In reality, however, our conflict with Servia was not the cause of the great war now raging, but only the spark which brought the overloaded powder barrel to explosion. Who talks of Servia today, and who believes that France, England, and Japan are making war on Germany and on us because of Servia? The war broke out because Russia decided to shield Servia against the consequences of her provocations and because, owing to preconcerted arrangements, the situation in Europe was such that the action of one great power was bound to bring all or nearly all the others into the field. And again those preconcerted arrangements were the outcome of a mass of pent-up passions, of hatred, envy, and jealousy, the like of which—all Hague conferences and pacific unions notwithstanding—the world has never seen before.

We are fully aware of the danger which threatened us from Russia when we formulated our demands in Belgrade. Russia's population is three times as large as ours and it was not with a light heart that our Emperor-King took his final resolution. But our national honor and our very existence as a self-respecting power were at stake. We could not hesitate. Now we are in a struggle for life or death and we mean to carry it through with full confidence in the rightfulness of our cause and in the force of our arms. In one respect events have already belied the calculations of our enemies, who counted on internal dissensions within our own borders. I am happy to say that Croatians, Slovenes, and a large majority of our own Servians are fighting in our ranks with the same valor and enthusiasm as Czechs, Rumanians, Poles, Magyars, and Germans.

But why did Russia decide to assail us? During the whole nineteenth century she has shown herself a very shifty and unreliable protectress of Servia. She made use of the smaller country when it suited her own aggressive purposes against others, and she dropped it whenever it served her ends. It was so at the time of the Turkish war of 1877 and of the Berlin Congress, and it remained so until with the advent of the present dynasty Servia offered a sure prospect of becoming and remaining a permanent tool in Russia's hands and a thorn in our flesh.

Russia is an aggressive power. For 200 years she has extended her dominions at the cost of Sweden first, of Poland and Turkey afterward. Now she thinks our turn has come. Finding us to be in the way of her ultimate aims in the Balkan Peninsula, she began to regard us as her enemy. For years the propaganda for undermining the bases of our empire has been carried on in the name of Pan-Slavism. It seems that she judged that now the time had come to draw the consequences and to bring things to a final issue. With what result remains to be seen.

Germany Bound to Aid Austria.

By the terms of our treaty of alliance Germany was bound to come to our assistance if we were attacked by Russia. There was no secrecy about that treaty. Its text had been made public long ago and its purely defensive character brought to the knowledge of the world. No more than we did Germany entertain hostile intentions or nourish hostile feelings against Russia. There were no clashing interests to excite the first, no historical reminiscences to justify the second. If it is otherwise in Russia, it is because her present leaders find German power in the way of their conquering aspirations against us. Germany, true to her obligations, hastened to our side when she saw us menaced, and when she declared war she did it because she had positive information that in spite of formal and solemn assurances to the contrary Russia mobilization was proceeding.

The terms of the Franco-Russian alliance have never been made public. Whether it was concluded merely for defensive or also for offensive purposes, and whether France was obliged by her treaty to draw the sword in the present case, remains therefore a matter of surmise. But there is no mystery about the feelings of France with regard to Germany, and no doubt about the greed for revenge which during the last forty-four years has swayed the overwhelming majority of her people and been the dominant factor of her foreign policy. It was for this object that she entered into her alliances and agreements, and it is for this cause that she is fighting now.

It is simple hypocrisy to talk about German aggressiveness against France. France stood in no danger of being attacked by Germany if she had chosen to remain neutral in the latter's war with Russia. Asked whether she would do so, she replied that her actions would be guided by her interests. The meaning of this reply was clear, and left Germany no choice. The formal declaration of war became then a mere matter of political and military convenience, and has no bearing on the moral issue of the case.

But why has England plunged into this war? Officially and to the world at large she has explained her resolution by Germany's violation of Belgian neutrality, and in the royal message to Parliament it was solemnly declared that England could not stand by and passively tolerate such a breach of international law and obligations.

No Austrian can read this declaration otherwise than with a mournful smile. Its futility has been exposed by the question which Englishmen of standing and renown have put to their Government, viz., whether they would equally have declared war on France if that violation of neutrality had first come from her side. In face of this question having remained unanswered, and in face of what has come to light since about French preparations in Belgium, there is no need to expiate on this subject. All that there is to be said about it has been said by the German Chancellor in open session of the Reichstag, and all that may be added is the remark that, considering England's history and what she did before Copenhagen in 1807, she of all nations should be the last to put on airs of moral indignation over the application of the principle that in time of war "salus reipublicae suprema lex est."

The existence of a convention binding England to France in case of war has—as far as I know—never been admitted officially by England. As I see now from manifestations of Englishmen disapproving of their country's participation in the war, the belief exists nevertheless that such a convention had been concluded. But whether England's declaration of war was the consequence of previously entered obligations or the outcome of present free initiative, the main fact remains that in the last resort it sprang from jealousy of Germany's growing sea power and commercial prosperity. This feeling was the dominant factor in English foreign policy, just as greed for revenge was in France. It was the propelling power for the agreements which England has made and for others which she endeavored but did not succeed in bringing about.

England claims the dominion over the seas as her native right, and, what is more, she holds it. Her title is no better and no worse than that of the Romans when they conquered the world, or of the Turkish Sultans in the days of their power. Like them, she has succeeded in making good her claim. For three centuries the nations of Continental Europe have been hating, fighting, and devastating each other for the sake of strips of frontier land and a shadowy balance of power. These centuries were England's opportunity, and she has made the most of it. That she should mean to keep what she has and hold to her maritime supremacy as to the apple of her eye is natural. Whether it is for the benefit of mankind that it should be so, and whether the world in general would not be better off if there existed a balance of power on sea as well as on land, does not enter into the present discussion. What is more to the purpose is that in reality England's sea power stood in no danger at all. To any thinking and fair-minded observer it must be clear that Germany, hemmed in by hostile neighbors in the east and west, and obliged, therefore, to keep up her armaments on land, would not have been able to threaten England's maritime superiority for generations to come. If the issue has been thrown into the balance, it has been done so by England's own doing.

But it is not only the nascent German Navy that excited the distrust and envy of England. German colonies and every trading German vessel seem equally to have become thorns in English eyes. The wish to sweep those vessels from off the seas, to destroy all German ports, in one word, to down Germany, has long been nourished and lately openly avowed in England. Norman Angell's theories about the great illusion of the profitability of modern warfare seem to have made mighty small impression on his countrymen.

Russian lust of conquest, French greed of revenge, and English envy were the forces at work in the European powder magazine. The Servian spark ignited it, but the explosion was bound to come sooner or later. What alone could have stopped it would have been England's stepping out of the conspiracy. That she did not do so, in fact became its really directing power, will forever remain a blot on her history.

About Japan's motives and methods I do not think it necessary to write. American public opinion will hardly need any enlightenment on this subject. America forced Japan out of the isolation in which she had lived during centuries. I hope the day may not come when she will wish that she had not done so.

The issues of the war stand in relation to its causes and the same attempts have been made to distort and falsify them in the eyes of the American public. I have seen it stated in a New York paper that this war is a fight between civilization and barbarism, and I have seen a member of the present English Cabinet quoted as having said that the issue was one between militarism and freedom, civilization and freedom standing, of course, in both cases on the side of our enemies.

Not a War for Civilization.

More idiotic rot—excuse the expression—I have never read in my life. What has civilization to do with Servia's murderous plotting against us? What with Russia's desire to shield her from the consequences of her aggressions and to demonstrate to the world that we are of no account in the Balkans and to establish her own—more or less veiled—protectorate there? And if the case of civilization is advanced by Japan's ousting Germany from Kiao-Chau, why should it not be equally furthered if Japan did the same to England in Hongkong, Singapore, or, if the opportunity offered, in India itself? And a person must be indeed at his wits' end for arguments to proclaim Russia as a standard bearer of freedom in her war against us. Compare her treatment of Poles, Finns, Ukrainanians (small Russians) and Hebrews with the freedom which the different nationalities enjoy in our empire! And England herself. Is it for freedom's sake that she holds Gibraltar and that she subjugated the Boers?

No! Civilization and freedom have nothing to do with the issues at stake now, least of all in the sense that our enemies have drawn the sword for their cause. It is a war for conquest and supremacy stirred up by all the hateful passions in human nature, fully as much as any war that has ever been waged before. But we did not stir it up. We are fighting for our existence, right and justice are on our side, and so we trust will victory be.

The causes of the war are clear. To make its issues still clearer, imagine for a moment and merely for argument's sake the consequences of our adversaries being successful. Russia, England, and Japan would remain masters of the field. Is this a consummation any thinking American can wish for?

These are the considerations I wished to lay before you, and I ask your assistance to bring them before the American people. I ask for no reply, no manifestation of feelings or opinion from you. What I ask you is to publish this letter as an open letter addressed by me to you, signed with my full name. How to do this I leave entirely to you. It goes without saying that your private reply, if you favor me with one, will be treated as such.

Hoping to meet you in better times, and sending our kindest regards to Mrs. Roosevelt, believe me, yours most sincerely,

BARON L. HENGELMULLER.

Abbazia, Sept. 25, 1914.



Russian Atrocities

By George Haven Putnam.

Publisher, Director of the Knickerbocker Press, Secretary American Copyright League; decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor, France.

To the Editor of The New York Times:

It is possible that the letter presented herewith from a German neighbor (who is a stranger to me) may be of interest to your readers as an example of a curious confusion of thought into which have fallen Germans on both sides of the Atlantic in regard to the issues of the present struggle and the conduct and the actions of the German Army. I am inclosing a copy of my reply to Mr. Thienes.

GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM.

New York, Nov. 4, 1914.

THE LETTER.

NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 1914.

Mr. George Haven Putnam.

DEAR SIR: Now that you have shown your "true" spirit of neutrality toward Germany, would you not be kind enough to give us a similar piece of your wisdom and describe in detail the way the Russians acted in East Prussia during their short stay there, and how they murdered, tortured, and assaulted women and girls, and cut children and infants to pieces without even the provocation of "sniping"?

This, your new article in THE TIMES, I anticipate with the greatest interest.

RUDOLF F. THIENES.

THE REPLY.

Rudolf F. Thienes, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR: Your letter of the 28th inst., intended as a rejoinder to a letter recently printed by me in THE TIMES, is written under a misapprehension in regard to one important matter.

The Americans, who are in a position to judge impartially in regard to the issues of the war, have criticised the official acts which have attended the devastation of Belgium, not because these acts were committed by Germans, but because they were in themselves abominable and contrary to precedents and to civilized standards.

If the Russians had, under official order, burned Lemburg, including the university and the library, and executed the Burgomaster, they would have come under the same condemnation from Americans that has been given to Germans for the burning of Louvain and Aerschot and the shooting of the Aerschot Burgomaster. I am myself familiar with Germany. I am an old-time German student, and I have German friends on both sides of the Atlantic, and I am in a position to sympathize with legitimate aspirations and ideals of these German friends.

I am convinced, however, that no nation can secure in this twentieth century its rightful development unless its national conduct is regulated with a "decent respect to the opinions of mankind." The references made in my TIMES letters were restricted to official actions; things done under the direction of the military commanders acting in accord with the instructions or the general policy of the Imperial Government.

The misdeeds of individual soldiers are difficult to verify. While these are always exaggerated, it remains the sad truth that every big army contains a certain percentage of ruffians, and that when these ruffians are let loose in a community, with weapons and with military power behind them, bad things are done. It is my own belief that the material in the German Army (which is the best fighting machine that the world has ever seen) will compare favorably with that of any army in the world, and that the percentage of wrongful acts on the part of the German soldiers has been small. Such misdeeds, sometimes to be characterized as atrocities, are the inevitable result of war, and they bring a grave responsibility upon a Government which (to accept as well founded the frank utterances of the leaders of opinion in Germany) has initiated this war for the purpose of "crushing France and of breaking up the British Empire."

You appear to think that it is in order for Germany to visit upon unoffending Belgians reprisal for the misdeeds (as far as such misdeeds may be in evidence) committed by Russians in East Prussia. I cannot see that this contention is in accord with justice or with common sense.

GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM.

New York, Oct. 28, 1914.



"The United States of Europe"

INTERVIEW WITH NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER.

Dr. Butler is President of Columbia University; received Republican electoral vote for Vice President of the United States, 1913; President of American Branch of Conciliation Internationale; President American Historical Association; Trustee Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Commander Order of the Red Eagle (with Star) of Prussia; Commandeur de Legion d'Honneur of France.

By Edward Marshall.

The United States of Europe.

Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, firmly believes that the organization of such a federation will be the outcome, soon or late, of a situation built up through years of European failure to adjust government to the growth of civilization.

He thinks it possible that the ending of the present war may see the rising of the new sun of democracy to light a day of freedom for our transatlantic neighbors.

He tells me that thinking men in all the contending nations are beginning vividly to consider such a contingency, to argue for it or against it; in other words, to regard it as an undoubted possibility.

Dr. Butler's acquaintance among those thinking men of all shades of political belief is probably wider than that of any other American, and it is significant of the startling importance of what he says that by far the greater number of his European friends, the men upon whose views he has largely, directly or indirectly, based his conclusions, are not of the socialistic or of any other revolutionary or semi-revolutionary groups, but are among the most conservative and most important figures in European political, literary, and educational fields.

This being unquestionably true, it is by no means improbable that in the interview which follows, fruit of two evenings in Dr. Butler's library, may be found the most important speculative utterance yet to appear in relation to the general European war.

Dr. Butler's estimate of the place which the United States now holds upon the stage of the theatre of world progress and his forecast of the tremendously momentous role which she is destined to play there must make every American's heart first swell with pride and then thrill with a realization of responsibility.

The United States of Europe, modeled after and instructed by the United States of America! The thought is stimulating.

Said Dr. Butler:

"The European cataclysm puts the people of the United States in a unique and tremendously important position. As neutrals we are able to observe events and to learn the lesson that they teach. If we learn rightly we shall gain for ourselves and be able to confer upon others benefits far more important than any of the material advantages which may come to us through a shrewd handling of the new possibilities in international trade.

"I hesitate to discuss any phase of the great conflict now raging in Europe. By today's mail, for example, I received long, personal letters from Lord Haldane, from Lord Morley, from Lord Weardale, and from Lord Bryce. Another has just come from Prof. Schiemann of Berlin, perhaps the Emperor's most intimate adviser; another from Prof. Lamasch of Austria, who was the Presiding Judge of the British-American arbitration in relation to the Newfoundland fisheries a few years ago, and is a member of the Austrian House of Peers. Still others are from M. Ribot, Minister of Finance in France, and M. d'Estournelles de Constant. These confidential letters give a wealth of information as to the intellectual and political forces that are behind the conflict.

"You will understand, then, that without disloyalty to my many friends in Europe, I could not discuss with freedom the causes or the progress of the war, or speculate in detail about the future of the European problem. My friends in Germany, France, and England all write to me with the utmost freedom and not for the public eye; so you see that my great difficulty, when you ask me to talk about the meaning of the struggle, arises from the obligation that I am under to preserve a proper personal reserve regarding the great figures behind the vast intellectual and political changes which really are in the background of the war.

"If such reserve is necessary in my case, it seems to me that it also is necessary for the country as a whole. The attitude of the President has been impeccable. That of the whole American press and people should be the same.

"Especially is it true that all Americans who hope to have influence, as individuals, in shaping the events which will follow the war, must avoid any expression which even might be tortured into an avowal of partisanship or final judgment.

"Even the free expression of views criticising particular details of the war, which might, in fact, deserve criticism, might destroy one's chance of future possible usefulness. A statement which might be unquestionably true might also be remembered to the damage of some important cause later on.

"There are reasons why my position is, perhaps, more difficult than that of some others. Talking is often a hazardous practice, and never more so than now.

"The World is at crossroads, and everything may depend upon the United States, which has been thrust by events into a unique position of moral leadership. Whether the march of the future is to be to the right or to the left, uphill or down, after the war is over, may well depend upon the course this nation shall then take, and upon the influence which it shall exercise.

"If we keep our heads clear there are two things that we can bring insistently to the attention of Europe—each of vast import at such a time as that which will follow the ending of this war.

"The first of these is the fact that race antagonisms die away and disappear under the influence of liberal and enlightened political institutions. This has been proved in the United States.

"We have huge Celtic, Latin, Teutonic and Slavic populations all living here at peace and in harmony; and, as years pass, they tend to merge, creating new and homogeneous types. The Old World antagonisms have become memories. This proves that such antagonisms are not mysterious attributes of geography or climate, but that they are the outgrowth principally of social and political conditions. Here a man can do about what he likes, so long as he does not violate the law; he may pray as he pleases or not at all, and he may speak any language that he chooses.

"The United States is itself proof that most of the contentions of Europeans as to race antagonisms are ill-founded. We have demonstrated that racial antagonisms need not necessarily become the basis of permanent hatreds and an excuse for war."

Hyphens Are Going.

"If human beings are given the chance they will make the most of themselves, and, by living happily—which means by living at peace—they will avoid conflict. The hyphen tends to disappear from American terminology. The German-American, the Italio-American, the Irish-American all become Americans.

"So, by and large, our institutions have proved their capacity to amalgamate and to set free every type of human being which thus far has come under our flag. There is in this a lesson which may well be taken seriously to heart by the leaders of opinion in Europe when this war ends.

"The second thing which we may press, with propriety, upon the attention of the people of Europe after peace comes to them is the fact that we are not only the great exponents but the great example of the success of the principle of federation in its application to unity of political life regardless of local, economic, and racial differences.

"If our fathers had attempted to organize this country upon the basis of a single, closely unified State, it would have gone to smash almost at the outset, wrecked by clashing economic and personal interests. Indeed, this nearly happened in the civil war, which was more economic than political in its origin.

"But, though we had our difficulties, we did find a way to make a unified nation of a hundred million people and forty-eight Commonwealths, all bound together in unity and in loyalty to a common political ideal and a common political purpose.

"Just as certainly as we sit here this must and will be the future of Europe. There will be a federation into the United States of Europe.

"When one nation sets out to assert itself by force against the will, or even the wish, of its neighbors, disaster must inevitably come. Disaster would have come here if, in 1789, New York had endeavored to assert itself against New England or Pennsylvania.

"As a matter of fact, certain inhabitants of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania did try something of the sort after the Federal Government had been formed, but, fortunately, their effort was a failure.

"The leaders of our national life had established such a flexible and admirable plan of government that it was soon apparent that each State could retain its identity, forming its own ideals and shaping its own progress, and still remain a loyal part of the whole; that each State could make a place for itself in the new federated nation and not be destroyed thereby.

"There is no reason why each nation in Europe should not make a place for itself in the sun of unity which I am sure is rising there behind the war clouds. Europe's stupendous economic loss, which already has been appalling and will soon be incalculable, will give us an opportunity to press this argument home.

"True internationalism is not the enemy of the nationalistic principle.

"On the contrary, it helps true nationalism to thrive. The Vermonter is more a Vermonter because he is an American, and there is no reason why Hungary, for example, should not be more than ever before Hungarian after she becomes a member of the United States of Europe.

"Europe, of course, is not without examples of the successful application of the principle of federation within itself. It so happens that the federated State next greatest to our own is the German Empire. It is only forty-three years old, but their federation has been notably successful. So the idea of federation is familiar to German publicists.

"It is familiar, also, to the English, and has lately been pressed there as the probable final solution of the Irish question.

"It has insistently suggested itself as the solution of the Balkan problem.

"In a lesser way it already is represented in the structure of Austria-Hungary."

America's Great Work.

"This principle of nation building, of international building through federation, certainly has in it the seeds of the world's next great development—and we Americans are in a position both to expand the theory and to illustrate the practice. It seems to me that this is the greatest work which America will have to do at the end of this war.

"These are the things which I am writing to my European correspondents in the several belligerent countries by every mail.

"The cataclysm is so awful that it is quite within the bounds of truth to say that on July 31 the curtain went down upon a world which never will be seen again.

"This conflict is the birth-throe of a new European order of things. The man who attempts to judge the future by the old standards or to force the future back to them will be found to be hopelessly out of date. The world will have no use for him. The world has left behind forever the international policies of Palmerston and of Beaconsfield and even those of Bismarck, which were far more powerful.

"When the war ends conditions will be such that a new kind of imagination and a new kind of statesmanship will be required. This war will prove to be the most effective education of 500,000,000 people which possibly could have been thought of, although it is the most costly and most terrible means which could have been chosen. The results of this education will be shown, I think, in the process of general reconstruction which will follow.

"All the talk of which we hear so much about, the peril from the Slav or from the Teuton or from the Celt, is unworthy of serious attention. It would be quite as reasonable to discuss seriously the red-headed peril or the six-footer peril.

"There is no peril to the world in the Slav, the Teuton, the Celt, or any other race, provided the people of that race have an opportunity to develop as social and economic units, and are not bottled up so that an explosion must come.

"It is my firm belief that nowhere in the world, from this time on, will any form of government be tolerated which does not set men free to develop in this fashion."

I asked Dr. Butler to make some prognostication of what the United States of Europe, which he so confidently expects, will be. He answered:

Has Advanced Much.

"I can say only this: The international organization of the world already has progressed much further than is ordinarily understood. Ever since the Franco-Prussian war and the Geneva Arbitration, both landmarks in modern history, this has advanced inconspicuously, but by leaps and bounds.

"The postal service of the world has been internationalized in its control for years. The several Postal Conventions have been evidences of an international organization of the highest order.

"Europe abounds in illustrations of the international administration of large things. The very laws of war, which are at present the subject of so much and such bitter discussion, are the result of international organization.

"They were not adopted by a Congress, a Parliament, or a Reichstag. They were agreed to by many and divergent peoples, who sent representatives to meet for their discussion and determination."

One of the Examples.

"In the admiralty law we have a most striking example of uniformity of practice in all parts of the world. If a ship is captured or harmed in the Far East and taken into Yokohama or Nagasaki, damages will be assessed and collected precisely as they would be in New York or Liverpool.

"The world is gradually developing a code for international legal procedure. Special arbitral tribunals have tended to merge and grow into the international court at The Hague, and that, in turn, will develop until it becomes a real supreme judicial tribunal.

"Of course the analogy with the federated State fails at some points, but I believe the time will come when each nation will deposit in a world federation some portion of its sovereignty.

"When this occurs we shall be able to establish an international executive and an international police, both devised for the especial purpose of enforcing the decisions of the international court.

"Here, again, we offer a perfect object lesson. Our Central Government is one of limited and defined powers. Our history can show Europe how such limitations and definitions can be established and interpreted, and how they can be modified and amended when necessary to meet new conditions.

"My colleague, Prof. John Bassett Moore, is now preparing and publishing a series of annotated reports of the international arbitration tribunals, in order that the Governments and jurists of the world may have at hand, as they have in the United States Supreme Court, reports, a record of decided cases which, when the time comes, may be referred to as precedents.

"It will be through graded processes such as this that the great end will be accomplished. Beginning with such annotated reports as a basis for precedents, each new case tried before this tribunal will add a further precedent, and presently a complete international code will be in existence. It was in this way that the English common law was built, and such has been the admirable history of the work done by our own judicial system.

"The study of such problems is at this time infinitely more important than the consideration of how large a fine shall be inflicted by the victors upon the vanquished."

The Chief Result.

"There is the probability of some dislocation of territory and some shiftings of sovereignty after the war ends, but these will be of comparatively minor importance. The important result of this great war will be the stimulation of international organization along some such lines as I have suggested.

"Dislocation of territory and the shifting of sovereigns as the result of international disagreements are mediaeval practices. After this war the world will want to solve its problems in terms of the future, not in those of the outgrown past.

"Conventional diplomacy and conventional statesmanship have very evidently broken down in Europe. They have made a disastrous failure of the work with which they were intrusted. They did not and could not prevent the war because they knew and used only the old formulas. They had no tools for a job like this.

"A new type of international statesman is certain to arise, who will have a grasp of new tendencies, a new outlook upon life. Bismarck used to say that it would pay any nation to wear the clean linen of a civilized State. The truth of this must be taught to those nations of the world which are weakest in morale, and it can only be done, I suppose, as similar work is accomplished with individuals. Courts, not killings, have accomplished it with individuals.

"One more point ought to be remembered. We sometimes hear it said that nationalism, the desire for national expression by each individual nation, makes the permanent peace and good order of the world impossible.

"To me it seems absurd to believe that this is any truer of nations than it is of individuals. It is not each nation's desire for national oppression which makes peace impossible; it is the fact that thus far in the world's history such desire has been bound up with militarism.

"The nation whose frontier bristles with bayonets and with forts is like the individual with a magazine pistol in his pocket. Both make for murder. Both in their hearts really mean murder.

"The world will be better when the nations invite the judgment of their neighbors and are influenced by it.

"When John Hay said that the Golden Rule and the open door should guide our new diplomacy he said something which should be applicable to the new diplomacy of the whole world. The Golden Rule and a free chance are all that any man ought to want or ought to have, and they are all that any nation ought to want or ought to have.

"One of the controlling principles of a democratic State is that its military and naval establishments must be completely subservient to the civil power. They should form the police, and not be the dominant factor of any national life.

"As soon as they go beyond this simple function in any nation, then that nation is afflicted with militarism.

"It is difficult to make predictions of the war's effect on us. As I see it, our position will depend a good deal upon the outcome of the conflict, and what that will be no one at present knows.

"If a new map of Europe follows the war, its permanence will depend upon whether or not the changes are such as will permit nationalities to organize as nations.

"The world should have learned through the lessons of the past that it is impossible permanently and peacefully to submerge large bodies of aliens if they are treated as aliens. That is the opposite of the mixing process which is so successfully building a nation out of varied nationalities in the United States.

"The old Romans understood this. They permitted their outlying vassal nations to speak any language they chose and to worship whatever god they chose, so long as they recognized the sovereignty of Rome. When a conquering nation goes beyond that, and begins to suppress religions, languages, and customs, it begins at that very moment to sow the seeds of insurrection and revolution.

"My old teacher and colleague, Prof. Burgess, once defined a nation as an ethnographic unit inhabiting a geographic unit. That is an illuminating definition. If a nation is not an ethnographic unit, it tries to become one by oppressing or amalgamating the weaker portions of its people. If it is not a geographic unit, it tries to become one by reaching out to a mountain chain or to the sea—to something which will serve as a real dividing line between it and its next neighbors.

"The accuracy of this definition can hardly be denied, and we all know what the violations of this principle have been in Europe. It is unnecessary for me to point them out.

"Races rarely have been successfully mixed by conquest. The military winner of a war is not always the real conqueror in the long run. The Normans conquered Saxon England, but Saxon law and Saxon institutions worked up through the new power and have dominated England's later history. The Teutonic tribes conquered Rome, but Roman civilization, by a sort of capillary attraction, went up into the mass above and presently dominated the Teutons.

"The persistency of a civilization may well be superior in tenacity to mere military conquest and control.

"The smallness of the number of instances in which conquering nations have been able successfully to deal with alien peoples is extraordinary. The Romans were unusually successful, and England has been successful with all but the Irish, but perhaps no other peoples have been successful in high degree in an effort to hold alien populations as vassals and to make them really happy and comfortable as such.

"One of the war's chief effects on us will be to change our point of view. Europe will be more vivid to us from now on. There are many public men who have never thought much about Europe, and who have been far from a realization of its actual importance to us. It has been a place to which to go for a Summer holiday.

"But, suddenly, they find they cannot sell their cotton there or their copper, that they cannot market their stocks and bonds there, that they cannot send money to their families who are traveling there, because there is a war. To such men the war must have made it apparent that interdependence among nations is more than a mere phrase.

"All our trade and all our economic and social policies must recognize this. The world has discovered that cash without credit means little. One cannot use cash if one cannot use one's credit to draw it whenever and wherever needed. Credit is intangible and volatile, and may be destroyed over night.

"I saw this in Venice.

"On July 31 I could have drawn every cent that my letter of credit called for up to the time the banks closed. At 10 in the morning on the 1st of August I could not draw the value of a postage stamp.

"Yet the banker in New York who issued my letter of credit had not failed. His standing was as good as ever it had been. But the world's system of international exchange of credit had suffered a stroke of paralysis over night.

"This realization of international interdependence, I hope, will elevate and refine our patriotism by teaching men a wider sympathy and a deeper understanding of other peoples, nations, and languages. I sincerely hope it will educate us up to what I have called 'The International Mind.'

"When Joseph Chamberlain began his campaign after returning from South Africa his keynote was, 'Learn to think imperially.' I think ours should be, 'Learn to think internationally,' to see ourselves not in competition with the other peoples of the world, but working with them toward a common end, the advance of civilization."

A Note of Optimism.

"There are hopeful signs, even in the midst of the gloom that hangs over us. Think what it has meant for the great nations of Europe to have come to us, as they have done, asking our favorable public opinion. We have no army and navy worthy of their fears. They can have been induced by nothing save their conviction that we are the possessors of sound political ideals and a great moral force.

"In other words, they do not want us to fight for them, but they do want us to approve of them. They want us to pass judgment upon the humanity and the legality of their acts, because they feel that our judgment will be the judgment of history. There is a lesson in this.

"If we had not repealed the Panama Canal Tolls Exemption act last June they would not have come to us as they are doing now. Who would have cared for our opinion in the matter of a treaty violation if, for mere financial interest or from sheer vanity, we ourselves had violated a solemn treaty?

"When Congress repealed the Panama Canal Tolls Exemption act it marked an epoch in the history of the United States. This did more than the Spanish war, than the building of the Panama Canal, or than anything else I think of, to make us a true world power.

"As a nation we have kept our word when sorely tempted to break it. We made Cuba independent, we have not exploited the Philippines, we have stood by our word as to Panama Canal tolls.

"In consequence we are the first moral power in the world today. Others may be first with armies, still others first with navies. But we have made good our right to be appealed to on questions of national and international morality. That Europe is seeking our favor is the tribute of the European nations to this fact."



A New World Map

By Wilhelm Ostwald.

Late Visiting Professor to Harvard and Columbia Universities from the University of Leipsic.

The following article is extracted from a letter written by Prof. Ostwald to Edwin D. Mead, Director of the World Peace Foundation.

The war is the result of a deliberate onslaught upon Germany and Austria by the powers of the Triple Entente—Russia, France, and England. Its object is on the part of Russia an extension of Russian supremacy over the Balkans, on the side of France revenge, and on the side of England annihilation of the German Navy and German commerce. In England especially it has been for several centuries a constant policy to destroy upon favoring occasion every navy of every other country which threatened to become equal to the English Navy.

Germany has proved its love of peace for forty-four years under the most trying circumstances. While all other States have expanded themselves by conquest, Russia in Manchuria, England in the Transvaal, France in Morocco, Italy in Tripoli, Austria in Bosnia, Japan in Korea, Germany alone has contented itself with the borders fixed in 1871. It is purely a war of defense which is now forced upon us.

In the face of these attacks Germany has until now (the end of August) proved its military superiority, which rests upon the fact that the entire German military force is scientifically organized and honestly administered.

The violation of Belgian neutrality was an act of military necessity, since it is now proved that Belgian neutrality was to be violated by France and England. A proof of this is the accumulation of English munitions in Maubeuge, aside from many other facts.

According to the course of the war up to the present time, European peace seems to me nearer than ever before. We pacificists must only understand that unhappily the time was not yet sufficiently developed to establish peace by the peaceful way. If Germany, as everything now seems to make probable, is victorious in the struggle not only with Russia and France but attains the further end of destroying the source from which for two or three centuries all European strifes have been nourished and intensified, namely, the English policy of world dominion, then will Germany, fortified on one side by its military superiority, on the other side by the eminently peaceful sentiment of the greatest part of its people, and especially of the German Emperor, dictate peace to the rest of Europe, I hope especially that the future treaty of peace will in the first place provide effectually that a European war such as the present can never again break out.

I hope, moreover, that the Russian people, after the conquest of their armies, will free themselves from Czarism through an internal movement by which the present political Russia will be resolved into its natural units, namely, Great Russia, the Caucasus, Little Russia, Poland, Siberia, and Finland, to which probably the Baltic provinces would join themselves. These, I trust, would unite themselves with Finland and Sweden, and perhaps with Norway and Denmark, into a Baltic federation, which in close connection with Germany would insure European peace, and especially form a bulwark against any disposition to war which might remain in Great Britain.

For the other side of the earth I predict a similar development under the leadership of the United States. I assume that the English dominion will suffer a downfall similar to that which I have predicted for Russia, and that under these circumstances Canada would join the United States, the expanded republic assuming a certain leadership with reference to the South American republics.

The principle of the absolute sovereignty of the individual nations, which in the present European tumult has proved itself so inadequate and baneful, must be given up and replaced by a system conforming to the world's actual conditions and especially to those political and economic relations which determine industrial and cultural progress and the common welfare.



The Verdict of the American People

By Newell Dwight Hillis.

Dr. Hillis, who occupies the pulpit of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, made famous by the pastorate of the late Henry Ward Beecher, delivered the following remarkable sermon on the European War on Sunday, Dec. 20, 1914, choosing as his text the words: "From whence come wars? Come they not from your own lusts?"

Nearly five months have now passed by since the German Army invaded Belgium and France. These 140 days have been packed with thrilling and momentous events. While from their safe vantage ground the American people have surveyed the scene, an old regime has literally crumbled under our very eyes. Europe is a loom on whose earthen framework demiurgic forces like Frederick the Great, Bismarck, and Napoleon once wove the texture of European civilization. Now the demon of war has, with hot knife, shorn away the texture, and a modern Czar and Kaiser, King and President, with Generals and Admirals, are weaving the warp and woof of a new world. One hundred years ago the forces that bred wars were political forces; today the collision between nations is born of economic interests. The twentieth century influences are chiefly the force of wealth and the force of public opinion. These are the giant steeds, though the reins of the horses may be in the hands of Kings and Kaisers. In Napoleon's day antagonism grew out of the natural hatred of autocracy for democracy, of German imperialism for French radicalism. Today Germany is not even interested in France's republican form of Government, nor is France concerned with Germany's imperial autocrat. But all Europe is intensely concerned with the question of economic supremacy or financial subordination.

Ever since Oliver Cromwell's day England has been the mistress of the seas, and Germany is envious and believes that she has a right to supplant England in this naval leadership. France has long been the banker of Europe, and Germany covets financial leadership. From whence come wars? Come they not from men's lusts? Now that long time has passed, it is quite certain that neither Napoleon nor Bismarck nor William II. understood the future. It is a proverb that yesterday is a seed, today the stalk, and tomorrow is the full corn in the ear. Napoleon was a practical man, but he could not see the shock in the seed. When Napoleon said, "One hundred years from now Europe will be all republican or all Cossack"—Napoleon was quite wrong. Forty years ago Bismarck said that he had reduced France to the level of a fourth-class nation, and that henceforth France did not count; while as for the Balkan States, "the whole Eastern question is not worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier"—Bismarck was quite wrong. The present Kaiser has no imagination. A man of any prevision of the future might have foreseen that any attack upon England would settle the Irish question; that any treaty with Turkey would force Italy, as Turkey's enemy in the late Italian-Turkish war, to break with Germany; any man with the least instinct for diplomacy might have known that the twentieth century man is so incensed by an enemy's trespass upon his property, that Belgium would have resisted encroachment, and so cost Germany the best three weeks of the entire war. If the history of great wars tells us anything, it tells us that the first qualification of the statesman and diplomat is an intuitive knowledge of a future that is the certain outcome of the present. There has been no foresight on the part of the makers and advisers of this war. Years ago, when the Austrian Emperor visited Innsbruck, the Burgomaster ordered foresters to go up on the mountain sides and cut certain swaths of brush. At the moment the man with his axe did not know what he was doing, but when the night fell, and the torch was lifted on the boughs, the people in the city below read these words written in letters of fire, "Welcome to our Emperor." Today the demon of war has been writing with blazing letters certain lessons upon the hills and valleys of Europe, and fortunate is that youth who can read the writing and interpret aright the lessons of the times.

The people of the republic now realize for the first time what are the inevitable fruits of imperialism and militarism. One of the perils of America's distance from the scenes of autocracy is that our people have come to think that the forms of government are of little importance. We hear it said that climate determines government and that one nation likes autocracy and another limited monarchy, that we like democracy self-government, and that the people are about as happy under one form of control as another. This misconception is based upon a failure to understand foreign imperialism. Superficially, the fruits of autocracy are efficiency, industrial wealth, and military power. But now, after nearly five months of constant discussion, our people understand thoroughly the other side of imperialism. The 6,000,000 of German-Americans living in this country, with their high type of character, millions who have left their native land to escape service in the army, the burdens of taxation involved in militarism, and the law of lese majeste, should have opened our eyes long ago. During the last five years I have lectured in more than one hundred cities on the New Germany and the lessons derived from her industrial efficiency, with the application of science to the production of wealth, but I did not appreciate fully the far-off harvest of militarism. And, lest an American overstate the meaning of militarism, let me condense Treitschke's view. He holds that the nation should be looked upon as a vast military engine; that its ruler should be the commander of the army; that his Cabinet should be under Generals; that the whole nation should march with the force of an armed regiment; that the real "sin against the Holy Ghost was the sin of military impotence; that such an army should take all it wants and the territory it needs and explain afterward." Manufacturers are essentially inventors of cannons and guns and dreadnoughts, incidentally self-supporting men. Bankers are here to finance the army and incidentally to make money. Physicians are here to heal the wounded soldiers. Gymnasiums are founded to train soldiers. Women are here to breed soldiers, and militarism is the path that will bring Germany to her place in the sun. The youth is first of all to be a soldier and incidentally to be a man. No one has indicted Germany's militarism in stronger language than the distinguished German-American, Carl Schurz. In words that burn the great statesman expressed his hatred of the imperialism and militarism against which he helped to organize a revolution that led to his flight to this country. Of late Americans have been asking themselves certain questions.

The American Ideal vs. the German.

What will be the result if Germany is allowed to seize any smaller State whose territory and property she covets? Is all Europe to become an armed camp? What is the meaning of this German professor's article in The North American Review, written two or three years ago, in which he says that once she is victorious the Monroe Doctrine will go and the United States will receive the "thrashing she so richly deserves"? Must we then go over to the military ideal? If Germany supports 8,000,000 soldiers out of 66,000,000, must we withdraw from productive industry 12,000,000 men for at least two or three of the best years of their young life? Must we start in on a programme of ten dreadnoughts a year instead of building ten colleges and universities for the same sum of money? Of late Americans who love their country have been searching their own hearts. Merchants hitherto busied with commerce are asking themselves whither this country is drifting. Is Germany to compel us to become a vast military machine? This military question is a subject of discussion on the street cars and in the stores, at the dining room table. No articles in paper and magazine are so eagerly read and analyzed. The American ideal is not a military machine, but a high quality of manhood. To make men free, with the gift of self-expression; to make men wise through the public school and the free press; to make men self-sufficing and happy in their homes, through freedom of industrial contracts; to make men sound in their manhood through religious liberty for Jew and Gentile and Catholic and Protestant—these are our national ideals. America stands at the other pole of the universe from imperialism and militarism. So far from being willing to desert the political faith of the fathers, this war has confirmed our confidence in self-government. Liberty to grow, freedom to climb as high as industry and ability will permit, liberty to analyze and discuss the views of President, Congress, Governor—these are our rights. In a military autocracy there can be no liberty of the printing press. If a man criticises the Kaiser, he goes to jail; in this republic, if Horace Greeley criticises Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln does not send the great editor to jail, but writes the latter, "My paramount object is to save the Union," and vindicates himself at the bar of the nation. An American editor or citizen would choke to death in Germany. He could not breathe because of the mephitic gases of imperialism and militarism. For a long time some of us did not realize what was involved, but now we do realize the difference between the fruits of democratic self-government and the fruits of military imperialism.

The last five months have brought a new realization to American citizens as to the rights and liberties of small States. In the republic the sin of trespass is one of the blackest of sins. Here we hold to the sanctity of property. A man's home is his castle, a citadel that cannot be invaded even by the power of the State. So deep is the American hatred of trespass against property rights that imperialism finds it impossible to understand this. Here the individual is a king of kings in his native right, and takes out an injunction against the city that wishes to trespass upon his property. This antagonism manifests itself in the laws that safeguard the small shopkeeper against the big firm, and the small manufacturer against any company with its billion dollars of capital. This antagonism to the sin of trespass has lent a peculiar sanctity to treaties between Canada and the United States. We have one hundred millions of people, and Canada nine millions. We need many things that Canada has, but it is intellectually unthinkable that "we should take what we want and explain afterward," or that we should violate our treaty guaranteeing neutrality to Canada. Our frontier line is three thousand miles long. There is not a fort from Maine to Victoria. If we adopted Germany's position we would have to build one thousand forts, withdraw two million young men from the farm, factory, store and bank, and load the working people with taxes to support them. In a free land, and in God's world, there should be a place for the poor man and for the small nation. In the olden time there was a king who had herds and flocks, and a poor man who had one pet lamb. It came to pass that a stranger claimed the right of hospitality at the rich man's palace, and the king sent out and took the poor man's one lamb and gave it for food to the stranger. And, soon or late, the time will come when history will tell the story of Germany's taking little Belgium, and conscience, like a prophet, will indict the militarism that seized the one lamb that belonged to the poor man. This episode is not closed. The German representative who says that Belgium is a part of Germany may be right in terms of future government and war, but the incident has just begun in the memory of the soldiers who never can forget that they first broke their sacred treaty, and then, when the Belgian defended his home as his castle, butchered the man, who died with a sacred treaty in his hand. Why, all over this land, teachers, fathers, editors, authors, have found it necessary to say to the young men and women of the republic, "Do not sign your name to an obligation unless you intend to keep it." Keep your faith. Remember that your word given should be as good as your bond. "Swear to your own hurt, and change not." All this is inevitable, as the result of Germany's trespass upon the property and the homes of Belgium. In some European lands the State is everything and the individual nothing. In this republic the individual is first, and the State is here to safeguard his rights and see to it that no one trespasses upon his property. The time will come when the nation that breaks its treaties and sows to the wind shall of that wind reap the whirlwind. It is an awful thing for a nation to make it inevitable that hereafter when other people sign a treaty with that country, that our representatives shall say: "Before we sign this treaty with you, we wish to ask one question. Later, if it is to your interest to break this treaty, is this document to be sneered at as a scrap of paper? Or does this treaty mean the faith of a nation that will die rather than break its word, given before the tribunal of civilized States?"

The Death of the Tribal God Idea.

This great war and one or two of the leaders thereof have killed the old tribal idea of God. In the twentieth century it seems almost ludicrous to find that the conception of the ancient Hebrews is still held by some rulers. Be the reasons what they may, of late there has been a strange recrudescence of the tribal God idea. This is the twentieth century, not the tenth! Think of a man sending his soldiers into Belgium, saying, "Make yourselves as terrible as the Huns of Attila, and the Lord our God will give you victory." Just as if God were not the God of the whole earth, a disinterested God, a God who makes His sun to shine and His rain to fall upon all His children, without regard to race or clime or color. Why, it is as artless as the way the old Hebrew peasant called on God to blast his enemy's field, and drown his children with floods, and smite his herds with the plague. The tribal idea of God belongs with the ox cart, the medicine man, the cave dweller. This is an era of science. Whatever is true is universal, not racial. If the heart beats and the blood circulates in a German soldier's veins, the blood flows in the veins of the people of England and France. If the earth goes around the sun in Berlin, the earth goes around the sun in Petrograd and Edinburgh. If there are seven rays in the sunbeam, why, the discussion is closed, and it is a universal fact. And if Jesus was right when He said, "God is our Father, and all the races are our brothers, and the world has been fitted up by God as an Eden garden for His children," then no man or ruler should ever adopt the view of the peasant and the cave man, and try to make the Eternal God a tribal God. The unconscious humor in the statements of one or two men as to their tribal God idea has added to the gayety of nations. But when any view is laughed at, it is doomed. From the very moment that the doctrine of election, that made God love a few aristocrats and pass the non-elect by, became a matter of joke in the comic papers, that theory was dead. Not otherwise is it with this idea of a tribal God. When Barry Paine begins to say,

Led by William, as you tell, God has done extremely well,

the tribal idea has been relegated to the theological scrap-heap. The peasant's view must go. In this age men must be citizens of all countries and of the universe. God is a sun Who shines for the poor man's hut as truly as for the rich man's palace. The Judge of all the earth is also the Father of all the races, and He will do men good and not evil.

In view of the events of the last few months, all Americans now realize as never before the futility of war as a means of settling disputes. Indeed, it may be doubted whether any war has ever settled any question. Defeat did not convince the South that they were wrong in their idea of State rights or slavery. If the South has given up both ideas today it is because time, events, and social progress have changed their view, not because the sword convinced them. Bismarck's victory at Versailles and von Moltke's at Sedan did not settle the dispute with France. To keep one billion dollars of indemnity Germany must have spent five billions on forts and armies in the government of Alsace and Lorraine. Germany's apparent victory simply put Germany's trouble with France out at compound interest, and left the next generation of Germans to pay several billions of dollars of accrued debt through hatred. Plainly it is folly not to reconstitute the map of Europe. The frontier lines of the geographer should exactly coincide with the racial lines. The German race, with their peculiar ideals, ought not to try to govern the French race. It is an expensive experiment. It is an impossible experiment. The plan is doomed to failure in advance. And when the day of payment comes it is quite certain that the questions at issue will not have been settled by regiments of soldiers. They must finally be settled by an appeal to some court of arbitration that will do justice and love mercy; that will insist upon the rights of the smaller States, and make it impossible for the great ones of the earth to trespass upon the property and the liberties of brave little peoples.

Imperialism Confuses Men's Judgments.

Out of the smoke of battle another lesson is written for all who have eyes to read. In view of the mistakes made by men who have absolute power it is now certain that exemption from criticism is a bad thing for any man, and that endless adoration destroys the ruler's power to think in straight lines. There never lived a man who was not injured by perpetual compliments. Strong men are willing to pay cash for criticism. Flattery will conceal the weakness, and they know that pitiless criticism will expose the danger and perhaps save them. No man is so unfortunate as the man who is put on a throne lifted up beyond the reach of plain truth telling. It is doubtful if so many blunders were ever made by statesmen and diplomats as were made at the beginning of this war. Just think of one Government being wrong in all these particulars at the same time! Lincoln said, "You can't fool all of the people all of the time." Yes, that may be true in a republic, but you certainly can fool all the diplomats and Generals and do it all the time—during July and August, in any event. Call the roll of the diplomatic blunders, and the list is long. First, England will be neutral and Ireland will keep her from going to war; second, Italy will be our ally; third, Belgium will be neutral and allow us to trespass upon her property and her homes; fourth, France is unprepared and Paris will fall within three weeks; fifth, an alliance with Turkey, despite her polygamy and butcheries in Armenia and the civilized world's hatred for her cruelties, will help us; sixth, Japan will hold Russia in check; seventh, the Czar will be attacked by Bulgaria, Italy, and China. It seems incredible that any ruler and group of diplomats could be so entirely wrong, all the time, on every question, for a whole Summer! Was there no man as diplomat who had the wisdom to see that an attack upon England would end the disputes in Ireland? And bind together Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India into a new United States of Great Britain? Was there no statesman with enough prevision of the future, and with courage to tell the people in Wilhelmstrasse that the certain result would be the United States of Balkany, to stand henceforth as a barrier between Germany and the Bosphorus? Was there no one to remind Berlin that Italy had just completed a war with Turkey and that any treaty with Turkey meant inevitably the breaking of friendship with Italy? Alas! for the man who is elevated to a throne, in whose presence men burn incense, pour forth flattery that he may breathe its perfume, sing songs of praise that he may slumber!

In concluding our survey of the nations and the stake of each country in the war, there is one reflection that must be obvious to all thinking men. This little fire of last August has become a world conflagration. The nation that first sent out her armies was Germany. There is a high-water mark of battle in every war, and after that, the invading waves begin their retreat. The high-water mark of Napoleon's was Austerlitz and the waves ebbed away at Waterloo. The high-water mark of the civil war was Gettysburg, and the tide ebbed out at Appomattox. Belgium's defense cost Germany the three most important weeks of the war, and her high-water mark was when she was within twenty miles of Paris. Occasional eddies and returns of the tide there may be, but nothing is more certain than that there are ten nations and six hundred millions of men that had rather die than have militarism imposed upon themselves and their children. Americans who admire German efficiency, the German people, and want to see German science preserved, and feel an immeasurable debt to Martin Luther, do not want Germany destroyed. But Germany will not listen to England, nor France, nor America. There is only one voice that can reach Germany—it is the voice of the German-Americans in this country. They are six million strong. They are among the most honored and esteemed folk in American life. Their achievements are beyond all praise. The Germans have built Milwaukee and have done much for St. Louis. The Germans have been great forces in Cincinnati and Chicago and New York. What wealth among their bankers! What prosperity among German manufacturers! What solidity of manhood in these German Lutherans! Was there ever a finer body of farming folk than the German landowners of the Middle West? The republic owes the German-American a great debt as to liberty through men like Carl Schurz. Take Martin Luther and German liberty of thought out of the republic and this land would suffer an immeasurable loss. Many of these German-Americans own great estates and have investments in the Fatherland. Today these six million German-Americans have the centre of the world's stage. This war is a conflagration that will probably burn itself out. But if the six million German-Americans organize themselves and hold great meetings of protest in New York and Brooklyn and Chicago and Milwaukee, in St. Louis and Cincinnati; if German-American editors and bankers and business men united their voice, they would be heard.

German-American Man of the Hour.

And do they not owe something to this republic? Having come to the kingdom for such a crisis as this, should they not use their influence with the Fatherland? Having escaped conscription and years of military service, with heavy taxation and enjoyed the liberty of the press; having become convinced that militarism does not promote the prosperity and manhood of the people, why should they not as one man ask the Fatherland now to present their cause to arbitrators? To no body of American citizens has there ever come a more strategic opportunity, or a responsibility so heavy. Some of the most thoughtful men in this land believe that the destiny of Germany rests now largely with the leaders of the 6,000,000 German-Americans in our country. But no matter what the outcome, let no man think that God and justice are not fully equal to this emergency. The great vine of Liberty was planted by Divine hands in the Eden garden. Just now men are feeding the blossoms of the tree of life to their war horses and splitting the boughs of that tree into shafts for their spears. The storm roars through the branches, but the storm will die out. Better days are coming. It may be that the convulsion of war will do for Europe what the earthquake did for the rude folk of Greece—cracked the solid rock and exposed the silver veins that gave the wealth with which rude men built Athens, with its art, its literature, its law and its liberty. Take no counsel of crouching fear, God is abroad in the world. With Him a thousand years are as one day. When a long time has passed let us believe that self-government will be found to be the most stable form of government, and that these golden words, Liberty, Opportunity, Intelligence, and Integrity, will be the watch-words not only of the republic, but of all the nations of the earth.



Interview With Dr. Hillis

From the Brooklyn Eagle.

A frank declaration that he was opposed to Germany in the present great war was the answer returned today [Dec. 21, 1914] by the Rev. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis to the protests against his sermon at Plymouth Church last night, in which he scored militarism and the Kaiser.

Not only did Dr. Hillis come out with the statement that he had said and meant all to which exception was taken in his sermon, but, in an interview today in his study, in the Arbuckle Institute, he asserted as well that he had told but little of what he had come to believe about Germany. This position, he said, was that America and all the world must hope for German defeat, and must see that Germany was in the wrong.

"I was for Germany five months ago," said Dr. Hillis. "I have been lecturing for five years about the lessons we might learn from Germany. Five months ago, it may be remembered, I gave an interview, in which I praised Germany and in which I took the part of the German people in the dreadful war that had come.

"But I have changed my mind. I have seen that I was mistaken. Several months ago I gave instructions to my lecture bureau to withdraw my lecture, 'The New Germany,' from my list. That was about the middle of September, and it was only then that I realized what a German success would mean to the world—how there could be nothing else but a world of armed camps, how we in this country, too, would have to adopt militarism in order to live.

"Just prior to that time, in the first of my Sunday evening sermons in this course, I had praised the Kaiser. I believed in the German ideals, I believed in German progress, German inventions, German principles. But I was wrong. I have now become convinced of what I never imagined before—that in the German viewpoint the only sin against the Holy Ghost is military impotency, and, to use Treitschke's words again, the only virtue is militarism."

The pastor of Plymouth uttered this attack upon Germany with a scornfulness which the printed word can hardly indicate. He was as strongly against Germany—more strongly against Germany now than he had before been in favor of Germany, he said. It was a position, he said, to which everybody in the United States was turning, and it was inevitable that Germany should find the world against her.

In his frank avowal of his position regarding Germany and the Kaiser, Dr. Hillis admitted, too, that his sermon last night had contained more than appeared on the surface. When he stated in the sermon that no man or ruler should ever adopt the view of the peasant and the cave man, and try to make the Eternal God a tribal God, he had the Kaiser in mind, said Dr. Hillis. The sermon is published in full in today's sermon pages of The Eagle.

In addition, Dr. Hillis said that while he believed that his sermon could not be considered in any way a violation of President Wilson's appeal for neutrality, yet, indirectly, the passages to which exception had been taken could be rightly construed as an attack upon Germany and the Kaiser.

"You believe that it is right for a minister to use the pulpit to express his own views upon a subject like this?" was asked.

"I do not believe that it is right for a minister to air his peculiar political views upon any subject—personal, social, or economic," answered Dr. Hillis, emphatically. "The church is a conservatory where a warm, genial atmosphere should be created. My conception of the work of a minister is that he is to create an atmosphere in the church on Sunday so that the Republican with the tariff, the Democrat who believes in free trade, and the Single Taxer can all grow and express their judgment during the week.

"The sun and the Summer shine for all kinds of seeds and roots, and the minister and the church should create an atmosphere in which all temperaments and races and faiths can grow. It is quite true that there were some of my German friends and members who rather protested against my view last night. But they had the same right and liberty to protest that I have. A German physician told me plainly that he thought that within six months I would change my view, and with the new light go over to the position of his native land, and even thought that I might retract all my studies, that are apparently prejudiced in favor of the republic and self-government and the liberty of the press. Well, if I do change my views and am converted to his viewpoint, I certainly will retract my statements. But I think this improbable. The task of converting me should be let out as a Government contract—in piecemeal."

Dr. Hillis was reminded here that a number of people were said to have left the church last night in the course of his sermon as a sign of protest against the expression of his views. Asked if it were true, Dr. Hillis answered:

"I did not see many leave," and then declared that it was impossible to imagine that war should not be discussed in the churches as it was being discussed everywhere else. He continued with the assertion that he believed it was his duty as the minister of Plymouth Church to say what he had, and then made this assertion with a vehemence that was almost startling:

"Whenever the time comes that I have to add God and the devil together and divide by two in the name of neutrality, I'll withdraw. I'm not going to sacrifice my manhood for what some people call neutrality."

It was on this score that Dr. Hillis came out with his unequivocal declaration that he was against Germany and against the Kaiser. He asserted that the viewpoint of the German people would have to be changed if they were to take the place in the world he had thought their due, five months ago, and he stated there could be no doubt but that the war was occasioned by Germany's lust for power—political, industrial, economic.

"I believe that the real issue of this war is largely industrial," continued Dr. Hillis. "It is an industrial war and not a political war. Some days ago I said that the real fight between Germany and the nations opposed to her was a fight for the possession of the iron fields recently discovered in Northern France. That statement regarding Germany's iron deposits and the whole economic situation has been challenged.

"Instead of modifying my position, I wish to reaffirm it. This is an age of steel. Without hematite iron deposits Germany cannot build her steamships, her cannon, her railways, her factories. German engineers have been saying for five years that another five years will exhaust her present iron supply. On Page 221 of the volume 'Problems of Power,' the author says that within a generation 20,000,000 of Germany's people will have to leave their native land. The pressure of iron and the call of steel led to Germany's development of the Morocco situation, where there are valuable iron mines. A short time ago French engineers discovered the largest and richest body of iron ore in Europe. Fullerton, in his book on the subject, expresses the judgment that one province has enough hematite iron ore to last Europe for the next 150 years.

"This diplomat and author said plainly two years ago, in one of his review articles, that Germany would go to war to obtain the iron deposits in Northern France, and that if she loses the war, she will fall behind in the manufacturing race, and that the French bankers and French engineers will make France the great manufacturing force and the richest people in Europe. The Napoleonic wars were wars between political ideas. The collision was between autocracy and bureaucracy and French democracy and radicalism. The new antagonism grows out of economic conditions. Germany wants to supersede England upon the seas, and Germany wants the iron mines of France, and this is the whole situation in a nutshell.

"No, I am not sinning against the law of neutrality. I am trying to freshen the old American ideals of self-government for the young men and women in Plymouth Church. If the whole-hearted support of America's free institutions involves indirectly a dissent from imperialism and militarism, I am not responsible. I admit there is a necessary condemnation of autocracy involved in the mere publication of the Declaration of Independence. Ours is a Government of laws and not of men, and I have been discussing the principles of self-government and not rulers who represent imperialism.

"Neutrality does not mean the wiping out of conviction. There are some men who think that neutrality means adding God and the devil together and dividing by two. And there are some statesmen who seem to think that neutrality means adding together autocracy and democracy, and halving the result. I do not share that view. I believe it is the first duty of the German-American and the native-born American to uphold the fundamental principles of self-government, and of an industrial civilization as opposed to a military machine, and if this means protest and criticism, then that protest must be accepted."



TIPPERARY.

By JOHN B. KENNEDY.

(At the other end of the long, long road.)

Who is it stands at the full o' the door? Mary O'Fay, Mother O'Fay. An' what is she watching an' waiting for? Och, none but her soul can say.

There's a list in the Post Office long an' black, With tidings bad, and woeful sad; The names of the boys who'll ne'er come back, An' one is her darling lad.

We showed her the list; but she cannot read, So we told her true, yes, we told her true. Her old eyes stared till they'd almost bleed, An' she swore that none of us knew.

She's waiting now for Father O'Toole, Till he goes her way at the noon of day. She's simperin' white—the poor old fool, For she knows what the priest'll say.

* * * * *

Who is it sprawls upon the sod At the break o' day? It's Mickey O'Fay; His eyes glare up to the walls of God, And half of his head is blown away.

What is he doing in that strange place, Torn and shred, and murdered dead? He's singin' the psalm of the fighting race As his soul soars wide o'erhead.

He killed three foemen before he fell (Och, the toll he'd take and the skulls he'd break!) And he shrieked like a soul escaped from Hell As he died for the Sassenach's sake.

Who shall we blame for the awful thing— For the blood that flows and the heart-wrung throes? Kaiser or Czar; statesman or King? Och, leave it to Him Who Knows!



As America Sees the War

By Harold Begbie.

I.

In order to determine how American public opinion concerning the war is running, The London Daily Chronicle sent Mr. Begbie to this country. The two articles printed below appeared in The Chronicle.

Every day of my sojourn in this country deepens the desire in my mind to see an increasing unity of understanding between America and England. I feel that the audacity of America, its passion for the Right Thing, and its impatience with the spirit of muddling through are the finest incentives for modern England, England at this dawn of her political renascence. I feel, too, as Americans themselves most willingly acknowledge, that Great Britain has something to give to America out of the ancient treasury of her domestic experience. Finally, I like Americans so heartily that I want to be the best of friends with them.

But it was only last night in this old and mighty city of Philadelphia that the greatest of reasons for an alliance was brought sharply home to my mind. I had thought, loosely enough, that since we speak the same language, share many of the same traditions, and equally desire peace for the prosperity of our trade, surely some alliance between us was natural, and with a little effort might be made inevitable. The deeper, more political, and far grander reason for this comradeship between the two nations had never definitely shaped itself to my consciousness.

Enlightenment came to me in the course of conversation with two thoughtful Philadelphians whose minds are centred on something which transcends patriotism and who work with fine courage and remarkable ability for the triumph of their idea.

One of these men said to me: "You speak of an alliance between England and America; do you mind telling us what you mean by that term alliance?"

I explained that I had no thought in my mind of treaties and tariffs; that the word "alliance" meant nothing more to me than conscious friendship, and that such a disposition between two nations thinking in the same language, speaking and writing the same language, must result, I thought, in an ever-multiplying volume of trade, to the great advantage of both parties.

Thinks Little of Blood Ties.

Out of this explanation came the following statement, made by the second Philadelphian: "I am as desirous as you are for such an understanding. I desire it so greatly that I venture to offer you a warning on the subject. It would be a mistake on your part, I am convinced, to advocate any such friendship, any such understanding, any such alliance, if you prefer that word, on the score of blood ties or a common speech. Believe me, the American, to speak generally, thinks very little of such matters. When America was far more English in its population than it is now scarcely any country was more unpopular with us than your country.

"I can remember when hatred for England was a kind of gospel with Americans. The Irish fanned that hatred. Your country had behaved badly toward us, war had left its scar on our memories, we rejoiced that we had thrown off a yoke which we felt to be definitely tyrannous. What, then, has produced the change in America—America, whose population is now made up from nearly all the nations of the earth? Have your people thought why we are on their side in this present war? Have they asked themselves that question? If so, and they have answered it with such a phrase as 'blood is thicker than water,' I can assure you they give not only a false answer but an answer which betrays amazing ignorance, if you will forgive the word, of this country's population. Blood thicker than water! Why, look at our names; our blood is world's blood.

"We're a nation of all the nations. The English element is only one element. Our ancestors were French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Norwegian, Russian, Danish, Irish, Greek, and Italian. The modern American citizen is no more English than the Boers of South Africa are English. And yet in overwhelming figures the American population is on the side of the Allies, and particularly on the side of England. Why?"

England Stands for Democracy.

"It is," he continued, "because England of all the nations on the earth stands for the democratic ideals which are the very breath of life to America. Modern England is for us the greatest of democracies. You lead the way to the rest of the world, if not in science and art, at any rate here in the great business of humanity's social existence. We see that the old England of privilege and obstinate prerogatives and bull-headed conservatism is dead. All your best qualities, straight dealing, honesty, fearless justice, and faith in the goodness of human nature are devoted now to the only ideals which can save progress from rot and decay. Your democracy is master. It has no overlords. And, from what we can gather since this war broke out, it would seem that your aristocracy is coming more and more into line with the democracy, making great sacrifices, showing a deeper appreciation of the democracy and shedding the worst of its prejudices in the common love of liberty and right.

"We hope that your aristocracy may render as great a service to the extravagant plutocracy of this country as your democracy has rendered to our democracy. To make life better, that's the work of all intelligent people. That's what our democracy is after, and, because your democracy is after the same thing, that's why we are on your side in this war. Under all the sentiment on the subject this is the bedrock fact. We're for England because we're for the ideals of democracy. That we speak the same language is only an accident. It's your spirit we desire to share, the spirit which desires to make life kinder, sweeter, better, more beautiful, and more righteous. America believes in civilization. It doesn't want culture in bearskin and top boots. It wants civilization, and civilization means a culture that takes in the whole of a man's being—his body, his mind, his spirit. Well, we think you're after the same ideal; we believe that you're as conscious of humanity as we are, and we begin to realize pretty acutely that in a world rather barbarous on the whole, come to think of it, we can't afford to lose England."

The other man added: "Germany stands for nearly everything we Americans are opposed to, tooth and nail. We just loathe militarism. Conscription's a thing we abominate. And feudalism is more dead over here than in any country in the world."

"But bear in mind," said the first, "we have few people in America better than the Germans. The Germans are almost the most efficient of our immigrants. They've taught us a lot. We owe them a mighty big debt. Before their coming we were prodigals. We used up our natural resources with a ruthless disregard for the future. We leveled our forests for timber, and just scratched the top soil of the land for corn. Now we're learning to farm scientifically and to conserve our wealth. And this is due in no small degree to the Germans. The German, emancipated from feudalism and kaiserism, is a pretty good citizen. In fact, among the men who have most helped modern America we reckon Germans and Irishmen."

I told them this story: A man in New York was speaking the other day to Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador. Count von Bernstorff was endeavoring to prove to this important personage that England had forced the war upon Germany out of jealousy of her trade competition. "Sir," said the American, "you really must not tell me that, and I advise you not to tell such a tale to other Americans. For we know very well that we are greater trade rivals of England than you are, and that, in spite of that fact, here on this continent of America we have got 3,000 miles of British frontier without a fort or a gun." He then said to the Ambassador: "No, Sir; your mistake all through has been in making an enemy of England when your best interest was to make friends with her. If you had made friends with England, you would have got all you wanted." To this accusation, I understand, the Ambassador made answer that Germany had endeavored to make friends with England, but had been repulsed. We have a different record in England. The American quietly reminded the Ambassador of the fact that England admits German goods free of tariff charges.

Germany Represents Autocracy.

The two Philadelphians perfectly agreed with the justice of this accusation, and declared again that it was because Germany represented all the perils and slavishness of autocracy, and because England represented the freedom, the justice, and the passion for social welfare which inspire all living democracies, that America was so absolutely on the English side.