Dr. Butler is President of Columbia University; received
Republican electoral vote for Vice President of the United
States, 1913; President of American Branch of Conciliation
Internationale; President American Historical Association;
Trustee Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Commander
Order of the Red Eagle (with Star) of Prussia; Commandeur de
Legion d'Honneur of France.
By Edward Marshall.
The United States of Europe.
Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, firmly
believes that the organization of such a federation will be the outcome,
soon or late, of a situation built up through years of European failure
to adjust government to the growth of civilization.
He thinks it possible that the ending of the present war may see the
rising of the new sun of democracy to light a day of freedom for our
transatlantic neighbors.
He tells me that thinking men in all the contending nations are
beginning vividly to consider such a contingency, to argue for it or
against it; in other words, to regard it as an undoubted possibility.
Dr. Butler's acquaintance among those thinking men of all shades of
political belief is probably wider than that of any other American, and
it is significant of the startling importance of what he says that by
far the greater number of his European friends, the men upon whose views
he has largely, directly or indirectly, based his conclusions, are not
of the socialistic or of any other revolutionary or semi-revolutionary
groups, but are among the most conservative and most important figures
in European political, literary, and educational fields.
This being unquestionably true, it is by no means improbable that in the
interview which follows, fruit of two evenings in Dr. Butler's library,
may be found the most important speculative utterance yet to appear in
relation to the general European war.
Dr. Butler's estimate of the place which the United States now holds
upon the stage of the theatre of world progress and his forecast of the
tremendously momentous rôle which she is destined to play there must
make every American's heart first swell with pride and then thrill with
a realization of responsibility.
The United States of Europe, modeled after and instructed by the United
States of America! The thought is stimulating.
Said Dr. Butler:
"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 lesson that they teach. If we learn rightly we
shall 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
through a shrewd handling of the new possibilities in international
trade.
"I hesitate to discuss any phase of the great conflict now raging in
Europe. By today's mail, for example, I received long, personal letters
from Lord Haldane, from Lord Morley, from Lord Weardale, and from Lord
Bryce. Another has just come from Prof. Schiemann of Berlin, perhaps the
Emperor's most intimate adviser; another from Prof. Lamasch of Austria,
who was the Presiding Judge of the British-American arbitration in
relation to the Newfoundland fisheries a few years ago, and is a member
of the Austrian House of Peers. Still others are from M. Ribot, Minister
of Finance in France, and M. d'Estournelles de Constant. These
confidential letters give a wealth of information as to the intellectual
and political forces that are behind the conflict.
"You will understand, then, that without disloyalty to my many friends
in Europe, I could not discuss with freedom the causes or the progress
of the war, or speculate in detail about the future of the European
problem. My friends in Germany, France, and England all write to me with
the utmost freedom and not for the public eye; so you see that my great
difficulty, when you ask me to talk about the meaning of the struggle,
arises from the obligation that I am under to preserve a proper personal
reserve regarding the great figures behind the vast intellectual and
political changes which really are in the background of the war.
"If such reserve is necessary in my case, it seems to me that it also is
necessary for the country as a whole. The attitude of the President has
been impeccable. That of the whole American press and people should be
the same.
"Especially is it true that all Americans who hope to have influence, as
individuals, in shaping the events which will follow the war, must avoid
any expression which even might be tortured into an avowal of
partisanship or final judgment.
"Even the free expression of views criticising particular details of the
war, which might, in fact, deserve criticism, might destroy one's chance
of future possible usefulness. A statement which might be unquestionably
true might also be remembered to the damage of some important cause
later on.
"There are reasons why my position is, perhaps, more difficult than that
of some others. Talking is often a hazardous practice, and never more so
than now.
"The World is at crossroads, and everything may depend upon the United
States, which has been thrust by events into a unique position of moral
leadership. Whether the march of the future is to be to the right or to
the left, uphill or down, after the war is over, may well depend upon
the course this nation shall then 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 ending of this war.
"The first of these is the fact that race antagonisms die away and
disappear under the influence of liberal and enlightened political
institutions. This has been proved in the United States.
"We have huge Celtic, Latin, Teutonic and Slavic 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 antagonisms have
become memories. This proves that such antagonisms are not mysterious
attributes of geography or climate, but that they are the outgrowth
principally 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 antagonisms are ill-founded. We have demonstrated
that racial antagonisms need not necessarily become the basis of
permanent hatreds and an excuse for war."
Hyphens Are Going.
"If human beings are given the chance they will make the most of
themselves, and, by living happily--which means by living at peace--they
will avoid conflict. The hyphen tends to disappear from American
terminology. The German-American, the Italio-American, the
Irish-American all become Americans.
"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 heart by the leaders of opinion in Europe when this war
ends.
"The second thing which we may press, with propriety, 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 in its application to unity of 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. Indeed,
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
Commonwealths, all bound together in unity and in loyalty to a common
political ideal and a common political purpose.
"Just as certainly as we sit here this must and will be the future of
Europe. There will 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. Disaster
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
Pennsylvania did try something of the sort after the Federal Government
had been formed, but, fortunately, their effort was a failure.
"The leaders of our national life had established such a flexible and
admirable plan of government that it was soon apparent that each State
could retain its identity, forming its own ideals and shaping its own
progress, and still remain a loyal part of the whole; that each State
could make a place for itself in the new federated nation 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 am sure is rising there behind
the war clouds. Europe's stupendous economic loss, which already has
been appalling and will soon be incalculable, will give us an
opportunity to press this argument home.
"True internationalism is not the enemy of the nationalistic principle.
"On the contrary, it helps true nationalism to thrive. The Vermonter is
more a Vermonter because he is an American, and there is no reason why
Hungary, for example, should not be more than ever before Hungarian
after she becomes a member 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 their federation has been notably
successful. So the idea of federation is familiar to German publicists.
"It is familiar, also, to the English, and has lately been pressed there
as the probable final solution of the Irish question.
"It has insistently suggested itself as the solution of the Balkan
problem.
"In a lesser way it already is represented in the structure of
Austria-Hungary."
America's Great Work.
"This principle of nation building, of international building through
federation, certainly has in it the seeds of the world's next great
development--and we Americans are in a position both to expand the
theory and to illustrate the practice. It seems to me that this is the
greatest work which America will have to do at the end of this war.
"These are the things which I am writing to my European correspondents
in the several belligerent countries by every mail.
"The cataclysm is so awful that it is quite within the bounds of truth
to say that on July 31 the curtain went down upon a world which never
will be seen again.
"This conflict is the birth-throe of a new European order of things. The
man who attempts 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 education of 500,000,000 people
which possibly could have been thought of, although it is the most
costly and most terrible means which could have been chosen. The results
of this education will be shown, I think, in the process of general
reconstruction which will follow.
"All the talk of which we hear so much 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 seriously 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 opportunity to
develop as social and economic units, and are not bottled up so that an
explosion must come.
"It is my firm belief that nowhere in the world, from this time on, will
any form of government be tolerated which does not set men free to
develop in this fashion."
I asked Dr. Butler to make some prognostication of what the United
States of Europe, which he so confidently expects, will be. He answered:
Has Advanced Much.
"I can say only this: The international organization of the world
already has progressed much further than is ordinarily understood. Ever
since the Franco-Prussian war and the Geneva Arbitration, both
landmarks in modern history, this has advanced inconspicuously, but by
leaps and bounds.
"The postal service of the world has been internationalized in its
control for years. The several Postal Conventions have been evidences of
an international organization of the highest order.
"Europe abounds in illustrations of the international 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."
One of the Examples.
"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 collected precisely as they would be in New York or
Liverpool.
"The world is gradually developing a code for international legal
procedure. Special arbitral tribunals have tended to merge and grow into
the international court at The Hague, and that, in turn, will develop
until it becomes a real supreme judicial tribunal.
"Of course the analogy with the federated State fails at some points,
but I believe the time will come when each nation will deposit in a
world federation some portion of its sovereignty.
"When this occurs we shall be able to establish an international
executive and an international police, both devised for the especial
purpose of enforcing the decisions of the international court.
"Here, again, we offer a perfect object lesson. Our Central Government
is one of limited and defined powers. Our history can show Europe how
such limitations and definitions can be established and interpreted, and
how they can be modified and amended when necessary to meet new
conditions.
"My colleague, Prof. John Bassett Moore, is now preparing and publishing
a series of annotated reports of the international arbitration
tribunals, 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 decided cases which, when the time comes, may be referred to
as precedents.
"It will be through graded processes such as this that the great end
will be accomplished. Beginning with such annotated reports as a basis
for precedents, each new case tried before this tribunal will add a
further precedent, and presently a complete international code will be
in existence. It was in this way that the English common law was built,
and such has been the admirable history of the work done by our own
judicial system.
"The study of such problems is at this time infinitely more important
than the consideration of how large a fine shall be inflicted by the
victors upon the vanquished."
The Chief Result.
"There is the probability of some dislocation of territory and some
shiftings of sovereignty after the war ends, but these will be of
comparatively minor importance. The important result of this great war
will be the stimulation of international organization along some such
lines as I have suggested.
"Dislocation of territory and the shifting of sovereigns as the result
of international disagreements are mediaeval practices. After this war
the world will want to solve its problems in terms of the future, not in
those of the outgrown past.
"Conventional diplomacy and conventional statesmanship have very
evidently broken down in Europe. They have made a disastrous failure of
the work with which they were intrusted. They did not and could not
prevent 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, 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, I
suppose, as similar work is accomplished with individuals. Courts, not
killings, have accomplished it with individuals.
"One more point ought to be remembered. We sometimes hear it said that
nationalism, the desire for national expression by each individual
nation, makes the permanent peace and good order of the world
impossible.
"To me it seems absurd to believe that this is any truer of nations than
it is of individuals. It is not each nation's desire for national
oppression which 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 judgment of their
neighbors and are influenced by it.
"When John Hay said that the Golden Rule and the open door should guide
our new diplomacy he said something which should be applicable 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 controlling principles of a democratic State is that its
military and naval establishments must be completely subservient to the
civil power. They should form the police, and not be the dominant factor
of any national 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 of the war's effect on us. As I see
it, our position will depend a good deal upon the outcome of the
conflict, and what that will be no one at present knows.
"If a new map of Europe follows the war, its permanence will depend upon
whether or not the changes are such as will permit nationalities 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 opposite of the mixing
process which is so successfully building a nation out of varied
nationalities in the United States.
"The old Romans understood 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 begins at that very moment to sow the seeds
of insurrection and revolution.
"My old teacher and colleague, Prof. Burgess, once defined a nation as
an ethnographic unit inhabiting a geographic unit. That is an
illuminating definition. If a nation 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 will
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 for me to point them out.
"Races rarely have been successfully mixed by conquest. The military
winner of 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 Teutons.
"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 successfully to deal with alien peoples is extraordinary.
The Romans were unusually 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 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 public
men who have never thought much about Europe, and who have been far from
a realization of its actual importance to us. It has been a place to
which to go for a Summer holiday.
"But, suddenly, they find they cannot sell their cotton there or their
copper, that they cannot market their stocks and bonds there, that they
cannot send money to their families who are traveling 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.
"All our trade and all our economic and social policies must recognize
this. The world has discovered that cash without credit means little.
One cannot use cash if one cannot use one's credit to draw it whenever
and wherever needed. Credit is intangible and volatile, and may be
destroyed over night.
"I saw this in Venice.
"On July 31 I could have drawn every cent that my letter of credit
called for up to the time the banks closed. At 10 in the morning on the
1st of August I could not draw the value of a postage stamp.
"Yet the banker in New York who issued my letter of credit had not
failed. His standing was as good as ever it had been. But the world's
system of international exchange of credit had suffered a stroke of
paralysis over night.
"This realization of international interdependence, I hope, 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 Mind.'
"When Joseph Chamberlain began his campaign after returning from South
Africa his keynote was, 'Learn to think imperially.' I think ours should
be, 'Learn to think internationally,' to see ourselves not in
competition with the other peoples of the world, but working with them
toward a common end, the advance of civilization."
A Note of Optimism.
"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 have come
to us, as they have done, asking our favorable public opinion. We have
no army and navy worthy of their fears. They can have been induced by
nothing save their conviction that we are the possessors of sound
political ideals and a great moral force.
"In other words, they do not 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 of their acts, because they feel that our judgment
will be the judgment of history. There is a lesson in this.
"If we had not repealed the Panama Canal Tolls Exemption act last June
they would not have come to us as they are doing now. Who would have
cared for our opinion in the matter of a treaty violation 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, than the building of the Panama Canal, or than anything
else I 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 today. 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 morality. That Europe is seeking our favor is the tribute
of the European nations to this fact."