus one great economic change already is occurring--the devastation
wrought, the destruction of hoarded funds and supplies and of useful
human life.
"There are others which are probable, but also problematical, although I
think we fairly may take them into account.
"Will the European nations, in settlement of their differences through
final terms of peace, simply endeavor to restore the old order, drawing
their lines of demarkation very strictly, enacting, for example, higher
tariffs, thinking that along that line will lie the easiest way of
re-establishing national finances?
"If so, the old contentions will be perpetuated. It will be the old
order of things over again.
"We shall again have the spirit of exclusiveness fostered and the old
suspicions bred. The old intense competition of nation with nation for
trade to the exclusion of other nations from the markets of the world
will return with its attendant inefficiency.
"But, on the other hand, the world will be an immense gainer through the
war if it is followed by a broad and rational review of the whole
situation and an adjustment of the map of Europe with due regard to the
ambitions and legitimate economic opportunities and capabilities of the
various peoples.
"This war may be the greatest good the world has ever known if it leaves
Europe in a mental state disposed to Broaden opportunity, to break down
suspicions, to eliminate barriers, and make commerce much freer than it
has been.
"Then Europe's economic recovery will be rapid, animosities will die
quickly away, and every nation which is now involved will progress with
a new speed, seeing that opportunity is created only through superiority
in fair competition.
"The next possibility, one far more nearly a probability, I think, than
the somewhat Utopian speculation in which I have just indulged, is that
after the war the world will have been deeply impressed by the
tremendous activity of Germany, whether she be victor or vanquished.
"What is the secret of her efficiency as manifested in the mobilization
of her vast army, in her use of science in new military devices, in her
holding of the elements of her national life together during the
struggle, in her keeping her industries going in the face of
unprecedented difficulties--all to a degree never before dreamed of?
will be a general query.
"Other nations will study the German plan, asking whether it is true, as
has been taught in America, that that Government is best which governs
least.
"It may be that this war will result, entirely apart from the urgency of
the labor problem which it will magnify, and wholly on the grounds of
general efficiency, in a general inquiry as to whether or not the time
has come for quasi-socialistic national developments.
"I think it unlikely that the war will give impetus to that proletarian
socialism which is founded on class consciousness and class struggle;
but it may urge forward a socialistic movement based upon the large and
fruitful idea that the best hope for the future is offered by the most
complete and highly organized co-operation of all elements, all
interests, all agencies which in their combination make up national
structures.
"As a matter of fact, I am an optimist, and I believe that this is about
what will come after this war ends.
"To put my theory in slightly different terms, I believe that the
conflict will greatly further the development of what perhaps may be
called 'public socialism,' and I mean by that the highest attainable
organization of whole peoples for the production of commodities, the
furtherance of enterprise, and the promotion of the general well-being.
"I think that when the world sobers up it will ask: 'How did Germany do
it?'
"Whether she wins or loses that must be the universal query, for whether
she wins or loses her achievement has been in many ways unprecedented.
"There can be but one answer to this query: She did it by an
organization which brought together in efficient co-operation the
individual, the quasi-private corporation, the public corporation, and
the Government upon a scale never before seen.
"The world is bound to take notice of this."
Will Fear Loss of Liberty.
I asked Prof. Giddings to go beyond economics and to consider the war's
probable results in their broader sociological aspects.
"If what I have predicted happens," he replied, "the democratic elements
of society in all nations will become apprehensive of the loss of
liberty.
"They will fear that in the interests of efficiency the perfected social
order will impose minute and unwelcome regulations upon individual life
and effort, and that a degree of coercive control will be established
which will end by making individuals mere cogs in the machine,
diminishing their importance, curtailing their usefulness and initiative
far more than is done by the great industrial corporations against which
the working classes already are protesting so loudly.
"And not only the working people but a large proportion of all other
classes will develop these fears, especially in those nations which,
during the last century, have built up popular sovereignty and
democratic freedom, as the terms are understood in England and America.
"We shall hear the argument that the loss of individual initiative and
personal self-reliance is too great a price to pay even for supreme
efficiency and the maximum production of material comforts.
"The problem which such a conflict of interests and opinions will
present may be speculatively defined as that of trying to find a way to
reconcile a maximum of efficiency organization with a maximum of
individual freedom.
"So stating it, we have to recognize that this has been the biggest
problem, in fact the comprehensive problem, that man, has faced
throughout human history, and the one which, really, he has been trying
to solve by the trial and error method in all his social experiments.
"It is the sociological as distinguished from the merely economic
problem.
"Human society exists because early in his career man discovered that
mutual aid, or team work, is, on the whole, in the struggle for
existence and the pursuit of happiness, a more effective factor than
physical strength or individual cleverness.
"Natural selection has acted not only upon individuals, but, in the
large sense, upon groups and aggregates of groups. The restrictions upon
individual life have developed in the interests of groups, or collective
efficiency.
"On the other hand, collective efficiency has no meaning, it serves no
purpose apart from the amelioration of individual life and the
development of individual personality.
"So long as groups fear one another and fight with one another the
restrictions upon individual liberty must be extreme in the interests of
the collective fighting efficiency of each group as a whole.
"All the possibilities of personal development, of individual freedom,
are involved in the larger possibilities of friendly relations between
nation and nation.
"Already the co-operative instinct has so grown that if war and the fear
of war could be eliminated, mankind would have relatively little
difficulty in working out ways and means of combining Governmental
action with individual initiative for purposes of economic production,
education, the promotion of the public health, and the administration
of justice.
"All those principles and rules which we call Morality are, in fact,
mere rules of the game of life. We play the game or do not play it; we
are fair or unfair.
"On the whole, most of us try to be fair because it has been found that
playing the game with a sense of fairness is the only way in which we
can succeed in working together for common ends without the necessity of
imposing upon ourselves coercive rules to hold our organization together
for possible mass attack upon the end in view.
"Social life, in this sense of playing the game fairly, has made man the
superior of the brutes he sprang from. There is nothing mysterious or
recondite about it.
"In order to work together men must understand one another. Therefore,
natural selection has picked out the intelligent for survival in the
social world; and in order to work together intelligent men must depend
on one another, abiding by their covenants.
"Therefore, again, natural selection has picked out what we call
Morality for survival in the social world. The whole further progress of
mankind would seem to hang upon the possibility that we can find a way
to limit and, if possible, to terminate wars between nations, for only
in that contingency can we hope to develop a social system in which a
supreme efficiency with a maximum of individual liberty can be combined
upon a working basis."
Application of the Facts.
"These are incontrovertible facts, and they find their application to
the existing European situation in various ways, the most important of
which will appear in the discovery that, valuable as conventions and
covenants of nation with nation may be, and intolerable as any violation
of them surely is, we cannot hope for general and unfailing observance
of them until the feeling of mankind and the whole attitude of the world
in respect to international as well as private conduct shall be that the
covenants and conventions shall become, in a degree, unnecessary.
"Already it is apparent that the entire world, including the peoples of
the nations at war as well as the peoples of the nations remaining
happily at peace, have, begun to think these thoughts and reflect upon
their momentous importance.
"Shocked and stunned as never before by a calamity for which we find no
measure in past human experience, mankind is bound to take at this
moment a more sober view, a broader and more rational view, of the
problems of responsibility and collective conduct than it hitherto has
been able even to attempt.
"The world is sure to ask what things make for sobriety of judgment and
integrity of purpose. It is sure in future more carefully to weigh
relative values, and will be disposed to count as unimportant many
things for which hitherto the armed men of nations have rushed into war.
"In a word, this war has made the whole world think as no one thing ever
has made it think before, and, after all, it is upon the habit of
thought that we must depend for all rational progress.
"Other wars and other great events have fostered sentiment, much of
which has been hopeful and useful; they have accomplished far-reaching
economic changes, many of them necessary.
"But the reactions of this war will surely go beyond all previous
experience. They already are and must be, in a far greater measure,
profoundly intellectual, and one of the consequences of this fact
inevitably will be the broadening and deepening of the democratic
current.
"When peace returns it will be seen that democracy has received a
hitherto unimagined impetus. Then it will be understood that democracy,
in one of its most important aspects, is popular thinking, that it is
the widest possible extension of the sense of responsibility.
"A democratic world will be, all in all, a peace-loving world.
"We may confidently expect far-reaching changes in the internal
political organization of the nations now involved. In every nation of
Europe the people are asking: What, after all, is this conflict all
about?
"They will ask this many times, and however they may answer it they
will, by consequence, follow the question with another: Shall we go on
fighting wars about the necessity, expedience, and righteousness of
which we have not been consulted?
"And to this query they will find only one answer--an emphatic negative.
"Sooner or later there will be a comprehensive political reorganization
of Europe, and when its day comes the rearrangement will be along the
lines of a republic rather than along the lines of any monarchy, however
liberal.
"Then international agreements will be unnecessary and there will be no
treaties to be broken--no 'scraps of paper' to be disregarded.
"Apparently Germany has been as successful in training her people to
think accurately along economic lines as she has been in training them
to work efficiently along such lines; and that accurate thought
undoubtedly is bearing startling fruit among the men today crouched in
the trenches on the firing lines."
Era of Individual Thought.
"England, on the other hand, and France have encouraged the free and
spontaneous life of democratic peoples. France and England, like the
United States, have been training their peoples to think efficiently of
and to appreciate and use liberty and initiative. And the men of these
two nations are, in turn, exercising that ability as they crouch in
their trenches.
"In other words, this war has precipitated an era of sober individual
thought about the individual's rights and responsibilities. It will
everywhere bring about a wider political organization of mankind, a
greater freedom of trade and opportunity, a more serious and thorough
education, a more earnest attention and devotion to the higher interests
of life, giving such thought preference above that overemphasis of
material comforts which has been so marked a feature of recent human
history.
"All these things will make for peace; and another and potent influence
will be the exhaustion of the weakened nations which will follow the
conflict. Because of that very weakness Europe will turn its unanimous
attention to the things of peace rather than to the things of war.
"The new Europe is being fashioned by those questioning men who now are
lying in the trenches.
"They are searching in the universe for answers to such inquiries as
they never dreamed about before, and the women, worrying at home--they,
too, are busy with a search for answers to hitherto undreamed-of
questions.
"They all are pondering great things for the first time. Their pondering
will be fruitful.
"Today all Europe fights, but, also, today all Europe thinks. And,
thinking, perhaps it may devise a better order, so that it may not ever
fight again."
[Illustration]
"To Americans Leaving Germany"