Chapter II: Irish-American Feeling (2)

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

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

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

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

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

Improvised Accounting Methods.

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

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

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

Effects of War on America

By Roland G. Usher.

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

_From The Boston Transcript, Sept. 2, 1914._

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

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

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

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

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

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

Europe May Depend On Us.

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

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

An American Merchant Marine.

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

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

Foreigners Leaving America

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

The Effect of Economic Readjustment.

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

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

America's Real Sufferers.

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

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

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

Germany of the Future

AN INTERVIEW WITH M. DE LAPREDELLE.

Exchange Professor from the University of Paris at Columbia University.

By Edward Marshall.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why the Philosopher Is Important.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teutonic Superexcitation.

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

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

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

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

"The German individual may not consider himself superior to all individuals of other nationalities, but he will be sure to consider his nation so far superior to every other that there can be no comparison between it and them. His is a peculiar arrogance. It is not at all personal; it is purely national; but none the less it is arrogance, and all arrogance is dangerous.

"A hierarchy always exists in aristocratic countries; the hierarchical idea has been developed further in Germany than elsewhere.

"This has given Germany an unfortunate impulse. If to this impulse we add that other born of all her various victories since 1866, especially those which were won while Germany was realizing Bismarck's dream of triumph 'through fire and blood'--her industrial victories, her scientific advance, her social progress--and consider the Germanic tendency toward egotism, we do not find ourselves surprised when we find, examine, and appraise exactly what we have today in Germany.

"The perversion of national sentiment into national arrogance has been the definite, although, perhaps, unrealized and unintended, aim of every educational influence which has been at work in Germany since 1870. It has amounted to an unparalleled perversion of a nation's sentiment toward all the outside world.

"This war marks the crisis of this German pride.

"Germany's course throughout has borne all the earmarks of a national ego-mania. The whole German people, as a nation, not always, perhaps, as individuals, have fallen victim to the most colossal attack of ego-mania which the world ever has known.

"Combine this ego-mania with another delusion--the entirely unjustified conclusion that Germany was the object of a worldwide persecution--and it is unnecessary to search further for the causes of the war, just as it is unnecessary to search further for reasons for the combination of practically all other Europe against Germany.

"What would German victory mean to the world, if German victory came, save the worldwide dominance of German egotism, imposed at the expense of every other people? France would not escape, England would not escape, and, I assure you, you, America, would not escape. German victory would be far more than a European disaster--it would be a world disaster.

"Of all the nations in the world perhaps the United States and France have stood most notably for the ideas of international justice. This really makes your interest in the outcome of the present war indirectly as great as ours.

"I cannot see how the people of the United States can feel otherwise than that not only their hearts but their reason demands victory for the Allies, not because of any wish for the destruction of Germany, but because of the wish for the preservation of the world.

"Indeed, it is inconceivable that victory for the Allies can mean destruction for Germany. It can mean only the destruction of German militarism, which has brought about the perversion of the German mind.

"No abler mind exists. Its release from the thralldom which has fettered it would be a vast world service, would, indeed, be a vast benefit to Germany herself. It is curious, but true, that I believe Germany's own salvation depends upon her absolute defeat in this great war.

"A few weeks before the war began Prof. Schucking expressed regret that Germany--that is, the German Government--should be so antagonistic to international spirit. The fact that he made this expression shows that, in spite of and beyond military Germany, the intellectual élite, the cream of the élite in Germany, has remained faithful to the traditions of the great philosopher, Kant.

"The intellectual élite--the cream of the élite--therefore may be absolved from all responsibility. Loyalty to the teachings of Kant will make it possible for the friends of humanity in all nations to join with Germany for human advancement on the basis of universal justice.

"After the victory of the Allies a new Germany will appear; it will be a liberal Germany, willing to renounce the narrow Prussian ideals, finding again the old German ideal in its disinterested form, a Germany which will be able to join hands with other nations, to help them in taking up again the works of international civilization, which Prussian Germany herself brutally brought to an end, with insolent scorn of right--an act for which she is now paying and must pay the penalty."

Germany the Aggressor

By Albert Sauveur.

Professor of Metallurgy at Harvard University.

_To the Editor of The New York Times:_

German professors and editors and other German sympathizers in the present struggle of nations have attempted the difficult task of convincing the American public, first, that Germany was not the aggressor, and, second, that she is conducting a war of civilization directed primarily against Russia, that Europe may not fall under Muscovite domination. The German Chancellor has made similar claims, while in the German "White Paper," published in full in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Aug. 24, it is likewise attempted to fasten the responsibility for this war on Germany's opponents.

A close and impartial study of both the English and German "White Papers" must suffice to convince the reader that Germany clearly was the aggressor and that England made every possible effort first to prevent a war between Austria and Servia and later to localize the conflict. Germany, on the contrary, by insisting from the start that there should be no intervention in the settlement of the dispute between Servia and her ally, Austria, made a European war inevitable. The sophistry, inaccuracies, and unwarranted conclusions of the German professors and editors have not helped their cause. The irrefutable facts remain, first, that Austria with the knowledge and approval of Germany presented to Servia an ultimatum so worded that she knew that the conditions imposed could not be complied with by any nation retaining a spark of self-respect; second, that after Servia had accepted Austria's ultimatum with the single exception of the most offensive clause, which she proposed to submit to arbitration, Austria, with Germany's consent, proclaimed herself unsatisfied and immediately declared war on Servia; third, that Germany and Austria knew that a war with Servia meant a war with Russia, and that a war with Russia meant a general European conflagration; fourth, that Germany declared war on Russia, started the invasion of France before declaring war, and, by refusing to respect the neutrality of Belgium, to which she was solemnly pledged, forced both Belgium and England into the war. In the face of so flagrant a violation of all sentiments making for peace no sophistry will avail in attempting to protect Germany from the odium of being responsible for the greatest calamity the civilized world has ever seen.

We are told that Germany is conducting this war in the interest of civilization, that her chief purpose is to protect Europe from the domination of the Slav. And to ward off this Muscovite danger Germany is at present making desperate efforts to crush England and France, the standard bearers of democracy in Europe! In her war for civilization she is employing the methods of barbarian tribes, methods condemned by civilized nations and which have already horrified the world. It is hardly conceivable that Russia, which the German Chancellor describes as a semi-Asiatic, slightly cultured barbaric nation, could have committed in Belgium the atrocities imputed to the Germans had she conquered that country in similar circumstances.

It is manifest that Germany's supreme desire is to fasten Teutonic rule on Europe, to crush Russia, to be sure, but also to crush France and French civilization and to reduce England to the rank of a second-class nation. It is obvious that this is a struggle between militarism and its evils as represented by the Hohenzollern dynasty and democracy as represented by England and France.

ALBERT SAUVEUR.

Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 5, 1914.

Militarism and Christianity

By Lyman Abbott.

_A Letter to The New York Sun._

Editor in Chief of The Outlook; author of numerous works on
theology, religion, and democracy.

_To the Editor of The New York Sun:_

In answer to your request for a statement of the causes and meaning of the European war I write with necessary brevity, both because of the limits on my time and the limits on your crowded columns.

What is the cause of the explosion of a powder magazine? The gases stored in the powder. The lighted match is the occasion, not the cause of the explosion. The cause of the European war is the spirit of envy, jealousy, selfishness and suspicion in the so-called Christian nations. The assassination by a Servian of the Crown Prince of Austria was only the lighted match which set the European combustibles in flame.

In the United States we recognize the truth that the interests of each State are identical with the interests of the Union, and that no State can permanently prosper by reason of the misfortune of its neighbor. In the German Empire since its unification each principality similarly recognizes that the interests of the German Empire and the interests of the several principalities are essentially identical. But there is no such recognition of the common interest binding the warring nations of Europe together.

Each nation looks with envy on the prosperity of its neighbor and acts upon the assumption that its neighbor is a rival, and that its own commerce and wealth can be built up only at the expense of its rival. New York is quite willing that the harbor of Boston should be improved. Bremen is quite willing that the harbor of Hamburg should be improved. The west coast of England does not object to harbor facilities on the east coast of England. But Germany envies England's harbor facilities, and England and Germany are both resolved to prevent if possible Russia from getting harbor facilities on the Mediterranean Sea. Not every individual German, Austrian, Frenchman, and Englishman holds this opinion, but the policies of these nations are governed by this spirit of international rivalry.

A striking illustration of this spirit, perhaps the most striking illustration in modern international life, is furnished by the military party in Prussia. Gen. Bernhardi, in a volume entitled "Germany and the Next War," has given what may be regarded as a semi-official interpretation of German militarism. He holds that life is a struggle for existence, with a survival of the fittest, and the strongest is the fittest; that a military organization constitutes the true strength of a nation; that there is no higher power in human life, certainly none in international life, than the power of physical force; that only the strong nation has a right to exist, and he objects to international arbitration because it recognizes the right to life of a small nation. In this volume he calls on Germany to establish a "world sovereignty" by force of arms, and he indicates what should be the twofold purpose of Germany in the next war, namely, to crush France and to establish such world sovereignty of Germany.

Militarism to Blame.

It was this spirit which led Germany into the present war; this spirit which denied that Belgium had any rights which Germany was bound to respect; this spirit which inspired the military party in Germany to regard its treaty with France and England guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium as only a "scrap of paper," and this spirit which could not and apparently still does not comprehend why Belgium should be bound in honor to defend her neutrality, or why England, with no very direct and immediate interests to protect, should feel herself bound to come to the defense of her weaker neighbor.

The delay of the German Army, which is likely to prove disastrous to her designs, has demonstrated in her own chosen field that there is a force in national honor and national conscience which can put up a very efficient resistance to Krupp guns.

It is a great mistake to suppose that all Germany is actuated by this spirit of militarism. Frederick William Wile, for over seven years the chief German correspondent of The London Daily Mail, in an article in The Outlook recently said: "There are 66,000,000 Germans; 65,000,000 of them did not want war; the other million are the war party." But he adds that now Germany is absolutely united and that the Germans will not stack arms "till the last among them capable of shouldering a rifle is incapacitated, till the last copper pfennig capable of purchasing ammunition of war has vanished from their impoverished grasp."

There is in this nothing extraordinary. Whoever is responsible for bringing on the war, the interests, the welfare, and in some sense the honor of Germany are apparently involved in it. And yet it may be true, and I believe it is true, that the defeat of Germany will be its salvation, for it will be the overthrow of the spirit of militarism inherited from Frederick the Great, and this has been the bane of the German Empire.

In our civil war there was at first only a minority in most of the Southern States in favor of secession, but when the national troops invaded Virginia the South was as united for State independence as the North was for national union, and yet today it will be difficult to find anywhere in the South an intelligent man who does not recognize the truth that the defeat of secession and the emancipation of the slave have been of inestimable benefit to the Southern States.

I make no attempt here to apportion the responsibility for this war between the several powers engaged in it. However this responsibility must be shared among them I can see but one meaning in the awful campaign. The victory of Germany would mean the victory of Prussian militarism. The defeat of Germany will mean the defeat of Prussian militarism, the rehabilitation of Germany as a great industrial and educational power in the world, and probably the practical overthrow of military autocracy in all Western Europe.

Divine Right of Kings Obsolete.

The campaigns of Napoleon ended for Western Europe the Divine right of Kings. The campaigns of the Allies will end for Western Europe the Divine right of the armed man. The Russo-Japanese war gave to Russia its first representative assembly, the Duma. It is not unreasonable to hope that the present European war will result in greatly enlarging the powers of the Duma and establishing true constitutional government in Germany, a government in which the Ministry will be responsible not to the Emperor but to the Reichstag; and the power both of the purse and the sword will not be in the hands of an aristocratic oligarchy but in the hands of the common people.

It is not strange that men should point to this, perhaps the greatest war of history, as an evidence that Christianity is a failure. If Christianity professed to be able by a miracle to transform human nature at once, such a war would be fatal to its claim. But no such claim can be made for Christianity. It is a great human movement, a phase of the gradual evolution of man, governed by conscience and reason, out of the brute, governed by appetite and passion.

Man as he is seen in the world to day is an unfinished product. He is in the making. The best that can be said of a Christian is that he is further along toward the goal of humanity than the barbarian. Theological doctrines such as the Trinity, the Atonement, and the like are not the essential doctrines of Christianity. The essential doctrine is that life is a struggle for others as well as for self; that in this struggle every one owes a duty to his neighbor, and the stronger he is and the greater the need of his neighbor the more imperative is his duty; that as the father and the mother care for, educate and govern their child until he grows able to care for, educate and govern himself, so always the strong men and women owe the duty of protection, education, and, in some measure, government to the weaker of the human race until they have outgrown the need for it.

In so far as autocracy is the rule of the few for the benefit of the few it is paganism. In so far as democracy is the rule of the many for the benefit of the many it is Christianity. He who believes this will perhaps believe with me that in a true sense this is a religious war, the war of conscience, honor, the moral sense against the rule of the bayonet and the bullet.

The cynic who thinks this war demonstrates the failure of Christianity should not forget such facts as the heroic struggle of Belgium to maintain her neutrality, the resolve of England at every cost to maintain her pledges to Belgium, the Red Cross following the armies in the field and ministering to the sick, the wounded and the suffering, regardless of their nationality, the general kind treatment to prisoners, accentuated by some very horrible exceptions, and all this contrasted with the enslaving, torturing, the crucifying, the flaying alive of prisoners captured in war by barbaric nations before the dawn of Christianity.

LYMAN ABBOTT.

Cornwall-on-Hudson, Sept. 17, 1914.

VIGIL

By HORTENSE FLEXNER.

I have waited with my mothers down the dim, uncertain ages, I have waited in the cave and hut and tower, From the first dawn's nameless fear To the death-list posted here I have slain my soul in waiting, hour by hour.

Under pelt of beast, trap-taken, or the leaves by chance winds blow, Under tunic, peasant hemp, or cloth of gold, By the fire, in low flame burning, I have crouched in silence, yearning, And as now, my helpless heart has waited cold.

Ancient is the part I play--like a cloak of heavy mourning, I take it, bending, from a million women's hands. They have worn it, they have torn it, Agonizing, they have borne it, And its folds are dark with heart-break of all lands.

Oh, the woman figure standing, with the face toward the horizon, Oh, the hand above the eyes to ease the strain! Gaunt and barren, stricken, lonely, With the empty memories only, We have stood, the dry-eyed sentries of our pain.

Nothing we can do to stop them, nothing we can say to hold them; Taking sunlight, laughter, youth, they swing away, And the things they leave grow strange, House and street and voices change, But the women and the burdened hours stay.

I have waited with my mothers down the dim, uncertain ages, While my children die, I pray the centuries through, And I wonder in my fear At the death-list posted here If God has left the women waiting, too!

Nietzsche and German Culture

By Abraham Solomon.

_A Letter to The New York Evening Post._