Chapter VII: Part 7

1. The terms of the Triple Alliance call for Italy's participation in war only if Germany or Austria-Hungary is attacked by another power. The present war is not a defensive war, but one brought on by Austria-Hungary and Germany.

2. The spirit of the alliance demands that no warlike action be taken involving the three countries without full mutual discussion and agreement. Italy was not even consulted by Austria-Hungary and the course of events was brought to her knowledge only by news agency reports.

3. When Italy went to war with Turkey, Austria prevented her from acting with a free hand in the Adriatic and the Aegean, thereby prolonging the war at an enormous cost in men and money to Italy. Italy would be justified in acting in precisely the same manner now toward Austria-Hungary.

_From Secolo, Sept. 3, 1914:_

During the last few days we have assisted at a deplorable example of our Latin impressionability. The first German victories have made Italians waver, and Germany is taking advantage of the popular nervousness, and is working on public opinion in countless ways. Italy is invaded by Germans, who assert that Germany will issue victorious, and that her commercial and industrial activity will not be arrested. We are inundated with German letters, telegrams, newspapers, and private communications from German commercial houses, all asserting that Germany will win, and that Italy should keep neutral, to be on the winning side.

We are not of that opinion. We cannot lose sight of England. Germany knows that England represents her great final danger, hence the bitterness with which she speaks of England in all the above communications. England is not playing a game of bluff. She is not impotent by land, as Germany says, and may give Germany a mortal blow by sea. The war may possibly end in a titanic duel between England and Germany. In this case England will go through with the struggle calmly and grimly, smiling at difficulties and disregarding losses.

_From the Corriere d'Italia, Sept. 17, 1914:_

We do not know what Italy will do tomorrow, but we are of opinion that, in face of all eventualities, it is the elementary duty of patriotism not to trouble the calm expectancy of public opinion and not to mar the task of the Government, already difficult enough.

_From the Messaggero, Sept. 18, 1914:_

The Italian Nation is beginning to ask itself whether it ought to remain until the conclusion of peace in an attitude of resignation. It is necessary for us with clear vision to take our place in the fighting line. While the destinies of a new Europe are being decided on the battlefields of Champagne, Belgium, Galicia, and Hungary the Government is assuming a grave responsibility before the country in deciding to be disinterested in the struggle. The keen popular awakening which is manifested in demonstrations, meetings, and public discussions shows that growing preoccupation and varied uneasiness will not cease so long as the fate of the country is not decided at the right time by men who by temperament are best fitted to be interpreters of the soul and the interests of the nation.

_From the Corriere della Sera, Oct. 4, 1914:_

Many who now invoke a war of liberation complained at the beginning of August that Italy had not helped her allies. The declaration of neutrality then seemed the greatest act of wisdom performed by Italy for many years. Now, however, we must think of the future. Let us remember that the powers will only support our wishes when they have need of us. Gratitude and sympathy are mere phrases when the map of Europe is being redrawn. If Italy desire to safeguard her interests in the Adriatic she cannot postpone her decision till the last moment. Italy is isolated; the Triple Alliance treaty cannot defend her even if it be still in force. Italy and Austria, as Count Nigra and Prince Bülow said, must be allies or enemies. Can they remain allies after what has happened?

ITALY'S ARMED, ALERT NEUTRALITY.

_From the Idea Nazionale, Dec. 3, 1914:_

The day on which Italy will undertake to realize those aspirations she will find full and unconditional support. Great Britain is favorable to Italy gaining supremacy in the Adriatic, which is so necessary to her existence. If Great Britain needs Italy's support in Africa it will be only a matter of one or two army corps, and such an expedition, while having a great moral and political importance, would not diminish Italian military power in Europe.

_From the Avanti, Dec. 4, 1914:_

Premier Salandra's speech was Jesuitical. It contents the Jingoes by certain dubious phrases, while discontenting the Clerical and Conservative neutrals.

_From the Corriere d'Italia, Dec. 4, 1914:_

This much-applauded word, "aspirations," was not (in Signor Salandra's speech) meant to refer to any particular belligerent, and the Cabinet consequently has no program.

_From the Stampa, Dec. 5, 1914:_

Austria, before the war, disclaimed any intention of occupying Serbia, and her declaration cannot be disregarded by Italy, whose relations with Austria have been always conditional on the maintenance of the Balkan status quo, which Austria now threatens to alter. The Italian Government cannot ignore this condition, especially as during the Libyan war Austria menaced Italy, unless she desisted from bombarding the Albanian coast. Thus the Serbian situation may constitute a new factor.

_From the Corriere della Sera, Jan. 31, 1915:_

Italy's true policy is to come to a friendly agreement with the Slavs, which will guarantee their mutual interests. Italy wants a national settlement in the Balkan Peninsula, independent of the great powers. In no circumstances can Italy bind her lot to Austria-Hungary's policy.

BRITISH PROTECTORATE OVER EGYPT.

_From the Idea Nazionale, Dec. 19, 1914:_

The British Government's act merely sanctions a situation already existing in fact since 1882. In our governing circle it is not thought that the change of régime in Egypt will occasion, at least for the time being, any great modifications in public law in relation to the international statutes regulating the position of foreigners in Egypt.

_From the Tribuna, Dec. 20, 1914:_

The Mediterranean agreement, in which Italy, too, has taken part, implicitly recognized the actual status England had acquired in Egypt. Now the war has demonstrated the judicial incongruity of a Turkish province in which and for which the English had to carry out warlike operations against Turkey. The protectorate already existed in substance, and Great Britain might now even have proclaimed annexation.

_From the Giornale d'Italia, Dec. 19, 1914:_

Great Britain had for some months been preparing this event, which legally regulates a situation which has existed in fact. The present situation has been brought about without any disturbance, like everything that England does, in silence, neatly and without disturbing any one. Nobody can be astonished at Great Britain's declaration of a protectorate over Egypt.

THE DARDANELLES.

_From the Giornale d'Italia, March 7, 1915:_

It will be extremely difficult for Italy longer to remain neutral. The attack by the allied fleet on the Dardanelles has brought up three great problems affecting Italian interests. The first of these problems is the new rule to allow Russia access to the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles; the second concerns the equilibrium of the Balkans, and the third the partition of Asiatic Turkey, which affects the equilibrium of the Eastern Mediterranean. It is impossible for Italy to keep out of the solution of such problems unless she be satisfied to see not only the powers of the Triple Entente settle these affairs according to their interests, but also the small but audacious and resolute nation, Greece.

_From the Messaggero, March 17, 1915:_

The cession of the Trentino would be valueless if it implied the abandonment of Italian aspirations in Venetia Giulia, (land west of the Julian Alps,) in the Adriatic, and in Asia Minor, and submission to German policy. We cannot obtain by neutrality the territory we want, nor, if we renew the Triple Alliance, can we make an agreement with Great Britain for our security in the Mediterranean.

VON BUELOW'S WORK AND PLEA FOR INTERVENTION.

_From the Corriere della Sera, Feb. 8, 1915:_

Happily our aspirations in the Adriatic, our interests in the Central Mediterranean and in Northern Africa coincide admirably with the policy which it is easiest for us to pursue. Unless we profit with the utmost prudence, with the greatest circumspection, by the present rare opportunity which history offers us to set the finishing touches to our unification, to render our land and sea frontiers immeasurably more secure than they are, to harmonize our foreign with our domestic policy, we shall experience after the close of the war the darkest and most difficult days of our existence. The crisis through which we are passing is the gravest we have yet encountered. Let us make it a crisis of growth, not a symptom of irreparable senile decay.

_From the Stampa, March 15, 1915:_

There is surely no possibility of an Austro-Italian war without German intervention. If Italy attacks Austria, Germany will attack Italy; nor will Austria make concessions, for Austria, like Turkey, never changes her system, even when wrong.

_From the Giornale d'Italia, March 19, 1915:_

Italy either can obtain peacefully immediate and certain satisfaction of her sacred aspirations, together with the protection of her great and complex interests, or she can have recourse to the supreme test of arms. It is absurd to think that Italy, after seven months of preparation, when she is in an especially advantageous diplomatic and military position, will be satisfied with the Biblical mess of pottage or less--mere promises.

However negotiations go the great national interests must be protected at any costs. This is the firm will of the country and the duty of the Government. For fifty years Italy has made great sacrifices to be an element of peace in Europe. The equilibrium and peace of the Continent were broken through the fault of others against Italy's desire and without consulting her. Others have the responsibility for the present terrible crisis, but Italy would be unworthy if she did not issue with honor and advantage from the conflict. Greece, Rumania, and Bulgaria are awaiting Italy's move and will follow suit. Thus Italian influence is great at this moment, which must be seized, as it is in her power to contribute to the formation of a new international combination.

SOME RUSES DE GUERRE.

By A.M. WAKEMAN.

(Respectfully submitted to the British Government.)

Great Churchill's plan to fool the foe is simple and unique--
You only take a neutral flag and hoist it at your peak.
Thereby a ship with funnels four looks just like one with two,
Because the pattern has been changed on her Red, White, and Blue.

Now, cannot you improve on this, and so protect your towns,
As well as all your gallant ships at anchor in the Downs?
Old London, with the Stars and Stripes, might well pass for New York;
And Baltimore for Maryland instead of County Cork.

To mouth of Thames (N-O-R-E) just add four letters more,
Then hoist the Danish ensign, and, behold, 'tis Elsinore!
And Paris will be Washington if, on the Eiffel Tower,
They raise the flag of U.S.A., (a well-known neutral power.)

Your sailors might wear Leghorn hats, and out upon the blue,
They'd look like sons of Italy, (at present neutral, too;)
And, if upon your King the Hun would try to work some ill,
With pickelhaube on his head he'd pass for Uncle Bill.

THE EUROPEAN WAR AS SEEN BY CARTOONISTS

[German Cartoon]

The Fatal Moment In America

"Citizens of America, protect your existence and your honor by the force of arms!"

"Sorry, but just now we happen to be sold out!"]

[English Cartoon]

Top Dog

[German Cartoon]

England's "Splendid Isolation"

[English Cartoon]

The Sultan "Over the Water"

MEHMED V. (to Constantinople): "I don't want to leave you, but I think I ought to go."]

[German Cartoon]

Churchill's Flag Swindle

"Really I don't care to go out any more in these disgraceful rags!"

"Cheer up, Mrs. Britannia, just steal something better!"]

[German Cartoon]

May God Punish England!

]

[Italian Cartoon]

Speeches of the Kaiser in 1915

JANUARY: "I alone will defeat the world."

MARCH: "Naturally, with God's help."

JUNE: "All goes badly--the fault is not mine."

DECEMBER: "The fault is his."]

[English Cartoon]

Our Embarrassing Cousin

JONATHAN: "In spite 'f my noo-trality, John, d'ye notice how 'ffectionate I am?--how I sympathise with yer?"

JOHN BULL: "M--m'yes, that's all right, but I should like it better just now if you'd leave my hands a bit freer to fight those rascals as they deserve!"]

[German Cartoon]

John Bull at the Costumer's

"What costume shall I choose so that none will recognize me?"

"Why don't you go as a gentleman?"]

[English Cartoon]

William o' the Wisp

[German Cartoon]

American Neutrality

[English Cartoon]

What the War Office Has to Put Up With

Demonstration of a device for catching bombs from airships.]

[German Cartoon]

Va Banque!

The Monte Carlo habitue's last play.]

[Italian Cartoon]

The Final Earthquake--In Germany

By the grace of God and the will of the nation.

[The falling columns are marked "feudalism" and "militarism."]]

[German Cartoon]

From the English Eating-House

England utilizes the refuse of her domestic establishment as cannon fodder.]

[English Cartoon]

The Bread-Winner

[Italian Cartoon]

Italy's Neutrality

Every day the dance becomes more difficult.

(The dancer is the German Ambassador, von Buelow.)]

[English Cartoon]

Busy Packing

SULTAN MEHMED: "'Am I there'?!! I should rather think I am!! We're being 'moved,' you know. And the hammering outside is something too awful!!"

His ISLAMIC MAJESTY HADJI GUILLIOUN: "Kismet, my boy, Kismet! Besides, I feel sure you'll be awfully pleased with Asia Minor--so quiet!--we Mussulmans always feel so at home there, too!"

(The English preface their telephone conversations with "Are you there?" instead of "Hello!")]

[German Cartoon]

In the Cause of Culture

"Papa has gone away to Europe to protect the nice Englishmen from the savages. If you are very good, perhaps he will bring you back a nice German beefsteak."]

[English Cartoon]

Queen Elizabeth in the Dardanelles

(The reference is to the huge British dreadnought that bears the name of England's famous queen.)]

[French Cartoon]

The "Sick Man" At Home

The camel with two humps.

(The original title was "_Le Chameau à deux Boches_." In French slang a German is a _bosche_.)]

[German Cartoon]

"The Cripple-Entente"

As it must finally be.]

[French Cartoon]

Beware of the John-Bull-Dog!

"Go lie down, contemptible little England!"

"What I get my teeth into I hang onto!"]

[German Cartoon]

The Great Question

"If I remain neutral, will you remain neutral?"

"If you were neutral, would he be neutral?"

"If he is neutral then we will remain neutral."

"If we remain neutral, will they remain neutral?"

"And you also, neutral?"

"Shall you remain neutral?"]

Facsimile of a Belgian Bread-Check

TO A GERMAN APOLOGIST

By BEATRICE BARRY.

You may seek and find if you will, perchance,
Excuses for your attack on France,
And perhaps 'twill not be so hard to show
Why England finds you her deadly foe;
There are reasons old and reasons new
For feelings hard 'twixt the Russ and you,
But talk as you may till the Judgment Day,
You cannot ever explain away--
Belgium.

You have used both speech and the printed word
To have your side of the story heard,
We have listened long, we have listened well
To everything that you had to tell,
We would fain be fair, but it seems as though
You _can't_ explain what we wish to know,
And when lesser points have been cleared away,
You are sure to fail us when we say--
"Belgium!"

You may rant and talk about British gold,
And opinions that are bought and sold,
But facts, no matter how hard to face,
Are facts, and the horrors taking place
In that little land, pledged to honor's creed,
Make your cause a luckless one to plead.
There are two sides? True. But when both are heard,
Our sad hearts echo a single word--
"Belgium!"

We are not misled by the savage tales
An invading army never fails
To have told of it. There are false and true,
And we want to render you your due.
But our hearts go out to that ravished land
Where a few grim heroes make their stand,
And our ears hear faintly, from overseas,
The wailing cry of those refugees--
_"Belgium--Belgium--Belgium!"_

America's Neutrality

By Count Albert Apponyi

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 28, 1915.]

The letter which follows was sent by Count Albert Apponyi to
Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, and was written in the latter part
of last month in Budapest. Count Apponyi, who is one of the
most distinguished of contemporary European statesmen, was
President of the Hungarian Parliament from 1872 to 1904. He
was formerly Minister of Public Instruction, Privy Councillor,
Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, and
Member of the Interparliamentary Union.

I have been greatly interested in your account of American neutrality in the present European crisis. I must confess that I had seen it in a somewhat different light before and that some of the facts under our notice still appear to me as hardly concordant with the magnificent attitude of impartiality, nay, not even with the international duties of neutrality, which intellectual and official America professes to keep.

We cannot explain to ourselves that a neutral power should suffer the selling of arms and ammunition by its citizens to one of the belligerent parties, when no such selling to the other party is practically feasible; we cannot understand why America should meekly submit to the dictates of England, declaring all foodstuffs and manufacturing materials contraband of war, with not even a show of right and with the clear and openly proclaimed intention of starving Germany and Austria-Hungary; why, on the other hand, America should use an almost threatening language against Germany, and against Germany alone, when the latter country announces reprisals against the English trade, which, under given circumstances, can be considered only as acts of legitimate self-defense against an enemy who chooses to wage war not on our soldiers only, but on our women and children, too.

With all the respect we feel for the United States, we cannot find this attitude of their Government either fair or dignified. I offer these remarks in no spirit of uncalled-for criticism, but because I see how much the moral authority of the United States and their splendid situation as the providential peace makers of some future--alas! still far off--day has been impaired by the aforementioned proceedings. We cannot help considering them as so many acts of ill-disguised hostility against ourselves and of compliance with our foes. How can you expect, then, to have your good offices accepted with confidence by both belligerent parties when the times are ripe for them? It seems like the throwing away of a magnificent opportunity, and I think that those who, like yourself, cherish for your country the noble ambition of being some day the restorer of peace, should exert themselves to prevent practices which, if continued, would disable her to play any such part.

In your letter you strike the keynote of what I cannot help considering the partiality of Americans for the Entente powers. It is the idea that "in the western area of conflict, at least, there is an armed clash between the representatives of dynastic institutions and bureaucratic rule on the one hand with those of representative government and liberal institutions on the other." I can understand that it impresses some people that way, but I beg to enter a protest against this interpretation of the conflict.

Liberal or less liberal institutions have nothing to do with it in the west; the progress of democracy in Germany will not be stopped by her victory, it will rather be promoted by it, because the masses are conscious of bearing the burden of war and of being the main force of its vigorous prosecution, and they are enlightened and strong enough to insist on a proper reward. Rights cannot be denied to those who fulfilled duties involving self-sacrifice of the sublimest kind with unflinching devotion. No practical interest of democracy then is involved in the conflict of the western powers.

As to their representing liberal institutions in a higher or lower degree, I am perfectly willing to admit England's superior claims in that respect, but I am not at all inclined to recognize such superiority in modern France, republic though she calls herself. The omnipresence and omnipotence of an obtruding bureaucratic officialism is just what it has been under the old monarchy; religious oppression has only changed sides, but it still flourishes as before. In former times the Roman Catholic religion was considered as a State religion and in her name were dissent and Freemasonry oppressed; today atheism is the official creed, and on its behalf are Catholic believers oppressed.

Separation of Church and State, honestly planned and loyally fulfilled in America has been perverted in modern France into a network of vexations and unfair measures against the Church and her faithful servants; the same term is used and this misleads you to cover widely different meanings. In a word, it is a perfect mistake to consider modern France as the "sweet land of liberty" which America is. A German citizen, with less show of political rights, enjoys more personal freedom than is granted to a French one, if he happens to differ from the ruling mentality.

So stand things in the western area of conflict. But how about the east? You are kind enough to admit in your letter that "from this (the aforementioned) standpoint of course the appearance of Russia among the allies is an anomaly and must be explained on other grounds." Anomaly is a rather tame word to characterize the meaning of this appearance of Russia. I should hardly designate it by this term.

She does not "appear among the allies." She is the leading power among them; it is her war, as Mr. Tsvolski, the Russian Ambassador to Paris, very properly remarked: "C'est ma guerre." She planned it, she gave Austria-Hungary no chance to live on peaceful terms with her neighbors, she forced it upon us, she drew France into it by offering her a bait which that poor country could not resist, she created the situation which England considered as her best opportunity for crushing Germany. I must repeat it over and over again: it is in its origin a Russian war, with a clearly outlined Russian program of conquest.

Here, then, you have a real clash between two principles; not shades of principles as these may subsist between Germany and her western foes, but principles in all their essential features; not between different tints of gray, but between black and white, between affirmation and negation; affirmation of the principle of human dignity, liberty, safety, and negation of the same; western evolution and eastern reaction.

I wonder why those prominent Americans who are so deeply impressed by the comparatively slight shades of liberalism differentiating Germany from England and France are not struck by the absolute contrast existing between Muscovitism and western civilized rule as represented by Austria-Hungary and Germany; that they overlook the outstanding fact that while in the western area the conflict has nothing whatever to do with the principles embodied in the home policy of the belligerents, in the east, on the other hand, these principles will in truth be affected by the results of war, since a Russian victory, followed by a Russian conquest, would mean the retrogression of western institutions and the corresponding expansion of eastern ones over a large area and large numbers of men.

It is the consciousness of fighting in this war which has been forced upon us, against the direst calamity threatening our kind and on behalf of the most precious conquests of progress and civilization, which enhances our moral force so as to make it unconquerable. The hope which I expressed in my first letter, that Serbia's doom would soon be fulfilled, has been prostrated by the mistakes of an over-confident Commander in Chief; but that means postponement only and does not alter the prospects of war in their essentials.

Good progress is achieved in the campaign against Russia; a chapter of it may be brought to a happy close before long. The spirit of the country shows no symptom of weakening; it is really wonderful what a firm resolve pervades our whole people, though every man between twenty and forty-two stands in the field, and though the losses are frightful. Economically we hold out easily; the expenses of war are defrayed by inner loans, which give unexpected results; every bit of arable land is tilled as in time of peace, the old, the women and the half-grown youths doing the work of their absent supporters, neighbors assisting each other in a spirit of brotherhood truly admirable. In cases of urgent need we have the prisoners of war, whose number increased to nearly 300,000 (in Austria-Hungary alone) and to whom it is a real boon to find employment in the sort of work they are accustomed to.

The manufacturing interest, of course, suffers severe losses; but the number of the unemployed is rather less than usual, since a greater part of the "hands" is absorbed by the army. In a word, though the sufferings of war are keenly felt, they are less severe than had been expected, and there is not the smallest indication of a break-down. The area of Germany, Austria, and Hungary taken as a whole is self-supporting with regard to foodstuffs. The English scheme of starving us is quite as silly as it is abominable. England can, of course, inflict severe losses on our manufacturers by closing the seas against their imports and exports; but this is not a matter of life and death, such as the first reprisals of Germany, if successful, may prove to England.

Generally speaking, it seems likely that England will be caught in the net of her own intrigue. She did not scruple to enlist the services of Japan against her white enemies, but this act of treachery will be revenged upon herself. The latest proceedings of Japan against China can have one meaning only--the wholesale expulsion of the white man from Eastern Asia. The Japs do not care one straw who wins in Europe; they seized upon their own opportunity for their own purposes. England only gets her deserts; but how do Americans feel about it? Can America be absolved from a certain amount of responsibility for what may soon prove imminent danger to herself? Has not her partiality for England given encouragement to methods of warfare unprecedented in the history of civilized nations and fruitful of evil consequences to neutral nations?

To us, in our continental position, all this means much less than it means to you. It does not endanger our prospects. We feel comparatively stronger every day. Our losses, though enormous, are only one-half of those of the Entente armies, according to the Geneva Red Cross Bureau's calculation. The astounding number of unwounded prisoners of war which Russia loses at every encounter, and even in spaces of time between two encounters, shows that the moral force of her army is slowly giving way, while the vigor of our troops is constantly increasing. After six months of severe fighting our military position is certainly stronger than the position of the Entente powers, though the latter represent a population of 250,000,000, (English colonies and Japan not included,) against the 140,000,000 of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey. Who can doubt on which side superior moral power fights? Who can doubt, therefore, what the ultimate result promises to be?

If it takes more time to bring matters to a decision--and a decision must be obtained at any price, if there is to follow a period of permanent peace--part, at least, of the responsibility for the horrors of the protracted war, for the slaughter of many hundred thousands more of human beings, rests on America. But for the American transports of guns and ammunition, the power of Russia would give way in a shorter time, considering her enormous losses in that respect and her inability to supplement them from her own workshops.

It is very edifying that American pacifists are exerting themselves against the current of militarism which appears to spread in their country; but wouldn't it be better still, more to the purpose and certainly practically more urgent, to insist upon a truly neutral attitude of the great republic, to protest against her feeding the war by providing one belligerent side with its implements? Do American pacifists really fail to see that their country by such proceedings disables herself from being the peacemaker of the future? Do they think it immaterial from the standpoint of her moral power, as well as of her material interests, how central Europe, a mass of 120,000,000, think of her, feel about her?

I hope my readers will not find fault with me for using such plain language. My well-known enthusiastic regard for the great American commonwealth makes it unnecessary that I should protest against the charge of meaning disrespect or anything else whatever but a sincere desire to state with absolute sincerity how we feel about these matters, in what light they appear to us. I think America must know this, because it is part of the general situation she has to reckon with when shaping her policies. I fervently hope these policies will remain in concordance with the great principles on which the commonwealth is built and with the teaching embodied in that farewell address which is read once a year in Congress and in which the greatest American emphatically warns his countrymen from becoming entangled in the conflicts of European nations.

A few words more about the future of Europe may be said on this occasion. I have read with the keenest interest your own and Mr. Carnegie's statements concerning a future organization of Europe on the pattern of the United States. My personal views concerning this magnificent idea have been expressed in anticipation in my America lectures of the year 1911. Allow me to quote my own words:

Analogies are often misleading, the most obvious ones
especially so. Nothing seems more obvious than to draw
conclusions from the existing union of American States to a
possible union of European nations; but no fancied analogy is
to be applied with greater caution than this one. The American
Union's origin was the common struggle of several English
colonies, now States, for their emancipation; unity of purpose
was the main principle of their growth, union its natural
result.

Europe, on the other hand, is, in her origin and in her
present state, a compound of conflicting interests and
struggling potentialities. Mutual antagonism remained the
principle of growth embodied in the several national lives.
The juridical formula of this system is the principle of
national sovereignty in its most uncompromising interpretation
and most limitless conception. As such it is the natural
result of a historical growth mainly filled with antagonism;
in the consciousness of (European) nations it lives as
synonymous with national honor, as something above doubt and
discussion.

Let me add to this the following remarks:

1. Any sort of union among the nations of Europe appears impossible if it is meant to include Russia. Russia represents eastern mentality, which implies an unadmissible spirit of aggression and of conquest. It seems to be a law of nature on the old Continent that eastern nations should wish to expand to the west as long as they are powerful. Not to mention the great migration of nations which gave birth to mediaeval organizations, you may follow this law in the history of the Tartars, of the Turks, and of Russia herself. The spirit of aggressiveness vanishes only when decay sets in, which is still far from being the case of Russia, or when a nation is gradually converted to Occidental mentality, which, I hope, will some day be her happy lot. But till then, and that may mean a century or two, any sort of union including Russia would mean a herd of sheep including a wolf.

2. What I hope then, for the present, as the most desirable result of the war, is a thorough understanding between the nations of the Western European Continent, construction of a powerful political block, corresponding to the area of western mentality, in close connection with America; such a block would discourage aggression from the east; it would urge Russia on the path of reform and home improvement. England would be welcome to join it, on condition of renouncing those pretensions to monopolizing the seas which are as constant a menace to peace as Russian aggressiveness is. So we should have, if not "the United States of Europe," which at present lies beyond the boundary lines of possibilities, a strong peace union of the homogeneous western nations. Alas! this result can be reached only by destroying the present unnatural connections, which mean the continuance of war till a crushing decision is obtained.

3. The American colonies of England did not think of union as of a peace scheme; they had been compelled into it by war, by the necessity of self-defense. It is only such an overpowering motive which has force enough to blot out petty rivalries and minor antagonisms. If union between States belonging to the same race and not divided either by history or by serious conflicting interests could be effected only under the pressure of a common peril, we must infer "a minori ad majus" that such a powerful incentive will be more necessary still to persuade into union nations of different races, each cherishing memories of mutual collisions and actually aware of not unimportant clashing interests.

The menace of aggression from the east has been brought home to us by the present war; gradually it will be understood even by those Occidentals who at present unhappily lend their support to that aggression. On this perception of the higher common interests of self-defense do I build the possibilities of a western coalition. But a time may come when Russia will be compelled to join it and to complete thereby the union of the whole of Europe; it may come sooner than the conversion of Russia to western ideas could be effected by natural evolution; it may come through the yellow peril, the menace of which has been brought nearer to us by the accursed policy of England.

Let Japan organize the dormant forces of China, as it seems bent upon doing, and the same law of eastern aggressiveness which is at the bottom of the present war will push the yellow mass toward Europe. Russia, as comparatively western, will have to bear their first onset; for this she will require Occidental assistance, and in the turmoil of that direful conflict--or, let us hope, in order to avoid it--she will readily give up all designs against her western neighbors, and she may become really western by the necessities which impel her to lean on the west.

But this may or may not happen. What I see before me as a tangible possibility is the great western block. It is the only principle of reconstruction after war that contains a guarantee of a permanent peace; it is the one, therefore, which the pacifists of all nations should strive for, once they get rid of the passing mentality of conflict that now obscures the judgment of the best among us.

Neutral Spirit of the Swiss

An Interview With President Motta of the Swiss Confederation

[From The London Times, Jan. 30, 1915.]

BERNE, Jan. 20.

The President of the Swiss Confederation is the symbol of a democracy so perfect that the man in the street is not quite sure who the President is. He knows that he is one of a council of seven, and that he is elected for one year, and that is all. In the Federal Palace, the Berne Westminster and Downing Street, the anonymity is almost as complete. Officers pass and repass in the corridors--one of the signs, like the waiting military motor cars at the door, of mobilization--but this does not change the spirit, simple and civilian, of the interior.

M. Motta, Chief of State for this year, is a man of early middle life. He is the best type of Swiss, a lawyer by profession, whose limpid French seems to express culture as well as candor. Nor could one doubt for a moment the sincerity of his speech. Speaking on the Swiss position in the war, M. Motta was anxious to remove the impression that it was colored, dominated by the existence of the German-speaking cantons, more numerous than the French. "Of course," he said, "we have our private sympathies, which incline us one way or the other, and there is the language tie--though here we are greatly attached to our Bernese patois--but I would have you believe the Swiss are essentially just and impartial, they look at the war objectively.

"We have good-will toward all the nations. Need I say that we respect and esteem England? Have you not found that you are well received? There is no antagonistic feeling against any one. Our neutrality is imposed upon us by our position, a neutrality that is threefold in its effects, for it is political, financial, and economic. Italy, France, Germany, Austria, are our neighbors; we send them goods, and we receive supplies from them in return."

We then talked of the army, of that wonderful little army which, at this moment, is watching the snowy passes of the Alps. Two years ago it is said to have impressed the Kaiser on manoeuvres; perhaps for that reason he has refrained to pass that way. Outside, in the slippery streets, over which the red-capped children passed with shouts of glee, I had seen something of the preparations; the men, steel-like and stolid, marching by, the officers, stiff and martial-looking, saluting right and left under the quaint arcades of this charming city. Colored photographs of corps commanders adorned the windows and seemed to find a ready sale. These things pointed in the same direction. Switzerland, posted on her crests, was watching the issue of the terrific struggle in the plains.

"We must defend our neutrality," the President said, "our 600 years of freedom. There is not a single man in the country who thinks differently. I am an Italian-Swiss, one of the least numerous of our nationalities, but there is only one voice here as elsewhere--only one voice from Ticino to Geneva. That we shall defend our neutrality is proved by the great expenditure on our army; otherwise, it would be the height of folly."

The President spoke of army expenditure, of the simple army system, of the reorganization which had been carried out some years before. Switzerland was spending £20,000 a day, a large sum for a small country. Since the day when the general mobilization had been decreed--some classes have now been liberated--Switzerland had spent £4,500,000. It was a lot of money.

The army, of course, was a militia; some few officers were professional soldiers, others were drawn from a civil career and were doctors, lawyers, engineers, and merchants. In 1907 the country had consented to lengthen the periods of training in what are quaintly called the "recruits' schools" and "rehearsal schools." In the former category the men do sixty-five days' training a year, in the latter forty-five.

"I assure you," continued M. Motta, "whatever sympathy the German-Swiss may feel toward Germany, the French-Swiss toward France, or the Italian toward Italy, it is nothing like as warm and as intimate as that which each Swiss feels toward his fellow-Swiss."

This was the national note which dominated everything. At first there was a little difficulty in the councils of the nation. Some showed a tendency to lose their balance, but that phase had passed, and each day, I gathered, purely Swiss interests were coming uppermost.

"And the press, M. le President?"

M. Motta admitted that some writers had been excessive in their language and had been lacking in good taste; but, on the whole, he thought the newspapers had impartially printed news from both sides, and he cited a list of leading organs--Switzerland is amazingly full of papers--which had been conspicuous for their moderation.

And then there was the question of contraband. Orders were very precise on the subject; the Cabinet had limitless power since the opening of the war; if there was any smuggling it was infinitesimal, and, as to foodstuffs, Switzerland regretted she could not import more for her own needs. The Government had established a monopoly and forbidden re-exportation, but supplies were not up to the normal. The route by the Rhine was closed.

Finally came the phrase, concluding the conversation: "Whoever violates our neutrality will force us to become the allies of his enemy." There could be nothing more categorical.

TO KING AND PEOPLE.

By WALTER SICHEL.

[From King Albert's Book.]

_All the great things have been done by the little
peoples._--DISRAELI.

Sire, King of men, disdainer of the mean,
Belgium's inspirer, well thou stand'st for all
She bodes to generations yet unseen,
Freedom and fealty--Kingship's coronal.

Nation of miracles, how swift you start
To super-stature of heroic deeds
So brave, so silent beats your bleeding heart
That ours, e'en in the flush of welcome, bleeds.

No sound of wailing. Look, above, afar,
Throbs in the darkness with triumphant ray
A little yet an all-commanding star,
The morning star that heralds forth the day.

A Swiss View of Germany

By Maurice Millioud

M. Maurice Millioud, an eminent member of the Faculty of the
University of Lausanne, Switzerland, has written an article of
marked breadth and penetration in which he presents a quite
novel view of the forces which, in combination, have brought
Germany to its actual position. These forces are political,
social, and economic; beneath and through them works the
subtle impulsion of a national conception of right and might
which the author sums up as the "ideology of caste." Want of
space forbids the publication of the entire article. We give
its most significant parts with such summary of those portions
which it was necessary to omit as, we trust, will enable our
readers to follow the general argument.

Humanitarians the most deeply buried in dreams yield with stupefaction to the evidence of fact. European war was possible, since here it is, and even a world war, for all continents are represented in the mêlée. Millions of men on the one side or the other are ranged along battle fronts of from 500 to 1,000 kilometers. We are witnessing a displacement of human masses to which there is nothing comparable except the formidable convulsions of geologic ages.

The world then was in formation. Will a new Europe, a new society, a new humanity, take form from the prodigious shock by which our imagination is confounded?

We can at least seek to understand what we cannot hinder.

This war was not a matter of blind fate, but had been foreseen for a long time. What are the forces that have set the nations in movement? I do not seek to establish responsibility. Whosoever it may be, those who have let loose the conflict have behind them peoples of one mind. That, perhaps, is the most surprising feature in an epoch when economic, social, and moral interests are so interwoven from one end of the earth to the other that the conqueror himself must suffer cruelly from the ruin of the conquered.

The Governments have determined the day and the hour. They could not have done it in opposition to the manifest will of the nations. Public sentiment has seconded them. What is it then which rouses man from his repose, impels him to desert his gains, his home, the security of a regular life, and sends him in eager search for bloody adventures?

This problem involves different solutions because it embraces a number of cases. Between the Russians, the French, the English, the Germans there is a similarity of will, but not, it seems, an analogy of sentiment. I shall undertake to analyze the case of Germany. It has peculiar interest on account of its importance, of its definiteness, of the comparisons to which it leads, and the reflections which it suggests. Numerous facts easy to verify and in part recent permit us to throw some light upon it and offer us a guarantee against hazardous conjectures.

_Defining a caste as "a group of men bound to each other by solidarity of functions in society," such as the Brahmins of India and the feudal nobility, Prof. Millioud says that he will use the terms as equivalent or nearly equivalent to a "directing class." Quoting the article from Vorwaerts which led to the suspension of that Socialist organ and which "admits by implication that responsibility for the war falls on Germany," he proceeds to examine the origins of the influence of the war party and the interests it served._

Here we must have recourse to history. In Germany the dominant class is composed in part of an aristocracy by birth and of bourgeois capitalists, more or less of them ennobled. The interior policy of Germany since 1871 and even since 1866 is explained by the relations, sometimes kindly, sometimes hostile, of these two categories of persons, by the opposition or the conjunction of these two influences, and not by a struggle of the dominant class against the socialistic mass. That struggle, which is in France and is becoming in England a fact of essential gravity, has been in Germany only a phenomenon of secondary importance. It has determined neither the profound evolution of the national life nor the chief decisions of the Government.

In Germany, as is known, the abolition of the ancien régime did not take place brusquely as in France. After the revolution and the French occupation, the noble caste recovered all its privileges. It has lost them little by little, but not yet entirely. Even the liquidation of the property of the feudal régime was not completed until toward 1850. Napoleon made some sad cuts in the little sovereignties, but from 1813 to 1815 the princely families did their utmost to recover their independence. The greater part were mediatized, but their tenacity offered a serious obstacle up to 1871 to the establishment of German unity.

That unity was accomplished in despite of them, by sword and fire, as Bismarck said, that is to say, by the wars of 1866 and 1870. Care was taken, however, not to abase them more than was strictly necessary, for it was intended to maintain the hierarchy. What was wanted was a monarchical unity, made from above down, and not a democratic unity brought about by popular impulsion.

On the other hand, the smaller nobles formed, after 1820, a vast association for the defense of their rights, the Adelskette. Moreover, they could not be sacrificed, in the first place, because they had rendered invaluable services in the wars of independence, they had arisen as one man, and they had ruined themselves in sacrifices for the national cause, they had organized the people and led it to victory, finally because they served to restrain the high nobility whose domination was feared. They sustained the throne against the princes, the higher nobility against the democracy, the lesser nobility against the higher, the two forming an intermediary class between the monarch and the nation. That was the social conception which prevailed with those who were working to realize the unity of Germany, so that the nobility, lesser or higher, in default of its privileges retained its functions.

Treitschke, in his last lessons, about 1890, called it "a political class." For the bourgeois, he said, wealth, instruction, letters, arts. Their part is fine enough. The nobility is apt at governing. That is its special distinction. For a long time, in fact, the nobility has filled alone or almost alone the great administrative, governmental, and military posts.

Bismarck was the finished type, the representative par excellence of this class of men. He had their intellectual and moral qualities carried to the highest degree of superiority. But he underwent evolution after 1871, and his caste with him, under the pressure of general circumstances.

Bismarck was a Junker, a Prussian rustic, monarchist, particularist, agrarian and militarist. Each of his qualities is an attribute of a mentality of caste, a very curious one, not lacking in grandeur, but very narrow and not always adequate to the conduct of affairs.

Monarchist means anti-Parliamentarian. The fine scorn of rhetoric and even of public discussion, a conviction that democracy will not lead to anything beyond a display of mediocrity, that is one of the salient features of his mind. Patriotism conceived as an attachment to personal relations, as the service of one man, the subject, to another man, the King, and not the service of an anonymous person, the functionary, to an abstraction, the State, the republic, this was formerly designated by the word faithful, (féal,) which has disappeared from our vocabulary because it is without meaning in our present moral state.

The Junker is particularist, at least he was. The political and administrative centralization which the Jacobins achieved in France inspires him with horror. For him it is disorder. He sees in it nothing but a dust heap of individuals crushed beneath a formula. Even today, when the German accuses France of anarchy, that is what he means. He figures to himself the nation as a vast hierarchy of liberties, an autonomy of States within the empire, of provinces within the State, of communes within the province, of proprietors within the commune. Equality is equality of rank, of worth, of wealth, of force, but impersonal equality before the law is for him an unnatural thing, an invention of the professors which at heart he despises.

He is agrarian and militarist, that is to say, conservative and enamored of force. In 1830 four-fifths of the population lived by agriculture and the landlord governed his peasants patriarchally. He kept the conservatist spirit of a rustic, a very lively sense of authority and the military instinct. He had scant liking for distant enterprises or adventures. He was at once religious, warlike, and realist, knowing how to nurse his ambitions and to confine his view to what was within reach.

Bismarck for a long time was the decided opponent of naval armaments and colonial policy, in short, of imperialism. Even his projects for social reform--insurance against sickness, against old age--which have been accepted as concessions to modern ideas, were due entirely to his monarchical and patriarchal conception of the State. He copied the ancient decrees of Colbert as to naval personnel. He would have gone as far as assurance against non-employment. In the dominion of the King, he said, no one should die of hunger.

The Junker made a force of Prussia; he made Prussia itself. It was due to him that she passed after 1815 from the form of a Polizeistaat to the form of Kulturstaat, the latter only an expansion of the former. In place of a watchful, regulating, and vexatious State she became an organized State, the instructor of youth, the protector of religion, the source of inspiration for agricultural reforms, and all great commercial and industrial enterprises. This State was not an emanation from the national will, but the creator of a nation, the living and moving self-incarnation of the Hegelian "idea," that is to say, the Divine thought.

Of all the German aristocracy the noble of Pomerania or Brandenburg, the Prussian Junker, represented this social type most definitely. In the south the liberal tendencies--to be exact, the memories of the French Revolution--persisted far into the nineteenth century. But it is well known that German unity was accomplished by military force and against liberalism.

After 1871, and even after Sadowa, the problem of interior policy which presented itself was that of the "Prussianization" of Germany. At one time it seemed that Bismarck was on the point of succeeding in it. What was that national liberal party upon which he depended for so long? It was the old liberal party, with advanced tendencies tainted with democratic liberalism and even with cosmopolitanism, keeping up its relations with the intellectuals, the university men, who made so much noise with pen and voice about 1848 and later. They dreamed of the unity of Germany in the democratic liberty and moral hegemony of their nation, having become in Europe the sobered heir of the French Revolution.

Under the influence of Bismarck they sacrificed to their dream of unity, to their national dream, their liberal dream, and they secured for the Chancellor the support of the upper bourgeoisie.

It was indeed the Prussianization of Germany, but in that spirit and in that system contemporary German militarism would never have fructified. It was contrary to the characteristic tendencies of a monarchical State supported by a conservative caste, which was also particularist, military, and agricultural. A State of this kind tends to become a closed State.

What then happened? An event of capital importance which everybody knows, but of which we only now begin to see the consequences. It was the radical transformation of Germany from an agricultural to an industrial nation. In its origin this phenomenon dates from before the nineteenth century. By 1848 it had become perceptible. Since 1866, and especially since 1871, it has dominated the entire social evolution of the empire. Here, in fact, is the revolution. It partakes of the character of a tragedy, it has overturned the conditions of life throughout the entire German territory.