DR. ELIOT'S FOURTH LETTER.
Germany and World Empire
_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
Each one of the principal combatants in Europe seems to be anxious to prove that it is not responsible for this cruelest, most extensive, and most destructive of all wars. Each Government involved has published the correspondence between its Chief Executive and other Chief Executives, and between its Chancellery or Foreign Office and the equivalent bodies in the other nations that have gone to war, and has been at pains to give a wide circulation to these documents. To be sure, none of these Government publications seems to be absolutely complete. There seems to be in all of them suppressions or omissions which only the future historian will be able to report--perhaps after many years. They reveal, however, the dilapidated state of the Concert of Europe in July, 1914, and the flurry in the European Chancelleries which the ultimatum sent by Austria-Hungary to Servia produced. They also testify to the existence of a new and influential public opinion, about war and peace, to which nations that go to war think it desirable to appeal for justification or moral support.
These publications have been read with intense interest by impartial observers in all parts of the world, and have in many cases determined the direction of the readers' sympathy and good will; and yet none of them discloses or deals with the real sources of the unprecedented calamity. They relate chiefly to the question who struck the match, and not to the questions who provided the magazine that exploded, and why did he provide it. Grave responsibility, of course, attaches to the person who gives the order to mobilize a national army or to invade a neighbor's territory; but the real source of the resulting horrors is not in such an order, but in the Governmental institutions, political philosophy, and long-nurtured passions and purposes of the nation or nations concerned.
German Desire for World Empire.
The prime source of the present immense disaster in Europe is the desire on the part of Germany for world empire, a desire which one European nation after another has made its supreme motive, and none that has once adopted it has ever completely eradicated. Germany arrived late at this desire, being prevented until 1870 from indulging it, because of her lack of unity, or rather because of being divided since the Thirty Years' War into a large number of separate, more or less independent, States. When this disease, which has attacked one nation after another through all historic times, struck Germany it exhibited in her case a remarkable malignity, moving her to expansion in Europe by force of arms, and to the seizure of areas for colonization in many parts of the world. Prussia, indeed, had long believed in making her way in Europe by fighting, and had repeatedly acted on that belief. Shortly before the achievement of German unity by Bismarck she had obtained by war in 1864 and 1866 important accessions of territory and leadership in all Germany.
With this desire for world empire went the belief that it was only to be obtained by force of arms. Therefore, united Germany has labored with utmost intelligence and energy to prepare the most powerful army in the world, and to equip it for instant action in the most perfect manner which science and eager invasion could contrive. To develop this supreme military machine universal conscription--an outgrowth of the conception of the citizens' army of France during the Revolution--was necessary; so that every young man in Germany physically competent to bear arms might receive the training of a soldier, whether he wished it or not, and remain at the call of the Government for military duty during all his years of competency, even if he were the only son of a widow, or a widower with little children, or the sole support of a family or other dependents. In order to the completeness of this military ideal the army became the nation and the nation became the army to a degree which had never before been realized in either the savage or the civilized world.
This army could be summoned and put in play by the Chief Executive of the German Nation with no preliminaries except the consent of the hereditary heads of the several States which united to form the empire in 1870-71 under the domination of Prussia, the Prussian King, become German Emperor, being Commander in Chief of the German Army. At the word of the Emperor this army can be summoned, collected, clothed, equipped and armed, and set in motion toward any frontier in a day. The German Army was thus made the largest in proportion to population, the best equipped, and the most mobile in the world. The German General Staff studied incessantly and thoroughly plans for campaigns against all the other principal States of Europe, and promptly utilized--secretly, whenever secrecy was possible--all promising inventions in explosives, ordnance, munitions, transportation, and sanitation. At the opening of 1914 the General Staff believed that the German Army was ready for war on the instant, and that it possessed some significant advantages in fighting--such as better implements and better discipline--over the armies of the neighboring nations. The army could do its part toward the attainment of world empire. It would prove invincible.
A Great German Navy.
The intense desire for colonies, and for the spread of German commerce throughout the world, instigated the creation of a great German navy, and started the race with England in navy building. The increase of German wealth, and the rapid development of manufactures and commercial sea power after 1870-71, made it possible for the empire to devote immense sums of money to the quick construction of a powerful navy, in which the experience and skill of all other shipbuilding nations would be appropriated and improved on. In thus pushing her colonization and sea-power policy Germany encountered the wide domination of Great Britain on the oceans; and this encounter bred jealousy, suspicion, and distrust on both sides. That Germany should have been belated in the quest for foreign possessions was annoying; but that England and France should have acquired early ample and rich territories on other continents, and then should resist or obstruct Germany when she aspired to make up for lost time, was intensely exasperating. Hence chronic resentments, and--when the day came--probably war. In respect to its navy, however, Germany was not ready for war at the opening of 1914; and, therefore, she did not mean to get into war with Great Britain in that year. Indeed, she believed--on incorrect information--that England could not go to war in the Summer of 1914. Neither the Government nor the educated class in Germany comprehends the peculiar features of party government as it exists in England, France, and the United States; and, therefore, the German leaders were surprised and grievously disappointed at the sudden popular determination of Great Britain and Ireland to lay aside party strife and take strenuous part in the general European conflict.
The complete preparation of the German Army for sudden war, the authority to make war always ready in the hands of the German Emperor, and the thorough studies of the German Staff into the most advantageous plans of campaign against every neighbor, conspired to develop a new doctrine of "military necessity" as the all-sufficient excuse for disregarding and violating the contracts or agreements into which Prussia or the new Germany had entered with other nations. To gain quickly a military advantage in attacking a neighbor came to be regarded as proper ground for violating any or all international treaties and agreements, no matter how solemn and comprehensive, how old or how new.
The demonstration of the insignificance or worthlessness of international agreements in German thought and practice was given in the first days of the war by the invasion of Belgium, and has been continued ever since by violation on the part of Germany of numerous agreements concerning the conduct of war into which Germany entered with many other nations at the Second Hague Conference.
Sanctity of National Contracts.
This German view of the worthlessness of international agreements was not a cause of the present war, because it was not fully evident to Europe, although familiar and of long standing in Germany; but it is a potent reason for the continuance of the war by the Allies until Germany is defeated; because it is plain to all the nations of the world, except Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey at the moment, that the hopes of mankind for the gradual development of international order and peace rest on the sanctity of contracts between nations, and on the development of adequate sanctions in the administration of international law. The new doctrine of military necessity affronts all law and is completely and hopelessly barbarous.
World empire now, as always, is to be won by force--that is, by conquest and holding possession. So Assyria, Israel, Macedonia, Athens, Rome, Islam, England, and France have successively believed and tried to accomplish in practice. United Germany has for forty years been putting into practice, at home and abroad, the doctrine of force as the source of all personal and national greatness and all worthy human achievements. In the support of this doctrine, educated Germany has developed and accepted the religion of valor and the dogma that might makes right. In so doing it has rejected with scorn the Christian teachings concerning humility and meekness, justice and mercy, brotherhood and love. The objects of its adoration have become Strength, Courage, and ruthless Will-power; let the weak perish and help them to perish; let the gentle, meek, and humble submit to the harsh and proud; let the shiftless and incapable die; the world is for the strong, and the strongest shall be ruler. This is a religion capable of inspiring its followers with zeal and sustained enthusiasm in promoting the national welfare at whatever cost to the individual of life, liberty, or happiness, and also of lending a religious sanction to the extremes of cruelty, greed, and hate. It were incredible that educated people who have been brought up within earshot of Christian ethics and within sight of gentle men and women should all be content with the religion-of-valor plan. Accordingly, the finer German spirits have invented a supplement to that Stone Age religion. They have set up for worship a mystical conception of the State as a majestic and beneficent entity which embraces all the noble activities of the nation and guides it to its best achievements. To this ideal State every German owes duty, obedience, and complete devotion. The trouble with this supplement to the religion of valor is that it dwells too much on submission, self-sacrifice, and discipline, and not enough on individual liberty and self-control in liberty. Accordingly, when the valiant men got control of the Government and carried the nation into a ferocious war, they swept away with them all the devotees of this romantic and spiritual State. The modern German is always a controlled, directed, and drilled person, who aspires to control and discipline his inferiors; and in his view pretty much all mankind are his inferiors. He is not a freeman in the French, English, or American sense; and he prefers not to be.
What German Domination Would Mean.
The present war is the inevitable result of lust of empire, autocratic government, sudden wealth, and the religion of valor. What German domination would mean to any that should resist it the experience of Belgium and Northern France during the past three months aptly demonstrates. The civilized world can now see where the new German morality--be efficient, be virile, be hard, be bloody, be rulers--would land it. To maintain that the power which has adopted in practice that new morality, and in accordance with its precepts promised Austria its support against Servia and invaded Belgium and France in hot haste, is not the responsible author of the European war, is to throw away memory, reason, and common sense in judging the human agencies in current events.
The real cause of the war is this gradually developed barbaric state of the German mind and will. All other causes--such as the assassination of the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, the sympathy of Russia with the Balkan States, the French desire for the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine, and Great Britain's jealousy of German aggrandizement--are secondary and incidental causes, contributory, indeed, but not primary and fundamental. If any one ask who brought the ruling class in Germany to this barbaric frame of mind, the answer must be Bismarck, Moltke, Treitschke, Nietzsche, Bernhardi, the German Emperor, their like, their disciples, and the military caste.
Germany Never Dreaded Russia.
Many German apologists for the war attribute it to German fear of Russia. They say that, although Germany committed the first actual aggression by invading Belgium and Luxemburg on the way to attack France with the utmost speed and fierceness, the war is really a war of defense against Russia, which might desirably pass over, after France has been crushed, into a war against Great Britain, that perfidious and insolent obstacle to Germany's world empire. The answer to this explanation is that, as a matter of fact, Germany has never dreaded, or even respected, the military strength of Russia, and that the recent wars and threatenings of war by Germany have not been directed against Russia, but against Denmark, Austria, France, and England. In her colonization enterprises it is not Russia that Germany has encountered, but England, France, and the United States. The friendly advances made within the last twenty years by Germany to Turkey were not intended primarily to strengthen Germany against Russia, but Germany against Great Britain through access by land to British India. In short, Germany's policies, at home and abroad, during the last forty years have been inspired not by fear of Russia, or of any other invader, but by its own aggressive ambition for world empire. In the present war it thinks it has staked its all on "empire or downfall."
Germany Should Be Defeated.
Those nations which value public liberty and believe that the primary object of Government is to promote the general welfare by measures and policies founded on justice, good-will, and respect for the freedom of the individual cannot but hope that Germany will be completely defeated in its present undertakings; but they do not believe that Germany is compelled to choose between a life of domination in Europe and the world and national death. They wish that all her humane culture and her genius for patient and exact research may survive this hideous war and guide another Germany to great achievements for humanity.
If the causes of the present immense catastrophe have been have correctly stated, the desirable outcomes of the war are, no world empire for any race or nation, no more "subjects," no Executives, either permanent or temporary, with power to throw their fellow-countrymen into war, no secret diplomacy justifying the use for a profit of all the lies, concealments, deceptions, and ambuscades which are an inevitable part of war and assuming to commit nations on international questions, and no conscription armies that can be launched in war by Executives without consulting independent representative assemblies. There should come out from this supreme convulsion, a federated Europe, or a league of the freer nations, which should secure the smaller States against attack, prevent the larger from attempting domination, make sure that treaties and other international contracts shall be public and be respected until modified by mutual consent, and provide a safe basis for the limitation and reduction of armaments on land and sea, no basis to be considered safe which could fail to secure the liberties of each and all the federated States against the attacks of any outsider or faithless member. No one can see at present how such a consummation is to be brought about, but any one can see already that this consummation is the only one which can satisfy the lovers of liberty under law, and the believers in the progress of mankind through loving service each to all and all to each.
Extreme pacificists shrink from fighting evil with evil, hell with hell, and advise submission to outrage, or at least taking the risk of being forced into resigned submission. The believers in the religion of valor, on the other hand, proclaim that war is a good thing in itself, that it develops the best human virtues, invigorates a nation become flaccid through ease and luxury, and puts in command the strong, dominating spirit of a valid nation or race. What is the just mean between these two extremes? Is it not that war is always a hideous and hateful evil, but that a nation may sometimes find it to be the least of two evils between which it has to choose? The justifiable and indeed necessary war is the war against the ravager and destroyer, the enemy of liberty, the claimant of world empire. More and more the thinkers of the world see, and the common people more and more believe instinctively, that the cause of righteous liberty is the cause of civilization. In the conference which will one day meet to settle the terms of peace, and therefore the future conditions of life in Europe, the example of the American Republic in regard to armaments and war, the publicity of treaties, and public liberty, security and prosperity may reasonably have some influence.
CHARLES W. ELIOT.
Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 14, 1914.
DR. ELIOT'S FIFTH LETTER.
A Hopeful Road to Lasting Peace
_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
The great war has now been going on long enough to enable mankind to form approximately correct views about its vast extent and scale of operations, its sudden interference with commerce and all other helpful international intercourse, its unprecedented wrecking of family happiness and continuity, its wiping out, as it proceeds, of the accumulated savings of many former generations in structures, objects of art, and industrial capital, and the huge burdens it is likely to impose on twentieth century Europe. From all these points of view, it is evidently the most horrible calamity that has ever befallen the human race and the most crucial trial to which civilization has been exposed.
It is, and is to be, the gigantic struggle of these times between the forces which make for liberty and righteousness and those which make for the subjection of the individual man, the exaltation of the State, and the enthronement of physical force directed by a ruthless collective will. It threatens a sweeping betrayal of the best hopes of mankind.
Each of the nations involved, horrified at the immensity of the disaster, maintains that it is not responsible for the war; and each Government has issued a statement to prove that some other Government is responsible for the outbreak. This discussion, however, relates almost entirely to actions by monarchs and Cabinets between July 23 and Aug.
4--a short period of hurried messages between the Chancelleries of Europe--actions which only prove that the monarchs and Ministers for Foreign Affairs could not, or at least did not, prevent the long-prepared general war from breaking out. The assassination of the Archduke and Duchess of Hohenberg on the 28th of June was in no proper sense a cause of the war, except as it was one of the consequences of the persistent aggressions of Austria-Hungary against her southeastern neighbors. Neither was Russian mobilization in four military districts on July 29 a cause of the war; for that was only an external manifestation of the Russian state of mind toward the Balkan peoples, a state of mind well known to all publicists ever since the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. No more was the invasion of Belgium by the German Army on Aug. 4 a true cause of the war, or even the cause, as distinguished from the occasion, of Great Britain's becoming involved in it. By that action Germany was only taking the first step in carrying out a long-cherished purpose and in executing a judicious plan of campaign prepared for many years in advance. The artificial panic in Germany about its exposed position between two powerful enemies, France and Russia, was not a genuine cause of the war; for the General Staff knew they had crushed France once, and were confident they could do it again in a month. As to Russia, it was, in their view, a huge nation, but very clumsy and dull in war.
The real causes of the war are all of many years' standing; and all the nations now involved in the fearful catastrophe have contributed to the development of one or more of these effective causes. The fundamental causes are: (1) The maintenance of monarchical Governments, each sanctioned and supported by the national religion, and each furnished with a Cabinet selected by the monarch--Governments which can make war without any previous consultation of the peoples through their elected representatives; (2) the constant maintenance of conscript armies, through which the entire able-bodied male population is trained in youth for service in the army or navy, and remains subject to the instant call of the Government till late in life, the officering of these permanent armies involving the creation of a large military class likely to become powerful in political, industrial, and social administration; (3) the creation of a strong, permanent bureaucracy within each nation for the management of both foreign and domestic affairs, much of whose work is kept secret from the public at large; and, finally, (4) the habitual use of military and naval forces to acquire new territories, contiguous or detached, without regard to the wishes of the people annexed or controlled. This last cause of the war is the most potent of the four, since it is strong in itself, and is apt to include one or more of the other three. It is the gratification of the lust for world empire.
Of all the nations taking part in the present war, Great Britain is the only one which does not maintain a conscript army; but, on the other hand, Great Britain is the earliest modern claimant of world empire by force, with the single exception of Spain, which long since abandoned that quest. Every one of these nations except little Servia has yielded to the lust for empire. Every one has permitted its monarch or its Cabinet to carry on secret negotiations liable at any time to commit the nation to war, or to fail in maintaining the peace of Europe or of the Near East. In the crowded diplomatic events of last July, no phenomenon is more striking than the exhibition of the power which the British people confide to the hands of their Foreign Secretary. In the interests of public liberty and public welfare no official should possess such powers as Sir Edward Grey used admirably--though in vain--last July. In all three of the empires engaged in the war there has long existed a large military caste which exerts a strong influence on the Government and its policies, and on the daily life of the people.
These being the real causes of the terrific convulsion now going on in Europe, it cannot be questioned that the nation in which these complex causes have taken strongest and most complete effect during the last fifty years is Germany. Her form of government has been imperialistic and autocratic in the highest degree. She has developed with great intelligence and assiduity the most formidable conscript army in the world, and the most influential and insolent military caste. Three times since 1864 she has waged war in Europe, and each time she has added to her territory without regard to the wishes of the annexed population.
For twenty-five years she has exhibited a keen desire to obtain colonial possessions; and since 1896 she has been aggressive in this field. In her schools and universities the children and youth have been taught for generations that Germany is surrounded by hostile peoples, that her expansion in Europe and in other continents is resisted by jealous powers which started earlier in the race for foreign possessions, and that the salvation of Germany has depended from the first, and will depend till the last, on the efficiency of her army and navy and the warlike spirit of her people. This instruction, given year after year by teachers, publicists, and rulers, was first generally accepted in Prussia, but now seems to be accepted by the entire empire as unified in 1871.
The attention of the civilized world was first called to this state of the German mind and will by the triumphant policies of Bismarck; but during the reign of the present Emperor the external aggressiveness of Germany and her passion for world empire have grown to much more formidable proportions. Although the German Emperor has sometimes played the part of a peacemaker, he has habitually acted the war lord in both speech and bearing, and has supported the military caste whenever it has been assailed. He is by inheritance, conviction, and practice a Divine-right sovereign whose throne rests on an "invincible" army, an army conterminous with the nation. In the present tremendous struggle he carries his subjects with him in a rushing torrent of self-sacrificing patriotism. Mass fanaticism and infectious enthusiasm seem to have deprived the leading class in Germany, for the moment, of all power to see, reason, and judge correctly--no new phenomenon in the world, but instructive in this case because it points to the grave defect in German education--the lack of liberty and, therefore, practice in self-control.
The twentieth century educated German is, however, by no means given over completely to material and physical aggrandizement and the worship of might. He cherishes a partly new conception of the State as a collective entity whose function is to develop and multiply, not the free, healthy, and happy individual man and woman, but higher and more effective types of humanity, made superior by a strenuous discipline which takes much account of the strong and ambitious, and little of the weak or meek. He rejects the ethics of the Beatitudes as unsound, but accepts the religion of valor, which exalts strength, courage, endurance, and the ready sacrifice by the individual of liberty, happiness, and life itself for Germany's honor and greatness. A nation of 60,000,000 holding these philosophical and religious views, and proposing to act on them in winning by force the empire of the world, threatens civilization with more formidable irruptions of a destroying host than any that history has recorded. The rush of the German Army into Belgium, France, and Russia and its consequences to those lands have taught the rest of Europe to dread German domination, and--it is to be hoped--to make it impossible.
The real cause of the present convulsion is, then, the state of mind or temper of Germany, including her conception of national greatness, her theory of the State, and her intelligent and skillful use of all the forces of nineteenth century applied science for the destructive purposes of war. It is, therefore, apparent that Europe can escape from the domination of Germany only by defeating her in her present undertakings; and that this defeat can be brought about only by using against her the same effective agencies of destruction and the same martial spirit on which Germany itself relies. Horrible as are the murderous and devastating effects of this war, there can be no lasting peace until Europe as a whole is ready to make some serious and far-reaching decisions in regard to Governmental structures and powers.
In all probability the sufferings and losses of this widespread war must go further and cut deeper before Europe can be brought to the decisions which alone can give securities for lasting peace against Germany on the one hand and Russia on the other, or to either of these nations, or can give security for the future to any of the smaller nations of Continental Europe. There can, indeed, be no security for future peace in Europe until every European nation recognizes the fact that there is to be no such thing in the world as one dominating nation--no such thing as world empire for any single nation--Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Japan, or China. There can be no sense of security against sudden invasion in Europe so long as all the able-bodied men are trained to be soldiers and the best possible armies are kept constantly ready for instant use. There can be no secure peace in Europe until a federation of the European States is established, capable of making public contracts intended to be kept, and backed by an overwhelming international force subject to the orders of an international tribunal.
The present convulsion demonstrates the impotence toward permanent peace of secret negotiations, of unpublished agreements, of treaties and covenants that can be broken on grounds of military necessity, of international law if without sanctions, of pious wishes, of economic and biological predictions, and of public opinion unless expressed through a firm international agreement, behind which stands an international force. When that international force has been firmly established it will be time to consider what proportionate reductions in national armaments can be prudently recommended. Until that glorious day dawns, no patriot and no lover of his kind can wisely advocate either peace in Europe or any reduction of armaments.
The hate-breeding and worse than brutal cruelties and devastations of the war, with their inevitable moral and physical degradations, ought to shock mankind into attempting a great step forward. Europe and America should undertake to exterminate the real causes of the catastrophe. In studying that problem the coming European conference can profit by the experience of the three prosperous and valid countries in which public liberty and the principle of federation have been most successfully developed--Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States.
Switzerland is a democratic federation which unites in a firm federal bond three different racial stocks speaking three unlike languages, and divided locally and irregularly between the Catholic Church and the Protestant. The so-called British Empire tends strongly to become a federation; and the methods of Government both in Great Britain itself and in its affiliated Commonwealths are becoming more and more democratic in substance. The war has brought this fact out in high relief. As to the United States, it is a strong federation of forty-eight heterogeneous States which has been proving for a hundred years that freedom and democracy are safer and happier for mankind than subjection to any sort of autocracy, and affords far the best training for national character and national efficiency. Republican France has not yet had time to give this demonstration, being incumbered with many survivals of the Bourbon and Napoleonic regimes, and being forced to maintain a conscript army.
It is an encouraging fact that every one of the political or Governmental changes needed is already illustrated in the practice of one or more of the civilized nations. To exaggerate the necessary changes is to postpone or prevent a satisfactory outcome from the present calculated destructions and wrongs and the accompanying moral and religious chaos. Ardent proposals to remake the map of Europe, reconstruct European society, substitute republics for empires, and abolish armaments are in fact obstructing the road toward peace and good-will among men. That road is hard at best.
The immediate duty of the United States is presumably to prepare, on the basis of its present army and navy, to furnish an effective quota of the international force, servant of an international tribunal, which will make the ultimate issue of this most abominable of wars not a truce, but a durable peace.