I know that the two things which are giving him the deepest pain in this world catastrophe, excepting only the sufferings of his own kindred and people, are the enmity of Great Britain and the misunderstanding of his character, feelings, and purposes in America. To remedy the first we here can do nothing, but to dispel the second is our bounden duty; and I devoutly hope that other evidence may prove sufficient to do this to the satisfaction of the minds of my countrymen than was necessary to convince the British Nation that the great-hearted Abraham Lincoln was not a brute nor the urbane William H. Seward a demon of ferocity.



Reply to Prof. Burgess

To the Editor of The New York Times:

The Burgess Kaiser is a truly admirable person. Every right-minded man will be only too glad to believe all that Prof. Burgess affirms of him. To be sure, there is a lurking sense that the professor "doth protest too much." But let that go. In the present topsy-turvy state of the world it is refreshing to hear of a man who loves his wife and children in the good, old way. But just now the world is not interested in the private, personal, peculiarly German characteristics of the Kaiser. We outsiders must take him as he is known to the international world. We of course trust that he is an able, cultivated, attractive gentleman. There are many such in the world. But this gentleman happens to be the head of one of the great nations. Our interest in him centres in his relations to his neighbor nations.

An English friend of mine was appointed to duty in a tribe of savages in Africa. I dislike to call them savages after the testimony of my friend. But they were just plain, naked folk, living in primitive simplicity in their native land. The chief of this little tribe was, as my friend asserts, a superior man, and, in spite of his undress, a good deal of a gentleman. In physique he was superb. A sculptor's heart would have leaped for joy at sight of him. My friend said to see him teaching his young son to throw a spear was a sort of physical music. He himself could throw a spear to an incredible distance with the precision of a rifle shot. He ruled his little kingdom with surprising wisdom and fairness. He was welcomed everywhere among his people as the friend and counselor. His family relations were unimpeachable. The same was true throughout the tribe. He was devoutly pious. In short, he was a Burgess Kaiser in the small. But he was the war lord of all that region. He was fiercely jealous of all the neighboring tribes. He kept his own people armed and drilled to the top of efficiency, ready for attack or defense. He was noted for his hatred and contempt for his people except his own. His forays were marked by savage cruelty. His military necessities stopped at nothing.

Need it be said that the surrounding tribes were in nowise interested in this chief's physique or domestic virtues, or in his fidelity to his own people? It is safe to affirm that the British Government did not ask whether he had the body of a Michael Angelo's David or of a baboon from the jungle. It did not ask whether he was good to his wife and children. Most animals are. It did not care how devoted he was to his fetich. The sole question was, What sort of public citizen is he? How does he stand related to surrounding peoples? On what terms does he propose to live with them? That precisely is what we want to know about the Kaiser.

Fortunately, we do not have to ask Prof. Burgess, or any group of savants, or the German people. The Kaiser's record is known and read of all men.

JAMES H. ECOB,

American Institute of Social Service.

New York, Oct. 21, 1914.



PROF. BURGESS'S SECOND ARTICLE.

The Guarantee of Belgian Neutrality

So much has been said about Belgian neutrality, so much assumed, and it has been such a stumbling block in the way of any real and comprehensive understanding of the causes and purposes of the great European catastrophe, that it may be well to examine the basis of it and endeavor to get an exact idea of the scope and obligation.

Of course, we are considering here the question of guaranteed neutrality, not the ordinary neutrality enjoyed by all States not at war, when some States are at war; the difference between ordinary neutrality and guaranteed neutrality being that no State is under any obligation to defend the ordinary neutrality of any other State against infringement by a belligerent, and no belligerent is under any special obligation to observe it. Guaranteed neutrality is, therefore, purely a question of specific agreement between States.

On the 19th day of April, 1839, Belgium and Holland, which from 1815 to 1830 had formed the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, signed a treaty of separation from, and independence of, each other. It is in this treaty that the original pledge of Belgian neutrality is to be found. The clause of the treaty reads: "Belgium in the limits above described shall form an independent neutral State and shall be bound to observe the same neutrality toward all other States." On the same day and at the same place, (London,) a treaty, known in the history of diplomacy as the Quintuple Treaty, was signed by Great Britain, France, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, approving and adopting the treaty between Belgium and Holland. A little later, May 11, the German Confederation, of which both Austria and Prussia were members, also ratified this treaty.

In the year 1866 the German Confederation was dissolved by the war between Austria and Prussia, occasioned by the Schleswig-Holstein question. In 1867 the North German Union was formed, of which Prussia was the leading State, while Austria and the German States south of the River Main were left out of it altogether. Did these changes render the guarantees of the Treaty of 1839 obsolete and thereby abrogate them, or at least weaken them and make them an uncertain reliance? The test of this came in the year 1870, at the beginning of hostilities between France and the North German Union. Great Britain, the power most interested in the maintenance of Belgian neutrality, seems to have had considerable apprehension about it. Mr. Gladstone, then Prime Minister, said in the House of Commons: "I am not able to subscribe to the doctrine of those who have held in this House what plainly amounts to an assertion that the simple fact of the existence of a guarantee is binding on every party to it, irrespective altogether of the particular position in which it may find itself when the occasion for acting on the guarantee arises."

A One-Year Treaty.

Proceeding upon this view, the British Government then sought and procured from the French Government and from the Government of the North German Union separate but identical treaties guaranteeing with the British Government the neutrality of Belgium during the period of the war between France and the North German Union, the so-called Franco-Prussian war, which had just broken out, and for one year from the date of its termination. In these treaties it is also to be remarked that Great Britain limited the possible operation of her military force in maintaining the neutrality of Belgium to the territory of the State of Belgium.

These treaties expired in the year 1872, and the present German Empire has never signed any treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium. Moreover, between 1872 and 1914 Belgium became what is now termed a world power; that is, it reached a population of nearly 9,000,000 people, it had a well-organized, well-equipped army of over 200,000 men and powerful fortifications for its own defense; it had acquired and was holding colonies covering 1,000,000 square miles of territory, inhabited by 15,000,000 men, and it had active commerce, mediated by its own marine, with many, if not all, parts of the world. Now, these things are not at all compatible in principle with a specially guaranteed neutrality of the State which possesses them. The State which possesses them has grown out of its swaddling clothes, has arrived at the age and condition of maturity and self-protection, and has passed the age when specially guaranteed neutrality is natural.

From all these considerations, I think it extremely doubtful whether, on the first day of August, 1914, Belgium should have been considered as possessing any other kind of neutrality than the ordinary neutrality enjoyed by all States not at war, when some States are at war. In fact, it remains to be seen whether Belgium itself had not forfeited the privilege of this ordinary neutrality before a single German soldier had placed foot on Belgian soil. A few days ago I received a letter from one of the most prominent professors in the University of Berlin, who is also in close contact with the Prussian Ministry of Education, a man in whose veracity I place perfect confidence, having known him well for ten years. He writes: "Our violation of the neutrality of Belgium was prompted in part by the fact that we had convincing proof that there were French soldiers already in Belgium and that Belgium had agreed to allow the French Army to pass over its soil in case of a war between France and us." Moreover, in the British "White Paper" itself, No. 122, is to be found a dispatch from the British Ambassador in Berlin, Sir E. Goschen, to Sir Edward Grey, containing these words: "It appears from what he [the German Secretary of Foreign Affairs] said that the German Government consider that certain hostile acts have already been committed by Belgium. As an instance of this, he alleged that a consignment of corn for Germany had been placed under an embargo already." The date of this dispatch is July 31, days before the Germans entered Belgium.

But placing these two things entirely aside, as well as the new evidence, said to have just been found in the archives at Brussels, that Belgium had by her agreements with Great Britain forfeited every claim to even ordinary neutrality in case of a war between Germany and Great Britain, I find in the British "White Paper" itself, No. 123, not only ample justification, but absolute necessity, from a military point of view, for a German army advancing against France, not only to pass through Belgium, but to occupy Belgium. This number of the "White Paper" is a communication dated Aug. 1 from Sir Edward Grey to Sir E. Goschen, British Ambassador in Berlin. In it Sir Edward Grey informed Sir E. Goschen that the German Ambassador in London asked him "whether, if Germany gave a promise not to violate Belgian neutrality, we, Great Britain, would remain neutral," and that he [Grey] replied that he "could not say that," that he did not think Great Britain "could give a promise of neutrality on that condition alone"; further, Sir Edward Grey says: "The Ambassador pressed me as to whether I could not formulate conditions on which we would remain neutral. He even suggested that the integrity of France and her colonies might be guaranteed. I said that I felt obliged to refuse definitely any promise to remain neutral on similar terms, and I could only say that we must keep our hands free."

The Necessary Invasions.

After this Sir Edward Grey declared in Parliament, according to newspaper reports, that Great Britain stood, as to Belgian neutrality, on the same ground as in 1870. With all due respect, I cannot so understand it. In 1870 Great Britain remained neutral in a war between the North German Union and France, and, with the North German Union, guaranteed Belgium against invasion by France, and, with France, guaranteed Belgium against invasion by the North German Union. On Aug. 1, 1914, the German Empire asked Great Britain to do virtually the same thing, and Great Britain refused. It is, therefore, Germany who stood in 1914 on the same ground, with regard to Belgium neutrality, as she did in 1870, and it is Great Britain who shifted her position and virtually gave notice that she herself would become a belligerent. It was this notice served by Sir Edward Grey on the German Ambassador in London on Aug. 1, 1914, which made the occupation of Belgium an absolute military necessity to the safety of the German armies advancing against France. Otherwise they would, so far as the wit of man could divine, have left their right flank exposed to the advance of a British army through Belgium, and there certainly was no German commander so absolutely bereft of all military knowledge or instinct as to have committed so patent an error.

Belgium has Great Britain to thank for every drop of blood shed by her people, and every franc of damage inflicted within her territory during this war. With a million of German soldiers on her eastern border demanding unhindered passage through one end of her territory, under the pledge of guarding her independence and integrity and reimbursing every franc of damage, and no British force nearer than Dover, across the Channel, it was one of the most inconsiderate, reckless, and selfish acts ever committed by a great power when Sir Edward Grey directed, as is stated in No. 155 of the British "White Paper," the British Envoy in Brussels to inform the "Belgian Government that if pressure is applied to them by Germany to induce them to depart from neutrality, his Majesty's Government expects that they will resist by any means in their power."

It is plain enough that Great Britain was not thinking so much of protecting Belgium as of Belgium protecting her, until she could prepare to attack Germany in concert with Russia and France. She was willing to let Belgium, yea almost to command Belgium, to take the fearful risk of complete destruction in order that she might gain a little time in perfecting the co-operation of Russia and France with herself for the crushing of Germany, and in order to hold the public opinion of neutral powers, especially of the United States of America, in leash under the chivalrous issue of protecting a weaker country, which she has done little or nothing to protect, but which she could have effectively protected by simply remaining neutral herself.

We Americans have been greatly confused in mind in regard to the issues of this war. We have confounded causes and occasions and purposes and incidents until it has become almost impossible for any considerable number of us to form a sound and correct judgment in regard to it. But we shall emerge from that nebulous condition. We are beginning to see more clearly now, and it would not surprise me greatly if the means used for producing our confusion would some day come back, if not to plague the consciences, at least to foil the purposes of their inventors.



Reply to Prof. Burgess

To the Editor of The New York Times:

Prof. Burgess's amazing communication on Belgian neutrality omits an essential piece of evidence. Granting, for the sake of argument, that the German Empire might repudiate all treaty obligations of the earlier German confederations, (very odd law, this;) granting also the still more novel plea that Belgium had outgrown the need, and the privilege of neutralization, Germany had agreed to treat all neutral powers under the following provisions of The Hague Conventions of 1907 concerning the rights and duties of neutral powers:

1. The territory of neutral powers is inviolable.

2. Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or either munitions of war or supplies across the territory of a neutral power.

* * * * *

5. A neutral power must not allow any of the acts referred to in Articles 2 to 4 to occur on its territory.

This pledge the German Empire had solemnly made only seven years ago. It would seem that Prof. Burgess may accept the distinction ably made by Prof. Muensterberg between "pledges of national honor" and mere "routine agreements," placing Hague treaties in the latter category.

The allegation that France and England secretly did unneutral acts in Belgium is as yet without proof of any sort, and must be interpreted by the commonsense consideration that a neutral Belgium was a defensive bulwark for France and England. To have tampered with her neutrality would have been motiveless folly. How much more decent and moral than Prof. Burgess's meticulous weighing of national reincorporation as a means of evading national obligations is Chancellor Hollweg's robust plea of national necessity! Prof. Burgess's whole moral and mental attitude in this case seems to be that of a corporation lawyer getting a trust out of a hole under the Statute of Limitations or by some reorganizing dodge.

FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jr.

Princeton, N.J., Nov. 4, 1914.



America's Peril in Judging Germany

By William M. Sloane.

Late Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University; ex-President National Institute of Arts and Letters and of the American Historical Association; was secretary of George Bancroft, the historian, in Berlin, 1873-5; author of works on French History.

The American public has been carefully trained to avoid entanglement with foreign affairs. This European war was so unexpected, so entirely unforeseen, that we were at first bewildered, and then exasperated, by our unreadiness to meet our own emergencies.

In our effort to fix responsibility we then became partisan to the verge of moral participation and had to be called to our senses by the wise proclamation and warning of our Chief Magistrate.

Western Europe is a nearer neighbor than either Central or Eastern, and what stern censors permit us to know is nicely calculated to arouse our prejudice on one side or the other. Believing that, owing to cable cutting and neutrality restrictions of wireless, as yet the plain truth is not available, we ask for a suspension of judgment on both sides in order that our Government may enjoy the undivided support of all American citizens in its desire to secure a minimum of disturbance to the normal course of our commercial, industrial, and agricultural life by convulsions that are not of our making.

Fairness to ourselves means justice in the formation and expression of opinion about not one or two but all the participants in a struggle for European ascendency, with which we have nothing to do except as overwhelming victory for either side might bring on a struggle for world ascendency, with which, unhappily, we might have much to do. To contemplate such a terrible event should sober us; the best preparation for it is absolute neutrality in thought, speech, and conduct.

Our own history since independence is an unbroken record of expansion and imperialism. Our contiguous territories have been acquired by compulsion, whether of war, of purchase, of occupation, or of exchange. We have taken advantage of others' dire necessity in the case of Great Britain, France, Spain, Russia, and Mexico.

To rectify our frontier we compelled the Gladsden Purchase within the writer's lifetime. As to our non-contiguous possessions, we hold them by the right of conquest or revolution, salving our consciences with such cash indemnity as we ourselves have chosen to pay, and even now we are considering what we choose to pay, not what a disinterested court might consider adequate, for the good-will of the United States of Colombia, a good-will desired solely and entirely for an additional safeguard to the Panama Canal and a prop to the policy or doctrine substituted by the present Administration for the moribund Monroe Doctrine.

In no single instance of virtual annexation or protectorate have we consulted by popular vote either the desires of those inhabiting the respective territories annexed or The Hague Tribunal. In every case we have had one single plea and one only—self-interest.

The entire American continent south of our frontier we have closed to all European settlement, thereby maintaining for more than a century in a magnificent territory an imperfect civilization which makes a sorry use of natural resources which could vastly improve the condition of all mankind if properly used.

This is the light in which European nations see us; our identity in this policy from the dawn of our national existence onward they consider a proof of our national character. It differs in no respect from their own policies except in one.

But for them this exception is basic. We are a composite folk and they are homogeneous, their blend being approximately complete. They have one language, one tradition, one set of institutions and laws; a unity of literature, habits, and method in life. Some European States are composite, but each component part claims and cultivates its own style and its own principles; each announces itself as a nationality with a life to be maintained and a destiny to be wrought out somehow, either in peace or in conflict.

With perhaps a single exception, they have an overflow of population, due to natural generation, for the comfort and happiness of which they seek either an expansion of territory or an improvement in the productivity of their home lands; for those who must emigrate they passionately desire the perpetuation of their nationality, with all it implies.

In these respects they do not differ from us, except that perhaps we are more determined and imperious. We cannot think politically in any other terms than those of democratic government, either direct or representative.

At the present hour we are engaged in the very dubious experiment of direct popular legislation and administration. We are trying to change our Government radically, discarding its representative form for that of delegation. The remotest cause of this is the desire to amalgamate all our elements into homogeneity. So far this policy has resulted in a demand, not for equality of political and civil rights, but for its overthrow, substituting laws intended to create social and economic equality by means of class legislation.

These facts are not to the edification of other civilized States, and subject us to harsh and contemptuous criticism.

It is likewise very interesting that apparently the American people believe in a monarchical democracy. One of our typical first citizens has recently expressed his antipathy to the phrases "My monarchy," "My loyal people," "My loyal subjects," used by one of the German monarchs in summoning the nation to war, as implying a dynastic or personal ownership of men.

Averse from Militarism.

The American masses dislike the sound of supreme war lord, but gladly admit their own Chief Magistrate to be Commander in Chief of the army and navy. To our ears the three German words are offensive, and well they may be, for in the treacherous literal translation they are willful perversion; but the much stronger English words are a delight to our democracy.

The phrases of monarchy are constantly used in Great Britain by its King and its Emperor, but give no offense to his "loyal subjects," even the most radical, who delight in them, as apparently do our people of British origin. Why do they give such deep offense when employed by the German Government through its King and Emperor? The social stratification of Germany is not as marked as that of Great Britain; its aristocracy is far less powerful; and Edward VII. proved that an adroit and willful English monarch could involve his "loyal people" deeper in harmful, secret alliances than William II., whose alliances and policies were and are unconcealed.

One of our greatest historians has earned a brilliant reputation in the conclusive proof that oceans are the world's highways, while its continents are its barriers. To the term "militarism" we attach an opprobrious meaning; militarism is the more infamous in exact proportion to its efficiency. We have been at little pains to define it, and as to certain of its aspects are curiously complacent.

The basic principle of our own nationality has long been the very vague Monroe Doctrine, by the assertion of which we have prevented the establishment on our nearest and remotest frontiers of strong military powers, which might in certain events compel us to maintain a powerful and numerous standing army, or even introduce the compulsory military service of all voters, (women, of course, excepted.)

Yet we propose to fight if necessary in order to prevent fighting, and to this end maintain the second strongest and, for its size, the most efficient fleet in the world. This is our militarism; that of Great Britain has been to maintain a fleet double our own or any other in size, for it is her basic principle to maintain an unquestioned supremacy on the highways of commerce. To this we have meekly assented, while other nations absorb our carrying trade and our flag waves over a fleet of perhaps a dozen respectable oceangoing trading and passenger ships. It is under her rather patronizing protection that we fight our foreign wars and by pressure from her that we manage the Panama Canal with nice and honorable attention to her interpretation of a treaty capable of quite a different one. Whether or not this be "militarism" of the utmost efficiency by sea is not difficult to decide. But we have never styled it infamous.

While I am writing, Germans, whose basic principle is the most efficient "militarism" by land, are publishing all abroad that the "militarism" of France must be forever stamped out, so that they may dwell at peace in the lands which are their home.

Within a generation France has accumulated a colonial empire second only to that of Great Britain, while she has incessantly demanded the reintegration of German lands, and especially a German city which she arbitrarily annexed and held by "militarism" for about five generations. The "militarism" of a republic and a democracy which retains the essential features of Napoleonic administration has been quite as efficient as that of a monarchical democracy like Great Britain, and may easily prove more efficient than that of a monarchy like Germany.

Why should it be more infamous or barbarous in one case than the other? And with what is this efficient military democracy allied in the closest ties?

With Russia, an Oriental despotism which by the aid of French money has developed a "militarism" by land so portentous in numbers, dimension, and efficiency that its movements are comparable to those of Attila's Huns. Escaped Russians in Western lands are denouncing German "militarism" as the incubus of the world.

Which of the two should Americans regard as the greater danger?

Menaces to Our Neutrality.

It has wrung our hearts to consider the violation of Belgian neutrality, for which both France and eventually even Great Britain have long been prepared, but the latter has with little or no protest arranged with the "bear that walks like a man" to disregard contemptuously the neutrality of Persia in arranging spheres of influence, exactly as Japan, another ally, is contemptuously disregarding the neutrality of China, the new "republic" we were in such haste to recognize that we had to use the cable. And what about Korea? It is a Japanese province in contravention of the most solemn guarantees of its integrity.

Leaving aside for the moment certain considerations like these, and they might easily be indefinitely amplified, which should compel Americans to unbiased consideration for others and preclude a dangerous partiality, let us ask ourselves how in the event of mediation we could be an impartial pacificator, behaving as we have hitherto done. The attitude of our Government has been strictly neutral, neutral to the verge of utter self-abnegation; and, as some regard it, timidity.

But rock-fast as any democratic magistrate may be, public opinion must and does influence him. Rightly or wrongly his agents would be even more completely dominated, and rightly or wrongly they would be suspect in view of our terrific partisanship on both sides since the commencement of hostilities.

The efficiency of Government organs in "producing the goods," the terrific power of organization on one side and mass on the other, have been considered a menace to world equilibrium.

Whichever way the decision falls, the scrutiny of Europe will be turned to us. Unless observation and instinct be utterly at fault, we have for more than a decade been, after Germany, the worst-hated nation of all that are foremost.

It is pre-eminently our affair to mind our own business, as others have minded theirs. Without cessation of noise and fury in America this is impossible.

Indeed, our emotional storms have already furnished proof of how we are incapacitated from either enforcing our rights as neutrals or seizing by the forelock the opportunity afforded to us as neutrals and from enjoying the unquestioned privileges of neutrality.

It is not altogether edifying to think that the close of the European struggle, be it long or short, will probably find our ocean commerce substantially where it was at the beginning, and that conflicts which were not of our making will have been fought out before we are able to secure our share of the world markets. Apparently the leaders in commerce, industry, and trade, like the lawmakers and administrators, are paralyzed by the imperative necessity of aiding panicstricken tourists and panicstricken stay-at-homes. Apparently, too, our people are suffering more in purse and general comfort than the actual combatant nations.

Clamorous for American sympathy and cash, we have on our shores embassies from the belligerents, pleading their respective virtues and sorrows.

Why, after all, should our chiefest concern be with them? Surely we may be good Samaritans without a total disregard of our own interests and a blindness to opportunity verging on impotency. There is no immorality in the proper play of self-interest. It is the conflict of interests which creates morality. But the spectators, even the maddest baseball "fans," do not play the game nor train for it. It is high time we ceased wasting our energies in emotions and vain babble.

At this writing the first line of defense against the Oriental deluge is endangered. The Slav individually and in his primitive culture is altogether charming. He is a son of the soil, picturesque in life and creative; he is minstrel and poet, seer. But so far he is the carrier of a low civilization, the prophet, priest, and king of autocracy and absolutism. Never has there been a time in history when the higher civilization was not in a savage struggle for existence. It is almost the first time in three centuries that the highest civilizations were in alliance with the lowest; not since the pugnacious Western powers of Europe sued for favor at the Sublime Porte.

In Peril of the Whirlwind.

This ought to be a very sobering spectacle, but it seems to arouse the delighted enthusiasm of an American majority. For such an aberration there is but a single and efficient remedy: absorption in our own affairs, the discriminating study of efficient methods to prevent our being caught up by a whirlwind, even the outer edges of which may snatch us into the vortex.

To change the metaphor, we revel in the pleasant propulsion of the maelstrom's rim, unaware that every instant brings us closer to dangers, escape from which would demand herculean effort. Irresponsible emotions are, like those of the novel and the stage, when intensified to excess utterly incompatible with action. And just such a paralysis seems for six long weeks to have lamed the highest powers of America.

The proportionate increase in population among the European powers is overwhelmingly in favor of the Slavs. Their rate of increase by natural generation is nearly three times that of even the Germans, with the result that by the introduction of enforced military service into Eastern Europe, (excepting Hungary and perhaps Rumania,) the military balance of power has been completely changed.

The wars among the Balkan States, including Turkey, have put on foot armies of a dimension hitherto undreamed of among the South Slavs, and the army of Russia is probably two and a half times larger than it could have been thirty-five years ago.

The method by which Eastern Europe has succeeded in financing itself is rather mysterious. We know, of course, that the original Franco-Russian Alliance was based on reciprocal interests, and that large sums of French money flowed into Russia, which partly developed the natural resources of Russia and were partly in the shape of loans that in all likelihood were used for war material.

Slavs in Germany.

The conflict between the Slavs and the Teutons all along the line on which they border has therefore been in two ways intensified. In the first place, just in proportion as Germany has become an industrial State, the field work has been intrusted to immigrant Slavs, some of whom come only for the season and return, but a very large number of them—estimated at the present moment at close to a million—have substantially settled within the borders of the German Empire. That is to say, there is a constant injection of 1-1/2 per cent. of Slavic blood into the territories of the German Empire.

Suppose now that Russia should succeed in establishing the protectorate over all Slavs which she desires, and at the same time should press back the Germans on that border line, something very closely approximating a new migration of peoples in Europe will take place.

As far as I know the German feeling, expressed both privately and publicly, officially and unofficially, they have hoped to maintain their complete consanguinity, if not homogeneity, within the lands they regard as their home; and their preparations for war, their increase of their military strength, have been made, professedly at least, solely in the interest of defense. Americans can simply not realize—it is impossible for them to realize—the difference in the degree of civilization and culture on either side of a purely artificial boundary line.

Very fortunately it has entered the minds of several people lately to write to the newspapers about the unhappy confusion that comes from the use of words in a meaning which at home they do not connote at all. Take, for example, the whole question of militarism. As we see it, it is a matter altogether of degree. For defense against what the German considers the most terrible danger that he personally has to confront, it has been necessary from time to time to change both the size and the composition of his forces, whether offensive or defensive, and they therefore have introduced compulsory military service, an idea which has always been very offensive to Anglo-Saxons, but which in cases of dire necessity they have been compelled to utilize themselves, as, for example, during our own civil war, the abandonment of voluntary enlistment and the introduction of the draft.

Now, the compulsory military service of the German means that every man is for a period of his life drafted and trained as a soldier. Forty years ago there were a great many men who escaped by reason of one or another provision of the law. That number was steadily diminished until within eighteen months, when finally it was proclaimed that every German who could endure the severity of that training must undergo it, and that was due to the fact that the military balance of power of which I spoke had been so completely changed by the re-armament of Russia and by the formation of the South Slav armies in the Balkan Peninsula.

As a parallel we might imagine, not one troublesome neighbor, but four. We might imagine a tremendous military power developed in Canada, and we might imagine a hostile military power on the Atlantic side and another one on the Pacific side, in which case we would beyond a question have to expand our inchoate militarism, just in proportion as we came to feel the necessity for a strong physical defensive or offensive in the way of a great standing army, and we probably would do it without any hesitation.

Now, Germany has not any really bitter foe on the north, although there is no love lost between the Germans and the Scandinavians; but it has an embittered foe on the east, and another one on the west, and what has proved to be an embittered foe upon the water and a very lukewarm neutral State on the south, a State which had joined in alliance with her.

Italy had joined what Italy considered a defensive alliance, but not an offensive alliance, and chose to regard the outbreak of this war as an offensive movement on the part of Germany, and for that reason has refused to participate in the struggle.

I say for that reason because, having been accustomed to reading, all my life, long diplomatic documents, really having been trained, you might say, almost in the school of Ranke, who was the inaugurator of an entirely new school of historical writing based on the criticism of historical papers, I have come to realize that the dispatches of trained diplomats are for the most part purely formal, and that while these respective publications of Great Britain and of Germany have a certain value, yet nevertheless the most important plans are laid in the embrasures of windows, where important men stand and talk so that no one can hear, or they are arranged and often times amplified in private correspondence which does not see the light until years afterward, and that the most important historical documents are found in the archives of families, members of which have been the guiding spirits of European policy and politics.

So that what the secret diplomacy of the last years may have been is as yet utterly unknown, and certainly will not be known for the generation yet to come and perhaps for several generations. The student in almost any European capital is given complete access to everything on file in the archives, including secret documents, only down to a certain date. That date differs in various of these storehouses, but I think in no case is it later than 1830.

If you ask why, there are the sensibilities of families to be considered, there is the question of hidden policies which they do not care to reveal, and then there is the whole matter of who the examining student is. For instance, certain very important papers were absolutely denied to me, as an American, in Great Britain—or at least excuses were made if they were not absolutely denied—which were opened to an Englishman who was working upon the same subject at about the same time.

The reason for such observations at the present hour is plain enough. Public opinion is formed upon what the public is permitted to know, and is not formed upon the actual facts which the public is not permitted to know. And for that reason Americans, remote as we are from the sources of information, and especially remote from that most delicate of all indications, the pulse of public opinion in foreign countries, ought to be extremely slow to commit themselves to anything.

Attack on Sir Edward Grey.

Now, we have just had a very interesting incident. THE NEW YORK TIMES printed recently what the British call their "White Paper," as well as the German "White Paper." The editors of our most important journals announced that they had read and studied those papers with care, and that on the face of those papers, beyond any peradventure, Germany was the aggressor. German militarism had flaunted itself as an insult in the face of Europe. Germany had violated neutrality, Germany had committed almost every sin known to international law, and therefore the whole German procedure was to be reprobated.

Within a very short time a Labor member of Parliament, J. Ramsay Macdonald, rises in his place, able and fearless, and, on the basis of the "White Paper," as published and put in the hands of the British public, attacks Sir Edward Grey for having so committed Great Britain in advance to both Russia and France that, in spite of the representations of the German Ambassador, he dared not discuss the question of neutrality. This member of Parliament manifestly belongs to the powerful anti-war party of Great Britain, a party two of whose members, John Burns and Lord Morley, resigned from the Cabinet rather than condone iniquity; a party which before the outbreak of the war made itself heard and felt, and protested against the participation of Great Britain, desiring localization of the struggle.

Mr. Macdonald says that in his opinion this talk about the violation of Belgian neutrality, from the point of view of British statesmen, is absurd, because as long ago as 1870 the plans for the use of Belgium, both by France and by Germany—in other words, the violation of its neutrality—were in the British War Office, and that Mr. Gladstone rose in his place and said he was not one of those whose opinion was that a formal guarantee should stand so far in thwarting the natural course of events as to commit Great Britain to war; and that has been the announced and avowed policy of Great Britain all the way down since 1870, and that therefore talk about the violation of Belgian neutrality is a mere pretext.

That is another instance of this secret agreement that goes on, which so commits a man like Sir Edward Grey that in the pinch, when the German Ambassador substantially proposed to yield everything to him and asked him for his proposition, he cannot make any.

These facts are in the "White Paper." As far as I know, no editor in the United States who claims to have studied thoroughly that "White Paper" has ever brought this out, and they had not been published in that paper at the time when Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith made their respective speeches and committed the British Nation to the war.

Another unhappy use of language which has been noted in the public press is due to the literal translation of words. Americans simply do not know what the word Emperor means. To most of them it connotes the later Roman Emperors, or the autocratic Czar of Russia, or the short-lived but autocratic quality of Napoleon III., so that when we use the word Emperor we are thinking of an absolutely non-existing personage, unless it be the Czar of Russia.

We like very much to make sport of phrases from languages unfamiliar to us, and we enjoy the jokes of ludicrous translations, and so we take the term "Oberster Kriegsherr" and we translate it "Supreme War Lord." What conception the average American forms of that is manifest. Whereas, as a matter of fact—and this has already been pointed out both in conversation and in public prints—the term means nothing in the world but Commander in Chief of the German Empire, has not any different relation whatsoever in the substance of its meaning than that which Presidents of the United States have been in time of supreme danger to the country. Mr. Lincoln was just as much an "Oberster Kriegsherr" at one period of his term as the German Emperor could ever be; in fact, rather more.

Sherman's March to the Sea.

In truth, the sense of outrage which Americans feel over the horrors of war, while most creditable to them, is very often based upon an ignorance of the rules and regulations of so-called civilized warfare, and upon a sentimentality, which, though also very creditable, is unfortunately not one of the factors in the world's work. It would not hurt Americans occasionally to recall Sherman's march to the sea, during which every known kind of devastation occurred, or to recall Gen. Hunter's boast that he had made the Valley of Virginia such a desert that a crow could not find sustenance enough in it to fly from one side to the other, and yet at that time, in what we considered the supreme danger to our country, the conduct of those men was approved, and they themselves were almost deified for their actions.

While parallels are dangerous and the existence of one wrong does not make another action right, yet at the same time a very considerable amount of open-mindedness must be exercised in a neutral country when regarding the passionate devotions of combatant nations to their culture, to their safety, to their interest; and it should be recalled that in the heats and horrors of war it is extremely difficult, however trained or disciplined troops may be, to prevent outrages, and that so far as we have gone in accurate information the least that can be said is that it is slowly dawning upon us that horror for horror and outrage for outrage there has been no overwhelming balance on either side.

The Allies (this interview was received Tuesday morning) firmly believe that the struggle on the west is so indecisive up to this time that what will count for them is the duration of the war. Lloyd George has just said, not in the exact language, but virtually, what Disraeli said in 1878: "We don't want to fight; but, by jingo, if we do we have got the ships, we have got the men, we have got the money, too." Those are the words that brought into use the expression "jingoists."

Now, Lloyd George said the other day that it was the money which in the long run would count and that Great Britain had that; and the meetings that are held to induce Englishmen to enlist are addressed by speakers who meet with lots of applause when they say: "We may not be able to put the same number of men into the field immediately that Germany was able to put or Russia was able to put, but in the long run, considering the attitude of all the different parts of our empire, we will be able to put just as many men, and therefore time is on our side both as regards force in the field and money to sustain it." (The London Times confesses that enlistment in Ireland is a failure.)

Lloyd George says that for a comparatively short time England's enemies can finance themselves and be very efficient, but that as time passes they unquestionably will exhaust not only their pecuniary means but their resources of men as well. That is his position at this time. Therefore, it does appear as if the long duration of the war was a thing desired, at least in Great Britain, as being their hope of victory. Both Great Britain and France are wealthy countries. Just how wealthy Germany is I do not think they realize, nor do we know, nor what its ultimate resources can be.

Now, looking at the allied line as a whole, we will suppose that the German forces were overwhelmingly triumphant in France, and suppose, likewise, which is by no means as strong a hypothesis, that Russia is overwhelmingly victorious against Austria and the Eastern German Army; then, of course, you have the situation in which that one of the Allies which is triumphant will assert its leadership in the terms of peace that will be reached, and would have the hegemony, as we call it, of all Europe.

Russia's Position.

So that the defeat of the Allies in the west and their overwhelming success in the east would compel the acceptance, in any peace that might be made, of such terms as Russia chose to dictate. She would have to be satisfied, otherwise there would only be one outcome of it; that is, of course, if Great Britain and France could not accept those terms, there would be a rupture, and stranger things have been seen than Germany, France, and Great Britain fighting against Russia.

Stranger things than that have been seen; such changes in the alliances between States have occurred at intervals from the seventeenth century onward in Europe, a phase of the subject that is too lengthy to discuss here, but which every student of history knows all about. And it is thinkable that they might occur again.

Suppose, on the other hand, that the Germans should imitate Frederick the Great, which is not so preposterous as appears on the face of it, because of comparatively easy means of transportation, and should be able to make successive victorious dashes, first in the east and then in the west, backward and forward; leadership would be hers, and France would be a minor power for years to come.

Probably peace might come more quickly if neither side should be absolutely victorious than otherwise. But for the moment I think that the agreement among the Allies is a very portentous thing, as far as the duration of the war is concerned.

"Do you think that any secret agreement may exist; that France even now may have made an agreement with Germany?" Mr. Sloane was asked.

I cannot think so. I think it very evident there is no such secret agreement. If one existed it would be much more likely to be between Russia and Germany. You remember the development of Prussia, which is, of course, the commanding State in the German Empire, occurred by its careful conservation of the policy which was laid down in the political will of Frederick the Great, that of keeping friends with Russia.

The fact of the matter is, Prussia was saved in the Napoleonic wars by the act of Gen. Yorck at Tauroggen, when he suddenly abandoned the French and went over to the Prussians, and while Russia has within half a generation become intensely bitter against Germany, yet it is true that the Baltic Provinces, in which the gentry and the burghers are Germans, have furnished most important administrators to the Russian Empire, a fact that causes much of the jealousy in Russia on the part of the native-born Russians against the Germans of the Baltic Provinces. Nevertheless, self-interest is a very important thing, and if Russia thought for a moment that France was going to abandon her I think she would turn to Germany right away.

As time has developed the nations of today, it has come to be understood by hard-headed statesmen that those who conduct their respective affairs can have no other guiding principle than the interest of their own State, no other.

There is a persistent feeling throughout the world that there is an analogy between the individual man and organized society. There are books written to show that States must and do pass through the various stages through which an individual passes, namely, infancy, childhood, youth, middle age, old age, decay. By a perfectly natural parallel the majority of men apply the same morality to the State which they apply to the individual, and they insist upon it that a State must be moral in every respect; that it must have a conscience; that it must have virtue; that it must practice self-denial; that it must not lay its hands on what does not belong to it. In short, that it must as a State or as a nation be "good," in exactly the same sense in which a person is "good." In other words, they personify the State.

I have never heard of any speaker or writer who would not approve of that as an ideal, and who would not desire that the millennium should come upon earth now, and that exactly the same virtues that are held up for personal ideals should be held up for national ideals.

I think we all believe that, but, as a matter of fact, in a world constituted as ours is, the one test of a good Government, applied by every individual, is the material prosperity of the people who live under it, and for that reason if the people do not at first put in power men who can give them material prosperity they will put such failures out and try another set of rulers, and they will go on and on that way until necessarily the policies of statesmen must be based upon the interest of that State whose destinies are in their hands. So that the only hope of relations between nations similar to those that exist between good men and good women is that the individuals of that nation, its population, its inhabitants, should consent to exercise the self-denying virtues; and until that point is reached there can be no good State in the sense in which there can be a good man. We ought all to work for it, but it is not here now, and there are no signs on the horizon of its approach.

In a war, therefore, every statesman studies the resources of his nation, and when the time comes that it is manifestly his duty to put an end to warfare, it is only by the public approval that he dares do it, by showing that it is to their advantage to give up the things for which they went to war, in greater or less degree.

Armed Peace Not Disarmament.

And the man of shrewd insight, who knows when that point is reached, is the leader who saves the face, so to speak, of these nations and steps in and says:

"Now, the whole moral force of the civilized world must be brought to bear upon you to make a peace, the terms of which, if possible, shall not discredit any of you, but at the same time shall be as elastic and as proportionate to your respective gains and losses as will insure at least a considerable period of peace, not an armistice, not an armed armistice, though it may be an armed peace."

We see no signs anywhere in Europe that disarmament has any substantial body of advocates in any nation. The basic principle hitherto of the German people has been to have, not the largest, but the strongest army; the basic principle of Great Britain, which sneers at militarism, has been not only to have the most powerful fleet, but twice the most powerful fleet.

And what is the basic principle of the United States? The Monroe Doctrine, to have no armed neighbor which shall compel us to violate by its presence our dislike for compulsory military service or to expend great sums for armament.

These are basic principles in each of us. Now, we have been able to maintain the Monroe Doctrine by simply showing our teeth, but whether we could maintain it in the future without an armed force sufficient to give it sanction I think is doubtful, and for that reason the Monroe Doctrine has undergone quite a number of modifications which I do not need to explain here.

But this basic principle of ours that from Patagonia to the Mexican frontier we will suffer no armed nation of Europe to make permanent settlement and endanger our peace is exactly the same sort of principle that the German holds when he says, "We must have the strongest army," and the same which the Englishman holds when he says, "We must have the strongest fleet."

I want it distinctly understood that I am not a partisan. I am not pro this or pro that or pro anything except pro-American, and the principal impulse I have in trying to clarify my mind is my hope that there may be an end to these hysterical exhibitions of partisanship, in which (throughout this neutral nation) men indulge who still hold too strongly, as I think, to the glory, honor, dignity, and traditions of the lands of their origin.



An Answer by Prof. Ladd

Emeritus Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at Yale University; Lecturer on Philosophy in India and Japan; has received numerous decorations in Japan, where he was guest and unofficial adviser of Prince Ito; ex-President of American Psychological Association.

To the Editor of The New York Times:

It seems strange to me that a student of history with the training and acumen of Prof. Sloane should overlook or minimize the important distinction that must hold the chief place in enabling us to understand the issues and appreciate the merits of the war now raging in Europe. This distinction is that between the German people and Germanic civilization, on the one hand, and, on the other, the present Constitution and cherished ambitions of the German Empire under the dominance of Prussia. The German people, by genuine processes of self-development, have worked out for themselves a veritable spiritual unity which manifests itself in language, laws, customs, and a large measure of substantial uniformity in moral and religious ideals. Germanic civilization, with its love of order, its high estimate of education, its notable additions to science, philosophy, and art, constitutes one of the most noble and beneficent contributions to the welfare of mankind.

But the case is not at all the same with the German Empire as at present constituted. It is not a historical development, a truly national affair, as are the Empire of Great Britain, the Republics of France and the United States, or the Empires of Russia and Japan. It is a modern combination of politically divergent unities, forced by the ruthless but infinitely shrewd policy of Bismarck and his coadjutors, misdirected and perhaps driven to ruin by the man and his entourage, who, even if he is King of Prussia "by the grace of God," is only Emperor of Germany "by the will of the Princes."

We are diligently given to understand that all these "Princes" and all the German people have entered heart and soul into this war, and without the slightest doubt as to its righteousness and as to the destiny of the empire, this modern military autocracy, ultimately to be completely victorious. This is hard to believe, although it must be admitted that the cowardice of the Socialists and the obsession of the professors are remarkable phenomena. As to the latter, however, we must remember their dependence on the Government, not only for their information and their "call" to speak, but also for their positions in the Government system of education.

As to the significance of the two names most prominently quoted in this connection, I am not at all impressed, as so many of my colleagues appear to be. An intimate friend of mine some twenty years ago was several weeks en pension in the same house where Haeckel had his apartment, and even then he was notorious for his hatred of foreigners and of women. Those of us who have followed closely his career know how often he has written with more than German professorial virulence against those who differed from his theory of evolution, and that he is at present scarcely more abusive of England than he has several times been of his own Government and of the State Church because his system was not made a matter of compulsory teaching. As to Eucken, the reasons for his obsession are quite different. In his case the feeling and the utterance are due to intellectual weakness rather than to virulence of passion.

After all, however, the temper of military and imperial Germany under the dominance of Prussia has been essentially the same from the beginning. In illustration of this, let me quote for your readers from a poem of Heine, written as long ago as 1842. I do this the more readily because I have recently seen, to my astonishment, Heine placed beside Goethe as representing the better temper of the Germanic civilization as opposed to the blinded judgment and immoral hatred of the modern German Empire:

Germany's still a little child, But he's nursed by the sun, though tender; He is not suckled on soothing milk, But on flames of burning splendor.

One grows apace on such a diet; It fires the blood from languor; Ye neighbor's children, have a care, This urchin how ye anger!

He is an awkward infant giant, The oak by the roots uptearing; He'll beat you till your backs are sore, And crack your crowns for daring.

He is like Siegfried, the noble child, That song-and-saga wonder, Who, when his fabled sword was forged, His anvil cleft in sunder!

To you, who will our Dragon slay, Shall Siegfried's strength be given; Hurrah! how joyfully your nurse Will laugh on you from heaven!

The Dragon's hoard of royal gems You'll win, with none to share it; Hurrah! how bright the golden crown Will sparkle when you wear it!

But it would not be stranger than many other things which have happened in human history if the defeat of German military imperialism should result in restoring to Europe and spreading more widely over the world the beneficent influence of Germanic civilization. Certainly they are not the same thing, and they do not stand or fall together.

GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD.

Yale University, Oct. 20, 1914.



Possible Profits From War

INTERVIEW WITH FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS.

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."



"To Americans Leaving Germany"

A FAREWELL WORD.

AMERICANS!

Citizens of the United States!

In this earnest moment in which you are leaving the soil of Germany and Berlin, take with you from German citizens, from representatives of trade and industry, who are proud to entertain friendly commercial relations with the United States, a hearty farewell coupled with the desire of a speedy return.

Together with this farewell we beg you to do us a favor. As our guests, whom we have always honored and protected, we ask you to take this paper with you as a memorial and to circulate the same among your authorities, press, friends, and acquaintances.

For, we are well aware that the enemies of Germany are at work to make you the instruments to lower Germany's people and army in the face of the whole world in order to deceive foreign nations as to Germany's policy and economical power. We ask you, as free citizens face to face with free citizens, to circulate the real truth about Germany among your people as compared to the lies of our enemies.

We beg you to take the following main points to heart:

1. The German Emperor and the German Nation wanted peace. The cunning and breach of faith of our opponents have forced the sword into the hands of Germany.

2. After war has been forced on us the German Nation, Emperor, and Reichstag have granted everything in the most brilliant unanimity for the war. No difference prevails in Germany any longer, no difference between party, confession, rank or position, but we are a united nation and army.

3. Our military organization and our mobilization has proceeded with splendid precision. The mobilization was accomplished during the course of a few days. In addition to those who are compelled to serve, more than 1,200,000 volunteers have offered their services. All civil organizations, from the head of industry and finance to the smallest man downward, vie with each other in works of voluntary aid and welfare.

4. In the field German arms have had splendid successes in the first days of mobilization.

In the east the Russian enemy has been driven from the German frontier, in numerous small fights by our troops in conjunction with those of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. By successful coup de mains our navy has been successful in damaging and alarming our Russian opponent in her Baltic naval ports. The Russian port of Libau has been burned down and in Russian Poland revolution has already begun. Russian mobilization is a long way from being accomplished, the troops are badly, poorly nourished, and many deserters sell their weapons and horses.

In the west the German Army has gained imposing victories over Belgium and France.

In Belgium, where the population unfortunately committed the most barbarous atrocities against peaceful Germans before the war broke out, comparatively weak German forces conquered the strong fortress of Liege a few days after the mobilization, inflicting severe damage on the enemy and opening up the way via Belgium to France.