Chapter XII: Front Matter (12)

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

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

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

One of the Examples.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Chief Result.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I saw this in Venice.

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

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

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

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

A Note of Optimism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A New World Map

By Wilhelm Ostwald.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Verdict of the American People

By Newell Dwight Hillis.

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

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

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

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

The American Ideal vs. the German.

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

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

The Death of the Tribal God Idea.

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

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

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

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

Imperialism Confuses Men's Judgments.

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

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

German-American Man of the Hour.

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

Interview With Dr. Hillis

_From the Brooklyn Eagle._

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TIPPERARY.

By JOHN B. KENNEDY.

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

As America Sees the War

By Harold Begbie.