New York Times Current History The European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 Part 18

A wounded fortress straightway lieth p.r.o.ne, Not so the Temple dies; its roof may fall, The sky its covering vault, an azure pall, Doth droop to crown its wealth of lacework stone.

Praise to you, Vandal guns of dull intent!

We lacked till now our Beauty's monument Twice hallowed o'er by insult's brutal hand,

As Pallas owns on Athens' golden hill, We have it now, thanks to your far-flung brand!

Your shame--our gain, misguided German skill!

Probable Causes and Outcome of the War

By Charles W. Eliot.

President Emeritus of Harvard University; Officer Legion d'Honneur (France); Imperial Order of the Rising Sun, first cla.s.s (j.a.pan); Royal Prussian Order of the Crown, first cla.s.s; Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy; Member of the General Education Board, and an original investigator for the cause of international peace.

_Following Is Reproduced a Series of Five Letters to_ THE NEW YORK TIMES _from Dr. Eliot, Together with the Comments Thereon by Eminent Critics._

DR. ELIOT'S FIRST LETTER.

_To the Editor of The New York Times:_

The American people without distinction of party are highly content with the action of their National Administration on all the grave problems presented to the Government by the sudden outbreak of long-prepared war in Europe--a war which already involves five great States and two small ones. They heartily approve of the action of the Administration on mediation, neutrality, aid to Americans in Europe, discouragement of speculation in foods, and, with the exception of extreme protectionists, admission to American registery of foreign-built s.h.i.+ps; although the legislation on the last subject, which has already pa.s.sed Congress, is manifestly inadequate.

Our people cannot see that the war will necessarily be short, and they cannot imagine how it can last long. They realize that history gives no example of such a general interruption of trade and all other international intercourse as has already taken place, or of such a stoppage of the production and distribution of the necessaries of life as this war threatens. They shudder at the floods of human woe which are about to overwhelm Europe.

Hence, thinking Americans cannot help reflecting on the causes of this monstrous outbreak of primitive savagery--part of them come down from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and part developed in the nineteenth--and wondering what good for mankind, if any, can possibly come out of the present cataclysm.

The whole people of the United States, without regard to racial origin, are of one mind in hoping that mankind may gain out of this prodigious physical combat, which uses for purposes of destruction and death all the new forces of nineteenth-century applied science, some new liberties and new securities in the pursuit of happiness; but at this moment they can cherish only a remote hope of such an issue. The military force which Austria-Hungary and Germany are now using on a prodigious scale, and with long-studied skill, can only be met by similar military force, and this resisting force is summoned more slowly than that of Austria-Hungary and Germany, although the ultimate battalions will be heavier. In this portentous physical contest the American people have no part; their geographical position, their historical development, and their political ideals combine to make them for the present mere spectators, although their interests--commercial, industrial, and political--are deeply involved. For the moment, the best thing our Government can do is to utilize all existing neutrality rights, and, if possible, to strengthen or develop those rights, for out of this war ought to come more neutral States in Europe and greater security for neutralized territory.

The Need for Discussion.

The chances of getting some gains for mankind out of this gigantic struggle will be somewhat increased if the American people, and all other neutral peoples, arrive through public discussion at some clear understanding of the causes and the possible and desirable issues of the war, and the sooner this public discussion begins, and the more thoroughly it is pursued, the sounder will probably be the tendencies of public sentiment outside of the contending nations and the conclusions which the peace negotiations will ultimately reach.

When one begins, however, to reflect on the probable causes of the sudden lapse of the most civilized parts of Europe into worse than primitive savagery, he comes at once on two old and widespread evils in Europe from which America has been exempt for at least 150 years. The first is secret diplomacy with power to make issues and determine events, and the second is autocratic national Executives who can swing the whole physical force of the nation to this side or that without consulting the people or their representatives.

The actual catastrophe proves that secret negotiations like those habitually conducted on behalf of the "concert of Europe," and alliances between selected nations, the terms of which are secret, or at any rate not publicly stated, cannot avert in the long run outrageous war, but can only produce postponements of war, or short truces. Free inst.i.tutions, like those of the United States, take the public into confidence, because all important movements of the Government must rest on popular desires, needs, and volitions. Autocratic inst.i.tutions have no such necessity for publicity. This Government secrecy as to motives, plans, and purposes must often be maintained by disregarding truth, fair dealing, and honorable obligations, in order that, when the appeal to force comes, one Government may secure the advantage of taking the other by surprise. Duplicity during peace and the breaking of treaties during war come to be regarded as obvious military necessities.

The second great evil under which certain large nations of Europe--notably Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary--have long suffered and still suffer is the permanent national Executive, independent of popular control through representative bodies, holding strong views about rights of birth and religious sanctions of its authority, and really controlling the national forces through some small council and a strong bureaucracy. So long as Executives of this sort endure, so long will civilization be liable to such explosions as have taken place this August, though not always on so vast a scale.

Americans now see these things more clearly than European lovers of liberty, because Americans are detached from the actual conflicts by the Atlantic, and because Americans have had no real contact with the feudal or the imperial system for nearly 300 years. Pilgrim and Puritan, Covenanter and Quaker, Lutheran and Catholic alike left the feudal system and autocratic government behind them when they crossed the Atlantic. Americans, therefore, cannot help hoping that two results of the present war will be: (1) The abolition of secret diplomacy and secret understandings, and the subst.i.tution therefor of treaties publicly discussed and sanctioned, and (2) the creation of national Executives--Emperors, Sultans, Kings, or Presidents--which cannot use the national forces in fight until a thoroughly informed national a.s.sembly, acting with deliberation, has agreed to that use.

Opposite Tendencies.

The American student of history since the middle of the seventeenth century sees clearly two strong though apparently opposite tendencies in Europe: First, the tendency to the creation and maintenance of small States such as those which the Peace of Westphalia (1648) recognized and for two centuries secured in a fairly independent existence, and, secondly, a tendency from the middle of the nineteenth century toward larger national units, created by combining several kindred States under one executive. This second tendency was ill.u.s.trated strongly in the case of both Germany and Italy, although the Prussian domination in Germany has no parallel in Italy. Somewhat earlier in the nineteenth century the doctrine of the neutralization of the territories of small States was established as firmly as solemn treaties could do it. The larger national units had a more or less federative quality, the components yielding some of their functions to a central power, but retaining numerous independent functions. This tendency to limited unification is one which Americans easily understand and appreciate. We believe in the federative principle, and must therefore hope that out of the present European horror will come a new development of that principle, and new security for small States which are capable of guaranteeing to their citizens "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"--a security which no citizen of any European country seems today to possess.

Some of the underlying causes of the horrible catastrophe the American people are now watching from afar are commercial and economic. Imperial Germany's desire for colonies in other continents--such as Great Britain and France secured earlier as a result of keen commercial ambitions--is intense. Prussia's seizure of Schleswig in 1864-5 had the commercial motive; and it is with visions of ports on the North Sea that Germany justifies her present occupation of Belgium. The Russians have for generations desired to extend their national territory southward to the Aegean and the Bosphorus, and eastward to good harbors on the Pacific.

Later they pushed into Mongolia and Manchuria, but were resisted successfully by j.a.pan. Austria-Hungary has long been seeking ports on the Adriatic, and lately seized without warrant Herzegovina and Bosnia to promote her approach toward the Aegean, and is now trying to seize Servia with the same ends in view. With similar motives Italy lately descended on Tripoli, without any excuse except this intense desire for colonies--profitable or unprofitable. On the other hand, the American people, looking to the future as well as to the past, object to acquisitions of new territory by force of arms; and since the twentieth century opened they have twice ill.u.s.trated in their own practice--first in Cuba, and then in Mexico--this democratic objection. They believe that extensions of national territory should be brought about only with the indubitable consent of the majority of the people most nearly concerned. They also believe that commerce should always be a means of promoting good-will, and not ill-will, among men, and that all legitimate and useful extensions of the commerce of a manufacturing and commercial nation may be procured through the policy of the "open door"--which means nothing more than that all nations should be allowed to compete on equal terms for the trade of any foreign people, whether backward or advanced in civilization. No American Administration has accepted a "concession" of land in China. They also believe that peaceable extensions of territory and trade will afford adequate relief from the economic pressure on a population too large for the territory it occupies, and that there is no need of forcible seizure of territory to secure relief. It is inevitable, therefore, that the American people should hope that one outcome of the present war should be--no enlargement of a national territory by force or without the free consent of the population to be annexed, and no colonization except by peaceable commercial and industrial methods.

Aggressive Force a Failure.

One of the most interesting and far-reaching effects of the present outbreak of savagery is likely to be the conviction it carries to the minds of thinking people that the whole process of compet.i.tive armaments, the enlistment of the entire male population in national armies, and the incessant planning of campaigns against neighbors, is not a trustworthy method for preserving peace. It now appears that the military preparations of the last fifty years in Europe have resulted in the most terrific war of all time, and that a fierce ultimate outbreak is the only probable result of the system. For the future of civilization this is a lesson of high value. It teaches that if modern civilization is to be preserved, national Executives--whether imperial or republican--must not have at their disposal immense armaments and drilled armies held ready in the leash; that armaments must be limited, an international Supreme Court established, national armies changed to the Swiss form, and an international force adequate to deal with any nation that may suddenly become lawless agreed upon by treaty and held always in readiness. The occasional use of force will continue to be necessary even in the civilized world; but it must be made not an aggressive but a protective force and used as such--just as protective force has to be used sometimes in families, schools, cities, and Commonwealths.

At present Americans do not close their eyes to the plain fact that the brute force which Germany and Austria-Hungary are now using can only be overcome by brute force of the same sort in larger measure. It is only when negotiations for peace begin that the great lesson of the futility of huge preparations for fighting to preserve peace can be given effect.

Is it too much to expect that the whole civilized world will take to heart the lessons of this terrible catastrophe and co-operate to prevent the recurrence of such losses and woes? Should Germany and Austria-Hungary succeed in their present undertakings, the whole civilized world would be obliged to bear continuously, and to an ever-increasing amount, the burdens of great armaments, and would live in constant fear of sudden invasion, now here, now there--a terrible fear, against which neither treaties nor professions of peaceable intentions would offer the least security.

It must be admitted, however, that the whole military organization, which has long been compulsory on the nations of Continental Europe, is inconsistent in the highest degree with American ideals of individual liberty and social progress. Democracies can fight with ardor, and sometimes with success, when the whole people is moved by a common sentiment or pa.s.sion; but the structure and discipline of a modern army like that of Germany, Austria-Hungary, or Russia, has a despotic or autocratic quality which is inconsistent with the fundamental principles of democratic society. To make war in countries like France, Great Britain, and the United States requires the widespread, simultaneous stirring of the pa.s.sions of the people on behalf of their own ideals.

This stirring requires publicity before and after the declaration of war and public discussion; and the delays which discussion causes are securities for peace. Out of the present struggle should come a check on militarism--a strong revulsion against the use of force as means of settling international disputes.

America Cannot Be Indifferent.

It must also be admitted that it is impossible for the American people to sympathize with the tone of the imperial and royal addresses which, in summoning the people to war, use such phrases as "My monarchy," "My loyal people," "My loyal subjects"; for there is implied in such phrases a dynastic or personal owners.h.i.+p of peoples which shocks the average American. Americans inevitably think that the right way for a ruler to begin an exhortation to the people he rules is President Wilson's way: "My fellow-countrymen."

It follows from the very existence of these American instincts and hopes that, although the people of the United States mean to maintain faithfully a legal neutrality, they are not, and can not be, neutral or indifferent as to the ultimate outcome of this t.i.tanic struggle. It already seems to them that England, France, and Russia are fighting for freedom and civilization. It does not follow that thinking Americans will forget the immense services which Germany has rendered to civilization during the last hundred years, or desire that her power to serve letters, science, art, and education should be in the least abridged in the outcome of this war upon which she has entered so rashly and selfishly and in so barbarous a spirit. Most educated Americans hope and believe that by defeating the German barbarousness the Allies will only promote the n.o.ble German civilization.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN W. BURGESS

_(Photo by Alman & Co.)_

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[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM M. SLOANE

_(Photo by Pach.)_

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The presence of Russia in the combination against Germany and Austria-Hungary seems to the average American an abnormal phenomenon; because Russia is itself a military monarchy with marked territorial ambitions; and its civilization is at a more elementary stage than that of France or England; but he resists present apprehension on this score by recalling that Russia submitted to the "Concert of Europe" when her victorious armies were within seventeen miles of Constantinople, that she emanc.i.p.ated her serfs, proposed The Hague Conferences, initiated the "Duma," and has lately offered--perhaps as war measures only--autonomy to her Poles and equal rights of citizens.h.i.+p to her Jews. He also cannot help believing that a nation which has produced such a literature as Russia has produced during the last fifty years must hold within its mult.i.tudinous population a large minority which is seething with high aspirations and a fine idealism.

For the clarification of the public mind on the issue involved, it is important that the limits of American neutrality should be discussed and understood. The action of the Government must be neutral in the best sense; but American sympathies and hopes cannot possibly be neutral, for the whole history and present state of American liberty forbids. For the present, thinking Americans can only try to appreciate the scope and real issues of this formidable convulsion, and so be ready to seize every opportunity that may present itself to further the cause of human freedom, and of peace at last.

CHARLES W. ELIOT.

Asticou, Me., Sept. 1, 1914.

Appreciation from Lord Bryce

Late Amba.s.sador at Was.h.i.+ngton from Great Britain; Chief Secretary for Ireland, 1905-6; author of "The American Commonwealth," and of studies in history and biography.

It has been a great pleasure to see from your published letter, which has just reached us, that you so clearly understand the motive and feelings with which Great Britain has entered on the present war.