Chapter IV (1)

There is, of course, some reason for believing that Carlyle's ideas resemble those of which the German policy is the expression, but there is none if we look beyond his superficial meaning. One reason for branding him as an advocate of German practices is his exaltation of Frederick the Great. Frederick began his first war by seizing Silesia, very much as Wilhelm II began the present war by seizing Belgium. As Carlyle justified the seizing of Silesia, many people cannot see why that does not warrant the conclusion that he would also justify the seizure of Belgium. Such people, however, forget that the Prussia of 1740 was not even the Prussia of 1914, to say nothing of the German Empire or the Teutonic Alliance. Carlyle would detect in Prussia a change in spirit, but even if this cannot be established, there is certainly no parallel between Frederick's seizure of Silesia and Germany's attack on Belgium. In 1740, Prussia was one of the small countries of Europe. Its population was about half that of Belgium in 1914, and its political importance was not much greater. It was situated between militaristic France and imperialistic Austria; and its immediate neighbors: Saxony, Bavaria, Poland, and the Scandinavian kingdoms, were ready at any moment to profit by its misfortunes. Prussia's seizure of Silesia was, therefore, very much as if Belgium, learning in advance of Germany's plan of invasion, had seized German territory adjacent to its frontiers, and used it as a buffer to defend itself. It was the case of a small state preserving itself from the aggressions of a big neighbor aiming at world dominion. The methods employed may not have been technically legal, but they were justified; therefore Carlyle endorsed them. He believed that Frederick, cynic and materialist though he admits him to have been, nevertheless proved himself the valiant defender of his country's right to self government. He also regarded Frederick as the man who did most in the eighteenth century to preserve Europe from being dominated by a lawless imperialism. The rulers of Austria, because of their almost uninterrupted possession of the office of Holy Roman Emperor, openly aimed at universal dominion, and never lost an opportunity of trying to realize it by force of intrigue. France, too, was striving for the domination of Europe, and Russia was just becoming conspicuous for the brutality and unscrupulousness of its political methods quite as much as for the vastness of the power it had suddenly developed. When these facts are considered, Frederick's action must be admitted to have been, if not in the interests of democracy, at least in support of the principle of self-determination for which the Allies claim to be fighting against Germany; and Carlyle's endorsement of it at least creates the presumption that he would not sympathize with Germany, which today, greatly extended, is playing the part of the bullying nations he commended Frederick for thwarting.

He seems, however, to advocate autocracy, and to deride democracy, and this would appear to put him in agreement with the kaiser and his professorial prompters. It is true that he did deride the notion that the decision of the majority is always right. He likewise insisted that all the constitutionality and legality conceivable will not ensure good government or justify incompetence or unrighteousness in power; and that, conversely, no formal or technical irregularity disqualifies a government which is beneficent and capable. He ridiculed the idea that political equality is synonymous with justice, but this does not mean that he believed in caste rule. His opposition to political equality was inspired by no respect for inherited authority or the sanctity of property, but was the result of a conviction that it is a crude and materialistic way of trying to solve an immensely complicated problem by a simple mechanical process. Not external equality, but _equity_, must be achieved to make government effective and successful, was his contention. Making men equal in political power, in his opinion, ensured that the government would be dominated by the ignorance and selfishness of the mass of men, rather than by the enlightenment and integrity of the relatively small portion of mankind whom nature fits for leadership by endowing them with superior moral and intellectual powers. He believed no man entitled to authority except on the basis of character and ability, and he was as bitterly opposed to the German scheme of class rule as he was to the quantitative methods of the radicals. It is entirely wrong to think that, because he denied that universal suffrage will guarantee justice and humanity, he endorsed injustice and oppression. He didn't care how a government was organized or what it claimed to do, but he only inquired what it had succeeded in doing, and by this he judged it. The results of the German policy have been disaster for the world as well as for Germany, and he would condemn the German government for this, without being at all concerned about its form. He attached no importance to a government's form; all he judged by was its spirit. He believed that a government is inevitably the expression of the intelligence and morality of the people it represents, and that any form is capable of proving either good or bad in operation. Germany may be an autocracy in form, but the German people almost unanimously endorsed the war and its enormities; so what we have is an exhibition of the fallibility of popular judgment more than a display of the evils of autocracy. On this point Carlyle's position is clear, while that of the critics who accuse him of having endorsed German practices, because he denied that the majority is always right, is much more susceptible of being considered a justification of Kultur.

According to his interpretation of history, the case of Germany is perfectly plain. It is simply an instance of the degeneracy that, he claimed, inevitably follows the adoption of selfish or materialistic ambitions. The patient industry and the steady pursuit of the practical instead of the spectacular brought Germany to greatness, and placed vast power in the hands of her rulers. Then those rulers were tempted to misuse that power, and they fell. They decided to corrupt the people and make them the instrument by which world dominion could be achieved. They therefore cultivated the baser passions of the populace, and with infinite thoroughness and resource, they used every agency of the government to secure public endorsement for a policy of aggression, and for a swash-buckling and bombastic procedure that appealed only to the shallow and the reckless. They found this the easier because circumstances worked with them. The Franco-Prussian War inflamed German chauvinism and inflated German conceit to an incredible extent. The success of the war was more the result of France's weakness than Germany's strength, but it filled the German nation with extravagant enthusiasm, and inspired it with blind faith in its own invincibility. Then Germany changed from a country largely agricultural to one mainly industrial, and wealth came to kindle in a naturally gross and sensual people a passion for luxury, and to impart to a naturally arrogant one the insolence of material power. The effect of the first of these things is shown in the famous night-life of Berlin, which, before the war, was more gross and lavish than that of any other city in the world; while the overbearing character of the average German abroad shows how general was the influence of the second. Thus a change has been effected in the spirit of Germany. From a nation dull but honest, rude but sincere and kindly, it has been transformed by bad leadership and sudden prosperity into a people whose dominant characteristics are brutality and mendacity. Therefore the Germany that Carlyle praised is not the Germany that perpetrated the present war, and there is no doubt that his attitude towards the apostles of Kultur would be the direct opposite of what it was towards Frederick the Great and Bismarck.

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS

"It need not be difficult either to define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the governments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it." At first thought, the most striking characteristic of these words of President Wilson in his address to the Senate last January is their optimism. Freedom of the seas, according to German authorities, is to be secured by various agencies, including the unrestricted use of the submarine and an independent Ireland. Primarily it is to be secured by the destruction of British naval predominance. Now British authorities have an inconvenient habit of stating that freedom of the seas was won long ago by means of the British navy, that it exists today in time of peace, and that its continuance depends upon Britannia ruling the waves. Our correspondence with Germany before we entered the war contains polite references to our cooeperation with that country to secure freedom of the seas through recognition by treaties and international agreement of principles such as that of the immunity of private property, not contraband, from capture at sea. But Germany no longer thinks it possible to secure the freedom of the seas by the medium of scraps of paper, and other nations show an unflattering unanimity on this point, with regard to any scraps of paper to which the present German government might be a party. As to the submarine as a means of securing freedom of the seas, our entrance into the war is perhaps a sufficient indication of our estimate of it. The usefulness of an independent Ireland toward this end would seem even more likely to be limited. There remains the British navy, and it promises to remain.

And how are we to define the freedom of the seas? The term has been used in the past, and examination of our diplomatic correspondence will show that it has been used in this war, in three different ways. It has been used in protest against the appropriation by a single nation of definite areas of the high seas for exclusive uses. The sowing of mines and the proclamation of danger areas have led to its revival in this sense. It has been believed to mean the right of private citizens to continue sea-borne commerce in war time with a minimum of interruption. Our preoccupation with this usage of the term during the first years of the war won us a good deal of unpopularity with our present co-belligerents. It has been used with reference to the safety of human life on the sea. We are fighting Germany today upon this issue.

Is the problem one of war times only, or is there anything in the contention that the potential pressure of sea power operates in times of peace in restraint of commercial development? The question is not a simple one, and perhaps it will aid us in understanding the seeming optimism of our historian-president if we try to understand how this matter has been dealt with in the past. The sailing ship has given way to the turbine propeller, the galleon to the dreadnaught, the pinnace to the submarine, but is the freedom of the seas which is being fought for to-day of a kind different from that which was fought for in the days of Drake? And is it to be secured by the same or by different means?

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We need not dwell upon the recognition by Roman law of the principle of the right of all to use the seas as a highway, nor upon the claims of various city-states, notably Venice, to dominate portions of the Mediterranean. In view of recent pronouncements from the Vatican, it is interesting to remember that the claim of Venice, picturesquely symbolized by the annual ceremony of wedding the Adriatic, was based in part upon the gift of a ring accompanying an alleged papal grant, and that the struggle for the freedom of the ocean seas began as a challenge of two actual papal grants of wider significance. In 1454 Nicholas V rewarded the pertinacity of the Portuguese in pushing their discoveries southward along the coast of Africa, by granting to the crown of Portugal exclusive rights of navigation and trade south of Capes Bojador and Non. In 1493, Alexander VI rewarded the crown of Castile for the exploit of Columbus, by giving Spain rights similarly exclusive beyond the meridian one hundred degrees west of the Azores. The details of these arrangements were later modified by mutual agreement of the powers concerned, the final understanding being that Portugal had exclusive rights of trade and navigation by the eastern approach to the Indies, and Spain in the waters of what was supposed to be the western route thither.

Both powers stood ready to defend the privileges which the highest international authority of the period had granted them. They proceeded to deal summarily with all foreign vessels found in their preserves. Although the medieval maritime code, the _Consolato del Mare_, provided for sparing the lives of the crew of a captured vessel, the humanitarianism of the king of Portugal took a different form. John II issued orders to his captains to seize all vessels encountered in the barred zone, and instructed them to cast the crews into the sea, "In order that they may die a natural death."

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It was the mariners of France who most frequently braved this earlier form of "spurlos versenkt." They persisted in navigating the waters claimed by Portugal, and established a lucrative trade in Brazil. Their sovereign, Francis I, seems to have been the earliest champion among rulers of the freedom of the ocean seas. To the expostulations of the king of Portugal he maintained, "The act of traffic and exchange of goods is of all rights one of the most natural and best grounded." To the remonstrances of the Spanish ruler, the Emperor Charles V, he replied, "The sun shines for me as well as for others. I should like to see the clause of Adam's will which excludes me from the partition of the world." The tales of the exploits of Jean Ango, merchant of Dieppe, who sank his enormous fortune in his ventures; of his captains, Fleury, Verrazano, the brothers Parmentier, is an absorbing one. Seeking fortunes for themselves and revenge for comrades fallen into the hands of the enemy and treated as pirates; justifying their acts on the principle that the paths of the sea are free to all; they dared and suffered, and explored new lands, and brought glory to the maritime annals of France. They laid the foundations of her overseas commerce and colonies, but owing to the religious wars at home the superstructure was not built until a later age.

The exploits of the French sailors against the Spanish monopoly were succeeded by those of Hawkins and Drake. Elizabeth's dictum that the sea and the air were common to all was as emphatic as Francis I's utterances on the subject, and Elizabeth's was the better maintained. The victories of Drake in the Caribbean Sea in 1586 meant the death blow to Spain's hopes of effectually barring the western seas. She was felt to be within her rights, however, in establishing a monopoly of trade with her colonies in the new world. The English, in their efforts to obtain trading concessions, or at least a recognition of their right to trade in regions not actually occupied by Spain, following French precedent, sedulously avoided making any agreement that might seem to acknowledge Spain's right to prevent the vessels of other nations from sailing the American seas.

While England was combating Spain's claims in western waters, a new maritime power, the Netherlands, was breaking down the monopoly of Portugal in the east. The ships of the Dutch East India Company won their way against the Portuguese and made prize of their vessels. It was apparently to set at rest the consciences of members of the company who hesitated to pocket profits that had not been won in peaceful trade, that the Dutchman Grotius wrote his treatise on the law of prize, one chapter of which, under the title _Mare Liberum_, was published as an independent work. The book claimed the seas as a free highway for the ships of all nations, and freedom of trade for all nations on every sea. That age was not ready to accept either claim in its entirety. Two Englishmen, Welwod and Selden, wrote books to vindicate England's traditional sovereignty over the British seas, the limits of which no one was quite certain about. Even the British admirals who were supposed to defend British authority there, could never get the Crown lawyers to pronounce exactly on the point, some holding that British seas extended to the English settlements in America, others being satisfied with a line drawn from Norway to Cape Finisterre. Charles I set out, with his ship money fleets, to supplement the discourses of his subjects by "the louder language of a powerful navy." But it was left for his great successor, Cromwell, to use this latter language effectively, and to wring from the Dutch the concession that their ships should strike flag and topsail in the narrow seas. They always insisted, however, that this was done in courtesy, not as a recognition of British sovereignty over any part of the high seas. International incidents arising from the refusal of French captains to salute occurred until England relinquished her claim during the Napoleonic wars.

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As to freedom of trade, the English Navigation Laws stood as a witness that Spain's policy of monopolizing colonial trade was considered worthy of emulation. Such monopolies were carefully guarded, as in Elizabeth's day, and as in her day efforts were made to break them down. To Cromwell's request that Englishmen be allowed liberty of conscience and of trade in the West Indies, the Spanish ambassador replied that it was to ask his master's two eyes. Thereupon Cromwell stopped asking, but despatched a fleet to the West Indies to seize a post which might become a centre of British trade.

This action of Cromwell links his day to ours. That the keynote of modern diplomacy and its accompaniment of wars is to be found in rivalry for the possession of land and markets in the extra-European world, has been fully pointed out by historians. It is a fact which cannot be emphasized too strongly. Its significance increases with the study of the whole modern period.[1] One has only to dip into the pamphlet literature of the eighteenth and late seventeenth centuries, or to read a few pages of parliamentary debates, to realize the importance of trade in the eyes of all men. It becomes apparent that the aim of each progressive nation was to increase its overseas commerce at the expense of other nations, and that every new enterprise of foreigners loomed as a menace to national prosperity. Sea-borne trade was the nursery of seamen, and commerce must be restricted to nationals by navigation acts, while commercial ventures of rival states were not alone a menace because they meant diverting profits to the benefit of a rival, but dangerous as the possible foundation for hostile naval power. Since commerce was carried on most successfully by trading companies, it was good policy to give them governmental countenance, and although occasional voices were raised in criticism of their monopolies and the high prices for which they were felt to be responsible, their shares were popular forms of investment, and many of their shareholders sat in the seats of the mighty. The English and Dutch East India Companies were among the first to carry on overseas commerce on a large scale, and much international history is written between the lines of their annals.

[1] And its illusions were set forth in "The Expansionist
Fallacy," No. 5 of this REVIEW.--ED.

"And you, Belgians, courage, courage! Continue to defend intrepidly your rights and your freedom, and with them the freedom of the human race!" It was not in August of 1914 that these words were spoken. They occur in a pamphlet published in 1727, and the struggle in which they urge the Belgians to persist was a struggle for the freedom of the seas. The ruler of the Belgians in those days was popularly called the German emperor, and though not a Hohenzollern, he was a Hapsburg. The Emperor Charles VI was pursuing a project which bade fair to give the Hapsburg lands something they have not attained to this day: importance as a maritime power. He had issued a charter to a group of Belgian merchants who were already carrying on a lucrative trade with the far east from the port of Ostend. The Dutch and English East India companies, seeing their monopolies endangered, complained to their respective governments, which immediately set in motion machinery for the suppression of the Ostend Company. Diplomatic agents busied themselves at Charles' court, and a flood of pamphlets, in those days of limited newspaper publicity, did what they could in the manufacturing of public opinion. The Belgian pamphlets maintained the principle that "the right to trade in any part of the globe is inherent in all sovereign peoples." The Dutch pamphlets opposed the company on the ground of alleged infringement of treaty rights and agreements. The English pamphlets, wisely refraining from much comment on documents based on papal grants whose authority England had never recognized, argued that English pocketbooks would suffer if the Ostend Company continued to do business. Pitt many years later stated in Parliament that the English government had no right to demand the suppression of the company. But, as the British ambassador said to the Emperor, in language strikingly reminiscent of that of the Spanish ambassador of Cromwell's day, "In attacking our commerce, you fly in the eyes of the English nation." In the complicated diplomacy of five years, the question of the Ostend Company held its own, but in 1731 Charles VI abandoned it, as he had abandoned many other things of value, to obtain one more ratification of the Pragmatic Sanction.

Eight years later it was England that was carrying on a struggle for the principle of freedom of the seas. Modern research has established beyond any reasonable doubt that the immortal Jenkins did actually have an ear sliced off by a Spaniard who was searching his ship for smuggled goods, and that the tale was not a fabrication of the Opposition that desired to force Walpole to plunge England into war. The Opposition certainly recognized the recruiting value of the incident. "The tale of Jenkins' ear will raise us troops enough!" exclaimed one member on the floor of the House of Commons. Whether or not Jenkins commended his soul to God and his cause to his country, his country embraced his cause as that of the freedom of British commerce from search by Spaniards in time of peace. The British vessels searched were usually smugglers, but the British public was not interested in the right of Spain to safeguard her monopoly of trade with her colonies; they objected to search and to the contention that British ships must not be found in American waters outside the straight path between England and her colonies, and they besieged the doors of Parliament with the slogan: "A free sea or war!" And so was fought the war of Jenkins' Ear, which might have been avoided had it not been for the powerful influence, both with the people and with Parliament, of the South Sea Company; and which did nothing toward settling the point in controversy.

Thus far the principle of freedom of the seas had been invoked in connection with efforts to preserve for the benefit of a whole nation or of favored groups of nationals, all access to the trade and resources of certain regions. During the wars for colonies and commerce which arose from these efforts, the principle was brought forward against interruption of commerce in time of war. In the days when privateering was a recognized adjunct of maritime, warfare, commerce-destroying was reduced to a science that only the last three years have rivalled. The seizure as contraband of anything which might help the enemy to prolong the struggle, and the confiscation of cargoes of neutral ships, on the ground that part of the cargo belonged to the enemy, caused endless international complications. Treaties of peace began to contain provisions designed to render less burdensome these rights claimed by belligerents. The first step toward anything like international agreement was taken in the treaties of Utrecht in 1713. By these treaties contraband was limited to articles directly useful in war, exclusive of foodstuffs; enemy goods on neutral ships were protected on the principle later reduced to a formula, as "free ships, free goods"; and the method of visit and search was regulated. These arrangements did not outlast the peace, but many later treaties renewed, and some developed more fully, these restrictions, which were naturally more popular with neutral powers and with powers possessing small navies, than with the power which possessed the command of the sea. As that enviable position was held practically without interruption by Great Britain, and as in time of war she used unsparingly the advantages her position gave her, she gained in the eyes of opponent and neutral the reputation of being the enemy of freedom of the seas.

At the beginning of the Seven Years' War France, realizing that she would not be able to control the trade with her colonies, threw it open to neutrals. Great Britain thereupon laid down her famous "Rule of 1756" that commerce illegal in time of peace was not legal in time of war, and attacked neutral ships found trading with French colonies. The answer of Denmark and Sweden to this policy was the formation of the first league of neutrals to protect neutral commerce. The French, hoping that the contrast of their policy with that of Great Britain would help their cause with neutral powers, were careful not to authorize interference with neutral trade. It is interesting to find the doctrine of which we have heard so much of late, of the menace of British "navalism," formulated in the eighteenth century by the minister of a state which, like England's opponent in the twentieth, was stronger on land than on the sea. It was a French diplomat who expressed the hope that some day a union of nations would be able to cope with England and "establish firmly after the peace, or even during the war, a balance of commerce: for without it no other people will ever enjoy any but a precarious navigation, which will last only as long as it is to the interest of the English government not to destroy it." This statement owes its significance to the fact that it voiced the attitude of a government which, under stress of circumstances, indeed, and not because it saw a light, was departing from the prevailing practice of mercantilism, the reservation for nationals of the benefits of colonial trade.

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A British statesman has recently made the assertion that the United States owes its existence to the struggle for the freedom of the seas. He was referring to the Elizabethan struggle against Spain's policy of exclusion, but is not the statement true also in another sense? In so far as the restrictions laid upon the development of the colonies by the trade and navigation laws contributed in bringing about the American Revolution, that movement was a protest against the mercantile system, under which no freedom of the seas was possible.

The United States early ranged herself, also, on the side of the nations that championed freedom of the seas for commerce in time of war. Her treaty with France regulated the right of search, limited contraband to munitions of war, and proclaimed the principle, "free ships, free goods." The treaty which Franklin later negotiated with Prussia established American advocacy of the immunity of private property from capture at sea. In the meantime, Great Britain's refusal to limit herself in any interference with commerce which might hinder her victory over her revolted colonies and France, gave umbrage to the Scandinavian powers and to Russia, and in 1780 Catherine II proclaimed the Armed Neutrality of the North. To the principle of "free flag, free goods," and the limitation of contraband to actual munitions of war, the Armed Neutrality joined the principle that a blockade to be binding must be effectively maintained. Although Catherine jested with the British ambassador about her armed neutrality, calling it an armed nullity, she told him that Russian trade and Russian ships were her children, and that she was determined to protect them. France had favored the formation of the Armed Neutrality, and Louis XVI improved the occasion by explaining that his only motive in participating in the war was his attachment to the principle of the freedom of the seas.

It is difficult for us today to preserve the proper attitude of respect for the word of a king in this connection, but it is not so difficult for us to understand what was the real attitude of France. England had won from France the greater part of her colonies, and with them a lucrative commerce, and her remaining commerce was being crippled by the war policy of the mistress of the seas. Behind the England which refused to limit her power as a belligerent by accepting a revision of maritime law, stood the England which was the successful commercial rival of France.

The French Republic inherited this much of the view point of Louis XVI. The remedy for the situation France saw in an imitation of England's policy. It enacted a navigation law copied after those of Great Britain, and while declaring that its war against England was a war to free the seas, it proclaimed that as a war measure it was abandoning the principle, "free ships, free goods." Napoleon took up the convenient formula, writing to the Royal Society on paper decorated by a vignette representing Liberty sailing in a shell, and bearing the motto, _Liberte de Mer_. Years later he read the same meaning into the formula; outlining to Narbonne his idea that England should be attacked through the Orient; he said that the same blow which destroyed her mercantile greatness in India, would win independence for the west, and the freedom of the sea. England's attitude toward sea law gave him a convenient weapon, and he induced his admirer the Czar to form a new Armed Neutrality, announcing that France would not make peace until neutral flags were properly respected, "and until England shall have acknowledged that the sea belongs to all nations." Whether the device of a league of neutrals could really be an effective force in protecting commerce in wartime was not proved in 1800, for after the assassination of the Czar Paul the coalition went to a pieces. As in the present war, both belligerents used their naval forces to cut off supplies from the territories controlled by the enemy, and to ruin her commerce. Napoleon in his attempt to close the markets of Europe to Great Britain maintained that he was defending the freedom of the seas against Great Britain's refusal "to recognize international law as observed by other nations," while England defended her "paper blockades" and policy toward neutrals, as necessary, since she must preserve her command of the seas as an "essential to the protection of independent states, and for the prosperity and good of the human race."

The damage done to American commerce in the pursuit of these high-sounding aims precipitated the war of 1812, which was indubitably a war for the freedom of the seas for neutral commerce in time of war, and which would probably have been fought with France instead of with Great Britain had it not been for the question of impressment, and the popular prejudices which had survived the American Revolution. Our championship of rules limiting belligerent rights against sea borne commerce, and our activities in the suppression of the Barbary pirates, have led us into a rather complacent attitude with regard to our position as to freedom of the seas. It is salutary therefore for us to remember the Bering Sea controversy. When, in 1821, Russia claimed sovereignty over Bering Sea, both the United States and Great Britain protested, and Russia withdrew her claim. But when in 1886 our activities in connection with pelagic sealing caused friction with Great Britain, our defense was based in part upon a claim to have inherited from Russia rights which in 1821 we had refused to admit that she possessed. And when the case was heard before an international court, one of our advocates even justified visit and search in time of peace, regardless of our traditional position on that subject. However, after a certain amount of journalistic jubilation when the award went against us, our cousins overseas charitably allowed the memory of our peccadillo to accumulate dust. That the question of the right of a nation to protect fisheries in adjacent waters is not a closed one, was shown by Russia's claim in the White Sea put forward in 1911. That question, as well as the whole matter of the three-mile limit, is bound to demand further consideration in the near future.

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What has been the attitude of Great Britain since 1815, and how far does it foreshadow her future policy? It must not be forgotten that in the long struggle to safeguard human life as well as property upon the seas, the chief burden has been borne by her. In the old days of her proud claim to a salute in the narrow seas, she felt her responsibility to police those seas, and this sense of responsibility has widened with the extension of her commerce, so that she has put the whole world in her debt by rendering the seven seas a safe highway in time of peace. Her adoption of the principle of free trade was probably the greatest single step that has been taken in modern times toward freedom of the seas, in the sense of breaking down the barriers of trade restriction which supposed national interest had erected. On the other hand, in the race for markets and raw materials, she has not escaped the tendency toward that return to the mercantilistic policy of exclusion in favor of nationals which is so marked in the whole movement today, and which is the crux of the problem. In the aspect of the question which has to do with limitation of belligerent right, she has shown herself responsive to the tendency, so noticeable from 1815 to 1914, to regard war as something to be limited so far as possible to the armed forces of the belligerents. Her substantial concessions in 1856, many of her statesmen have never ceased to deprecate, and it was the growing feeling that she could not afford to part with any more of the advantages her command of the sea gave her, that prevented the ratification of the Declaration of London. The events of the present war make very vital the question how far rules of this sort contribute toward the solution of the problem.

The attitude of the English press toward Lord Lansdowne's suggestion that Great Britain declare her willingness to discuss the problems connected with the freedom of the seas reflects the shades of British opinion at present. Certain papers see the problem as one of war times only, and point out, what American opinion will not fail to echo, that the submarine question will have to be dealt with first and foremost. Two writers face the problem squarely as one of commercial policy in time of peace, and offer solutions according to their creeds. The _Saturday Review_ expresses the belief that "so far from examining with other Powers the question of the freedom of the seas, we must re-enact, without delay, the Navigation Laws, which we foolishly repealed in 1849." On the other hand, the _London Nation_ sees the impartial distribution of the world's raw materials as one aspect of the real freedom of the seas, and agrees with the French Socialists that the mistress of the seas that must secure this freedom for all nations willing to live by the rule of peace, must be, not Great Britain, but the future League of Nations. The harmonizing of these two view-points does not promise to be an easy task, and we may be sure that the whole question will have full and free discussion in England and throughout her empire in the months to come. American citizens do not have to consider the problem of resigning to the keeping of a League of Nations a proud and long-cherished tradition of wardenship of the seas. But we are one of the great commercial nations, and no voice will have a more respectful hearing than ours at the peace settlement. Barere, phrase-maker of the French Revolution, summed up the foreign policy of France in 1798 by saying that she had inscribed upon her flags, "Freedom of the seas, peace to the world, equal rights to all nations." We have seen how the first of these phrases has been used again and again in the past to cloak jealousies of the commercial dominance of a rival nation. We know that one thing that it means today is that never again must the history of the world be stained by the wanton destruction of the lives of peaceful travelers upon the world's highway. If it has a meaning also in relation to the world's commerce, in peace or in war, we must see that it is a different meaning from that of the past. For we, too, have inscribed _Freedom of the seas_ upon our battle flags, and it behooves us to be certain just where our army belongs in the long procession of armies with banners--just what is the direction in which our standards point.

THE CONDITIONS OF TOLERANCE

There is one virtue which we implicitly assume when we discuss philosophy, and usually invoke when we venture to discuss religion. It is the favorite "intellectual virtue" of our time: for, as the sophists disquietingly remarked in their day, and as Professor Sumner shows in _Folkways_, moral touchstones, like clothes, are subject to change of fashion; those of a former generation, taken for granted in all soberness, rise out of old books with a quaintness like that of the "y^e" and the long "s" of our forefathers. The "great, the awful, the respectable virtues," such as godliness and righteousness, as terms of approval, are seldom on our lips; the old stalwart, rigid qualities are less admired today than those which are more gracious and humane--than flexibility of mind, universal sympathy, open vision.

But these latter in their turn we have now accepted as ideals, with no warning Socrates at our elbow to demand: "Precisely what do you mean by these new standards which you take for granted?"

"Toleration is so prodigious an impiety," said a member of the Westminster Assembly, "that this religious parliament cannot but abhor the meaning of it." Yet, in that constant gradual "transvaluation of all values" which humanity performs, tolerance has become the golden word of modern thought. And, like all popular ideas, it is unthinkingly accepted and facilely claimed. Even those who admit that they have not attained full measure of it, hide themselves behind the remark: "I am tolerant of everything except intolerance," and thereby yield them altogether: for to be tolerant only of a corresponding tolerance, is like confining your courtesy to polite people. The only attitude which tests the quality of tolerance is precisely the intolerant attitude.

But passing by these simple folk, we may yet find in the more serious-minded the sense of an inconsistency in the very conception, which puts it forever beyond our reach. We may be undertaking the difficult experiment of eating our cake and having it too. Yet even so there may be a refuge: for if paradox should prove to be the final form of truth--a union of opposites present in all living facts--inconsistency will have no devastating effect on it. The very fabric of truth may be woven of just such contradictions; reality may _never_ be consistent. But whether or no this be the way out, there are plainly difficulties to be considered, if we are to understand, and at the same time accept, the ideal of tolerance.

At the outset the distinction must be drawn between outward physical toleration and the inward spiritual grace of tolerance. In the first place, tolerance refers to thought, not to conduct. That heretics are no longer burned at the stake is the outcome of a change in social policy; in so far as this change is more than the discovery that heretics are after all not dangerous to the state, it is due to the obvious fact that where there is no clearly delineated, uniform orthodoxy, there can be no heresy--the species is extinct. Whenever the government in power concludes that an idea _is_ dangerous to the state, it does not hesitate to break through whatever safeguards to individual liberty of opinion may have been erected in the past. If such action is not legally justified, it is at once shown that laws are dead things, powerless against living human fears and needs. The application of the Defense-of-the-Realm act in England to distributing copies of the hitherto innocuous Sermon on the Mount, is evidence enough that the governmental attitude towards the subject has not changed in principle. And if, in addition to fear, we have a sharply defined orthodox view, we find that, though ordinary people no longer advocate capital punishment for doubting the Trinity, they did attempt to lynch Max Eastman for doubting the righteousness of the war. In other words, we have ceased to believe that religious opinions matter to social conduct, while still believing that political opinions do.

The genuine intolerance of the middle ages rested on a different basis. We say: Think what you please, so long as you act in conformity with what public opinion pleases. Plenty of anarchists and pacifists and upholders of the Susan B. Anthony Federal Amendment are still at large because their actions, though not their thoughts, are orthodox. The Inquisition struck deeper, because it was convinced of the genuine importance of thought, in relation to conduct. It was not content with binding the heretic to hold his peace--he must recant. It was so utterly convinced that not merely expediency, but final universal truth, lay in its keeping, that mere error, in the face of this revealed truth, became the ultimate sin.

The question of the meaning of tolerance, then, if it is not simply a matter of social usage, becomes the question, How far is it compatible with conviction? Tolerance may be defined as willingness to sanction the existence of views at variance with our own. The point at issue is not the expression of such views; the most intolerant man may egg on his opponent to complete expression, that he may argue him out of his error. The real tolerance refers to the relation of thought to thought, not of thought to speech. The above definition is one which, I believe, the seeker after tolerance will agree to accept (I have tried it on several). And yet, though presenting a fair idea of the attitude, it holds within itself the difficulty which puts the ideal out of reach.

This inherent contradiction may be stated, in the terms of our definition, thus: we are willing for an opposite view to exist _only_ when we are not entirely convinced that our own view is true. The real belief in absolute truth is a missionary state of mind, and carries with it the faith that truth is the one thing worth having. In our day, the infinite variety of ideas which custom does not stale, has long forced itself upon our attention. In consequence we no longer share the faith of Plato that knowledge, as distinct from opinion, can be secured. We cannot believe anything quite as firmly as the mediaeval Catholic believed in an eternal church independent of argument, or indeed of humanity. If we could, we should be as intolerant as Billy Sunday, whom "the pale cast of thought" has never tinged, and, if we were metaphysicians, should go up and down the world preaching the dangers of neo-realism, as the evangelist fulminates against the blasphemy of biological evolution. But Billy Sunday is an inverted anachronism; it is not in the power of a modern of the _commencement de siecle_ to recapture his fine careless rapture.

If this be true, if we have grown too modest to declare the eternal constitution of the universe, what degree of conviction and what quality of tolerance are left us?

The first answer is, that we may be willing to admit a view differing from our own because we realize that both may be right. But such a realization, if it is to be more than verbal politeness, implies that the difference is only partial or nominal, and consequently that my opponent's error does not shut him out from acknowledging my truth. I may be a woman suffragist, and yet be tolerant of the views of a friend who opposes suffrage, not on grounds of sex, but because he believes that the suffrage is already too wide, requiring restriction rather than enlargement. If I also am in theory an aristocrat, I can admit the notion that both of us are in a measure right.

But the only real tests of tolerance are the far more common cases, in which, if I am right, you must be wrong. Present species are or are not the result of development or special creation; the world is or is not an intelligible order; our individual personalities do or do not survive bodily death. We cannot be content here to fall back on a different statement of the problem. When we say: "Oh, yes, we both believe in God; to me he is Life Force; to you, Jehovah," we know in our hearts that we are simply conniving at the draining of all definite meaning from the word, in order to confuse the issue and keep the peace. The one thing needful is, not that we should find blanket terms under which we seem to agree, but that we should drag our disagreement into the clearest possible light, and so find out what we are talking about. Not only our language, but our intelligence suffers from preferring vague unity to distinct differentiation.

Even in such cases there are, however, three conditions which make tolerance tenable. The first of them is, that we do not really care about the issue; we have taken sides, but only because it is necessary to hold some opinion, and so we have no active conviction. We are tolerant because, after all, we know little about the subject, and are willing to leave enthusiasm to experts. I have a friend who, even in the crisis of the present war, keeps critically aloof from questions of politics, seeming tolerant because his own position is held only "academically"; he does not care enough about the subject for that particular truth to seem supremely important. He is tolerant with the ease of indifference. It is easy to give free play to ideas in which we have no compelling interest. In consequence, many of us pretend to a general tolerance, when the fact is, that we carefully choose our examples from among the issues which least concern us.

Much of the modern religious tolerance is of this type. Our culture is so predominantly pagan that Christianity has ceased to play more than a nominal part in our tests of ideas and conduct. This tendency has infiltrated even those who are unaware of the influence; the saving of souls according to Christian theology has become less important than the preservation of good taste, whose standards are set by an unconsciously pagan public opinion. On the other hand, the prevailing paganism has not become self-conscious, since it is hidden behind Christian words; and few have the time or courage to look beneath words to test their consonance with things. Being the result, not of directed effort, but of drifting, the pagan element in our civilization is not eager to assert itself. So the avowed pagans are tolerant of Christianity, saying: "I do not care for it for myself, but it is good for the masses. As to the church, for people who like that sort of thing, why, that is the sort of thing they like." And the Christians are tolerant of pagan ideals of self-realization, of personal pride and the worldly splendor of luxury and art, on the ground that some of the ideals which they are supposed to accept are after all inapplicable to modern life. Since neither cares to assert itself for what it is, there is the mutual tolerance of indifference. If these two ideals dared to stand forth and contest the field, there would be an end of tolerance,--a holy war, and clearing of the atmosphere.

The second condition of tolerance implies deeper thought on the disputed subject than does the first. It relates to things, about which we are not indifferent; but it indicates a mental sophistication which is too cautious lightly to put Q. E. D. at the close of a demonstration. Our conviction has, as it were, a string to it. I read once in a novel a phrase like this: "He was as amazed as a Christian, who, waking after death, should look round the universe and find that there was no God." Imagination gives us tolerance by marring every faith with the suggestion that we may wake up and find ourselves mistaken. And this is just the faith that cannot remove mountains. The idea that the other fellow may be right, paralyzes activity. Only bigots and fanatics set fire to the world without scruple. We sit before the hearth, perhaps, and argue about the brutality and cowardice of much of our current morality, and the obstacles which convention often raises against a sincere and heroic life; and yet, unspoken behind our preaching, is the haunting fear that the wisdom of the ages may not be the hoary folly it seems, that the melodramatic novels may be true, that considerations unguessed may be involved--and we continue to sit before the hearth.

The presence of the little imp of skeptical imagination marks the difference between philosophical and religious convictions. For good or ill, the other person's point of view, once seen, cannot cease for us. Our most ardent idealism is not a belief for which we would willingly be martyred by the realists: for we might wake and look round the universe in vain for an Absolute. It may be a good thing that the quality of religious conviction has died out among us, or it may be a necessary evil of civilized thinking. But the fact remains that we have no need of tolerance towards views which, consciously or unconsciously, we admit may be more nearly true than our own. We are merely not sure enough of ourselves to risk annihilating the views of our opponents.

The third form of imperfect conviction on which tolerance may rest is the view of truth as purely personal or relative. Subjectivism has been used as a bad name in philosophy for so long that the suspicion of it is usually resented. But it peers out from behind the respectable robe of many a philosophy which has not learned to call hard names. To reduce truth to a fact in individual experience, is to destroy the problem. Genuine conviction, without which tolerance is a mere form devoid of substance, is impossible if the truth for me and the truth for you are isolated facts, having and needing no relation to each other. But little private truths are sufficient only for little private affairs.

All of us want, and most of us take for granted, a real beauty in whose light it is irrelevant that Longfellow is read by a larger number of people than is Shelley. If I really love Shelley, I must believe that in some impersonal sense _Prometheus Unbound_ is superior to _The Psalm of Life_. This insistence upon a standard is at the root of all our serious thinking; _de gustibus non disputandum_ is a foolish saying: for nothing as a matter of fact is more fiercely disputed than questions of taste. The social character of thought is so firmly rooted that a thought which is limited to a personal impression ceases to interest us. It has become a mere fact; and we live in a world not of mere facts but of facts which gain their importance only through meaning. It is only of the most trivial acts that we say: This is right for me but wrong for you, because you think it wrong. We do not really even then put the You and the I on the same level, but imply that you will, if properly educated, agree with me. Human nature demands that we habitually will that the maxim of our thought at least, should become a universal law. Only when we apply our convictions, aesthetic, ethical, or metaphysical, to others outside ourselves, do they become more than fancies.