What is there of world-progress in the declaration of the present German Emperor, celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the Kingdom of Prussia,—

"In this world nothing must be settled without the intervention of Germany and of the German Emperor."



CHAPTER XV

THE GERMAN POSITION

An Aggressive Germany—The Logic of It—The War Party Supreme—A War for Business—What Confronts Germany—Her Finish.

A mighty nation surrounded and besieged, yet still fighting on foreign soil, is the position of Germany to-day. Her triumph would mean, not alone a European conquest, but a world-conquest. Her defeat within a reasonable time does not mean her destruction or dismemberment. It means only the destruction of Prussian militarism and that theory of national existence into which the German people have been led under the present emperor, that theory which teaches:—

"War and courage have done more great things than Charity."

"What is good? All that increases the feeling of power; the will to power."

"The weak and debauched must perish, and should be helped to perish."

This is the philosophy, the teaching and the language of Nietzsche and on it Treitschke and Bernhardi founded their war propaganda.

When Emperor William II ascended the throne and became the "All Highest War Lord," he found himself at the head of two great Germanys: a military Germany arising from the Prussian conquest of France in 1870, by which more than thirty states had been welded into a compact unity of military order, commercial tariffs, railroad transportation, and national finance; and an industrial Germany forging ahead in the commercialism of the earth at a pace exceeded by no other nation.

Bismarck and Von Moltke had made a Germany for defense. The railways did not flow to the ocean for the interchange of commerce. They ran primarily east and west to the Russian and French frontiers for military reasons; but never for attack, always for defense. It was expected that France would revive and again seek to try issues with Germany. In this she might possibly be assisted by Russia. Hence the German plans were for defense against these two countries.

As Germany developed in industry, the military caste receded relatively. Bankers, merchants, shippers, and traders came to the front. Railways bent the traffic of the country to the sea, and harbors and ports of commerce grew with rapid strides.

"What a wonderful business man is the German Emperor!" said the world. "He advertises Germany all over the earth by the spiked helmet and the rattle of his sword, but never war seeks he." The world must now revise this opinion.

German unity gave rise to German efficiency and German thoroughness, and to a demand for a larger German unity. The whole German-speaking race must be put together and bound together. Germany must expand over the seas, in colonial empire, and by tariffs of her own making. This meant that the Germans must have dominion on sea as well as land. Alliances must first be cemented with Austria and her neighboring states. Italy must be dragged into a triple alliance; and the small Balkan States must be tied up with Austria, that through an alliance with Turkey, Germany might reach not only the Mediterranean but the waters of the Pacific. This must happen before the great try-out for the mastery of the seas.

Now, the central point in the study of Germany under the present Kaiser is the naval programme for over-seas conquest, which was originated entirely by the present Kaiser. It was he and no other who aimed to turn defensive Germany into aggressive Germany. He has been the author from the beginning of the entire naval programme.

Such a plan must take cunning and strategy covering years. It must proclaim peace to the world but rouse all the fighting blood of the German-speaking race. The spirit for world-conquest must be stimulated in all literature and art, in education, and commerce; with the individual and the family. The danger of Germany must be pointed out. The greatness and rightfulness of her ambitions in the world must be brought forward and educated into the blood of every growing German.

While to the outside world steadily proclaiming peace, the Kaiser was as steadily inculcating war and the principles of war into every avenue of German thought and philosophy.

The Germans are nothing if not logical and scientific. They must therefore find a reason in philosophy and in the facts of history for their national programme. Those who found these reasons and logically set them forth were hailed as the great philosophers and educators of Germany. The logic was simple. It was that all history and all progress had been made by war; that peace-loving races decayed, and finally perished, and their places were rightfully taken by the younger, braver, sturdier, and hardier fighting races.

"Let your superiority be an acceptance of hardship." "Die at the right time." "Be hard." "What is happiness? The feeling that power increases, that resistance is being overcome." Nietzsche thus talked the principles of this philosophy; a something entirely apart from the principles of the Christian religion, but an absolutely philosophical, modern paganism; a worship of power, the assertions of one's individual and national self—"The Will to Power."

Treitschke taught it to the youth of Germany as applied to war,—not the necessity for defense but the justice and the righteousness of aggressive warfare. The Emperor and his court hailed these teachings with great acclaim. Chamberlain, an Englishman, printed a book to show that all good things were German; that the great Italian art-workers were German; that Christ himself was of German origin.

The teachings of Christ were repudiated by Germany, but His greatness in world leadership must be claimed for Germany. Had not all the poets given Him the German countenance and complexion, even light hair and blue eyes? The German Emperor bought presentation copies of this book by the thousand.

If you think the picture is over-drawn, get a copy of Chamberlain's "Foundations of the Nineteenth-Century Civilization."

There are those who acclaim that all these teachings were never meant for war; that the Germans, outside of Prussia, being a phlegmatic, home-loving, non-military people, needed to have their patriotism stimulated with "war talk" and national ambitions.

Now there are those who see that it was all part of a cunning propaganda for a world-conquest; that Germany was cultivated industrially and financially to give base for military operations.

But most carefully have the business men of Germany been excluded from the war councils. I asked one of the best-informed men in the diplomatic cycles of Europe, whose business all his life has been to travel from country to country studying the languages, thought, and customs of all people, west of Asia and north of Africa: "Are the German bankers and business men to have no say in Berlin as to peace and war or the military policy of the empire?" His response was emphatic: "Not one word; they would no more be allowed expression of opinion in the inner councils of military Germany than would a rank foreigner from the farthest part of the earth. Still in Germany is the business of trade apart from the business of government."

The world may now see that the business of Germany was war from the beginning under Kaiser Wilhelm II, and that Germany was to be made great on land and sea by the sword of war hacking the way for German commerce, German tariffs, and German commercialism. The old feudal idea of trade expanded and supported by a war lord has been the idea of Germany since the pilot, Bismarck, was dropped by the young Emperor from the ship of state. War for aggression, war for business, war for German expansion, has been the scheme. That these plans were interrupted and the war precipitated sooner than expected was most fortunate for American civilization and all civilization, west of Germany.

It was the Kaiser who changed the terms of Austria's ultimatum to Servia, making them impossible of fulfillment, and then cunningly slipped away on a water-trip with the fastest German cruiser behind him, that he might come rushing back and cry, "Peace, peace!" while he fenced off every peace proposal from effectively reaching Austria. Servia was willing to agree to every demand of Austria except that which involved a change in her constitutional government, with which she could not comply in the allotted time; but even this she was willing to discuss. The Kaiser gave Russia twelve hours to demobilize, and then declared war on her five days before Russia even withdrew her minister from Vienna.

While the Germans have gone to war to possess the land and dominate the business of their neighbors, they have not gone to war as savage tribes, seeking blood and human sacrifice as an end in itself.

I have not dealt with German atrocities in Belgium or France. War is atrocious, and you cannot move millions of men to the slaughter of their fellow men without revealing a certain percentage of crimes kindred to murder.

In due time, all the atrocities of this war may be shown up in photographs which have been taken. The Carnegie Peace Foundation is circulating photographs showing the atrocities in the Bulgarian wars. It might be much more timely for them to circulate photographs showing the horrors and atrocities of human sacrifice in this most audacious war.

Previous chapters have shown how German diplomacy slipped, how the German secret service had gathered the facts of the military, financial, and political weaknesses of Russia, Great Britain, and France, yet with no ability to value properly the spirit of the peoples behind this military unpreparedness. Germany has been described as "System without Soul." It remains only to show the relative weaknesses of Germany, and why she cannot win this war.

The Allies can reach round the world for men, war-supplies, and financial assistance. Germany can get no more men, no more gold, no more outside war-supplies. She must manufacture and be self-sustaining.

In the first six months of the war Germany has raised a loan of 4,400,000,000 marks, or about 1,100,000,000 dollars, promptly and patriotically taken by her people.

But international bankers inform me that every dollar of this and fifty percent more was gone before January 1, 1915. This is also indicated by the expansion of her paper money and her efforts to maintain the gold basis under that paper.

As this is regarded as a life-and-death struggle for Germany, the jewelry in the Empire must go into the melting-pot.

I can well credit the reports of copper household utensils and building materials going into the melting-pot for the copper of war.

And of rubber, for which there is no substitute, I hear that above three dollars a pound is being bid in Germany, or about four times the price in the United States.

Still, the scarcity of gold, copper, gasolene, or rubber, or all combined, might not force Germany to sue for peace.

What I give a final verdict on is the tremendous human sacrifice that is exhausting both Austria and Germany. I do say from good sources that in the first twenty weeks of the war the German casualties—wounded, prisoners, missing, and killed—were above 1,700,000, while Austrian casualties are now approaching a million and a half.

In the first six months of the year Germany and Austria will have suffered not less than three million casualties. Of course, more than half these people are wounded, who may go back to the firing line. But the three hundred thousand and more dead will never go back; and many vitally wounded and many cripples will be hereafter useless in peace or war; and the prisoners that are exchanged with France through Geneva are under pledge and mutual government agreement not to take up arms again.

I have also more confidence in the Russian position, numbers, supplies, and strategy than is generally possessed in America.

We hear in the press reports of generals at the head of the armies in Russia and France. We do not hear of the wonderful younger generals that war is developing, and who are coming forward more rapidly there than from any similar developments under the bureaucracy of Germany.

The two greatest military strategists the war has developed are not in Germany or England. They are in Russia and France, and their names have not yet crossed the Atlantic in the press reports.

However long Germany may fight on, offensively or defensively, her retreat must begin this year. Then the world will be increasingly interested in the terms of peace.

Balfour, the English statesman, says privately, "I know the people look for the dismemberment of Germany, and some look for her destruction, but this is not the intelligent opinion or intelligent desire. Germany is an indispensable part of the world's industrial, commercial, financial, and political organization. To destroy Germany would be a world loss." The opinion of eminent political and financial people in England is that Germany can never repair the total damage she may inflict. So far as England is concerned, next after the destruction of Germany's war-power, giving insurance of a European peace, comes first the indemnification of every financial loss that Belgium suffers. This is now estimated at from $1,500,000,000 to $2,500,000,000.

What there will be left over in the way of Germany's ability to pay, aside from the Kiel Canal, Alsace and Lorraine, and German Poland, is problematical.

To have Germany able to pay even a part of the damage she is inflicting upon the world, she must be put back upon her industrial feet. Therefore, I have declared, when asked about this matter, that in the end England would be found the best friend of Germany. But conquered and destroyed must be the Prussian war-machine of aggression, or crumbles the art and industry of republican France and the democracy of English speech, thought, and government.



CHAPTER XVI

THE LESSONS FOR AMERICA

Wealth is National Defense—Gold Mobilization—Food Supplies International—No Financial Independence—Tariffs as War Causes—Are We in a Fool's Paradise?

The lessons for the United States and for all America from this war are so many that it is difficult to arrange them in order.

The first lesson is that nations can be no longer isolated units. A hundred years ago the United States desired to be free from Europe,—from its political system, its wage system, and its social system. To-day the United States cannot desire to be freed from any country in the world. Its Panama Canal, its demand for a mercantile marine, for countries to take its cotton and cotton goods, and its inquiry as to where it can get potash salts and chemical dyes, all show the interrelation of modern business which has broken all national boundaries.

England is talking to-day of a closer federation in her empire to follow this war. She is asking why she alone should be the protector of the seas, and of the peace of Europe, not only for herself and her colonies, but for the whole world. She is already talking of a federation for the empire by which Australia, Canada, etc., will have direct representation in Parliament, and assist directly in bearing the burden of the maintenance of peace. I doubt if a British federation will strengthen the British Empire. Mutual interest is the great federator. The unwritten Constitution of England has more binding force than the written Constitution of the United States. The Triple Entente is stronger and more binding than the Triple Alliance.

The whole world is interested in the maintenance of peace, and it should not be the business of any one nation or empire to maintain the peace of the world.

Secondly, if the burden is put upon England to maintain the peace of the seas and the peace of Europe, she must have a growing empire to support that burden.

Already the English people see the spread of her influence which is to follow this war and make Cecil Rhodes's dream of a Cape to Cairo railroad a reality for Africa. Egypt, Palestine, and Asia Minor are hereafter to be restored in fertility and give a new civilization to the shores of the eastern Mediterranean.

Is it to be assumed that with the new development for Africa and Asia, Europe is going to abandon her interest on the continents of America?

Will not the very force of these developments make a foundation for European developments in North and South America?

Have we not seen that the British Empire has still some interest in the Panama canal? Is it to be supposed that when peace succeeds in Europe, and the European nations lie down together for another period of mutual development, France will make no inquiry concerning her $800,000,000 of property in Mexico? Or that England will adopt Mr. Bryan's idea that any Englishman or American who goes into Mexico cannot look for any protection from his home government?

I believe that Lord Cowdray is to-day the foremost business man in England. He represents oil lands in Mexico worth intrinsically more than $100,000,000. Is it the policy of the British government to say, "Cowdray, forget it, and come over and develop Mesopotamia; living is unsettled in Mexico, and Uncle Sam has told 'em to fight it out"?

A third lesson the United States will receive from this war is the value of large units in business and the value of national wealth as national defense.

Instead of trying to pull down wealth and individual accretions of wealth, the country will recognize that all savings and every increment of fortune, small or large, are for the ultimate benefit and for the prosperity and defense of the whole country.

In this war Russia is poor in railroads, and the advantage that Germany has held over her in Poland is more by reason of the German railways than the German armies. Railways are products of wealth and individual capital, and the sooner the United States learns this lesson, the better.

A fourth lesson for the United States from this war is the value of gold in bank reserves, and the value of ability to mobilize quickly such reserves. No nation in the world to-day is more closely tied to every other nation than by the invisible strings of gold. Every nation in the world has an interest in the gold supply and the gold reserve in bank throughout the world.

There are those in England who still believe that this war will be the supreme test of the gold monometallic base for money and banking. There is no thought as yet that Germany, if driven off the gold base, will seek a silver base. It has always been declared by the bimetallists that the successor of gold monometallism will be paper, and Germany is expected to go upon a paper rather than a silver basis.

In exchange operations German paper is about 8 per cent discount, but exporting gold or buying or selling gold at a premium is by law forbidden. All are penal offenses.

England can stand upon a gold basis because she commands the gold promises to pay, but in war time she can threaten the stability of the monetary systems of many countries. The United States saved its gold base by closing the Stock Exchange, but the South American countries were quickly in distress for gold.

To put India on a gold basis a few years ago, a tax was levied on Indian silver imports with the result that India has absorbed $400,000,000 in gold from England in the last five or six years, and where payments to India were formerly one-quarter gold and three-quarters silver, they are now one-quarter silver and three-quarters gold.

All these matters are being sharply watched by the English economists.

A fifth lesson we may draw from the war is the necessity for a larger official representation abroad. It was fortunate that before the outbreak of the war the American embassy in London had been moved to larger quarters by the gardens west of Buckingham Palace.

The strain that was thrown upon that embassy for information, passports, transportation, etc., was something terrific. United States statutes allow this embassy only three secretaries, but it had to use eight, and the work continued until 3 A.M., and sometimes 5 A.M. There was only one relief in the situation and that was in a study of the queer characters one finds abroad, insisting that they are representative Americans. Some of the people demanding free transportation back to America declared their residence to be in Hoboken, but could not tell if Hoboken were nearer New York City than to San Francisco. It was a great temptation for some people to get out of the war zone and into America at the expense of Uncle Sam. The amount of business transacted by this embassy may be illustrated by the fact that the cable tolls alone for several months cost more than the former total expenses of the embassy.

Still another lesson from the war that America must learn is that food supplies are now not national, but international. We have seen the price of sugar in the United States jumping up and down in a commercial battle between England and Germany almost before their clash at arms.

Before the war, 80 per cent of the sugar consumed in England was produced in Germany. England, under her free trade policy, had permitted German beet sugar interests, fattened upon a government bounty, to destroy the refinery interests in the south of England. The Island gained by the trade because her refineries were turned into sugar canneries. Jams and marmalades therefrom expanded her foreign trade. Germany, however, at the outbreak of this war, proposed to cut off, or tax heavily, England's sugar supply. Into the markets of the world went the British Treasury and in a few days the government was in command of an eighteen months' supply of sugar for the whole of Great Britain. Down went the price of sugar in Germany, and now the government is taking measures to restore prosperity to her sugar interests by a reduction in beet-sugar plantings. The English government is selling sugar in England at a loss, as a war measure, and will not permit sugar purchases in any country where Germany sells her sugar.

Nothing but the strain of war could have induced the Bank of England to count a hundred million dollars in gold sent from New York into Canada as a part of the Bank's metal reserve.

There is now no reason why this relation should not continue. Why should fifty or a hundred million in gold be sent across the ocean in the spring, to be returned in the fall? The world is going to be still more a unit in finance hereafter. It has taken a generation to educate the world to the right of the individual in the common fund of money, so far as money is needed to effect transfer of credits. This is the keynote in our Federal Reserve act: that business has just as much right to regulation promoting safe and smooth credits as it has to national regulation promoting safe and sound transportation.

Out of this war must arise better international relations, and they comprise not alone the relations of peace, but closer relations to international transportation, as respects both ships, international money, and international credit.

While many people are looking for financial independence between nations, the United States taking back from Europe in the next three years the larger part of the $6,000,000,000 of American securities owned abroad, it is quite possible that the opposite will take place: a greater interrelation, not only in credits but in investments.

If nations are to be more closely knit together hereafter, it will be not alone in alliances of peace, but in financial alliances in security ownership.

It is far better for both Europe and America that, instead of Europe selling its American securities, America should buy European securities—first, acceptances, making a basis for credits and international purchases in connection with the war; and later, American investment in the funds of foreign nations. It may be that before this war is over many European nations will have to appeal to America with their loans.

If France could see her way clear to put out a long-term loan at 5 per cent instead of short-term loans at this rate, there should be a good investment field for it in America.

Russia is an unconquerable country, and her securities at a good rate should be attractive for some American capital.

There is no reason why the 3 per cent bonds of Germany should not soon be investigated for investment purposes in America. The German debt is very small and, however long the war may continue, German bonds will ultimately be paid. They are quoted now at about 70, and, with the discount on exchange, they may be purchased from America at nearly 60, or to get 5 per cent on the investment, to say nothing of possible appreciation toward par in the future.

One may well believe the Germans to be misled in this war, and yet properly await opportunity to purchase at the right time their outstanding national bonds when these can be purchased so much more advantageously toward the end of the war than in the beginning of the era of peace, which must in time follow. Is it not just as neutral to purchase German bonds from the Germans as to purchase ships or our own railroad shares from Germany?

A great and primary lesson for the United States is in a thorough understanding that this war was caused by tariffs. The United States is the home of protective tariffs. The sentiment under a protective tariff is national selfishness. England has bought in other markets wherever she could buy cheapest, and has kept her ports open to the cheapest markets. This may be her selfishness.

It may, however, remain for the United States, while maintaining a protective tariff, to look to larger international relations and admit reciprocal trade-relations. There is a wide field for study here in connection with this war, for the same spirit—the wresting of commercial advantages by tariffs without regard to the fellow nation—is in many countries.

We aim in this country to boycott foreign manufactures with the declaration that we should give all the advantages to labor in this country, and keep our money at home. But what do we think when we find that Germany has for years run a boycott against every American enterprise?

America's great International Harvester Company, which has made and promoted the great agricultural inventions of the world; the Singer Sewing-Machine Company, that spreads its manufactures over the earth, and brings back the returns to the United States; all American motor-car companies, all American tobacco interests, and, in fact, all foreign companies, are boycotted, or barred, or worked against, throughout Germany. Placards in shop windows say, "Don't buy foreign goods. Keep the money in Germany!"

The horrors of backing such a policy by a war machine, that would impose German goods upon other countries and keep the products of those countries out of Germany, is something to contemplate; but the deepest lesson from it is in America, which has the tariffs and not even a defensive war machine.

With the Monroe Doctrine so interpreted that no European government can enforce security for its citizens or for the property of its citizens in Mexico, and with a protective tariff under which we can invite countries to send us goods for a series of years and then suddenly bar them out, the United States may be dwelling in a fool's paradise from the political, military, and economic points of view.

A united Europe cannot be expected to lay down its arms, while arms are international arbiters, until there is a better understanding of the Monroe Doctrine and European relations to Mexico.

There is only one safety for America, and that is the rule of right and of reason. Tariffs should be neighborly; life and property made secure wherever the United States extends its sphere of influence; and arbitration should take the place of all wars.

Indeed, the United States, from every standpoint, is the one nation in the world to be the promoter of peace, and to assist in its enforcement. There is no other policy for us from the standpoint of both national righteousness and national safety.

But this subject is so large that I must present it in the next and concluding chapter.



CHAPTER XVII

WHAT PEACE SHOULD MEAN

Not When but How—The Argument for War—Right over Might—National Hate as a Political Asset—The Human Pathway—Peace by International Police—The Practical Way—Is a New Age Approaching?

The endeavor in these pages has been to show from close personal research in Europe the cause and cost of this war—cost in finance and human lives,—and also the lessons that America, and particularly the United States, should derive from this greatest war.

It is not so material when this war terminates, as how it terminates. Many people, and especially those sympathetic with Germany, are looking for a drawn battle. This means a world-disaster, and no world-progress.

The British Empire is determined that this war shall mean for generations a lasting peace by the destruction of the German war machine. The Germans likewise declare that what they are fighting for is the peace of Europe. The Germans, high and low, declare that this peace has been disrupted by jealousy of German culture, German efficiency, and German success. It is difficult to understand the German logic, for wars do not lessen jealousy, envy, or race, or national hate. They only increase the jealousy and put peace further away than before, unless there is real conquest, division, and absorption.

Bismarck declared in 1867 that he was opposed to any war upon France, and that if the military party convinced him of ability to crush France and occupy Paris, he would be unalterably opposed to the attack. For, said he, one war with France is only the first of at least six, and were we victorious in all six, it would only mean ruin for Germany, and for her neighbor and best customer.

"Do you think a poor, bankrupt, starving, ragged neighbor as desirable as a healthy, solvent, fat, well-clothed one?" demanded Bismarck.

France attacked Germany in 1870 and found her well-prepared armies impregnable. Many believe that the Allies will find the German trench-defences now impregnable. I do not think the Allies will pay the price in human sacrifice to invade Germany from the west. The break-up of Germany is more likely to come from her exhaustion and the weakness of Austria, against which the pressure will be steadily increased. But what follows the war is most important. If the victorious or defeated nations are to go on arming, they will go on warring to the extent that there be left in the world no small nations and no unfortified area.

If Germany is to grow other navies, and England is still to build two for one, North and South America must in time have navies, the support of which will burden the western hemisphere and the progress of humanity. It ought to be clear that this audacious war can mean nothing unless it means tremendous progress toward universal peace; unless it means that nations are to be guided by the same principles, practices, and morality that should guide individuals.

I know all the arguments for the needfulness of war, and there is not one of them that will hold water. Wars exist for the same reason that they formerly existed with individuals, or between cities, or states,—because there was no organization regulating the relations between individuals, cities, and states. Wars exist between nations to-day because there is no organization regulating international relations.

Out of this war and its alliances must ultimately come such a regulating of international relations, or the world goes back toward bankruptcy and barbarism.

It is declared that the people of Europe have wanted this war; that the Germans wanted to expand by war; that the French have wanted to fight for Alsace-Lorraine; that the Russians must war for a water outlet; that the English have favored war for a readjustment of the European balances in power. There are many individuals who want their neighbors' goods, or redivision; there are many cities jealous of their commercial rivals; there are many states jealous of the progress of others; but all these no longer think of war as a method of readjustment, or even of redress of grievances.

Patriotism and nationality should no more be a basis of war than civic pride or family pride.

Perhaps the first error to be blotted out before a universal peace is that which arises from the German teaching that the state is a distinct entity or individuality apart from ourselves; that a state has no moral status, no moral principles, and can do no wrong; that while we may not steal individually, we will justify ourselves in stealing, murdering, and plundering collectively, in the name of the state.

When once this error is clearly seen and rooted out, we shall still find in every community men who believe that what a man is able to get and hold is his by right of possession and power; and we shall still have police regulations, departments of justice, and courts of law, to defend the weak against injustice from the strong.

We have constitutions in civilized communities to prevent robbery and the injustice of majorities upon minorities. We have sheriffs, police, and military power to enforce the edict of right, when once the highest tribunal has made the nearest possible human approach to justice.

A distinguished lawyer once said to me that, to him, the most wonderful thing in the world was an edict of the Supreme Court of the United States; "A few words scrawled upon a scrap of paper and approved by some aged individuals of no great physical vigor; and, behold, it is instantly the law of a hundred million people!"

And, for the benefit of future human progress, the argument supporting that edict is later printed with it; and that in future any errors therein may be corrected, the wisdom of the minority or dissenting judges is as carefully preserved and bound up with the major opinion and edict, that all public sources for correction of error may be preserved in the clear amber of legal justice in truth as betwixt man and man.

"For what avail the plow or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?"

And freedom fails when justice falls and right of might succeeds.

The breaking up of the world's physical body, or of the material dwellings and possessions of humanity, may be necessary for "a new birth of freedom"; for the incoming of the larger light; for a broader, more universal brotherhood.

Individual robbery or wrong may beget individual hate, but law in social organization prevents its full expression. The extent to which individual hate may be expanded indefinitely where guns take the place of law, may be illustrated by some communities in sparsely settled mountainous countries in our Southern states. Here family feuds and individual murder went on through generations, until nobody could tell how or why they ever began.

A journalist friend just arrived from Berlin in this month of February tells me he detects a general policy in Germany to direct the national spirit solely against England, possibly with a view to bringing the German people into line for proposals of peace with everybody else. The sentiment of Germany is being swung to-day, just as it has been from the beginning under the present Kaiser, against England as the real and only enemy to a German world-conquest.

Punch says the Germans spell "culture" with a K because England has command of all the "C's." But the English-speaking race has also command of the biggest letter in the alphabet, and can say damn with a force surpassing expression in any other language. The most popular song to-day in Germany is the "Hymn of Hate," by Ernest Lissauer, whom, it is reported, the Kaiser has decorated for this—the only real German literature from the war. It is a hymn and chant, and has rhythm, hiss, and fight in it. It runs to the sentiment,—

"French and Russian, they matter not, A blow for a blow, a shot for a shot,"

but ends,—

"We love as one, we hate as one; We have one foe, and one alone— ENGLAND!"

And when that last line and that last word burst from thousands of German throats, as in the crowded cafes of Berlin, it is the fullest German damn that can find expression in German consonants. I believe the Prussians of Berlin would be as pleased to megaphone that line from Calais to Dover as they would be to throw their first shell across the English Channel. But if enforced international law did not permit them to strive for that shot as the expression of their passion, they would soon forget their hot hate and put their shoulder again beneath the progress of the world.

Man has come up from the dug-out or the cave where in primordial condition he won his food by his own hands from the uncut forests and the unfarmed waters. As family policeman he had no incentive to accumulations of food, clothing, or luxuries. These involved added police responsibilities and enlarged the temptations of his neighbors, both men and animals.

Later, his family becomes a tribe. In combination the duties of protection for the common good take on a larger view. The village, the walled city and the armed state naturally follow. Each stage of communal growth reduces the number of men set apart for defence or police duty. There is a corresponding increase in the common store of human possessions and human happinesses.

From states grow nations, then empires, until but a small fraction of the people is engaged in any way in aggressive or defensive warfare, or even police work or the determination or enforcement of laws of justice as between individuals, cities, states, or communities of any sort.

The individual club at the mouth of the cave protecting the family has become for England a surrounding line of steel ships; for the United States, of 100,000,000 people, a mere outline of a military defensive organization, to be filled in when needed. But for a few communities in the world that individual club has become a national armory, with human energies perfecting the most destructive machinery of warfare, that aggression may be carried on against neighbors, and territory expanded for purposes of national government and the increment of national wealth.

The twentieth century has been distinguished by a call to the humanities; a summons to a larger brotherhood. This has been the meaning of the clashes of the classes within all growing nations—Germany, Russia, the United States. All that outcry of humanity against mere commercialism, against the mere financial exploitation of man and his labor, in this age takes on a larger meaning.

In great wars material things go back; but the man goes to the front; and the victorious survivors make a newer and broader human creation—a new world with a new spirit.

The world has been seeking a solution of many social problems. They instantly disappear as dissolved in the hot cauldron of war. In the settlement of peace following, they are found precipitated in the fired solution, refined, clarified,—"settled."

To-day all social problems are merged in the greater problem of national existence. Alliances and a larger nationality become necessities. Man comes forth in a larger citizenship—a citizen of the whole world. There is, there can be, no other solution, no other universal peace. From this war must follow a world federation and international citizenship.

The first recognition of the brotherhood of nations may arise under the Monroe Doctrine. While this doctrine primarily is one for our national defense, it should properly embrace the defense of both North and South America, any aggression from the other side of the ocean to be unitedly resented on this side.

The increasing responsibility of nations for their fellow nations may be illustrated by the case of Cuba. The United States heard the cry of the Cubans under Spanish rule, turned out the Spanish rulers, and gave Cuba over to the Cubans. In the same spirit the United States, finding itself in possession of the Philippines, is now attempting to develop them not for the United States but for the Filipinos.

Lastly, we have the example of President Wilson, who has decreed that government by assassination in the countries to the south of us must cease, and that the United States will not recognize any government thus set up in Mexico.

It is, however, not yet incumbent upon any nation, as upon individuals, to say to its neighbor, "You shall not arm; you shall not build a war machine of aggression; your offense against one is an offense against all; your military invasion against one for purposes of expansion or self-aggrandizement will be resented by all."

Until we have practical application of a world-wide police in maintenance of the peace of nations, not alone by international agreement, which can be broken, but by agreement and international police-enforcement, so that it cannot be broken, there can be no universal peace.

We are now approaching that time.

There is no more reason why aggregations of people should have the right of murder, destruction, piracy, and pillage, than that individuals should have such right.

This is just a simple, practical question in human advancement. The world should now be big enough to grasp and effectively deal with it. The true meaning of this war is, therefore, human progress: humanity taking on larger responsibilities—the whole world answering the question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" with a thunderous, "Aye! we are one and all our brother's keeper, and we may well keep the peace of the world!"

There is no question, national or international, no question of the individual or collection of individuals, which cannot be settled by the laws which belong in the human heart. Such laws may be called spiritual or natural, divine or human; they are one and the same.

Moses wrote no new law on the tables of stone on Mount Sinai. The laws were before the tables of stone, and before the creation of the mountain itself. It was only for the people to hear and to do.

It is the same to-day. The laws of brotherhood—brotherhood of individuals, brotherhood of nations, or aggregations of individuals—are unchanged and unchangeable. It is only for the world to hear and to do.

The doctrine that war is a biological necessity must go by the board. The teaching that war is needed to harden men and nations must be placed in the realm of pagan fiction.

If war is a necessity for man, it is a necessity for woman. If it is good for men, it is good for children. If it is good for nations, it is good for states. If it is good for states, it is certainly good for cities. If it is good for peoples, it is good for individuals.

War is Hell, and from Hell. Hell may not be abolished, but it may be regulated.

Wars may not be abolished from the human heart, but they may be restrained from breaking forth to the destruction of the innocent and the guiltless.

There is only one practical way to do this, and that is to have nations under restraint, just as nations have states and cities under restraint. Then international courts of justice may perform the same work national courts now perform in respect to differences between states.

Man has come up from the individual, or dual, unit through family and tribal relation, the walled city, the policed state, into the armed nation. He is now steadily stepping forth into the world as ruler of himself, the creator of his own government, the heir and sovereign of the world. He can step into the kingdom of manhood suffrage or government only so far as the rights of his fellow men are recognized. Evil holds its own destruction, and nations that live by the sword perish by the sword.

For the United States to rush into the maelstrom of war, with organization of armies and the building of armaments, is to invite its own destruction.

For just one hundred years the North American continent has held the practical example of the impotency of the war-spirit where there is no war machinery.

By the Bush memorandum of agreement one hundred years ago it was provided that there should be no guns, forts, or naval ships on the greatest national boundary line of the world—4000 miles across the American continent between the United States and Canada. Nowhere else in the world have armed men attempted invasion, and yet provoked no war, no reprisal. What might have been the relations between the United States and Canada when the "Fenians" armed in New England and attempted a raid across the border, if there had been armies and fortifications on that border?

How securely now dwells in Canada $100,000,000 of the Bank of England reserve gold! When German representatives in the United States talk of Germany's right to invade Canada and get that gold. Uncle Sam only smiles and frowns. And the smile and the frown are potential. That boundary has been consecrated to peace; and what would be thought of the proposal, did Germany command the seas, that Uncle Sam accept some money or promises to pay and permit the German armies to go through, according to the proposal to Belgium?

In an age which has abolished human slavery, broken the walls of China, which is bringing the yellow races into the labor and white light of civilization, which has made Germany a nation, and spanned a continent with the human voice so that Boston talks with San Francisco, is it too much to expect that it can bring the boon of an international civilization, abolishing national wars?

Indeed, it is right at our doors if the United States would only welcome it and join it, instead of preparing to invite the old-world barbarism of national warfare by planning military defenses and naval fleets.

Did anybody ever hear before of ten nations, and nearly a billion people, at war, and all declaring that they are warring for purposes of peace; and may there not yet be that universal peace by reason of this war, and the war's alliances?

Suppose that, either before or after the nations of Europe lay down their arms, universal disarmament is assented to, and the peace of the world is entrusted to an international tribunal, which takes such part of the armies and navies as it may need to enforce its decrees, the balance so far as not needed for local police duty to be put back into industry or laid on the shelf, and all border fortifications ordered dismantled or turned into public recreation grounds—is it too much to expect in this Age?

What would be simpler than, in the end, to find fortified Heligoland, not back in the hands of England, but the naval base of a Hague Tribunal enforcing international peace?