By Lyman Abbott.
_A Letter to The New York Sun._
Editor in Chief of The Outlook; author of numerous works on
theology, religion, and democracy.
_To the Editor of The New York Sun:_
In answer to your request for a statement of the causes and meaning of
the European war I write with necessary brevity, both because of the
limits on my time and the limits on your crowded columns.
What is the cause of the explosion of a powder magazine? The gases
stored in the powder. The lighted match is the occasion, not the cause
of the explosion. The cause of the European war is the spirit of envy,
jealousy, selfishness and suspicion in the so-called Christian nations.
The assassination by a Servian of the Crown Prince of Austria was only
the lighted match which set the European combustibles in flame.
In the United States we recognize the truth that the interests of each
State are identical with the interests of the Union, and that no State
can permanently prosper by reason of the misfortune of its neighbor. In
the German Empire since its unification each principality similarly
recognizes that the interests of the German Empire and the interests of
the several principalities are essentially identical. But there is no
such recognition of the common interest binding the warring nations of
Europe together.
Each nation looks with envy on the prosperity of its neighbor and acts
upon the assumption that its neighbor is a rival, and that its own
commerce and wealth can be built up only at the expense of its rival.
New York is quite willing that the harbor of Boston should be improved.
Bremen is quite willing that the harbor of Hamburg should be improved.
The west coast of England does not object to harbor facilities on the
east coast of England. But Germany envies England's harbor facilities,
and England and Germany are both resolved to prevent if possible Russia
from getting harbor facilities on the Mediterranean Sea. Not every
individual German, Austrian, Frenchman, and Englishman holds this
opinion, but the policies of these nations are governed by this spirit
of international rivalry.
A striking illustration of this spirit, perhaps the most striking
illustration in modern international life, is furnished by the military
party in Prussia. Gen. Bernhardi, in a volume entitled "Germany and the
Next War," has given what may be regarded as a semi-official
interpretation of German militarism. He holds that life is a struggle
for existence, with a survival of the fittest, and the strongest is the
fittest; that a military organization constitutes the true strength of a
nation; that there is no higher power in human life, certainly none in
international life, than the power of physical force; that only the
strong nation has a right to exist, and he objects to international
arbitration because it recognizes the right to life of a small nation.
In this volume he calls on Germany to establish a "world sovereignty" by
force of arms, and he indicates what should be the twofold purpose of
Germany in the next war, namely, to crush France and to establish such
world sovereignty of Germany.
Militarism to Blame.
It was this spirit which led Germany into the present war; this spirit
which denied that Belgium had any rights which Germany was bound to
respect; this spirit which inspired the military party in Germany to
regard its treaty with France and England guaranteeing the neutrality of
Belgium as only a "scrap of paper," and this spirit which could not and
apparently still does not comprehend why Belgium should be bound in
honor to defend her neutrality, or why England, with no very direct and
immediate interests to protect, should feel herself bound to come to the
defense of her weaker neighbor.
The delay of the German Army, which is likely to prove disastrous to her
designs, has demonstrated in her own chosen field that there is a force
in national honor and national conscience which can put up a very
efficient resistance to Krupp guns.
It is a great mistake to suppose that all Germany is actuated by this
spirit of militarism. Frederick William Wile, for over seven years the
chief German correspondent of The London Daily Mail, in an article in
The Outlook recently said: "There are 66,000,000 Germans; 65,000,000 of
them did not want war; the other million are the war party." But he adds
that now Germany is absolutely united and that the Germans will not
stack arms "till the last among them capable of shouldering a rifle is
incapacitated, till the last copper pfennig capable of purchasing
ammunition of war has vanished from their impoverished grasp."
There is in this nothing extraordinary. Whoever is responsible for
bringing on the war, the interests, the welfare, and in some sense the
honor of Germany are apparently involved in it. And yet it may be true,
and I believe it is true, that the defeat of Germany will be its
salvation, for it will be the overthrow of the spirit of militarism
inherited from Frederick the Great, and this has been the bane of the
German Empire.
In our civil war there was at first only a minority in most of the
Southern States in favor of secession, but when the national troops
invaded Virginia the South was as united for State independence as the
North was for national union, and yet today it will be difficult to find
anywhere in the South an intelligent man who does not recognize the
truth that the defeat of secession and the emancipation of the slave
have been of inestimable benefit to the Southern States.
I make no attempt here to apportion the responsibility for this war
between the several powers engaged in it. However this responsibility
must be shared among them I can see but one meaning in the awful
campaign. The victory of Germany would mean the victory of Prussian
militarism. The defeat of Germany will mean the defeat of Prussian
militarism, the rehabilitation of Germany as a great industrial and
educational power in the world, and probably the practical overthrow of
military autocracy in all Western Europe.
Divine Right of Kings Obsolete.
The campaigns of Napoleon ended for Western Europe the Divine right of
Kings. The campaigns of the Allies will end for Western Europe the
Divine right of the armed man. The Russo-Japanese war gave to Russia its
first representative assembly, the Duma. It is not unreasonable to hope
that the present European war will result in greatly enlarging the
powers of the Duma and establishing true constitutional government in
Germany, a government in which the Ministry will be responsible not to
the Emperor but to the Reichstag; and the power both of the purse and
the sword will not be in the hands of an aristocratic oligarchy but in
the hands of the common people.
It is not strange that men should point to this, perhaps the greatest
war of history, as an evidence that Christianity is a failure. If
Christianity professed to be able by a miracle to transform human nature
at once, such a war would be fatal to its claim. But no such claim can
be made for Christianity. It is a great human movement, a phase of the
gradual evolution of man, governed by conscience and reason, out of the
brute, governed by appetite and passion.
Man as he is seen in the world to day is an unfinished product. He is in
the making. The best that can be said of a Christian is that he is
further along toward the goal of humanity than the barbarian.
Theological doctrines such as the Trinity, the Atonement, and the like
are not the essential doctrines of Christianity. The essential doctrine
is that life is a struggle for others as well as for self; that in this
struggle every one owes a duty to his neighbor, and the stronger he is
and the greater the need of his neighbor the more imperative is his
duty; that as the father and the mother care for, educate and govern
their child until he grows able to care for, educate and govern himself,
so always the strong men and women owe the duty of protection,
education, and, in some measure, government to the weaker of the human
race until they have outgrown the need for it.
In so far as autocracy is the rule of the few for the benefit of the few
it is paganism. In so far as democracy is the rule of the many for the
benefit of the many it is Christianity. He who believes this will
perhaps believe with me that in a true sense this is a religious war,
the war of conscience, honor, the moral sense against the rule of the
bayonet and the bullet.
The cynic who thinks this war demonstrates the failure of Christianity
should not forget such facts as the heroic struggle of Belgium to
maintain her neutrality, the resolve of England at every cost to
maintain her pledges to Belgium, the Red Cross following the armies in
the field and ministering to the sick, the wounded and the suffering,
regardless of their nationality, the general kind treatment to
prisoners, accentuated by some very horrible exceptions, and all this
contrasted with the enslaving, torturing, the crucifying, the flaying
alive of prisoners captured in war by barbaric nations before the dawn
of Christianity.