They spoke of Ireland, and expressed the hope that the Conservative Party would do nothing to hinder that great settlement which has done so much to increase American respect for England.

"We recognize over here," said one, "that the Liberal Party, in going to the rescue of Belgium, sacrificed some of its greatest ideals on the altar of national righteousness. War must have been a bitter draught for Lloyd George. Your social programme will be checked for many years. But if the Conservatives attempt to spoil the Irish settlement, that will be worse than anything else. It will mean confusion for you at home and loss of reputation abroad."

I spoke of what I had heard on this subject from Irish-Americans, and they confirmed everything recorded in my former article. The three great things, outside of increasing opportunities for intercourse, which have drawn modern America toward England, they told me, are the social legislation of the Liberal Party, the triumph of home rule, and England's keeping her word to Belgium. By these three things, I was assured, the old animosities against England have been destroyed, and a spirit of enthusiasm for English ideals has been born among Americans.

I should like to say that, while many American women love England for the beauty and repose of her social life, and most eloquently base their affection on the assertion that blood is thicker than water, the men of America are sometimes inclined, and not unnaturally, to disapprove of this pleasing sentimentalism. I now begin to perceive that the men of America are not jealous of England's social life, but anxious to put their friendship on a more substantial foundation.

Liberalism not only uplifts democracy; it establishes England in the affection of all vital democracies. If the Conservatives, so liberal and charming in their private lives, combine with the Liberals after this hideous war to reconstruct our national life and to consolidate the empire, how great will be the harvest reaped by our children!

It is in the high and lofty name of civilization that the American people are anxious to make friends with the people of Great Britain. We have both got something to live for greater than patriotism and imperialism, greater because it includes them both.

II.

Irish-American Feeling

Until I came to America I had not the least idea of the depth of hatred which has existed among Irish-Americans toward England. Nothing that I ever encountered in Ireland itself is comparable with this transatlantic fury of unforgiving hate.

An Irishman who had held very high office in America, a well-educated, a kindly, and a judicious man, told me that when war with Germany was in the air he could not prevent himself from hailing this opportunity for declaring his hatred, his undying hatred, of England. His father had suffered frightfully in the great famine; every story he ever heard at his mother's knee was a story of English tyranny, English brutality, English rapacity; England, for him, stood at the rack centre, the lustful and bestial slave driver, the cruel and merciless extortioner.

This man's good judgment, however, would not suffer him to approve of German militarism, and as events moved forward he gave his support more and more to the cause of the Allies.

"But I want you to know," he told me, striking the table with his hand and watching me carefully, "that I was dead against John Redmond for saying that Ireland must go to the aid of England. Ireland's call was to go to the aid of civilization. If Germany had stood for civilization, I should have been on Germany's side and dead against England.

"I tell you, at the beginning of this business I longed to see England defeated, humiliated, broken to the dust. But civilization is of such enormous consequence that I put my natural hatred of England on one side. The violation of Belgium made me an anti-German. And with the vast majority of Irishmen in America it was the same thing. The menace of German militarism forced us into your camp.

"I am perfectly certain that but for the violation of Belgium there would have been in this country among Irish-Americans an open movement publicly proclaimed in favor of Germany. That is my fixed opinion. And I happen to know what I am talking about."

No Hatred of England.

I gathered in the course of his conversation that Irish friendliness toward England is a final manifestation of a change in the feeling of all America toward England. It was not very long ago that President Cleveland wanted war with England. Hatred of England was at one time as fiercely handed down from generation to generation by Americans as by Irish-Americans. We have to thank our English stars that America has outgrown this historic hate and that Irish-Americans now show the new and happier feeling of their compatriots.

I asked this Irishman, no one better able throughout America to express a just opinion on the subject, what difference had been made in the feeling toward England by the passing of the Home Rule bill.

"It was the passing of that bill," he replied, "which finished the work begun by German militarism. Home rule has softened our feelings toward England, particularly among the thousands of Irish-Americans who are born over here and whose fathers have become too Americanized to remember the sufferings of their ancestors.

"There is still some hatred of England, but not very much. It is a sentimental, a poetic hatred, not a political hatred. One finds it among a few individuals. What agitation is now going on is secret and underground, a sure proof that it is unrepresentative. We ignore it. It means nothing. No; the passing of the Home Rule bill has given balance to the Irish mind.

"It has helped Irish-Americans to realize that the dreadful sins of England are sins of a dead and gone England, and it has helped them to see that the present England, so far as its democracy is concerned, sincerely desires to make reparation for the past. In fact, the war and the Home Rule bill together have produced such a transformation in the Irish-American nature as I, for one, never expected and never hoped to see."

He then warned me that this great change might suffer a dangerous reaction if England allows the religious bigotry of Ulster to split Ireland into two camps. To the Irish-American Ireland is a country, a home, and a shrine, one and indivisible.

"Such a surrender," said my friend, "would not only be fatal to Ireland but fatal to something even greater than Ireland, and that is the cause of religion in an age of increasing paganism. For the world can only be saved from the ruin of paganism, as we are beginning to see very clearly in America, by a union of religious forces.

"I am a Catholic, but I say that any man who says 'Only through my door can you enter into heaven' is a bad Christian. There are many doors into heaven. What we have all got to do, Catholics and non-Catholics, is to insist together that there is a heaven, that there is a life after death, that there is a God. The more doors the better. No one has a monopoly of heaven.

"And to Ireland is offered the opportunity, greater than politicians appear to perceive, of presenting to the world an example of tolerance and compromise in the supreme interests of religion which may have incalculable results for the whole world. But what will happen if England bows before the worst and the stupidest bigotry the modern world can show? Not only will you strike a blow at Ireland and a blow at Irish-American sympathy, but a blow at the vitals of religion.

"For it is only by sinking religious differences and making a common advance against this universal paganism that religion can save the soul of civilization. If you do not see the truth of that fact in England I think you must be blind. The fullness of civilization hangs upon religious union; religious dissension is the enemy."

Change in Ulster.

Another Irish-American who was present on this occasion, an accomplished man of letters and a traveler, asked me what England felt about Ulster's share in the responsibility for the present war.

"I myself have seen two letters from Ulster," he said, "in which the phrase occurs, 'Rather the Kaiser than the Pope.' These letters were written before the war. Ulster, no doubt, has now changed her tune. But it was that spirit, surely, and the reports sent to Berlin by German officers who visited Ulster and inquired into the military character of Carsonism which persuaded Germany that England would not fight."

Irish-Americans are persuaded that Sir Edward Carson is in very great measure responsible for all the ruin and death and bitter suffering of the enormous catastrophe. He boasted that he would make civil war, and such were his preparations that in any other country in the world civil war would have been inevitable.

Germany counted on that civil war. The British Army was said to be completely under the influence of Carsonism. The real catastrophe for the diplomacy of Berlin was not India's loyalty and the vigorous uprising of the young dominions, but the dying down of Ulster mutiny.

These Irish-Americans have hated the ruling classes in England, not only for sins of the past but for the unworthy and most cruel opposition offered by those ruling classes, in the name of religious intolerance, to the ideals of the Irish Nation.

When Unionist politicians sneer at the subscriptions sent by Irish servant girls in America to help the cause of Ireland they should reflect that not only do they fail to make a good joke, not only do they exhibit a horribly bad taste, but they spread hatred of England through the thousands and thousands of people. For it is the loyalty of the poorest of these Irish-Americans, the sacrifices perpetually made by the humblest of them, which should move us to see, as it has certainly moved the American people to see, that the cause of Irish liberty is noble and undying.

Religious Education.

With all my heart I would beg Unionists in England to reflect conscientiously upon this very significant state of affairs in America:

A non-Catholic Bible used to be read in the public schools of America down to the year 1888. A Catholic agitation against this Bible reading was begun in 1885, and in 1888 the custom was finally abolished. From that date to this there has been no religious instruction of any kind in the public schools of America.

Bigotry and intolerance won that victory. The Catholic Church, in its folly, destroyed religious teaching in the schools of the country. Catholics themselves are now looking back on that agitation with religious repentance and political regret.

The result of this abolition is that Catholics and non-Catholics who believe in the importance of religious instruction, and who see the pagan effect of purely secular instruction, do not send their children to the public schools.

"These schools, for which Christians are heavily taxed, are in the possession of the Hebrews. If nothing is done to alter the existing state of things Americans themselves assure me that in five-and-twenty years America will be a pagan country. But a fight is to be made to avert this disaster at the Constitutional Convention to be held next month.

"What we have to do," my Irish friend told me, "Catholics and non-Catholics alike, is to appeal for schools representing Catholic and non-Catholic teaching. Instead of the various churches fighting against each other they must fight together, helping one another to get the schools they demand. Only in this way can we save civilization."

This is how the Irishman, breathing the free air of America, and in America rising to positions of extraordinary power and responsibility, views the foundational question of religion; while England allows herself to be dragged at the heels of the frothing fanatic who has actually dared to raise the unholy battle cry of "Rather the Kaiser than the Pope."

Let the Unionist Party hesitate before it seeks to revive this hideous, utterly irrational and most unchristianlike spirit at the very heart of the British Empire. The sower of hate is the reaper of death.



TO MELOS, POMEGRANATE ISLE.

By GRACE HARRIET MACURDY.

(Destroyed by Athens, 416 B.C., because of her refusal to break neutrality.—Thucydides V., 84-116; Euripides, "Trojan Women.")

O thou Pomegranate of the Sea, Sweet Melian isle, across the years Thy Belgian sister calls to thee In anguished sweat of blood and tears.

Her fate like thine—a ruthless band Hath ravaged all her loveliness. How Athens spoiled thy prosperous land Athenian lips with shame confess.

Thou, too, a land of lovely arts, Of potter's and of sculptor's skill— Thy folk of high undaunted hearts As those that throb in Belgium still.

Within thy harbor's circling rim The warships long, with banners bright, Sailed bearing Athens' message grim— "God hates the weak. Respect our Might."

The flame within thy fanes grew cold, Stilled by the foeman's swarming hordes. Thy sons were slain, thy daughters sold To serve the lusts of stranger lords.

For Attic might thou didst defy Thy folk the foeman slew as sheep, Across the years hear Belgium's cry— "O Sister, of the Wine-Dark Deep,

"Whose cliffs gleam seaward roseate. Not one of all my martyr roll But keeps his faith inviolate, Man kills our body, not our soul."



What America Can Do

By Lord Channing of Wellingborough.

Lord Channing, who makes the following suggestion to American statesmen, was born in the United States of the well-known Channings of Boston. His father was the Rev. W.H. Channing, Chaplain of the House of Representatives during the civil war and a close friend of President Lincoln. Lord Channing has been for twenty-five years a member of the British Parliament, and for the last three years a member of the House of Lords, having been created first Baron of Wellingborough in 1912. He is President of the British National Peace Congress.

To the Editor of The New York Times:

As a member of the British Legislature for a generation, and a lifelong Liberal, and having also the closest ties of blood with America, and a proud reverence for her ideals, I would wish, with the utmost respect, to offer some comments on one specific aspect of present affairs, as they affect America, which does not seem to have been marked off with the distinctness its importance calls for.

This is the greatest crisis in the history of the world, and attention concentrates itself on the attitude of the greatest neutral State.

It is unthinkable that America can divest herself of responsibility for the final outcome. This seems as clearly recognized in America as in Europe.

To us in England this war is a life or death struggle between two principles—Pan-Germanism on the one side, with its avowed purpose to impose its hegemony and its rigid system of ideas and organization on the rest of the world, not by consent, but by irresistible military force; on the other side the claim of the other nations, large and small, to maintain inviolate their freedom and individuality, and to think and work out for themselves their own political and economic future in their own way.

The one principle would seem the flat contradiction of all that America stands for, the other principle would seem to be precisely the essential idea of free self-government and democratic evolution, in which are rooted the very life and being of America.

For this reason there is instinctive and profound sympathy on the part of the great majority of native Americans with the cause of England and her allies.

This sympathy is not merely the tie of blood or the unity of ideals. Reason has convinced Americans that the supreme principles and highest interests of America will be best safeguarded if the Allies win.

They dread instinctively what might happen if Pan-Germanism absorbed the smaller nationalities, crushed the great free countries like France and England, and dominated the whole world with the "mailed fist," not only Europe and the Far East, but South America and the Pacific. Perhaps the hint of Count Bernstorff that Canada may be treated like Belgium, and the Monroe Doctrine like other "scraps of paper," may also have thrown some light for Americans on a "Germanized" future! And a cast-iron system of commercial and industrial monopoly dictated by German needs cannot attract.

America Can't Stand Apart.

That is one side that American statesmen have to consider. There is, of course, another.

The United States visibly form the greatest force the world has yet seen to bring together, to unite, to assimilate, in the development of their vast territories, measureless resources, and complicated industries, all that is best from all the other great nations, welding slowly but surely, through free institutions, these new elements into instruments for the fuller realization of the generous and noble ideals for which America stands. Perhaps an eighteenth or even fifteenth part of the population is of German origin, a percentage not far from equal to that contributed by the United Kingdom and Canada.

There is thus not only the broad question of avoiding war with Germany, whose people have so large a share in the life of America, a war doubly unwelcome at all times because of the innumerable links of science, invention, professional training, of commerce, and of personal friendship; but there is also the local question of peace and good-will in the daily work of America as between huge sections of her population. These visible facts not unnaturally give great weight to the argument for neutrality. No wise man on this side of the Atlantic will try to ignore them, or take exception to the dignity and correctness with which the American Executive has dealt with the grave problem before it.

Neutrality has, of course, its limits and conditions, logical and moral. Those limits and conditions, the possibility of their infringement in such a way as to make some change of policy imperative, are matters solely for the United States.

The point the present writer wishes to press is on a different plane, and is precisely this:

America does not and can not stand wholly apart from supreme European decisions.

America is as responsible as Europe for the great extensions, definitions, the strengthening and modification of international law. America stands forth as the apostle of arbitration, to widen the area within which disputed points may be determined amicably. America stands also as the chief signatory of the great world conventions which have settled new rules for the conduct of war, to mitigate its horrors, especially for non-combatants.

America has taken a noble part in framing machinery for securing peace and justice, and in moving forward the landmarks of civilization as against savagery, and of human mercy as against cruel terrorism.

Can America safely or wisely divest herself of the duty thus placed upon her, logically and morally, by her participation in this, the noblest work of our age?

And is it wise or is it safe to indefinitely postpone the discharge of this duty?

By the events of the last three months the whole of this new charter of humanity has been challenged and is at stake.

Is it not sound policy as well as an imperative duty to take some step here and now to "stop the rot" and to make good here and now as much as we can of what we have won and wish to keep?

Belgium's Wrongs.

Admittedly a "guiltless and unoffending nation,"[1] whose neutrality and independence had been solemnly guaranteed by treaty, to which the powers concerned in the war were parties, has had her treaty rights violated by one of these powers on the cynical plea that there is no right or wrong as against national interest, that necessity obeys no law, and treaties are "scraps of paper." This is not matter for inquiry or judicial decision at some later date. It has been frankly avowed by the German Government from the outset of this war.

[Footnote 1: Theodore Roosevelt.]

Again, this admitted wrong is not the sudden and unavoidable outcome of events unforeseen and uncontrollable. It has been deliberately planned years ahead, with elaborate preparation of railway and other facilities, and with every invention and contrivance, to rush in irresistible forces; to subvert and destroy the independent State that Germany was herself pledged to defend.

Thirdly, this policy of absolute annihilation of Belgium, of its right to live its own life, its right even to preserve those monuments of its noble and beautiful history which had become treasured heirlooms of the whole world, has been carried out with a ruthless barbarity to the people, and especially the non-combatants, for which it is hard to find a parallel in the worst incidents of the Thirty Years' War or of the devastation of the Palatinate. To bring the actual guilt home to those who actually did or ordered these deeds to be done in individual cases is one thing. The broad fact that these barbarous deeds were done stands manifest and insistent, and demands such instant action as can be taken by a great and responsible people.

And, lastly, there is the undisguised adoption of the policy of terrorizing non-combatants to submission by such acts as forcing women and children to walk before the advancing enemy, the wholesale burning of houses, shooting of hostages and other non-combatants, and the dropping of bombs from aeroplanes not on forts or troops, but on places where women and children can be killed or injured.

And all this tragic sweeping away of such good things as had been won with worldwide consent, at the instance of the Czar in initiating The Hague policy, has gone on, so far as it could go on, with equal horror, throughout Northern France. Rheims and Senlis have suffered the fate of Louvain and Termonde and Malines, and Paris has had her quota of women and children wantonly slain by bombs, exactly like Antwerp.

The Threat to England.

And America knows, as we here in England know, from the open menace of the German press, writing of England as the one supreme enemy, that it is the full intention of Germans, if they can, to carry through England, too, even more ruthlessly, the same policy.

We are fighting here, and are confident that we shall fight with success, not only to protect our English homes and to guard the historic buildings of this land but to make an end of this Prussian terrorism of the world; to secure no national aggrandizement, but to secure a permanent and solid peace, based on guaranteed liberties, and a rational settlement of the question of armaments.

These questions touch us all the more because many of us have been the most persistent friends of international peace and have specially labored to promote happy and friendly relations with the German people. The present writer, who was honored by election as President of this year's National Peace Congress, has been associated with the work of men like Lord Brassey, Sir John Lubbock, (later Lord Avebury,) as a member of the Anglo-German Friendship League, and has repeatedly in Parliament argued against any hostile or provocative attitude toward Germany. This war is our answer and our reward!

America in the Settlement.

So far as can be judged from authoritative words of President Wilson and ex-President Roosevelt, America does and will claim a right to share in the final settlement of the terms of a permanent and stable peace.

If that claim is sound, if the efforts of America to create better machinery for securing peace and for generously and humanely vindicating the liberties and happiness of nations and of the individuals who make them up do entitle America to a voice, and a potent voice, in the work of mending and remaking the world after this terrific catastrophe, then I would submit with all respect that it is really idle to wait till all the recognized principles of what has been held to be right or wrong as between nations, and what has been held to be right or wrong in the methods of conducting war have gone overboard, without one word of protest; we must save the world first, if we are to have a real chance of remaking it on lines which are worth having.

Nothing but good could come from immediate action by the American Executive to assert as they, best of all nations, could assert, now and at once in terms uncompromising, unanswerable, that the ground taken up by international consent in the past generation must be held now and hereafter, and accepted as an essential basis of the final settlement.

Such a pronouncement now by America would make a landmark in history—would render a measureless service to the whole world in emancipation from the persistent degradation of the twin doctrines that might makes right, and that necessity knows no law, and would bring to America herself imperishable honor and glory in the fearless assertion and eternal consecration of her own noblest ideals.

I would submit further that such a national declaration by America involves no violation of neutrality, and is in no sense inconsistent with the spirit of official utterances already made.

To take the latter first—we have had notable utterances from the President and from the ex-President.

President Wilson seems to have given a sympathetic hearing to the mission which laid the case of Belgium before him, both as to the violation of Belgium's neutrality and as to the cruel treatment of the non-combatant population and the wanton destruction of towns and villages and of precious historical monuments. He is understood to have promised an investigation, and it is gathered from the Independance Belge this week that this investigation has been, and is being, carried out by American Military Attaches in Belgium, and also at the London Embassy of the United States.

Again, President Wilson's recent letter to the Kaiser, while confirming neutrality in precise terms, went on to intimate that there must be a "day of settlement" and that "where injustices have found a place results are sure to follow, and all those who have been found at fault will have to answer for them." If the "general settlement" does not sufficiently determine this, there is the ultimate sanction of "the opinion of mankind" which will "in such cases interfere." He would apparently reserve judgment until the end of the war, but in no way disclaims or surrenders American responsibility.

Mr. Roosevelt is not tied by official responsibility, and can speak with less restraint and more freedom. In The Outlook he has substantially accepted and indorsed all that is material in the Belgian case.

America should help in securing a peace which will not mean the "crushing the liberty and life of just and inoffending peoples or consecrate the rule of militarism," but which "will, by international agreement, minimize the chances of the recurrence of such worldwide disaster," and "will, in the interests of civilization, create conditions which will make such action" as the violation of Belgian treaty rights "impossible in the future."

Like President Wilson, he seems to think that the time for judicial pronouncement on acts presumably guilty and wrongful will come at the conclusion of the war. At the same time he surrenders no part of America's responsibility, but reaffirms it with all the force of his trenchant style.

But elsewhere, and later, he has insisted on the "helplessness"—the "humiliating impotence created by the fact that our neutrality can only be preserved by failure to help to right what is wrong."

Mr. Roosevelt's Remedy.

And he has gone on to adumbrate his practical remedy—"a world league" with "an amplified Hague Court," made strong by joint agreement of the powers, to secure "peace and righteousness," and to vindicate the just decisions of such a court by "a union of forces to enforce the decree." He adds that this might help to obtain a "limitation of armaments that would be real and effective."

That so happy a plan may be capable of realization would be the hope of all wise men.

But where I take exception with Col. Roosevelt is as to America's present "impotence"—that nothing effectual can be done by America without breaking her own neutrality.

That view I wholly traverse. It might conceivably be felt by America, under certain grave eventualities, that neutrality must be broken.

But it is clear that the articles of The Hague Convention of 1907 amply provide for the type of action here and now by the United States which I have ventured to lay before American statesmen in this paper. And, in my opinion, it is conceivable that more good might be achieved by America taking that action, while maintaining her neutrality.

It goes without saying, it really needs no demonstration, that nearly every international agreement embodied in The Hague Convention has been broken, wholly or in part, in the letter and in the spirit, in the proceedings of this unhappy year.

The violation of the territory of a neutral State by the transit of belligerent troops and other acts of war is forbidden, (Articles 1, 2, 3, 4, &c.) It is the duty of the neutral State not to tolerate, (Article 5,) but to resist such acts, and her forcible resistance is not to be regarded as an act of war, (Article 10.)

Interference with Neutrals.

That, of course, covers the case of Belgium completely and establishes absolutely that there is, and need be, no breach of neutrality in resistance thus legally sanctioned to illegal interference with neutral rights.

It is hardly necessary to recapitulate the articles that have been torn up. To refer to the most striking, there is the repeated bombardment of undefended towns, pillage incessant throughout Belgium and Northern France, (Articles 28 and 47;) the levying of illegal contributions, (Articles 49 and 52;) the seizure of cash and securities belonging to private persons, banks, and local authorities, (Articles 52 and 56;) collective penalties for individual acts for which the community as a whole are not responsible, (Article 50.) Articles 50 and 43 should have made impossible the punitive destruction of Vise, Aerschot, Dinant, and Louvain, and numberless villages; Article 56 should have preserved from destruction institutions and buildings dedicated to religion, education, charity, hospitals, &c. All these wrongful acts, committed everywhere, have been prohibited by these articles.

The gradual introduction of the policy of terrorism has been ably traced by perhaps the highest French authority on international law, Prof. Edouard Clunet, formerly President of the Institute of International Law, in a recent address.

"Bombardment par intimidation" was adopted by the Germans in 1870 and used at Strassburg, Paris, Peronne, &c., shells being directed and conflagrations spread in the inhabited parts of towns apart from the fortifications. Germany herself assented to serious mitigations of this practice at the Conference of Brussels in 1874 and at The Hague in 1907.

The worst evolution of the policy of terrorism has been in the throwing from aeroplanes of bombs, explosive or incendiary. M. Clunet lays down that, by the most recent decision of the institute, bomb throwing from aeroplanes must follow the rules of bombardment by artillery. This would prohibit such bombs without formal notice. But in Antwerp bombs were dropped without notice over the Royal Palace, to the peril of the Queen and her young children, and the number of peaceable inhabitants killed or injured was thirty-eight, three children being mutilated in their beds. In Paris, besides the bombs dropped on Notre Dame, bombs were deliberately dropped in the public streets and a number of peaceable victims killed or wounded. The dropping of bombs as an act of war on fortresses, ammunition depots, Zeppelin sheds, &c., is, of course, legal. But the bomb dropping adopted in Belgium and France, and threatened in England, if the opportunity arises, is undisguised terrorism, and not war.

It is important to note also that at Brussels in 1874 Antwerp addressed a petition to the conference praying that any bombardment should be limited to fortifications only. The commission of the conference, which included three well-known German Generals and two professors, recognized the justice of this plea and recommended Generals to conform to it.

But the one point that should appeal most strongly to the patriotism as well as the idealism of America is the fact that the instructions of 1863 for armies in campaign, drawn up by the United States Government in the height of the civil war, first codified the laws for the conduct of war, and have been the source and starting point of all these later international agreements.

And it should be remembered that both Germany and America signed the Fourth Convention of The Hague with its annexed regulations as to sieges and bombardments (Articles 22 to 28) and the further provision which may even yet be applied punitively to the proceedings of the present war. "The belligerent who shall have violated the provisions of the said regulation shall be held liable for an indemnity."

And if it be thought that America can render no help in such a position as the present without violating her neutrality, the answer is that by Article 3 of Convention 1 of The Hague, 1907, neutral powers have the right to offer their suggestions (bons offices) or their mediation, even during the course of hostilities. And further: "The exercise of this right must never be considered by one or the other of the parties to the conflict as an unfriendly act."

With all submission, I earnestly urge on the leaders of American thought to support this attempted interpretation of the supreme duty and the noble opportunity the present position places before their country.

One more word. I referred to the possible benefit of neutrality being maintained while this protest against wrong and appeal for right is at the same time advanced.

Is it not more than probable that there is an immense section of moderate though patriotic opinion in the great German people which at heart deprecates the extreme doctrines of conquest and world supremacy in pursuit of which the great, the wonderful achievements of the German race in science, in industry, in the extension of commerce, are being rashly risked?

CHANNING OF WELLINGBOROUGH.

40 Eaton Place, London S.W., Oct. 29, 1914.



TO A COUSIN GERMAN.

By Adeline Adams.

My Hans, you say, with self-applausive jest, "When Albert gave his Belgians Caesar's name— 'Bravest of all the Gauls'—surely 'twere shame The King, unthorough man, forgot the rest:

"'Bravest because most far from all the best Provincial culture.'"[2] Friend, if now your aim Be that fine thoroughness your people claim, Read on: "Such culture's wares, it stands confest,

"Oft weaken minds." And Caesar's word was just. If men, bedeviled under culture's star, Have left Louvain a void where flames still hiss, Speared babes, and stamped the world's own Rose to dust, God grant that Belgium's soul may dwell afar Forever, from a culture such as this!

[Footnote 2: "Propterea quod a cultu atque humanitute provinciae longissime absunt."]



What the Economic Effects May Be

By Irving Fisher.

Professor of Political Economy at Yale University; member of many scientific societies.

When the future historian chronicles the facts of the present great world struggle and attempts to analyze its causes and effects the economic losses, gains, shiftings, and dislocations will form an important part of the story. It is, of course, quite impossible at this time to know, in any detail, what all the economic results will be. Much will depend on how long the war lasts, how many people and how much property are destroyed, what financial devices are resorted to in order to finance it, and which side is finally victorious.

The most palpable and the most fundamental effects will be a partial stoppage of earnings in the nations directly concerned, i.e., a reduction in the "real income," which consists of enjoyable goods. All the other important results follow from this.

The cost, however reckoned, is sure to be stupendous. Prof. Richet is quoted as reckoning it at $50,000,000 a day. This is probably more than half the total income of all the inhabitants of the warring countries. The highest estimates of the total income of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, estimates of Bowley, Laverge, and Buchel, respectively, total up less than $70,000,000 a day. Russia and Austria are poor countries per capita, and would scarcely bring the grand total to $100,000,000 a day. Moreover, the loss of real income to Europe is, I imagine, in reality much greater than Richet's estimate, chiefly because he takes little account of the indirect costs, which may well be the greatest of all. The cost to the fiscal departments of Government is probably only a small part of the total cost which the people will have to bear. The killing and disabling of the men engaged will cut off the financial support of European families to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The physical destruction of capital through the devastation of crops, the burning and demolishing of merchant ships and buildings, the crippling of industry through the sudden withdrawal of labor and raw materials, the introduction of new trade risks, and the cutting off of transportation, both internal and foreign, make up a sum of items which cannot be measured, but which may exceed those which can. Last, but not least, is the impairment of that subtle but vital basis of business, commercial credit.

In short, the central effect is a vast impairment of Europe's current income and of the capital from which her future income will flow. It means a veritable impoverishment of vast populations. The great burden will bear heaviest, of course, on the poor. It will impinge very unequally and will cause a great redistribution of wealth. As always happens, some people, mostly lucky speculators, will come out of the melee wealthier than before. This fact will not serve to lessen the discontent of the masses, which their impoverishment is sure to create. Food prices will be high, the earnings of labor will be low, and after the war unemployment will be great, due to the impossibility of quick absorption into the industrial system of returned soldiers, as well as other maladjustments which the war is sure to bring.

The victor may secure indemnity for part of the loss, but not for all; he will, in spite of himself, be a net loser. Taxes will be a crushing burden, merely to secure funds with which to pay high interest on vast new war debts, to say nothing of funds with which to purchase new armaments—if again the nations are forced, by lack of international control, to resume the stupendous folly of racing each other in military equipments.

Bankruptcy and Revolution.

It may well be that among the economic consequences of the war there will be some national bankruptcies, and that among the political consequences will be revolutions. High prices, high taxes, low wages, and unemployment make an ominous combination. We may be sure that discontent will be profound and widespread. This discontent is pretty sure to lead, especially in the defeated nations where there is no compensating "glory," to strong revolutionary movements just as was the case in Russia after her defeat by Japan. Whether or to what extent these movements, in which "Socialism" in the various meanings of that word is sure to play a part, will succeed, depends on the relative strength of opposing tendencies which cannot yet be measured. One possible if not probable result may be, as I suggested in THE TIMES two weeks ago, some international device to secure disarmament and to safeguard peace.

Though part of the losses to Europe will be permanent, her chief loss will be coterminous with the war. She will, therefore, seek ways and means to fill in this immediate hole in her income in order to "get by." To do this she must borrow; that is, she must secure her present bread and butter from us and other nations and arrange to repay later out of the fruits of peace. She can stint herself, but not enough to meet the situation. She must borrow. And in one way and another she will satisfy this necessity by borrowing in the United States.

Most of the strange and unprecedented phenomena which we have witnessed in the last month, in rapid succession, are due to this pressing necessity of the belligerent peoples to cash in now and trust to good fortune to pay later. As soon as the war became even probable Europe tried to cash in on our securities. The pressure for our gold pushed it toward Europe faster than it could move. Exchange jumped to the gold-shipping point of $4.89 per pound sterling, and did not stop. In some cases it reached $7. This was partly due to the desire to get our gold and bolster up a credit structure, tottering before the deadly blow of war; but it was also partly due to the need of ready money for supplies of all kinds. This need applies not only to the Governments, but to the individual people. To obtain this ready money they threw back on us the securities they had purchased of us in former years. They wanted us to take back these titles to future income and give them instead titles to present income. Had they secured our gold their next step would have been to spend part of it for supplies, and this would have caused any foreign dealers to whom they applied to place orders with us. The gold then might have turned the exchanges and have been brought back to us in return for our wheat and other products.

This double transaction is in essence one—a barter of present income in the form of our wheat to Europe for future income in the form of investment securities. It was interfered with by the refusal of the insurance companies to insure the gold and by the closing of Stock Exchanges against the inundating flood of securities. The first difficulty, as to transporting gold, has been largely removed by arranging for drafts against stocks of it kept on both sides of the Atlantic. This will save the need of sending it on risky voyages back and forth, and any final net balances can be liquidated after the war. The second obstacle, the closure of the Stock Exchanges, is more formidable, but cannot completely or permanently prevent the transactions which so many people on both sides are anxious to consummate. Curb markets and limited cash sales on the Exchanges themselves are doing some of this business, and, sooner or later, much more will be done, whether the Exchanges are open or not. Europe needs our wheat and cannot pay for it except with securities, partly because her own industry is paralyzed, partly because ocean transportation is difficult.

What Dumping Securities Means.

Few people seem to realize that the dumping of securities on our shores and the efforts of foreign Governments, such as France and Switzerland, to borrow money in our markets are at the bottom very much the same thing. They are simply two forms of securing present supplies from America in return for future supplies, the dividends and interest on securities from Europe.

It does not much matter whether we buy Government bonds or other securities. If we buy of French capitalists their holdings in American railway securities we simply provide them with the wherewithal to take the French Government loans themselves. They virtually become, without our knowledge, the go-between through which we lend, as it were, to the French Government, in spite of ourselves. It is doubtless well, as a matter of policy, to refuse to loan directly to France, but we must not for a moment conclude that France or any other nation will have to finance the war without our aid. We shall not be consciously helping any particular nation, but we shall be actually helping any nation which can trade with us. Evidently England will get more of our help than any other nation because her shores are more accessible. Germany is more isolated. Unless she possesses a larger food stock than commercial statistics indicate she will be pressing for our food supplies, which may reach her indirectly, we selling to Holland and Holland to Germany; also reversely, via Holland or via Austria and Italy, Germany may sell a stream of securities the other end of which we receive. Whether directly or by devious routes there will inevitably be, so far as I can see, a vast exchange of commodities passing to Europe for securities coming from Europe. In this interchange will be found the dominant economic effect of the war on the United States.

Foreign nations will get their much-needed loans on better terms, even if less promptly, by the circuitous process mentioned than if they could borrow directly in our markets; for their own citizens will pay higher prices than we would, even if, to get the money, they have to sell their other investment securities to us at a considerable sacrifice. England has sold Treasury bills for seventy-five millions of dollars on as low a "basis" as 3-3/4 per cent.

In this virtual trade of this year's crops for titles to future years' crops we shall get a high price for the former and pay a low price (in present valuation) for the latter. Investment securities are, and will be, a drug on the market. In other words, the rate of return to the investor will be high; the rate of interest on long-time loans will be high and stay high, that on short-time loans may fluctuate greatly. The rise in the rate of interest on long-time investments is one of the most vital and far-reaching effects of the war. At bottom, interest always arises from the exchange of present and future goods. The rate of interest, as I have tried to show in my book of that title, is simply the crystallization, in a market rate, of the impatience of the human race for its bread and butter. War has now produced such impatience in populations of hundreds of millions. It is this impatience which dumps the securities upon us, sends down their price, and sends up the rate of interest. As Byron W. Holt has said, there is no moratorium for hunger. The fall of securities in Europe produces the like fall in this and other countries.

One of the consequences to America of being forced to play the role of money lender and one of the consequences of the rise in the rate of interest here, or what amounts to the same thing, the fall in the prices of bonds, will be an increased difficulty of financing our own enterprises. Only the most promising enterprises will be able to sell their securities. This means that we shall be neglecting, to some extent, our own enterprises, to finance the European war instead.

This general depreciation of investment securities will doubtless lead to many bankruptcies, if not to a genuine crisis. It will also give tempting opportunities to investors. The likelihood of a genuine panic is lessened by the fact that every one recognizes the real cause of the disturbance and that insolvency is not suspected. According to the best commercial observers, the previous liquidation had been fairly well completed. Unless they are mistaken, disaster will not be likely to follow.

We repeat that since the necessities of Europe have forced her to buy our food in return for her investments, it is evident that during the war food prices will be high and security prices, especially bonds, will be low. These are the two facts of greatest economic significance to us. To the country as a whole they defer some of our pleasures till after the war. Uncle Sam will cut down for the present on his eating and drinking, his clothes, shelter, and amusements in order to share his rations with Europe. Instead of the pleasures foregone he will invest—not in new enterprises at home, but in old ones—American and possibly European also—purchased of Europe. We can never have our cake and eat it too. In this case we shall let Europe eat some of it on condition that she in turn shares hers with us after the war. Moreover, we shall trade off a relatively small piece of our present cake for a relatively large piece of Europe's future cake. In other words, Europe will fill up the great breach in her income now impending by inducing us to make a small breach in ours. The result will be that the course of our real income, that is, economic satisfaction or enjoyable consumption, will imitate in some degree that of Europe. This is, reduced to its lowest terms, the chief economic result of the war.

But to many the question is, do we gain or lose, as compared with what might have been the case if there had been no war? I do not think any one can answer that question with certainty. Europe is willing to mortgage its future to us on terms very advantageous to us; but when the future comes, the purchasing power of money will probably be so much lessened as to have absorbed all our advantage. Probably we shall lose slightly on the whole. But it is not economically impossible that there will be a net gain. In either case the net effect will, I believe, be small.

Of more importance will be the various effects on various classes. Certain people will be greatly benefited by the rise in food prices and the fall in security prices. The farming classes will profit by the former; the investing classes by the latter. Those who have the good fortune to belong to both classes will grow rich. The farmer who is in a position to save money will both make more money to save and be able to invest it more advantageously after he has saved it. If he lends to his neighbors he will find the market rate of interest high. Even if he buys more land the purchase price will be restrained from the great rise we might expect from the prosperity of farming by the fact that the "number of years purchase," as the phrase is in England, will be small, or, in other words, that the interest basis, which enters into every land price, will be high.

Labor Will Not Suffer Much.

On the other hand the general consumer of farm products will suffer from another advance in that part of his cost of living, while the debtor classes will suffer from the fall in bonds or rise in interest. Many speculators on the Stock Exchange, those who have speculated for a rise, are in effect undoubtedly ruined already, and many borrowers at banks on collateral security will feel the pinch from the depreciation of their property and the hard terms of renewing their loans.

And the laboring man, who forms the majority, what of him? It seems improbable that he will be greatly affected, that is, on the average. He will have to pay more for his food, and food constitutes more than a third of his budget. But some articles he buys will probably fall and he may secure higher wages because of the withdrawal of competing laborers. Some labor may rise, especially in the industries benefited by the war, such as, for instance, farming and other food industries, canning, flour mills, sugar, &c., the automobile industry and perhaps ammunition and steel. In other industries thrown out of gear for lack of foreign markets or for lack of foreign raw material, the wage earner may lose in wages and employment. In other words, labor will be dislocated in spots, like the other parts of our industrial machinery.

Important dislocations will be felt in the fields of shipping and banking. One consequence is that American enterprise has now the golden opportunity to capture a good share of each. The outbreak of the war and the simultaneous opening of the Panama Canal will tend to divert the course of trade from Europe to South America. Probably our merchant marine can be developed more successfully for this South American trade than it could for the European trade. New York can largely take the place of London as the world's exchange centre for Pan-American trade. This opportunity is increased by the possibilities in the new Banking act for the establishment of branch banks abroad.

With these opportunities and the rise of interest in Europe, the United States will change to a great degree from a debtor to a creditor nation.

One of the dislocations of the war in the United States will be the cutting off of imports of a large part of our dutiable commodities, and therefore the loss of national revenue. There is an urgent need to compensate for this loss by some other form of tax.

But it is well not to lose perspective, to remember that dislocations are not necessarily losses, that, however loudly they are proclaimed in news columns, they are small in extent, when considered in relation to our whole trade, that this country of ours is a vast one, and that the rank and file of Americans will be but slightly affected by the war—especially by contrast with our friends, now fighting each other, across the sea.

We are too nearly self-supporting to be prostrated. Our foreign trade is and always has been a trifling matter compared with our internal commerce. The internal commerce paid for by money and checks annually in the United States amounts to nearly five hundred billions of dollars, which is more than a hundred times as much as our combined exports and imports.

Almost all of what has been said so far had grown out of the prospect that the prices of foods and other materials needed in Europe will be high, while the prices of securities which Europe does not need and cannot afford will be low. Other prices will rise or fall according to special circumstances. Like a bomb-shell, the effect of the war will be to disperse or scatter prices at all angles of rises and falls. The prices of luxuries will be lowered. The prices of chemicals will be raised. The same article will fall in price in one country and rise in another if the transportation from the former to the latter is interfered with. This is true today of cotton.

There has already been a speculative movement to anticipate these changes and arbitrarily to mark some prices up and some prices down. But as this is guesswork, and will be subject to frequent revision, one of the striking phenomena will doubtless be an increase in the variability of prices. The general level of prices will tend to rise. The rise will probably be greatest in little countries like Belgium, which are in the war zone and largely dependent on foreign trade. The rise will be less in England and in the United States than on the Continent. In fact, it is conceivable that in England the hoarding of money and the shock to credit, which is as predominant there as it is here, may actually lower the general level of prices during the war, especially if we could include in the index number the prices of securities, luxuries, and articles of English internal trade. If any nation tries the old experiment of paying its bills in irredeemable paper money, that desperate expedient will have the same result that it did with us during the civil war. Inflation of the currency will expel gold from that country and raise its price level higher than elsewhere.

After the war is over prices will probably not retreat, but will move upward even faster than before. There may then come the familiar "boom" period, which may culminate in a commercial crisis in a few years after the close of the war, as was true after the Crimean war, the American civil war, and the Franco-Prussian war. The rebound will probably be fastest in England. Statistical price curves of many nations usually show an upward turn when war begins and another when it ends. The war will thus aggravate a rise of prices already in prospect.

It would take considerable space to give, completely, the reasons for these prognostications, but I have tried to justify them in a brief addendum to a book to be issued this week on "Why Is the Dollar Shrinking?"

The sudden lightning bolt of war produced as one of its first economic effects a general dislocation of credit machinery in Europe and to some extent in this country. We heard at once that letters of credit of travelers in Europe were uncashable. Gold was hoarded everywhere. It is estimated that about $30,000,000 in gold was hoarded in New York in the first week in August. Runs on banks were frequent. Bank reserves were depleted.

The moratorium was resorted to to avoid a general cataclysm of bankruptcies which might have occurred—not from actual insolvency but from mere insufficiency of cash.

To me one of the most striking phenomena was the promptness and effectiveness of the co-operative actions by which, so far, any business cataclysm has been avoided. The closure of Stock Exchanges perhaps saved us from general financial panic. Most striking of all is the manner in which the Governments of the world have come to the rescue of business. Those of us who were brought up in the old laissez-faire school have to rub our eyes. Had the world been guided by laissez-faire ideas, in this emergency we should in all probability have witnessed by this time the greatest collapse of credit the world has ever seen. Almost all the large and effective measures to meet the many emergencies arising were taken by Governments. The moratorium must be counted among the Governmental acts which, so far at least, have saved the day for business credits. In England the Government permitted suspension of the Bank act, (not of the Bank, as many Americans seem to imagine.)

Improvised Accounting Methods.

The Bank of England has been enabled to rediscount a great mass of acceptances by the guarantee of the British Government against loss in so doing. These in the end will amount to several hundred millions of dollars. Emergency notes were issued by Governmental authority on both sides of the Atlantic, and in the arrangements made for special gold funds in Canada and in France the Governments of England and France played the important parts. Thus have been improvised methods of international accounting by which the transportation of gold balances may be deferred and largely dispensed with. Our own Government has co-operated in the currency exchange and credit situation in many ways. It made provision for sending gold to Europe for our stranded countrymen. It promptly revised the banking and shipping laws.

Whether further instability will be found to need such bolstering we cannot be sure. The present outlook is that business conditions are fairly sound and stable. In which direction across the Atlantic the title to gold will tend to change cannot as yet be foreseen. It will depend largely on how much Europe wants our products and how large a sacrifice she is willing to make in selling us her securities. It will also depend on possible issues of paper money. Fortunately, we are the happy possessors of over $1,500,000,000 in gold, and it is inconceivable that any large part of this should flow out—unless we should be so insensate as to inflate the currency.

If we keep our heads, we shall at the end of the war be in the proud position of being the only great nation whose economic resources have not even been strained.



Effects of War on America

By Roland G. Usher.

Head of Department of History at Washington University; author of "Pan-Germanism," "The Rise of the American People," &c.

From The Boston Transcript, Sept. 2, 1914.

The events of the last few days of July, 1914, showed the Americans the far-reaching effects of a state of war. There are now few who would say, as used to be so common, that a European war would make no difference to us. The closing of the New York Stock Exchange, the great shipments of gold and its consequent scarcity in the United States, the closing of the New England cotton mills, the cessation of export to Europe and of transatlantic communication with the Continent were instantaneous effects of a war 3,000 miles away obvious even to the apathetic and the heedless. With these we have not here to do; such are already past history. There is, however, a legitimate field for speculation as to the probable effects on the United States of the continuation of the state of war in Europe for months or years. The permanent results of a war naturally cannot be predicted in advance, but in the light of the history of the past, certain changes and developments in the United States appear so probable if the war continues as to reach almost the realm of certainty.

Needless to say, the European war will not involve the United States in actual hostilities. It is highly improbable that either our army or our navy will see service. We are too distant from the seat of war; too entirely devoid of interests the combatants might seriously injure which a resort to war could remedy; too completely incapable of aiding or abetting one or the other in arms to cause them to assail us. Even were we not as a nation of a peaceable disposition, even had we not a President blessed with a singularly clear head and able to keep his temper, we should still stand little chance of going to war. One eventuality alone might affect us—Japan might attempt some measures of aggression in the Far East which would interest us as possessors of the Philippines, but that is practically foreclosed by her official announcement that she will side with England. The effects of the war upon the United States will be indirect effects; they will be economic in character, though far-reaching and significant for every man, woman, and child in the country.

The economic structure of the United States rests today upon the assumption of the interdependence of international trade, upon an international division of labor, where England makes some things, Germany others, and we still more, all of which are exchanged. In a sense each country manufactures and produces for the whole world, and in turn expects the rest of the world to buy its products and to manufacture and produce things for its consumption. While something of this sort has always been true in international trade, the process reached during the nineteenth century an unprecedented development which actually made countries interdependent, or, if you will, actually dependent for the necessities of life upon each other's prosperity and continued activity. Hand in hand went the expansion of the international credit structure, based upon public confidence in the mutual honesty of merchants, until finally personal checks have begun to be exchanged (between the United States and England at least) at par and without investigation or previous indorsement by the banks on which they were drawn.

With the outbreak of war a striking and artificial change, a totally uneconomic and unnatural factor, came to transform the situation and leave the United States for all practical purposes in contact with only two of her really large customers. We have no merchant marine and cannot therefore avail ourselves of our neutral status to trade with the belligerents. We shall be compelled (for a time at least) to ship in English bottoms to such ports as English ships can make—which will practically be limited to England, France, Portugal, Spain, and the Mediterranean ports. The ordinary commercial roads to Russia through the Baltic are automatically closed by the location of the German fleet, and probably England and France, deprived of other outlets for their own trade, will nearly monopolize the trade with Russia through the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

On the other hand, the mobilization of armies and fleets in Europe will draw millions of men from the field and factories where they have been accustomed to make what we have usually bought. The war will vastly diminish and in many cases stop altogether the stream of imports to the United States. These millions of men in the field and on the sea will not possess most of the economic wants they had in time of peace and will become conscious of many which they usually did not feel. The war will diminish and in many cases entirely stop the stream of ordinary American exports to Europe. Because of the stoppage of the European supply of things we have usually bought of them, and the cessation of a European demand for things we have usually sold to them, the conditions of the home market, both in regard to what we must buy in it, and to what we must sell in it, will be vitally changed. When our present supplies of European importations are exhausted, we shall be obliged to make for each other and buy from each other the things which we happen to be no longer able to import or export. A great readjustment of the economic fabric in the United States will take place if the war lasts longer than a comparatively short time.

How long a time that must be will depend entirely upon the sharpness of the break in the economic life of Europe, and the amount of supplies they have on hand, which, as they will not now need them at home, they will be anxious to sell in the United States. Indeed, it would not be surprising if there was for a short time a glut of English and French manufactured goods in the United States market.

Europe May Depend On Us.

Of late years the commercial relationship between the United States and Europe has changed very greatly. For centuries we were a debtor community, buying largely from Europe, possessed only of crude staple products for export, and scarcely able by a series of expedients and exchanges to pay for what we bought. Tobacco for many decades, then cotton, were the only commodities of which much was exported direct to Europe. Then came, during the European famines of 1846, 1861, and 1862, an enormous demand for American grain. Yet only during the last few decades have we been able to export largely manufactured products or been able to deal with Europe on an equality of terms. We are no longer a debtor nation; we are no longer dependent upon Europe; the United States is an integral and essential part of the interdependent international economic fabric. Indeed, if the war continues ten years, Europe may be dependent upon us.

In a sense we are not ready to meet the crisis. During the last ten or fifteen years the exports of foodstuffs have fallen off greatly, and the supply in this country has actually declined in proportion to population. There has been also a most marked increase in the exports of manufactured goods and a decided increase in the importation of raw materials, including foodstuffs. Now will come an enormous demand from Europe for the very things of which we have not produced so much and exported little or nothing—bacon, eggs, butter, beef. The demand will also be greatly increased for woolen cloth, raw leather, shoes, steel in all its forms, railroad equipment of all sorts, automobiles and machinery, and, in particular, coal and gasoline. To supply this demand old industries will be expanded and new ones created, and a shift of capital and labor will inevitably take place to the industries for which a demand becomes clear in Europe, as soon as it seems reasonably certain that the war will last, beyond the present year.

An American Merchant Marine.

Above all, an American merchant marine is likely to be seen again upon the seas. There will be German ships in plenty for sale, in all probability, unless Germany wins an immediate victory on the sea, and the advantage of an unquestioned neutral status, easily obtained by a bona-fide purchase, will be so great that American capital will probably invest largely in freight steamers and ocean liners. It seems entirely unlikely that England, while she remains mistress of the seas, should recognize as valid the registration in the United States of vessels actually owned by belligerents or regard as anything more than masquerading their appearance under the American flag. England has never recognized any one's "right" to do anything at sea in time of war which did not accrue directly to her own benefit. It is scarcely necessary to say that she will not allow trade with Germany or Austria while she can prevent it. The only refuge will be the sale of the ship by the foreign owner to Americans who will trade with England, her allies, and strictly neutral nations. As always in time of war, privateering and smuggling will be profitable, and trade with Germany, unless she is immediately victorious at sea, will offer to the adventurous plenty of risk and the certainty of huge profits. During the Napoleonic wars the flats and bars of the German coast along the North Sea offered light vessels a great opportunity and the pursuing warships great obstacles. A modern motor-driven light craft will now have an enormous advantage over destroyers or cruisers. Here, as a century ago, many an American will find an opportunity to make a fortune.

The preoccupation of Europe with the war and the opening of the Panama Canal will afford the United States an unrivaled opportunity to develop trade with Canada, South America, Australia, New Zealand, India, China, and the Far East in general. We have never bulked large in the eyes of these countries and there has been much speculation as to the reasons why the German succeeded so well in South America and why the Englishman did so much business in China. Whether from sentiment or from a national habit that prefers English goods, the English colonies have bought more largely of the mother country than they have of us. But now that the war has closed the German factories, called German commercial agents home, and sent German ships racing to neutral harbors; now that the Panama Canal brings us some thousands of miles nearer to Australia and New Zealand than they are to London via Suez; now that England will be busy manufacturing for Europe and will have less to sell her colonies, these particular parts of the world will probably be compelled to look for their manufactured goods to the United States. Indeed, if one were not afraid of being accused of gross exaggeration, he might take heart and proclaim his conviction that a long and really inclusive European war would give the United States a practical monopoly of the South American and Pacific trade, provided always that the United States acquire by purchase a merchant marine and that the Panama Canal becomes feasible in January for large ships.

Foreigners Leaving America

One other effect of the war has already begun to reveal itself in the emigration from America of thousands of Servians, Austrians, Russians, Germans, Frenchmen, going home to take their places in the ranks. While many of these men are brave and honorable citizens, the fact that they respond to such a call proves them not yet Americans. The war will tend to remove a goodly part of the distinctly foreign element in the country, the part not yet amalgamated, and therefore the part most alien to our institutions and the most difficult to place in our social structure. If the war continues, Europe will draw every able-bodied man who can be influenced to go. Far more important, immigration will probably become negligible not only during the war, but for some time after it. Usually the reason for leaving home lies in the crowded population of European States and the lack of opportunity for advancement, plus the glib tongue of some agent of a contractor or of a steamship company. In recent years those who have come have not been desirable additions to our population because they came from nations alien in blood, language, religion and institutions, and were not therefore easily knit into our national structure and absorbed. There will be little, if any, further immigration. The men are wanted for the army and will not be allowed to leave during the war. After peace is restored, they will be imperatively needed in the fields and factories and every effort will be made to retain them. In fact, it does not take any wild stretch of the imagination for one acquainted with the results of the Thirty Years' War and of the Napoleonic wars to conceive that, from the view of economic opportunity and rewards, Europe might become a more favorable scene for the truly capable and ambitious than America is today. The tendency of a war is to absorb the best of a nation and to leave the dregs. For the power of organization and the fire of initiative Europe will at no distant date be ready to pay well.

The Effect of Economic Readjustment.

Unquestionably the economic readjustment which the war will force upon the United States will have an immediate and serious effect on individuals. Some will profit largely and promptly. All who at present possess large stocks of food, leather, oil, woolen cloth will be able to dispose of them at enormous profits. From the greater volume of freight the railroads will benefit directly. But while the farmers and cattle-men, the steel and oil kings are rejoicing in the opportunity, all industries which depend chiefly upon exportation or which manufacture an amount beyond the normal American demand, will be closing the factories or curtailing the output. For a time certain individuals, perhaps a relatively large number of individuals, will suffer inconvenience, loss, anxiety, and even privation. But the vast demand for labor in other industries, and the almost certain extensive demand for relatively unskilled labor ought not to make the period of transition long or the amount of suffering considerable. After all, the vast majority of the people of the United States are connected with farming, with the manufacture or production of the very things for which there will most likely be a great demand, or with the transportation and distribution of both imports and exports to the rest of the community. In certain industries, like the manufacture of cotton cloth, which is localized in New England to such an extent that whole districts are dependent upon it for a livelihood, the distress will be great, for the factories closed upon the declaration of war and the workers are a long distance from the Western fields, where laborers are only too scarce. The cheapening of transportation, the rapidity of communication, the superior mobility of the population today over ten years ago, make it probable that these people will soon find new places.

Concomitant with the war came a rise of prices. Foodstuffs especially advanced sharply and will certainly continue to rise until some material increase of the supply is assured beyond a peradventure. The tendency in England and above all on the Continent for the cities to buy great supplies to guard against possible want will increase this tendency. But, without question, should the war last, a rise in the whole level of prices of everything, including labor, will take place in the United States. It will affect some individuals adversely, but for most will be in the long run almost negligible. For those who actually produce or handle goods which advance in price the result will be a profit, because the price of the commodity they have to sell will almost certainly advance sooner and faster than the prices of the commodities they themselves are compelled to buy. In time the two will equalize and they will be precisely where they were before the war; they will pay out with one hand what they take in with the other. In nearly all cases where the individual produces or shares in the production of an actual commodity a general rise in prices, even to the extent which this war threatens to produce, will be to him only a temporary advantage or disadvantage. True, wages and salaries in industrial pursuits will not quite keep pace with the rise in foodstuffs, and factory workers and clerks will not benefit to the same extent nor as soon as the farmers will. People whose incomes are derived from stocks in the businesses which prosper will probably receive much more than they pay by reason of the increased prices of other commodities, and certainly cannot be worse off than before.

America's Real Sufferers.

The real sufferers in America will be those who hold stock in the enterprises which fail or cease to operate, and that far larger class who are dependent on a fixed salary. Professors and teachers of all sorts and grades; people living on annuities or small incomes derived from bonds or real estate; those dependent on the rent derived from leases for a term of years of dwelling houses, office buildings and the like, these will lose a material amount, exactly in proportion to the rise in prices. To that extent, the purchasing power of the stated number of dollars they receive will depreciate and that much they will lose beyond a peradventure. In time, some relief will be afforded by a tardy rise in salaries, by the expiration of leases and the payment of bonds, but the actual losses of the intervening years have never been in any way refunded in like cases in the past.

For some individuals, then, the European war will spell strict economy; for a comparatively few, let us hope, ruin. For the country as a whole, considered as a social and economic unit, a long war will introduce an era of astounding prosperity. Never before has the country had, and certainly it will never again have, almost a monopoly of the world's trade thrust into its hands. The United States will have only one real competitor, England, and, should the English Navy prove itself less capable than is expected, or should England and her colonies be forced to order a general mobilization of their armies, the United States might conceivably remain the only great mercantile community to which the world could look for supplies. No such eventuality need be predicated to prove that the continuation of this war or a series of wars will create a demand for manufactured goods such as our merchants have never dreamed of. And they will command war prices. It means employment with rich reward for capital and labor alike—a vastly increased foreign market, a much greater domestic market, high prices, and a steadily voracious demand for the entire output. The result will be the rapid diversification of industry in the United States, the creation of industries never before possible because of European competition, the invention of machines to meet new needs. The normal economic development will be accelerated decades.

After the close of the European war, when manufacturing and production are resumed, America will find herself overproducing and face to face with another economic readjustment necessary to meet the new situation. Then will ensue a commercial crisis with all its attendant suffering and trouble such as the United States has probably never seen and which will be violent and serious in proportion to the length of the war.



Germany of the Future

AN INTERVIEW WITH M. DE LAPREDELLE.

Exchange Professor from the University of Paris at Columbia University.

By Edward Marshall.

In the American press French views of the great war's significance have been less common than British views and far less frequent than German views. Therefore, this talk with M. de Lapredelle, Exchange Professor from the University of Paris at Columbia, will have especial interest.

This very distinguished Frenchman, although but 43 years old, has won high eminence in his native land, especially in the domain of international law, which is his branch at the University of Paris. Also he is Directeur de Recuel des Arbitrages Internacioneaux, he is the editor of The International Law Review in Paris, he is a member of the Committee on International Law for the French Department of Justice, he is a member of the French Committee on Aerial Navigation, he is General Secretary of the French Society of International Law, and he occupies other important posts and bears other important scholastic honors.

He is a cautious conversationist, as might be expected of one who has so deeply delved into the most cautious of all professions, but in the mind of the thoughtful reader this should add to the value of his utterances, which, as expressed in the following columns, were carefully revised by him before going into type.

I asked M. de Lapredelle to estimate the great war's probable effect upon education.

"Of course it is too early to guess intelligently," he replied, "for the effect of the war will be dependent entirely upon the results of the war, and, while we of the Allies have no doubt of our ultimate victory, it is the fact that victory has not been won as yet by either side.

"In talking with you my impulse is to assume what I feel in my heart—the certainty of German defeat, but I must not do that, although all the letters which I get from the front and from Paris express a growing confidence in the victory of the Allies.

"But it is too early to attempt intelligent detailed prophecy as to the effect of the great struggle upon the world's philosophy, or upon any other phase of its intellectual development.

"Almost certainly, however, a reaction against certain Germanic influences will be apparent after the war ends, for the world will not want ever to risk repetition of the horrors of this struggle, and it will be plain that they were the inevitable fruit of Germany's attempt at intellectual domination.

"This German assumption was due, largely, to their victory in 1870, but it went far beyond the bounds of reason, far beyond the fields in which German achievement really had established legitimate supremacy.

"The momentum of victory often has led humanity into excess. It led Germany into excessive claims of social superiority and into an excessive assumption of intellectual supremacy. Even in the eyes of others it gave Germany an unwarranted intellectual prestige.

"Really, the German is not a big thinker; he is an immensely careful thinker.

"Above everything, the German is an observer—a very diligent observer—and his mental eyes are likely to be so close to the wall that he sees only a single brick in it, wholly failing to get a comprehensive view of the whole structure.

"Germans are very careful students. They attach a vast importance to detail. I think it is not unfair to say that, with the German, the smaller, the more minute the detail, the more it interests him. The German loves to write a big book on a small subject, and, loving it, he does it well.

"But there are more exalted tasks, as, for example, the writing of big books upon big subjects, giving the world fresh visions of new and far-flung vistas. The German loves to catalogue and catalogues almost with genius; he loves to deliver long lectures upon microcosms.

"Cataloguing and the near-sightedness which may arise from intense study of the atom, to the exclusion of the collective organism, whether that collective organism be the human individual or the social mass, may render immense service to the world, but it never will be the only service necessary, and, if pursued to the exclusion of all other investigations, such study is likely to produce an aggravated narrowness of vision. Narrow vision is certain to eventuate in selfishness.

"The Germans became selfish after this fashion. The present struggle is the war of selfishness against world advance.

"Innumerable, or at least many, individuals have furnished smaller parallels to the course which Germany has taken as a nation. The individual with the truly and exclusively scientific mind is likely to go too far into abstractions, built from a possible misinterpretation of minutiae.

"The ideal national intellectual development will combine both fact and theory, will join rationalism to idealism, and will be far more like that of certain nations which I shall not name than it will be like that of Germany. These nations which I shall not name have both.

"In other words, it seems to be the fixed idea of the German that the German civilization is the only civilization; but it is not the thought of France or England that their civilizations are the only ones.

"This very lack of what may be defined as national egotism in France and England enables these nations to work, as Germany does not, for world science and world development—the growth of civilization as a whole.

"Germany's scientific work is for German science, she thinks of civilization only as German civilization. The world's other great nations—and may I say the world's great Latin nations especially?—internationalize their science and their civilization."

Why the Philosopher Is Important.

"One must be struck by the fact that Germany's critical philosophy formed the basis of her educational system and, therefore, the basis of her social system, and that it had in it the basis of the war.

"It cannot be denied, I think, that her education, as well as her politics and militarism, directly pointed to this great conflict. Indeed, the industrialism, the politics, the philosophy of Germany all find their logical expression in present events.

"Hegel was the first, in the beginning of the last century, to insist upon the ideas which, already being paramount in him, quickly became paramount in his followers, serving as the basis for the development of Prussia. To him this represented all and everything; to him divinity on earth was incarcerated in the State, and, therefore, the development of the State, not justice, was, in his mind, the object of all law.

"Since this beginning that has been the consistent German viewpoint, and increasingly so. The glorification of the State has included, of necessity, the sacrifice of the individual, and this has been conducted ruthlessly in Germany itself.

"Of course the State which considers it right to sacrifice the individuals of its own citizenship will be sure to consider it right to sacrifice the individuals of other nations' citizenships.

"That explains why international law never has been considered binding by the German; it explains why international law was not considered binding when Belgium stood in the path of Germany's march toward Paris.

"International law never has bound the German; it never will bind him until he changes his national psychology.

"Ihering, one of Germany's greatest theoretical jurists and a scholar in the matter of Roman law, declared, 'Right is the child of might.' He did not say exactly that right is might, but he defined it as 'the child of might.'

"That may be taken as the German keynote, for this man is of such great influence in Germany that his utterances must have an enormous effect.

"Treitschke, the historian, in his teaching in Berlin, naturally drew some of his inspiration from these two men. For him the State need consider no law save that which will promote its own expansion.

"Moral law, he holds, need not and must not stand in the way of the prosperity and growth of States, as it frequently must obstruct the prosperity and growth of individuals.

"Under this theory the State has two functions—these are, inside the country, to make law; outside the country, to make war. Germany denies the right of an extraneous law to decide upon the details of right and wrong within a country, and that is why Germany defies and even denies international law.

"If it happens that a treaty which the State has entered into later proves to be obstructive to some expansion which is thought to be a necessity of the State's destiny, that treaty may be disregarded with the full approval of Germany's national morality, although similar conduct on the part of an individual in Germany would be considered highly reprehensible.

"The State may bind itself to secure advantage, but, also, it may unbind itself to secure advantage, and this without consultation with, or the approval of, the other party or parties to the contract.

"This theory becomes confusing to the student reared in other nations under different educational influences. It indicates beyond contradiction that Germany feels no sense of duty toward other nations, but only an obligation to further her own interests.

"Germany has immense patriotism but no humanitarianism. Her only duty is to herself. Her national egotism can be characterized by no other word than selfishness.

"It is a curious phenomenon that at a time when humanitarianism in its broadest sense has become the keynote of all other of the great nations it has not become at all the keynote of German civilization."

Teutonic Superexcitation.

"It is impossible that such pride, such a sense of arrogant national superiority as that which marks Germany, should maintain among a democratic people; it is possible only to a very aristocratic country. What has happened is its logical outgrowth in the country which it has infected.

"In Germany this sense of national pride, of intolerance of others, even of contempt for others, has been developed until it amounts to superexcitation. It not only affects Germany's relations to other peoples, but it affects the relations of Germans to one another.

"Different classes of the German population continually exhibit it in their dealings with one another.

"It is continually illustrated in those events which have been the wonder of visiting foreigners—episodes of the contemptuous ill-treatment of subordinate German soldiers by their superiors. It goes beyond that, manifesting itself in the treatment of all civilians by the lowest soldier, and, further still, in the attitude even of the lowest civilian to all foreigners, even the highest.