New York Times Current History The European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 Part 40

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

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

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

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

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

The Chief Result.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The old Romans understood this. They permitted their outlying va.s.sal nations to speak any language they chose and to wors.h.i.+p whatever G.o.d they chose, so long as they recognized the sovereignty of Rome. When a conquering nation goes beyond that, and begins to suppress religions, languages, and customs, it begins at that very moment to sow the seeds of insurrection and revolution.

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

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

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

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

"The smallness of the number of instances in which conquering nations have been able successfully to deal with alien peoples is extraordinary.

The Romans were unusually successful, and England has been successful with all but the Irish, but perhaps no other peoples have been successful in high degree in an effort to hold alien populations as va.s.sals and to make them really happy and comfortable as such.

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

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

"All our trade and all our economic and social policies must recognize this. The world has discovered that cash without credit means little.

One cannot use cash if one cannot use one's credit to draw it whenever and wherever needed. Credit is intangible and volatile, and may be destroyed over night.

"I saw this in Venice.

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

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

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

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

A Note of Optimism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A New World Map

By Wilhelm Ostwald.

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

_The following article is extracted from a letter written by Prof.

Ostwald to Edwin D. Mead, Director of the World Peace Foundation._

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