WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
All fights reserved 
 
WAR THOUGHTS 
 
 OF AN 
 
 OPTIMIST 
 
 A COLLECTION OF TIMELY ARTICLES 
 
 BY AN AMERICAN CITIZEN RESIDING 
 
 IN CANADA 
 
 BY 
 
 BENJAMIN APTHORP GOULD 
 
 LONDON AND TORONTO 
 J. M. DENT & SONS LTD. 
 NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. 
 
First issued in August 1915 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE author of these articles is a United States 
 citizen who has been resident for several years 
 in Canada. He has had the advantages of being 
 a graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard 
 Law School, but has given up the practice of 
 the law and devoted himself to commerce and 
 manufacturing. 
 
 Coming of old New England stock and revolu- 
 tionary ancestry, the issues of this war have 
 appealed to him as so vital that he has felt that 
 he must speak. He gives this book out not 
 because he thinks he can write, but because he 
 knows that he cannot remain silent. 
 
 The author makes no apologies for his views. 
 He feels that, on the contrary, apologies are due 
 from those who fail to entertain them. 
 
 May 1915. 
 
 35993 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 UTOPIA IN AMERICA ..... i 
 
 LOYALTY THE PRODUCT OF FREEDOM . . 9 
 
 A LETTER ....... 17 
 
 THE GERMAN-AMERICAN ..... 19 
 
 NATIONAL HONOUR ...... 27 
 
 AT THE END OF THE WAR 35 
 
 SOME CORRESPONDENCE ..... 47 
 
 WHAT THE WAR MEANS TO RUSSIA ... 57 
 
 THE BIG WORLD AND THE LITTLE NATIONS . 69 
 
 PEACE MUST MEAN PEACE .... 77 
 
 AMERICANS IN CANADA ..... 85 
 
 OPTIMISM ....... 93 
 
 THE FIRST Six MONTHS ..... 101 
 
 THE VOLUNTEER ARMIES . . . . . 115 
 
 ADDRESS 123 
 
 FRANCE . . . . . . . . 147 
 
 GERMANY UNCIVILISED ..... 153 
 
 PATRIOTISM . . . . . . .163 
 
 THE DECREASING VALUE OF NATIONHOOD . 173 
 
 AMERICAN AMMUNITION IN BRITISH TRENCHES . 187 
 
 THE SADNESS OF THE WORLD ... 191 
 THE WAY OUT . . . . .195 
 
 Vll 
 
WAR THOUGHTS OF AN 
 OPTIMIST 
 
 UTOPIA IN AMERICA 
 
 THERE are in Canada hundreds of thousands of 
 men who have come from the United States, a 
 part of whom retain their United States citizen- 
 ship, and a part of whom have been naturalised. 
 Among all those people there is a practical unani- 
 mity of opinion upon Canada's course in the war, 
 but the greatest diversity upon the question of 
 the duties of the United States. 
 
 With one accord these people agree that this 
 is Canada's war as much as Britain's; that, being 
 a unit of the British Empire, Canada is attacked, 
 and must do her part to the last man and the 
 last dollar needed. Their sympathy with the 
 cause of the Allies is unlimited. They feel that 
 Germany and what she stands for must be over- 
 thrown, and that after the war there will arise 
 a condition of economic demand which will 
 enable Canada to utilise her resources to her 
 lasting profit. 
 
2 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 But, in regard to the action or inaction of the 
 United States, there is the widest difference of 
 opinion. Many content themselves with a feel- 
 ing of thankfulness that their native land is 
 neutral and is not suffering from the war to the 
 same extent as the countries which are actively 
 fighting. It almost seems as if with them the 
 " Safety First " propaganda had become an 
 obsession. 
 
 Patriotism with them is the support of their 
 country in whatever stand she is taking, not an 
 insistence that this stand must be right. They 
 think it statesmanship to sidestep responsibility, 
 to dodge the necessity of making a decision which 
 must be fraught with the hugest consequences, 
 to delay, to postpone, and if possible ultimately 
 to evade the choice. 
 
 Such a stand, however natural, is consistent 
 only with a statecraft which neglects modern 
 international duties. It is the viewpoint which 
 one might expect from Venezuela or Ecuador. 
 It is the denial of the White Man's Burden. It 
 is the apotheosis of the individual, the subli- 
 mation of the Little and the Small. It is an 
 unacknowledged admission that immediate self- 
 interest must be the governing factor, that to- 
 day's profit and to-day's ease are all-important. 
 It is an absolute denial of the soul of a nation. 
 
UTOPIA IN AMERICA 3 
 
 There is, however, in Canada, as elsewhere, 
 a large and, I am proud to believe, a rapidly 
 increasing number of Americans who hold very 
 different views. To them the United States is 
 not merely a locality, but an inspiration, an 
 ideal, a history, and if need be a supreme duty. 
 Their country is not a certain number of square 
 miles of more or less fertile land, a certain number 
 of cities and towns, a certain number of industries 
 yielding annually a certain amount of profits. 
 
 No, America is Bunker Hill and Valley Forge 
 and the little Continental Congress at Phila- 
 delphia; she is Gettysburg and Lookout Moun- 
 tain and Sheridan's Ride; she is Washington 
 and Lincoln and Clay and Daniel Webster; she 
 is Longfellow and Bret Harte and Huckleberry 
 Finn. 
 
 We who feel thus yield to none in our love 
 for our country, but we love her as a living, 
 thinking, growing, eager, erring, inspiriting 
 entity, not as mere latitude and longitude or a 
 place in which to make money. 
 
 The United States is the nearest thing to the 
 Golden Rule that has yet happened in nations. 
 We shouted " Cuba Libre," and we bled to prove 
 our words. We believe that we should be willing 
 to bleed to prove Belgium a nation, not a road. 
 
 At this time and place it were futile to argue 
 
4 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 about the rights and wrongs of this war. We 
 know that however clouded by pettinesses here 
 and obscured by selfishnesses there the origin of 
 the war may have been, the struggle to-day is 
 to decide whether democracy or feudalism shall 
 prevail in the world. No amount of special 
 pleading can blind us to this fundamental fact. 
 And we Americans who feel as I do, knowing 
 that our land has been dedicated to democracy 
 and has until now been the foremost exponent of 
 democracy in the world, believe that the United 
 States of America ought to be taking a leading 
 part in the defence of that democracy by and 
 for which she lives. 
 
 We, therefore, quarrel with President Wilson 
 and his do-nothing policy. We think he has 
 failed the people whom he has been chosen to 
 lead. To him in large measure has the honour of 
 our country been entrusted, but what account 
 can he give of his stewardship ? Under our 
 form of government no means is yet provided 
 for obtaining at a crisis like this the judgment of 
 the people, and of necessity on the administration 
 rests the formulating of our national position. 
 
 We hold that Mr. Wilson, to be true to our 
 history, to our ideals, to the soul of our nation, 
 must cease to preach an unprotesting neutrality 
 which for us may become craven and sordid. 
 
UTOPIA IN AMERICA 5 
 
 We credit him with sincerity, but believe he has 
 been victimised by phrases, and persuaded by 
 blind and narrow counsellors. 
 
 No price can be too high to pay for our national 
 self-respect. No danger has for the United 
 States of late years been so great as that in her 
 material prosperity she should lose her idealism. 
 No crisis so terrible as the present one has ever 
 arisen. We who love our country for her great- 
 hearted past wish now to see her true to all that 
 is best and noblest in her history. 
 
 We are entitled to look to our President to 
 guide us along the paths which our position as 
 one of the leaders of civilisation demands that 
 we tread. Instead of this, he is quibbling like 
 a corporation lawyer over niceties of construc- 
 tion and interpretation. He does not see that 
 words are of no consequence at all; that ideas are 
 all-important. 
 
 The United States is in a position to make 
 rather than to interpret international law. She 
 has it in her power to turn the clock of Time 
 forward a century. Should she boldly promul- 
 gate the doctrine that no nation can commit 
 national barbarisms without incurring the active 
 intervention of every self - respecting nation, 
 these barbarisms would soon cease. 
 
 There would be an end for all time to the 
 
6 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 wholesale slaughter of civilians, such as took 
 place at Dinant and Tamines; to the murder 
 of women and children by the unannounced 
 bombardment of unfortified places without 
 military significance; to the organised and 
 intended terrorism which seeks to make the lot 
 of the conquered so horrible that no little nation 
 will ever be willing to risk it. 
 
 She can above all insist that the punctilious 
 performance by every nation of its international 
 obligations entered into by treaty concerns every 
 member of the society of nations. The credit 
 of the world depends upon the faith of the nations, 
 and the safety of the world demands that each 
 nation maintain its faith unblemished. 
 
 Some say that these views are Utopian. I 
 answer that my country always has been Utopian, 
 and given a fair chance always will be Utopian. 
 We were Utopian when we struggled for our 
 liberties and erected our nation in the image of 
 Freedom; we were Utopian when we decreed 
 that the union of our States was indissoluble 
 and must harbour no slavery within its limits; 
 we were Utopian when we freed Cuba from the 
 tyranny of an unregenerated Spain. 
 
 Our people still are Utopian, and need but a 
 super-Utopian to lead them to heights of Uto- 
 pianism such as the world has never seen. Now 
 
UTOPIA IN AMERICA 7 
 
 is the time when my country has an opportunity, 
 unselfishly and with firmness, to take a position 
 which will not only end the present war more 
 quickly and with far less loss of life than if she 
 holds aloof, but will establish rules for the conduct 
 of nations which after the war will make the 
 world a better and a safer place for all men to 
 live in. No nation will dare to enter into an 
 unjust war or to wage a war barbarously if she 
 knows that such action will bring upon her the 
 active intervention of the rest of the world. 
 
 December 1914. 
 
LOYALTY THE PRODUCT OF 
 FREEDOM 
 
 GREAT BRITAIN lias an asset greater than all 
 assets of all other nations in the world, an asset 
 that makes it certain that she will win this war. 
 No other nation knew she had it Germany 
 suspected it least of all and she herself was not 
 certain she possessed it until she sought to realise 
 upon it and found it worth more than all else 
 she has. Yet this asset has cost her nothing, 
 but has rather paid her rich dividends while 
 she has been acquiring it. It is the unfailing 
 loyalty of all her far-flung peoples. 
 
 This loyalty is the by-product of the freedom 
 which Great Britain has consistently given to 
 those under her flag. 
 
 Up to about a hundred years ago, England, 
 like the rest of the great colonising powers, did 
 not know the truth about foreign possessions. 
 She had the false idea that Germany still has 
 and is trying in this war to turn into cash, that 
 foreign countries represent wealth that can be 
 captured and turned to the profit of the con- 
 queror, that a people beaten in war can be 
 
 9 
 
io WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 exploited and the fruit of their labour used to 
 enrich the victors. She believed as Germany 
 believes to-day in national burglary, in thievery 
 protected by the force of arms from the punish- 
 ment which overtakes the individual thief when 
 detected. 
 
 Two great events in her history served to 
 convince England of her error and to bring to 
 her the knowledge which has become the basis 
 of the present greatness and stability of her 
 Empire. The first and far the most important 
 of these was the revolt of the American colonies. 
 Under the stupid and selfish Georges, their 
 selfish and stupid ministers sought to use these 
 colonies as sources of revenue, as taxable proper- 
 ties from which might be derived moneys to 
 help in carrying on the great European wars 
 which she was at the time waging. 
 
 She was genuinely and intensely surprised at 
 this revolt. She could not understand the Bos- 
 ton Tea Party. She did not recognise the fact 
 that white men dwelling eighty degrees west are 
 the same as those who dwell at the longitude of 
 Greenwich. She regarded this revolt as one to 
 be put down by force, not as one to be nullified 
 by a change of policy; and considered the reten- 
 tion of these colonies at any rate as trivial in 
 comparison with European successes. 
 
LOYALTY ii 
 
 She, therefore, felt that she could spare for 
 subduing this revolution only a few troops, and 
 these not her best, many of them being mer- 
 cenaries; and the defeats they met troubled her 
 not greatly. As a result, she lost forever because 
 of her lack of democratic understanding the 
 country that has become second only to herself 
 in wealth and political importance, and second 
 not even to her as a leader in those demonstrated 
 principles of democracy which are now revolu- 
 tionising the older civilisations. 
 
 The other great event in recent English history 
 was her experience with the East India Company. 
 Even after she had realised that it was poor 
 business to try to exploit white men under her 
 flag, she none the less thought that it might be 
 done with brown ones. But since the recall of 
 Hastings she has broadened her wisdom as to 
 them also. 
 
 As a corollary, she has learned that she loses 
 more than she gains when she tries to exploit 
 those who do not live under her flag. Her 
 future history will never have another opium 
 treaty to chronicle. 
 
 Since Great Britain adopted this later policy, 
 she has been consistent in carrying it out. She 
 has determined that all under her flag must be 
 better off and safer for being a part of her empire, 
 
iz WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 and she has sought to link this empire together 
 by ties of interest rather than to hold it together 
 by the broadsides of her fleets. 
 
 She has therefore consistently given to each 
 constituent part the greatest measure of self- 
 government for which it has capacity, varying 
 from an administration such as that in India 
 or Egypt, where the object is to build up and 
 benefit the country administered, to the absolute 
 and uncontrolled autonomy of her self-governing 
 Dominions like Canada and Australia. 
 
 Can any one conceive of a nation built on 
 German ideals giving to a conquered South 
 Africa self-government within a few years of 
 the close of the bitter and costly Boer war, and 
 allowing one of the conquered generals to become 
 the head of this government? Even turbulent 
 Ireland would have had home rule .years ago 
 had all of Ireland desired it. 
 
 This democracy which Great Britain is now 
 so successfully practising in her Empire abroad 
 has also had a tremendous reflex action at home, 
 and year by year the authority of her sovereigns 
 has been curtailed, one by one the powers and 
 privileges of her peers have been restricted, until 
 to-day it is the man rather than the rank that 
 counts, even as in Belgium, where Albert is first 
 not because he is king, but because he is Albert. 
 
LOYALTY 13 
 
 The British. Tory of to-day is more liberal than 
 the Radical of a generation ago. No other 
 European nation stands to-day for freedom as 
 does Great Britain. 
 
 From this freedom has come the loyalty which 
 is bringing the active co-operation of every part 
 of the Empire. This war has proved once and 
 for all that free men will sacrifice everything for 
 their freedom, and will die if need be to maintain 
 the government that has given them that free- 
 dom. We knew that white men realised this, 
 and we knew that Canada, Australia, and New 
 Zealand would spring forward with serried ranks 
 of sober-minded and earnest soldiery at the call 
 of the Motherland. But what we did not know 
 was that the other races whose measure of self- 
 government was not so great would likewise have 
 the insight to recognise the fact that this is their 
 war too. 
 
 The most significant thing which the war has 
 developed in its bearing upon the future of 
 mankind has been the magnificent way in which 
 India has rallied to the flag, and begged that she, 
 too, might have the opportunity to prove her 
 loyalty with her blood and her treasure. 
 
 Here is a land which for centuries has been 
 the victim of the feuds and strifes of warring 
 principalities and incompatible beliefs, a land 
 
14 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 in which, the mass of the people have not any- 
 thing approaching the education of the western 
 civilisations; where the bazaar rumour takes the 
 place of the press, and the word of mullah or 
 yogi is held the word of God. Yet this India, 
 to us incomprehensible, has comprehended us, 
 and those who in the black year of 1857 sought 
 to kill us, to-day ask nothing better than to die 
 for us. 
 
 A half-century of unselfishness in administra- 
 tion has bred a loyalty to Great Britain that even 
 religious fanaticisms and the proclamations of 
 Jehads have been unable to overcome. Rajah 
 and Maharajah, Prince and Nizam, have offered 
 to the great British Raj their lives and their 
 treasure chests; Sikh and Ghurka and Pa than 
 and Hindu plead that they too may bleed in the 
 great cause. Has anything in the history of the 
 world so made for optimism ? 
 
 There is one further step for the world to take, 
 and I still do not despair of seeing the world take 
 it as a result of this war. This is to appreciate 
 that the thing which earns and secures this 
 deserved loyalty is an idea, not a nation. We 
 see it typified in a nation, but in truth it is a 
 cause common to all true nations. 
 
 Political divisions of nations are supremely 
 unimportant so long as the idealisms on which 
 
LOYALTY 15 
 
 they are founded are the same. The changes of 
 boundaries which will result from this war matter 
 nothing; the changes in the aspirations of peoples 
 are all-important. England to-day happens to 
 typify a democracy for which the world is willing 
 to suffer, but this democracy is inherent in man- 
 kind, not in England. This war belongs to every 
 free people and concerns them broadly as much 
 as it concerns England. 
 
 Once the people of the United States realise 
 this fact, I believe that nothing will be able to 
 hold them from joining in the struggle. The 
 world requires that the feudalism existing in 
 Germany be destroyed, and to accomplish this 
 destruction is the duty of every free people. 
 To shirk this duty is pure selfishness. 
 
 The end of all great wars can only come when 
 all great nations have a similar idealism, when 
 they recognise that there is a cause greater than 
 nationality to which their loyalties are due. 
 This end of war can never be brought about 
 either by armament of disarmament; only the 
 costliness of war may be varied by this means. 
 Where nations are actuated by this supernational 
 conception of freedom, war becomes futile and 
 preparation for war needless. 
 
 It is inconceivable that America and Great 
 Britain should ever again come to blows because 
 
16 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 both are loyal to the same supernational concep- 
 tion of liberty and of the place of free men in 
 a free world. The lesson that India teaches is 
 that every race has capacity for this conception, 
 and that the time when this supernationalism 
 shall prevail throughout the world is much nearer 
 than those who only see the details of contem- 
 porary history and not its broader significance 
 believe possible. Russia, the last land which we 
 could expect to learn the lesson, shows clear 
 signs that she is learning it; Italy shows that she 
 has it almost learned; the pains of defeat will 
 force Germany and Austria to learn it. 
 
 To the earnest thinker the future of the world 
 and of the humankind that makes it is brighter 
 than ever before. The federation of the nations 
 is almost in sight. 
 
 December 1914. 
 
A LETTER 
 
 To the Editor of Every Newspaper, Everywhere 
 
 SIR, The United States has at last seen fit to 
 make a protest. For months we Americans, 
 who think our country still is what her history 
 shows that she has been, have been hoping and 
 expecting that a protest would be made. We 
 looked for a protest against the invasion of 
 Belgium, against the murder of civilians, against 
 the mutilation of children, against the slaughter 
 of women, wounded, and prisoners, against 
 reprisals forbidden by the Hague Tribunal, 
 against the bombardment of unfortified towns, 
 against the levying of blackmail on conquered 
 cities, against the strewing of floating mines 
 in neutral waters, against the wanton destruction 
 of universities, cathedrals, and works of art, 
 against the insolent leaving of Belgium to starve 
 while bleeding her white with extortion, against 
 the taking of hostages, against the screening of 
 soldiery with women and children, against 
 calculated terrorism, against barbarisms that 
 
 17 B 
 
i8 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 have made this war hideous beyond any in 
 modern history. 
 
 But when the protest came it was in behalf 
 of the copper trust and the beef trust, seeking 
 arrangements by which they could add profits 
 from German trade to the profits they are making 
 from British trade. Let them hunt with the 
 hound and run with the hare, and squeeze a few 
 dollars out of each. Shades of Washington and 
 Lincoln, that a Wilson and a Bryan should be 
 in a position to do this thing ! 
 
 December 1914, 
 
THE GERMAN-AMERICAN 
 
 CANNOT the leopard change his spots ? Is it 
 true that once a German always a German? I 
 cannot believe it. The history of progressive 
 evolution denies it. 
 
 There can, of course, be no such thing as a 
 German-American. The term itself is contradic- 
 tory. America is the antithesis of Germany in 
 all the things that count; in the idealism which 
 is the basis of citizenship, in the freedom which 
 is the perquisite of this idealism. . 
 
 Germany is the past, the middle ages, pater- 
 nally administered with all the latest scientific 
 frills, feudalism brought up to date. America 
 is the future; the centuries to come; self- 
 administration and self-government by intelligent 
 units ; the opportunity for the individual. 
 
 In Germany the citizen exists for the benefit 
 of the State. In America the State exists for 
 the benefit of the citizen. This difference is 
 fundamental. The German idea makes for a 
 more efficient collective organisation, and creates 
 a nation without a soul which can terrorise and 
 bully. The American idea makes for the happi- 
 
 19 
 
20 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 ness and progress of the units which form the 
 State. 
 
 This very difference is the cause of the great 
 emigration from Germany to the United States. 
 It began on a considerable scale in 1848, when the 
 revolution drove many Germans to seek their 
 pursuit of happiness under more favourable skies. 
 The conditions then prevalent compelled them 
 clearly to understand the difference in the lands, 
 and these earlier immigrants knew why they 
 came. 
 
 If any question had made it necessary for 
 them to choose whether their loyalty should be 
 given to their new country or to their old one, 
 there would have been no hesitation. They 
 had already chosen definitely between freedom 
 and tyranny, and their regard for Germany was 
 only the natural sentimental regard for the land 
 of their birth and not a loyalty to its political 
 constitution. 
 
 The underlying cause of the more recent 
 influx of Germans has been the same. They 
 sought greater freedom and greater individual 
 opportunity. But later conditions abroad have 
 not been such as to necessitate the clear per- 
 ception of the difference of ideals as in 1848. 
 Then he who ran might read, but afterward the 
 issues were blurred and clouded, and many who 
 
THE GERMAN-AMERICAN 21 
 
 came failed to recognise the real cause of their 
 coming. 
 
 They saw, perhaps, only a better chance of 
 prospering and failed to see that this better 
 chance existed because of the difference of 
 national ideals. If these people had to make 
 their choice, they, too, would choose America, 
 but some great necessity will have to arise to 
 compel them to this choice and to crystallise their 
 thought into a discriminating judgment. So 
 long as this necessity for choice can be avoided, 
 it is easier and pleasanter for them to let their 
 sentiment run wild and to shout for Germany. 
 
 These people cannot be both Americans and 
 Germans. I believe that nearly all of them are 
 Americans, even though they do not know it 
 and think themselves Germans. 
 
 There is of course among them a number of 
 the blatant and the loud-mouthed, who shout 
 for the Kaiser in order to bring personal promin- 
 ence to themselves or to boom the sale of their 
 papers. They claim to be representative of 
 their fellows, and the falsity of this claim is not 
 made obvious on account of the natural re- 
 pugnance of the more clear-minded of those of 
 German origin to declare against their native 
 land. 
 
 This blatancy also aids to colour the views of 
 
22 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 those who have not the ability to reason and 
 to differentiate, and in this is capable of great 
 harm. The Ridders are from this point of view 
 a real misfortune, not that they can mislead the 
 wise, but that they may deceive the foolish. 
 
 Unquestionably there are in the United States 
 a certain number of German spies. The system 
 of espionage has been carried by Germany to 
 such an extent that reports from every country 
 are constantly going to Berlin. But the fatuous 
 State Department there seems absolutely unable 
 to draw conclusions from the facts laid before it. 
 
 Since it has never been allowed in Germany 
 to criticise the Government, that Government 
 believes that in other countries criticism means 
 hatred. It is unable to comprehend that those 
 whom we love we chasten. It fully believed that 
 the British possessions and Dominions overseas 
 would seize the opportunity of the war to throw 
 off what it regards as the British yoke. The 
 loyalty that comes from freedom is to it a sealed 
 book. 
 
 This stupidity at home to a great extent 
 nullifies both the harm and the good that might 
 come from the reports of these spies, for in so 
 far as these reports relate to conditions of opinion 
 Germany cannot understand them, and in so 
 far as they relate to physical conditions of 
 
THE GERMAN-AMERICAN 23 
 
 defence and armament they are futile because 
 Germany will never be in a position to wage war 
 on the United States in the United States. The 
 number of these spies is also insignificant in 
 comparison with the number of people of German 
 origin, however large it may be compared with 
 spies of other nations. 
 
 The extraordinarily amateurish Government 
 now at Washington does not understand these 
 conditions. One of the reasons why it is 
 so sedulously maintaining a neutrality which 
 patriotic Americans deem selfish and shameful 
 undoubtedly is a fear of the German-born popu- 
 lation in the nation. Mr. Wilson is probably 
 above sacrificing the honour of his country for 
 party reasons, and does not guide his actions 
 solely by fear of Germanic votes, but really fears 
 internal rebellion if he takes the stand that the 
 history and ideals of his country demand. 
 
 This fear I believe to be entirely unfounded, 
 but it is doubtless one of his excuses for inaction. 
 He ought to recognise that this fear must either 
 have or lack a basis in fact. If the latter, he is 
 building up a bogey-man and is frightened of 
 shadows; if the former, nothing is more impor- 
 tant for the country than that the disease should 
 be diagnosed and the remedy applied as soon as 
 possible. 
 
24 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 The greatness of the United States has been 
 due to its power of assimilation, to the fact that 
 at the end of a generation the polyglot immigra- 
 tion that has poured through Ellis Island has be- 
 come American. I believe that the clarification of 
 thought that a necessity for choice must induce 
 will prove that the German immigration, too, has, 
 with regard to its great mass, become American. 
 
 If I am wrong, no price would be too high to 
 pay to extirpate the cancer. America cannot 
 remain America if it tolerates in any considerable 
 part of its population ideals utterly inconsistent 
 with its history and the democracy on which 
 it is founded. 
 
 If, of all the peoples to whom the United 
 States has opened its gates, the Germans alone 
 are incapable of becoming Americanised, then 
 immigration laws should be made and enforced 
 which would prevent another German from ever 
 entering the country. That such a state of 
 things exists is inconceivable, and the yammer- 
 ings of the pro-German organs should deceive 
 no one. 
 
 Again I repeat that the German-American is 
 an impossibility. One cannot serve God and 
 Mammon. Until the choice has to be made 
 between the democracy of America and the 
 feudalism of Germany, sentiment and association 
 
THE GERMAN-AMERICAN 25 
 
 naturally cause the German-sprung to speak 
 kindly of Germany; once, however, the issue 
 is clear, democracy will, as always, come forth 
 triumphant. Even if there were not a thousand 
 other reasons, ranging from bleeding Belgium 
 to the Hague Tribunal, why the United States 
 should be aligned with the foes of Kaiserism, 
 this proof of its democracy alone should be 
 compelling. Let us demonstrate that Americans 
 are Americans, no matter under what sky they 
 were born. 
 
 January 1915. 
 
NATIONAL HONOUR 
 
 THERE is such a thing as the honour of a nation. 
 It is the only thing that is worth fighting for. 
 It is the only thing that can make future wars 
 unnecessary. 
 
 There is no phrase which has been so misused, 
 none which has so frequently been made a cover 
 for greed and aggression. It has been the cloak 
 behind which Junkerism has hidden its ugliness. 
 " Wolf! wolf! " has been shouted so many times 
 that disbelief has become habitual. But the 
 fact remains none the less that wolves do exist, 
 and that the honour of a nation is its most holy 
 heritage. 
 
 Every evil cause seeks to bolster itself up with 
 claims of good, and often succeeds in bringing 
 what is really good into disrepute because the 
 falsity of these claims is not recognised. There 
 never has been a jingoism or a militarism that 
 has not declared itself to be the guardian of 
 national honour. 
 
 It is a stock disguise. It has become so com- 
 mon that those who have had the wit to penetrate 
 
 it, but not the understanding to reason incisively, 
 
 27 
 
28 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 have come to think that national honour is a mere 
 mask, a tissue to cover national aggression, the 
 time-worn excuse of the national bully. 
 
 International treaties of arbitration have 
 habitually excepted subjects of dispute which 
 involve national honour; and many think that 
 this exception has nullified their value because it 
 is often claimed that national honour is involved 
 when in fact only national interest or national 
 desire is at stake. 
 
 An excellent illustration of this false claim 
 of national honour being involved is given by the 
 recent Vera Cruz incident. Here a government, 
 which was diplomatically unrecognised, and 
 therefore diplomatically non-existent, refused 
 to explode a" salute of a certain number of guns 
 in token of respect to the nation which refused 
 to acknowledge the existence of the erring govern- 
 ment which refused to fire the guns. 
 
 National honour was therefore involved and 
 Vera Cruz had to be seized. But when the 
 government which did not exist diplomatically 
 ceased to exist actually, Vera Cruz was not 
 evacuated. Later, when nothing had been 
 accomplished, and the guns still remained un- 
 fired, the troops were withdrawn from Vera 
 Cruz. 
 
 If this thing were not serious, it would be 
 
NATIONAL HONOUR 29 
 
 opera bouffe. Everybody knows that the ques- 
 tion of national honour had nothing whatsoever 
 to do with the affair. The United States can 
 continue to exist without inconvenience even 
 if General Huerta does not fire twenty-one guns. 
 It cannot continue to exist if it ceases to be true 
 to itself. It may well be that the United States 
 not only ought to have taken Vera Cruz, but 
 ought to have done a great deal more, but it is 
 ridiculous to cloud the duty with nonsense about 
 its honour being insulted by a lack of guns. 
 
 National honour has to do with the conduct 
 of a nation, not with the conduct of other nations 
 toward it. The other idea is that which was at 
 the root of the obsolete duello. If a cad thumbs 
 his nose at a gentleman, the latter is no longer 
 held to be wounded in his honour and obliged to 
 risk his life. 
 
 The same thing is equally true of nations. 
 The carrying of chips on national shoulders is 
 out of date, and honour is not injured by the ill- 
 breeding of others. When thus stated in plain 
 words, this proposition seems self-evident; but 
 a failure to recognise it has been the basis of 
 many wars which otherwise would never have 
 been permitted to occur. 
 
 Conditions may arise, however, where national 
 honour is involved, where a nation must act to 
 
30 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 preserve its honour. This honour is not affected 
 by the act of another nation, but an outside act 
 may be such that the nation damages its honour 
 by not itself acting. A nation's honour is in its 
 own charge and can be affected only by its own 
 acts or failures to act. 
 
 The most common instance affecting the honour 
 of a nation is the existence of a condition which 
 requires action for the fulfilment of its obligations. 
 A nation cannot with honour fail in its engage- 
 ments any more than can a business house. The 
 most solemn undertakings of a nation are those 
 which it voluntarily assumes by its treaties. So 
 long as the obligations of its treaties remain in 
 force any nation loses its honour if it neglects 
 them. 
 
 Belgium was in honour bound to resist the 
 German invasion of her frontier. Rather than 
 lose her honour she was willing to suffer the utter- 
 most that can come to any nation. Her action 
 and her sacrifice will forever place her name fore- 
 most on the roll of them to whom honour was 
 supreme. 
 
 Great Britain was in honour bound to declare 
 war against Germany when Belgium's neutrality 
 was violated, and she has taught the world the 
 value of scraps of paper when they contain a 
 nation's honour. 
 
NATIONAL HONOUR 31 
 
 When the question of the obligation of the 
 United States arose in connection with tolls on 
 the Panama canal, Mr. Wilson very properly 
 realised that the honour of his country demanded 
 that it should do nothing that by any nicety 
 of construction could be held to be contrary to 
 its treaty understandings. Apparently, however, 
 he has never heard of the conventions of the 
 Hague Tribunal, signed by President Roosevelt, 
 or assuredly he must, as to them also, have safe- 
 guarded the honour of his country. 
 
 There is also a national honour deeper and more 
 fundamental than that which comes from written 
 undertakings. This is the duty of every nation 
 to be true to its history, to its ideals, to the con- 
 ception of freedom on which it has been erected. 
 Noblesse oblige for a nation, as for a man; and 
 the honour of a United States demands a far 
 higher standard of unselfishness than the honour 
 of San Domingo requires. 
 
 It is the duty of every President to guard this 
 unwritten and inherent honour as sedulously as 
 it is to see that his country's treaties are per- 
 formed. The rank of a nation among its fellows 
 may be judged by the fineness of this unwritten 
 honour, for much must be given by them who 
 possess much. It is the soul of a nation, and the 
 greatness of this soul is shown by its willingness 
 
32 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 to perform in the concrete what it professes in 
 the abstract. 
 
 The American people has a right to look to the 
 President to express the soul of the nation. This 
 nation has been founded on democracy, has bled 
 for democracy, and through democracy has come 
 to its present high estate. It has until now 
 typified democracy to the world. 
 
 Now that the deepest and most sacred honour 
 of the nation demands that in the colossal 
 struggle between democracy and absolutism 
 throughout the world the United States shall 
 make its position clear and unmistakable, Mr. 
 Wilson will not be forgiven for not acting in 
 accordance with the traditions and the nobility 
 of his country. 
 
 No fear of the blatant Germans in the land, 
 " vocal out of all proportion to their numbers 
 or their importance," will serve to excuse him. 
 However interesting the game of party politics 
 may be, he has no right at this time, and in this 
 matter, to play it. 
 
 I believe the honour of the United States is too 
 great and too sacred a thing to be destroyed 
 by any one man. If it shall happen that the 
 man to whom the honour of the country is 
 chiefly entrusted shall prove unworthy of his 
 stewardship, the action which the honour of the 
 
NATIONAL HONOUR 33 
 
 nation demands may be delayed, but cannot be 
 prevented. 
 
 The judgment of the people when time has 
 been given for the crystallisation of its thought 
 will prove irresistible. Such a condition makes 
 it doubly the duty of the clear-thinking and 
 patriotic to spread the propaganda of national 
 idealism, and to make it evident to the people 
 that the very greatness of the land and its history 
 forbids it to stand aside when all that it holds 
 holy is at stake in the world. 
 
 January 1915. 
 
AT THE END OF THE WAR 
 
 THE time has come to consider what must be 
 done at the end of the war to make the new 
 peace a lasting one. There is, of course, only 
 one possible outcome to the war which the world 
 can tolerate. Germany and her allies must be 
 compelled to a peace which shall not be threat- 
 ened by the menace of militarism, and which 
 shall make all Europe free from conscription, 
 as the Americans are free. 
 
 When two or three years of the best part of 
 the life of every young Frenchman, German, and 
 Russian are no longer required for military 
 service, this relief will go far towards paying 
 the enormous cost of the war. And when the 
 non-productive expenditures on guns, fortresses, 
 and navies are lessened by many hundreds of 
 millions of dollars annually, the saving will pay 
 the interest on a huge volume of war bonds. No 
 peace can be economically permitted which does 
 not provide for both of these great reforms. 
 
 The world is fortunate in having at this time 
 the unselfish and clear-minded services of Sir 
 Edward Grey, for to the world, even in greater 
 degree than to Great Britain, must these services 
 
 35 
 
36 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 be given. His character and the history of his 
 statesmanship make it clear that he recognises 
 this world-duty. 
 
 Of the great men of to-day Joffre, the re- 
 liable; Kitchener, the organiser; Grand Duke 
 Nicholas, the brilliant; Albert, the inspiration; 
 and Grey, the statesman Grey is the most 
 valuable and would be the hardest to replace. 
 When Lincoln was murdered, it was truly said 
 that in him the Confederacy lost its greatest 
 friend. Even so, at the end of the war the people 
 of Germany will have in the vision of Sir Edward 
 Grey their greatest asset. There seems little 
 doubt but that he will dominate the making of 
 peace. 
 
 By far the most important political event since 
 the outbreak of hostilities was the protocol en- 
 tered into by Great Britain, France, and Russia. 
 This protocol contained two distinct provisions, 
 and in the popular mind the fact that the first 
 was more striking has caused the deeper import 
 of the second to be overshadowed. 
 
 First, it was provided that no one of the parties 
 to the agreement would make peace without the 
 consent of the other two. This makes it certain 
 that the Triple Entente will win the war. By 
 this the knell of the Kaiser was rung, as the 
 Kaiser himself knows. 
 
AT THE END OF THE WAR 37 
 
 Secondly, it was provided that no one of the 
 parties, in making peace, would demand terms 
 not satisfactory to the other two. This makes 
 it certain that the peace will be a lasting one. 
 By this the knell of Kaiserism was rung; but 
 whether the Kaiser himself has the vision to 
 understand it is very doubtful. No greed on the 
 part of any victor shall be allowed to impose 
 conditions so bitter that in the nature of things 
 they can be but temporary. The temperance of 
 concerted wisdom, dominated by the temperance 
 of Grey, will have to prevail. 
 
 The world needs Germany and cannot afford 
 to see her destroyed. But this Germany that 
 must be preserved is not the Germany of to- 
 day, but the Germany of to-morrow and to a 
 certain extent of yesterday; not the Germany 
 of the mailed fist and blood and iron, but of 
 thrift and intelligent labour and scientific pro- 
 duction; the Germany that helps to live, not 
 that dooms to death. The world needs Goethe 
 and Schiller and Wagner and Beethoven and 
 Nuremberg and Munich just as it can no longer 
 tolerate Bernhardi and Treitschke and Nietzsche 
 and William II. and Essen and Potsdam. 
 
 For a generation it will be difficult to get fair 
 treatment for the people of Germany; and for 
 a generation there will be upon these people a 
 
38 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 burden of payment which will be hard to bear. 
 These things are inevitable. 
 
 The millions who have suffered deep personal 
 loss from the war, to whom during the war 
 the very name of Germany has been anathema, 
 cannot forget and cannot lightly forgive. There 
 will be a legacy of hatred towards the individual, 
 a failure to recognise that the individual is the 
 victim, not the cause, of conditions which have 
 been insufferable. 
 
 Unquestionably Germany, and the feudalism 
 that rules her, was directly responsible for the 
 war; equally unquestionably Germany, once 
 the war was afoot, has been fighting for her 
 very existence as she is now constituted. It is 
 impossible to expect that the mass of her people 
 should differentiate between the false Germany 
 which must cease to exist and the true Germany 
 which is entitled to their loyalty. Every instinct 
 of their nationalism, every impulse of their 
 training, every bar of their national tunes, has 
 urged them to support the Government which 
 they have never been allowed to discuss or to 
 criticise as happier peoples have been allowed to 
 criticise freer Governments. 
 
 The very qualities of courage and efficiency 
 which will make these Germans valuable to the 
 world, once their point of view ceases to be dis- 
 
AT THE END OF THE WAR 39 
 
 torted, have now made them a menace to the 
 world. Only when the outcome of the war is 
 clear to them will they begin to question the 
 leadership which brought it about. 
 
 Because for a generation there has been no 
 free press in Germany, Prussianism has been able 
 to make the people see red, and until they cease 
 to see red they cannot be expected to be disloyal 
 to their Kaiser. But once the time comes, as 
 come it must, when defeat and invasion clear 
 their vision and they themselves see the falseness 
 of their gods, then will they also appreciate the 
 value of the political evolution which will entitle 
 them to their place in the society of nations. 
 
 This brings us to the consideration that at 
 the end of the war there will be no problem of 
 what to do with the Kaiser. If he is still living, 
 if neither disease nor suicide nor assassination 
 have already ended his career, nothing must be 
 done which may make of him a legendary martyr. 
 
 St. Helena is entirely obsolete. He may be 
 safely left to the people whom he has deceived. 
 To one of his temperament the knowledge of his 
 colossal failure will be far more bitter than any 
 other punishment which a civilised people could 
 inflict upon him. The inevitable loss of his 
 empire and the end of his dynasty will be the 
 heaviest burden that can be laid upon him. 
 
4 o WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 Personally, I do not expect that he will survive 
 the collapse of his country, but I believe he will 
 meet death at his own hands, if he does not suffer 
 it at the hands of one of his dupes. 
 
 What of the territory of the conquered nations ? 
 Undoubtedly it will be trimmed to suit newer 
 conditions. France will get back her ravished 
 provinces. Alsace and Lorraine will again be 
 French, and the statue of Strasbourg, in the Place 
 de la Concorde, will doff her mourning. This is 
 all the European territory that France will 
 acquire. It is merely the restoration to the 
 owner of the property stolen forty-four years ago. 
 
 But there are other stolen properties which will 
 also have to be restored. Heroic Belgium will 
 arise greater than before, and Aachen will again 
 become Aix - la - Chapelle. Even though the 
 Scandinavian countries shall be able to remain 
 neutral to the end, Denmark will probably get 
 back the Schleswig - Holstein that the great 
 European thief stole from her fifty years ago. 
 
 With this restoration will have to be coupled 
 some provision in regard to the Kiel Canal, 
 which shall make it forever neutral and no 
 longer a menace to the world. If, as seems 
 probable, something like a federation be estab- 
 lished of the three Scandinavian kingdoms, it is 
 likely that to them, under proper guarantees 
 
AT THE END OF THE WAR 41 
 
 from all the great powers, may be entrusted the 
 gates of the Baltic, both through the Cattegat 
 and through the Kiel Canal. 
 
 So much for Western Germany. In the east, 
 the old Poland will be re-erected as an autonomous 
 unit in the Russian Empire, and East Prussia, as 
 far as the mouth of the Vistula, will become a 
 part of it. This new Poland will, of course, also 
 comprise Galicia, on the south. 
 
 When we come to consider the Austro- 
 Hungarian Empire, the questions of division 
 become much more complicated and difficult. 
 This empire, old and great as it has been, will 
 cease to exist. For many years it has been 
 an 'unnatural and artificial structure, and it 
 will fall absolutely to pieces. Europe will at 
 last be free of Hapsburgs, as it will be free 
 of Hohenzollerns. 
 
 Bukowina will become Russian, Transylvania 
 will go to Roumania. The endeavour must be 
 made to draw the boundaries according to racial 
 populations, so that the units may be as homo- 
 geneous as possible. The part of Hungary which 
 is Magyar will probably be made an independent 
 nation a limited monarchy or a republic. 
 
 Bosnia and Herzegovina will, of course, be- 
 come Serbian, with possibly Slavonia, Croatia, 
 and Dalmatia. Trieste, with the Trentino, as 
 
42 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 well as Albania, will be Italian, and the Adriatic 
 will become an Italian lake, with trading rights 
 assured for the seaports of Serbia and Montenegro. 
 
 All that is Germanic of Austria should become 
 a part of the new Germany. Many districts 
 which are at present not at all German in 
 sympathies are none the less probably racially 
 sufficiently German to be safely constituted 
 into German states. For this is the destiny of 
 Germany, to be a confederation of states, prob- 
 ably republican in form of government, each free 
 and equal and relieved of Prussian domination. 
 
 As military disasters twice bred a French 
 republic, so will the downfall of Kaiserism bring 
 about a republican Germany. It may not follow 
 immediately on the heels of peace, but it is sure 
 to come as a result of the war. 
 
 A temporary government made up of duchies 
 and kingdoms may be established, but it will 
 only be to prepare the way for a Vereinigten 
 Staaten von Deutschland. Then and then only 
 will it be safe for the world to forget that the 
 Teuton is a Hun. 
 
 Turkey will cease to exist. The time has come 
 for the Sick Man of Europe to die, and his death 
 will extend to Asia also. The Ottoman Empire 
 has long been an anachronism, and now is the 
 time when " Finis " must be written. 
 
AT THE END OF THE WAR 43 
 
 The ownership of Constantinople will be the 
 hardest thing to decide. There is no question 
 but that Russia ought to have it. Can Russia 
 be trusted to have it ? I believe that this will 
 be the solution, and that the Dardanelles must 
 be in Russia's immediate charge, under guaran- 
 tees of perpetual neutrality. 
 
 The greater part of what remains of Turkey 
 in Europe will probably go to Bulgaria, including 
 Adrianople. Of Turkey in Asia a strip along 
 the Black Sea from the Caucasus should accom- 
 pany Russia's ownership of the Straits, so that 
 she shall have land access to the Bosphorus. 
 The rest of Asiatic Turkey might well be erected 
 into a Caliphate, under British protection. 
 
 Germany will be stripped of all the foreign 
 possessions which she has so signally failed to 
 administer successfully. The greater part of 
 them will go to Great Britain, not so much 
 because Great Britain needs the colonies as 
 because the colonies need Great Britain. 
 
 The Cape to Cairo railroad will be all red. 
 France may receive some additional African 
 territory, as may also Belgium, for whom nothing 
 will be too good; but Africa will become essen- 
 tially British, except along the Mediterranean. 
 
 The German islands in the Pacific will be 
 British. Kiao Chow will be in Japanese posses- 
 
44 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 sion; but if Japan is as wise as I believe her to 
 be, she will restore it to China very shortly after 
 the war. Nothing else that she could do would 
 give her such prestige or so entitle her to a place 
 among the leaders of the world. No other act 
 could so confound those who cry of the Yellow 
 Peril and see Tokio fighting San Francisco. Such 
 unselfishness would repay Japan a hundredfold 
 for what it costs her. 
 
 In the matter of money indemnities, the sums 
 which the beaten countries can pay are, of 
 course, limited. Turkey can pay nothing. She 
 is bankrupt and must go through insolvency. 
 The highest amount which can be wrung out of 
 what remains of Germany and Austria-Hungary 
 after the trimmings already mentioned will not 
 exceed ten billions of dollars, and may not be 
 more than half of this. 
 
 Not a shilling must come to Great Britain. 
 Her greatness denies that she may take money 
 pay for what she has done. 
 
 Belgium must be given all the money needed 
 to restore her so far as money can restore 
 probably one and a half billion dollars. 
 
 France must have back the ransom of which 
 Germany robbed her in 1871, with good heavy 
 interest, and also an indemnity for the destruc- 
 tion of her northern provinces. It may take 
 
AT THE END OF THE WAR 45 
 
 two and a half or three billion dollars to pay 
 the bill. 
 
 Serbia and little Montenegro will also have to 
 be paid; perhaps three-quarters of a billion for 
 the former and two hundred and fifty million 
 for the latter. 
 
 Russia should be great enough not to demand 
 money, although she could hardly be blamed if 
 she sought to be re-imbursed for part of her 
 outlay and for the destruction wrought in 
 Poland. 
 
 Japan also can show her magnanimity to the 
 world by demanding no money. 
 
 There remains the question of armaments. 
 All of the German and Austrian dreadnoughts 
 and ships of the line which have not been trans- 
 formed into " unter see booten " must go to 
 Britain. The world must trust Britain to guard 
 the routes of trade until there shall be an inter- 
 national navy to do this international job. The 
 history of the last hundred years proves that the 
 world will be safe in so trusting Britain. 
 
 The Krupp works must be destroyed, except 
 in so far as they are suited to the needs of peace. 
 Such of the border fortresses as have not been 
 destroyed must be demolished ; those of Germany 
 under compulsion; those of the victors volun- 
 tarily. The fact that they have proved of little 
 
46 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 use against modern siege artillery will make the 
 nations more ready to do this. 
 
 Finally, the boundaries established must be 
 guaranteed by every great power, each of whom 
 must be bound to prevent with force of arms, if 
 need be, any violation or forcible alteration of 
 frontiers. If every great power is bound by 
 scraps of paper, which will hereafter have more 
 weight than in the past, to protect each guaran- 
 teed frontier, even as Great Britain protected 
 Belgium, national usurpation of real estate will 
 cease. 
 
 If these things are brought about, as they can 
 be brought about, by the war, it will not have 
 been fought in vain; and Tommy Atkins, Jean 
 Francois, and Ivan Ivanovitch will deserve very 
 well of the world for which they have suffered 
 and died. It is chiefly up to Sir Edward Grey 
 to justify their deaths. 
 
 January 191 5. 
 
SOME CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 Letter to Mr. Gould 
 
 OTTAWA, January 15, 191$. 
 
 Mr. B. A. GOULD, Toronto. 
 
 Thank you for the three magazines which you 
 have sent me. I have read with considerable 
 interest the articles in which you so eloquently 
 plead for the entry of the United States into the 
 war on the side of the Allies. 
 
 It would interest me very much if you will 
 take the time to drop me a line and state just 
 how you think the United States should take 
 part, what direction the participation should 
 take, and what you assume the results would be. 
 I shall then be ready to argue the matter out 
 with you when next we meet. 
 
 I believe that in theory I go even farther than 
 you do in respect to national obligation in such 
 cases, but do not understand the facts in quite 
 the same light as you, and certainly do not see 
 the opportunity quite as clearly. 
 
 47 
 
48 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 Mr. Gould's Reply 
 
 TORONTO, January 19, 1915. 
 
 To , Ottawa. 
 
 I am glad so far as I am able to put into words 
 what I think our country ought to do. This will 
 necessarily involve a consideration of the altera- 
 tion of conditions due to the failure of the United 
 States to act heretofore, and how far it is possible, 
 in my estimation, to remedy the evil already 
 done to its prestige and its honour. 
 
 At the very outbreak of hostilities, or even 
 before, at the time when war seemed imminent, 
 I think that the State Department ought to have 
 sent an identical note to each of the powers 
 involved, calling their attention to the fact that 
 the United States was a signatory to the con- 
 ventions of the Hague Tribunal of 1907, and as 
 such signatory would expect each warring power 
 in conducting hostilities to abide strictly by the 
 rules therein set forth; and further stating that 
 the note of the United States was based not only 
 on its technical obligations as aforesaid, but 
 much more broadly and fundamentally upon its 
 position as one of the great powers, believing that 
 modern civilisation, if unable to prevent war, 
 should do all in its power to mitigate its horrors, 
 
SOME CORRESPONDENCE 49 
 
 and to spare, so far as might be, blameless non- 
 combatants from its rigours. 
 
 Such a note would have placed the United 
 States in a position wherein any authenticated 
 instance of the violation of the adopted rules of 
 warfare, or of inhumanity or barbarism, could 
 properly have been brought to its attention 
 and made the basis of an emphatic protest 
 addressed to the offending power. 
 
 It is most unlikely that such protest would 
 have remained unheeded, as no nation would 
 have been willing to incur the odium of the 
 adverse judgment of the greatest of the non- 
 combatant nations, or to run the risk of having 
 the 'immense resources of the United States in 
 money, supplies, and equipment, besides an 
 efficient navy and enormous possibilities in men, 
 enlisted actively against it. 
 
 Such a course would in all probability have 
 resulted in allowing the United States to main- 
 tain an honourable neutrality throughout the 
 war, have prevented such reversions to barbar- 
 ism as took place in many Belgian towns, and 
 in the Austrian invasion of Serbia, have pre- 
 served from destruction Louvain, Malines, and 
 the Cathedral of Rheims; have stopped the 
 baby-killing expedition to Scarborough and the 
 
 reckless strewing of floating mines in neutral 
 
 D 
 
So WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 waters; have forbidden reprisals and the levy- 
 ing of ransom on captured cities; have made 
 impossible other atrocities too numerous to 
 mention here, and in other ways have greatly 
 minimised the misery resulting from the war. 
 
 It would also have given the United States 
 a status that would have naturally made it an 
 important factor at the making of peace, and 
 would have given it enormous weight and 
 influence in securing at that time essential 
 ameliorations of international compacts, the 
 value of which to the progress of civilisation 
 cannot be overstated. 
 
 This position not having been taken by the 
 United States at the beginning of the war, I 
 believe that the moment that the government 
 became cognisant of the commission by any 
 belligerent of barbarisms or atrocities, it should 
 have investigated them, and, if substantiated, 
 should have made them the basis of a vigorous 
 protest. 
 
 Such a protest would have lacked much of the 
 force which it would have carried if a note or 
 declaration of position, as previously mentioned, 
 had been delivered, but it nevertheless would 
 undoubtedly have had great effect and would 
 have accomplished much in lightening the burden 
 of sorrow which the war has caused. 
 
SOME CORRESPONDENCE 51 
 
 It would also have made such a protest as 
 the commercial one recently made to Great 
 Britain far more suitable, and would have re- 
 lieved the United States from the accusation of 
 caring only for its pocket-book. Whether or 
 not this last protest was justified is of com- 
 paratively little importance; it is supremely 
 unfortunate that action should have been taken 
 which can make it possible for the United States 
 to appear to the world as negligent of high ideals 
 and deaf to the calls of humanity, but insis- 
 tent on the full money payment to which it is 
 entitled. 
 
 At this point I think I should call your atten- 
 tion to the fact that the position of the United 
 States should not in any way depend upon 
 whether under a technical examination the 
 obligations of the Hague Tribunal agreement 
 should be held to be in effect or not. The United 
 States signed them in the belief that they would 
 be in effect, and certainly should not seek to 
 avoid its duties thereunder on a technicality. 
 
 The need now is for a statesman, not for a 
 corporation lawyer skilled in evading legal 
 responsibility, and statesmanship should be 
 based upon the requirements of humanity and 
 civilisation, a foundation much broader than 
 the Hague conventions, which sought merely 
 
52 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 to reduce to the concrete of definite regulation 
 some of trie abstractions of international ideals. 
 
 The government of the United States having, 
 as I believe, hitherto signally failed to take the 
 action due, not only to the world, but to itself, 
 the only way to recover its prestige, and to make 
 effective the power for good inherent in the 
 nation, is to take action which will probably 
 cause it to cease to be neutral. The opportunity 
 for honourable and useful neutrality has been 
 lost. 
 
 I believe that the State Department should 
 publicly notify the governments of Great Britain, 
 France, Russia, Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro, 
 and Japan that the course of events has been 
 such as to convince the United States that its 
 own safety and the survival in the world of the 
 principles of democracy, upon which the nation 
 has been founded, and which is its most sacred 
 heritage, require that the result of the war should 
 be a defeat of Germany, Austria, and Turkey; 
 that the admitted breach of national guaranty 
 shown by the invasion of Belgium makes it of 
 vital import to all nations who themselves 
 believe in maintaining the sanctity of such 
 guaranties, that this breach bring punishment 
 and the re-establishment of the obligation of 
 such guaranties; that the militaristic system 
 
SOME CORRESPONDENCE 53 
 
 commonly known as Prussianism has shown 
 itself to be a menace to the world and can no 
 longer be tolerated; that the safety of small and 
 unoffending nations must be assured; that at 
 the end of the war international agreements 
 should be made looking to a large decrease in 
 armaments; and that in order to promote the 
 accomplishment of these ends which it thinks 
 so important, the United States is prepared to 
 lend the allied belligerents its moral and financial 
 support, and to agree so far as possible to prevent 
 any of its citizens from aiding the German 
 alliance. 
 
 Such a communication would under ordinary 
 circumstances at once call forth a declaration 
 of war from Germany, and probably even under 
 the conditions of approaching exhaustion there 
 prevalent, would lead to such a declaration. 
 It would then be for the United States to decide 
 whether it would actively proceed to create 
 forces suitable for use on the European terrain, or 
 whether, like Japan since the fall of Tsing Tau, 
 it would content itself with passive belligerency. 
 
 In either case it would have re-established its 
 prestige and put itself into a position where, 
 at the end of the war, it could exercise an enor- 
 mous influence in making conditions of inter- 
 national agreement which would be of supreme 
 
54 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 effect in advancing civilisation and promoting 
 the safety and happiness of mankind. 
 
 The one valid argument against such action 
 by the United States seems to me to be the fear 
 that such a course might to a great extent 
 destroy its ability to mitigate the suffering in 
 Belgium. But this drawback is insignificant 
 in comparison to the good which can be accom- 
 plished for the world and for future generations. 
 American charity in Belgium maybe administered 
 by Dutch hands. 
 
 Many people fear that any such action on the 
 part of the United States would be followed by 
 revolt and sedition among those of German birth 
 within its borders. I do not believe it; but 
 even if it were so, I believe that such revolt 
 could be put down with far less harm to the 
 nation than is coming from an attitude incon- 
 sistent with the ideals and the history of our 
 past, and the doctrines of democracy upon 
 which our country has been founded. 
 
 We are too intelligent a people to fail to recog- 
 nise that this war is essentially a conflict to 
 decide whether democracy or autocracy shall 
 prevail in the world, and we have a paramount 
 duty to ourselves, to our conception of freedom, 
 to the world of which we form a part, to do the 
 utmost in our power to promote for the great 
 
SOME CORRESPONDENCE 55 
 
 mass of humankind the principles in which we 
 believe. 
 
 We know that a victory by Germany and the 
 success in Europe of the Philosophy of Force 
 would necessarily mean war at no distant time 
 between Germany and America, and that this 
 war would be much harder for us to conduct 
 successfully at a time when Germany had beaten 
 down the other opposition to her and could 
 devote all her strength to crushing America. 
 
 There is no use in blinding ourselves to the 
 fact that the Allies are fighting the battle of 
 America just as much fundamentally as they 
 are fighting their own, and the dignity and 
 generosity of the American people make it 
 unfitting in the highest degree that we should 
 be guilty of the selfishness of doing nothing to 
 assist those who are in reality fighting for us 
 and all that we hold holy. 
 
 If we do our part in bearing the burden which 
 German militarism has imposed upon the world, 
 we may be instrumental in bringing about the 
 enormous advance in world conditions which 
 must be made to result from this war. Then 
 truly at every place and at every time may each 
 of us be proud to say: " Civis Americanus sum." 
 
 BENJAMIN A. GOULD. 
 
WHAT THE WAR MEANS TO RUSSIA 
 
 RUSSIA, dark and terrible, eager and striving, 
 poetic and fanciful, degraded and sordid, Russia, 
 the land of contrasts and contradictions, of 
 wonderful possibilities, of awful failures, of the 
 knout and the fervour of aspiration, of black 
 bread and music, quick with the longing for 
 freedom, heavy with the burden of tyranny 
 what will the war do to Russia ? 
 
 Is it not an awful thing, say many people, 
 that England and France, who represent the 
 farthest advance in European civilisation, should 
 be fighting alongside of Russia the medieval? 
 I say no, it is not awful; it is splendid, it is 
 glorious, it is inspiring. In the spirit that makes 
 this alliance possible lies the hope of the world. 
 It typifies the future of mankind. It is a beacon- 
 light for generations still unborn. It is the 
 justification of humanity. 
 
 King Edward the Seventh was worth a century 
 to the world, the world that he saved. His few 
 years of reign, during which nothing of moment 
 happened, were none the less salvation. If he, 
 not only the First Gentleman, but also the First 
 
 57 
 
58 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 Diplomat of Europe, had not had the vision to 
 create the Triple Entente, nothing could have 
 prevented Germany from imposing her will upon 
 all of Europe. 
 
 Once the doctrine of physical superiority had 
 made Europe a vassal to Berlin, America would 
 have had but short shrift. There is no question 
 but what ultimately the principles of democracy 
 would have come forth triumphant, even if 
 this calamity had overtaken mankind, but the 
 victory of democracy would have had to be 
 accomplished by the tedious processes of evolu- 
 tion within a world dominated by absolutism. 
 
 Revolution would have had to be engendered 
 and ripened before it could hope to overcome 
 the inertia of the conditions existing. The 
 change would have had to come from within, 
 and in spite of an autocracy doing all in its 
 power to stifle it. 
 
 In other words, the whole world would have 
 been in the position in which Russia now is, 
 except that it would not have had the assistance 
 and inspiration from without which is now coming 
 to Russia, and would have lacked the pressure 
 from without which is now so markedly influenc- 
 ing the Government of Russia. 
 
 It is conservative to say that it would have 
 taken the world a hundred years to reach the 
 
WHAT IT MEANS TO RUSSIA 59 
 
 point at which the end of this war will find it, 
 and this saving of a hundred years in its history 
 the world owes to Edward the Seventh. 
 
 Example is of the same effect with nations as 
 with men. The example of a successful demo- 
 cracy in America was the incentive to the success 
 of democracy in Europe. 
 
 The downfall and ruin which is coming to 
 absolutism in Germany will be an example to 
 other autocracies which will make them mend 
 their ways. 
 
 The Romanoffs have never been fools, and 
 they will mark the exit of Hapsburgs and Hoheri- 
 zollerns from the European stage with an under- 
 standing eye. The success of the French and 
 British democracies will teach a lesson to all 
 who are not involved in the German crash. 
 And since in addition to example there is associa- 
 tion with victorious democracy, the influence 
 on Russia will be enormous. 
 
 This generality can be fairly deduced from 
 history and its truth emphasised by this war, 
 that the world can afford to trust democracies 
 but cannot afford to trust autocracies. People 
 in the mass are not subject to the same influences 
 which succeed in corrupting the individual. 
 
 This is the first time that Russia has ever 
 been in decent company. The cave man has 
 
60 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 been asked out to dinner, and is looking for his 
 evening clothes. His manners and his morals 
 will both be permanently benefited by his 
 association. He is going to take excellent care 
 that his behaviour is such that he will be asked 
 again. 
 
 The influence of London and Paris on Petro- 
 grad is going to be of supreme importance. 
 Russia realises that her association with France 
 and Britain places her in a position in the world 
 which she has never before held. 
 
 She is of all the nations the most self-contained, 
 and hitherto has been content to go strictly her 
 own way and work out her own salvation. Her 
 contact with other nations has been altogether 
 along her own frontiers, and her lust of conquest 
 has been purely for contiguous expansion of her 
 already enormous bulk. 
 
 She has taken less part than any other great 
 power in international politics, asking only to be 
 let alone. The time for this isolation has come 
 to an end, and Russia recognises this fact. She 
 must henceforth take her place among the nations 
 as a member of their society, and must lay aside 
 the role of a recluse. 
 
 It is, therefore, of great moment that in making 
 her national friendships she should associate 
 herself with those who are leading progress 
 
WHAT IT MEANS TO RUSSIA 61 
 
 rather than with those who hinder it, and her 
 fortune in her allies is of happy augury not only 
 for herself but for the world. 
 
 A Russia not supremely influenced by the 
 restraint of France and Britain and victorious 
 under her old regime, might prove almost as 
 great a menace to the world as Germany has 
 been. But her victories will not have been 
 gained by German methods or by her old methods, 
 but by the granting of a nearer approach to 
 democracy within her own borders, and the 
 adoption in her foreign policies of French and 
 British guidance. 
 
 Russia was overwhelmingly defeated by Japan 
 in a war wherein the mass of her people could 
 hope for an amelioration of their lot only if 
 Russia lost. That war was not a war of the 
 people, but a war of the existing Grand Ducal 
 Cabal. Had it been successful it would have 
 served merely to confirm the system of absolu- 
 tism prevailing. The cause of democracy needed 
 Russia's defeat in 1904 just as it needs her 
 success in 1915. 
 
 Out of her Japanese defeat came the reorganis- 
 ation which made possible the Russia of to-day. 
 That defeat spelled clearly the lesson that official 
 corruption and a sneering disregard of the needs 
 of the mass of the people means ruin. It 
 
62 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 emphasised the fact that the strength of a nation 
 lies in the strength of her people, not in the 
 strength of her rulers. 
 
 Strong and wise rulers may make effective 
 the strength of the people, as weak and foolish 
 ones may nullify it, but without this strength 
 behind the government, government is powerless. 
 The war that Russia is now fighting is a war of 
 her people, not of her rulers, and we see the 
 apparent anomaly of a democratic war being 
 waged by autocratic Russia. 
 
 The powers that be in Russia know that this 
 is a democratic war, and they have with extra- 
 ordinary courage made a complete volte-face, 
 and are carrying it on as a democratic war. The 
 leaven that began its fermentation in 1904 is 
 leavening the lump. 
 
 In view of the long tradition of Russian 
 absolutism, it is wonderful that Petrograd should 
 show both the discernment and conviction 
 necessary to carry out the present reforms, and 
 to make this struggle one of the people and for 
 the people. 
 
 We cannot, of course, tell how far this dis- 
 cernment and conviction has been instigated 
 by Grey and the foreign influence, but no matter 
 whence comes the impulse for the change, the 
 full credit for it must be given to the dynasty. 
 
WHAT IT MEANS TO RUSSIA 63 
 
 The world is beginning to revise its earlier 
 judgment of the Tsar, and to-day is attributing 
 to Nicholas and his advisers qualities and vision 
 far in advance of what it ascribed to him five 
 years or even one year ago. Great events and 
 great needs often produce great men and great 
 wisdom. Out of the life-throes of America rose 
 Lincoln; out of the life-struggle of Europe are 
 rising Nicholas the Tsar and Nicholas the Grand 
 Duke. 
 
 The cause of democracy required that the 
 bureaucratic war of 1904 should be lost by 
 Russia, and through its loss democracy gained 
 the first indications of a real parliament, as shown 
 by the Douma, the first symptoms of an eco- 
 nomic freedom, as evinced by the admitted 
 efficacy of organised and concerted industrial 
 strikes, and the first flickering light of religious 
 toleration. 
 
 Democracy now requires that the present war 
 should be won, because it is democratic in its 
 nature, and the success of Russian arms will 
 gain for the Russian people an improvement in 
 conditions which will for the first time permit 
 the development of which they are capable. 
 
 The writing has appeared on the wall, and the 
 rulers have had the wit to understand it and 
 the faith to act upon it. Mene, mene, tekel, 
 
64 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 upharsin has not been wasted upon them, and 
 great will be their reward. 
 
 The Russian Empire, like the British Empire, 
 is being unified by this war, but whereas the 
 unification of the British Empire has been 
 lateral, has been the bringing into closer com- 
 munion of many widely separated parts, the 
 unification of Russia has been vertical, the 
 bringing together of different and hitherto 
 antagonistic strata of its society. 
 
 The Little Father is to-day closer to the 
 Moujik than ever before. Nihilism, socialism, 
 industrialism, sabotage are being merged in 
 Russianism, and when, after the war, they again 
 break forth, it will be with a much diminished 
 virulence. The blood which is being drained 
 into the watersheds of the Vistula is cementing 
 Russia into a national entity deserving of the 
 loyalty which its previous history forbade. 
 
 The Government of Russia is recognising these 
 altered conditions with a splendid courage and 
 a clairvoyant insight. It is taking no half 
 measures. It appreciates as never before that 
 it must look to the welfare of its people, and in 
 the crisis it is showing an unselfishness entirely 
 unparalleled in the annals of autocracy. 
 
 When before, for example, has such a govern- 
 ment, at a time when revenue was needed 
 
WHAT IT MEANS TO RUSSIA 65 
 
 urgently and insistently, voluntarily given up 
 an assured profit of many hundreds of millions 
 of roubles annually? Yet this is what Russia 
 is doing to-day in cancelling its vodka monopoly 
 and forbidding at an hour's notice all alcohol 
 to nearly two hundred millions of people. 
 
 Those who have done this, who have forbidden 
 it not only to the moujiks but to themselves as 
 well, are the drunken Grand Dukes, the aristo- 
 cracy hitherto the most debauched and dissipated 
 of Europe. There is no question but what the 
 sacrifice will be repaid unto Russia a hundredfold, 
 but who would hav.e dared to expect it from the 
 quarters whence it came ? It is one of the mar- 
 vels of this marvellous war, and shows the un- 
 suspected instruments which democracy adapts 
 to its purposes. 
 
 The influence of the company which Russia 
 is keeping is shown in the ukase in regard to 
 Poland. The promise is made that Poland shall 
 again become a self-governed unit, although still 
 remaining a part of the Russian Empire. This 
 is a clearly British conception, a Canada, an 
 Australia. No other empire has ever done it, 
 but it has been proved that it works. 
 
 British influence will make it impossible that 
 this promise shall not be carried out at the end of 
 the war, and the Polish pride which has hitherto 
 
66 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 threatened the Russian Empire will become one 
 of its firmest supports. 
 
 With self-government in Poland, self-govern- 
 ment in Finland will necessarily come, and the 
 fears of Sweden will be forever allayed. It is 
 a true statesmanship that can turn a danger into 
 a protection and a succour, even as in modern 
 therapy the disease itself furnishes the immunis- 
 ing serum. It is a clear demonstration that 
 democratic understanding can come even to a 
 proverbial autocracy. 
 
 There is also evidence that the other great 
 blot upon Russia's escutcheon will be cleansed 
 by this war, and that the persecution of the Jews 
 will cease. The government, instead of foster- 
 ing, will subdue the anti-Jewish riots, and with- 
 out government instigation and toleration the 
 fire of such demonstrations will at first merely 
 smoulder and will finally be extinguished. Pre- 
 judice will, of course, continue for much longer, 
 but even it will gradually lessen with the cessa- 
 tion of political disability. It means the libera- 
 tion of a race within a nation. 
 
 Russia must find other revenue to make up 
 for what she has given up from the vodka 
 monopoly. In order to afford this greater 
 revenue there must be increased economic 
 prosperity to support added taxation. That 
 
WHAT IT MEANS TO RUSSIA 67 
 
 this prosperity will come is certain. The greater 
 efficiency of a populace free from the curse of 
 vodka can pay the vodka profits twice over, and 
 still have a huge profit for itself. The increase 
 of unity in the nation will also have a definite 
 effect in improving its industrial capacity. The 
 certainty that hereafter Russian trade can pass 
 freely from the Euxine to the Mediterranean will 
 stimulate it greatly. 
 
 Russian finance need worry only about the 
 immediate present; later Russia can count on a 
 revenue far greater than she was receiving before 
 she surrendered the perquisites from her vodka. 
 
 Therefore, I say that it is a glorious and 
 inspiring thing that Russia should be fighting 
 at the side of Britain and of France. She is 
 being born again, her trammelled soul is being 
 freed, and in the aid and the example of her 
 allies she finds her hope of liberty. 
 
 Not only for themselves has their democracy 
 justified itself, but it has proved itself the hope 
 of others struggling through a great darkness 
 towards the light. It is proof of the brotherhood 
 which is the crown of true democracy, and France 
 and Britain are honoured in the fact that it is 
 to them that Russia looks for help in this time 
 of her great awakening. 
 
 January 1915. 
 
THE BIG WORLD AND THE LITTLE 
 NATIONS 
 
 IN a truly civilised world, bulk should no more 
 be needful to the safety of a nation than to the 
 safety of a man. In early times, a man had to 
 depend on his strength and his fleetness to save 
 him from physical disaster. The rule of the 
 strong prevailed, and the hard doctrine of the 
 survival of the fittest demanded bone and 
 muscle in plenty. 
 
 To-day in civilised lands the five-footer is as 
 safe as he who tops six feet unless he unwisely 
 seeks to engage in bar-room brawls or com- 
 mingle with thugs. The things that, owing to 
 his size, the big man only can accomplish are 
 not those which are worth the most. Brawn 
 alone is worth only a very few dollars a day; 
 there is no limit to the value of brains. 
 
 This war is going far to assure to the little 
 nations their safety, and in this regard to 
 civilise the world. The little nation that be- 
 haves itself as it should will have little to fear, 
 and the rules which will be established for the 
 conduct of little nations will make them much 
 
 69 
 
70 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 less likely to offend than in the past. Example, 
 counsel, protection, and the great influence of 
 unified international opinion will all make 
 towards increasing wisdom and restraint. 
 
 The British Empire is really not much more 
 than a coalition of little nations under the 
 protection and guidance of a collective Empire 
 which guarantees them freedom and safety. 
 Canada is a little nation. Australia and New 
 Zealand are little nations. Each is free, each 
 is safe, because each has behind its freedom 
 and its safety the Empire of which it is a part. 
 
 After this war has brought about new standards 
 of national obligation, the other little nations 
 will be free and safe because their freedom and 
 their safety will be guaranteed by the world 
 of which they are a part. No big bully nation 
 will ever again dare to attempt to walk over 
 the well-behaved little nation as Germany has 
 trampled upon Belgium. 
 
 The freedom of little nations within an empire 
 has worked well and justified itself; the freedom 
 of little nations within a world has worked well 
 and justified itself; it is only a step to have 
 the world guarantee the latter as the Empire 
 guarantees the former. 
 
 No great nation is injured by the progress 
 and prosperity of a little one. The old idea that 
 
THE BIG WORLD 71 
 
 there could be only so much wealth, and that 
 the more A has the less there is left for B, is 
 entirely exploded. We now know that the more 
 wealth A produces the better not only for A but 
 for B as well, who must profit by A's prosperity. 
 Modern transportation and commercial inter- 
 change deny absolutely the old idea of national 
 selfishness. 
 
 Great Britain knows this, and for many years 
 has consistently practised this selfish altruism 
 of endeavouring herself to prosper in the pros- 
 perity of others. As an example, Norway has 
 prospered, and has built up a commerce that per 
 capita is considerably greater than the commerce 
 of Great Britain herself. This has been made 
 possible by the safety of the sea routes which 
 Great Britain has maintained and has paid 
 for. 
 
 Yet Great Britain does not grudge Norway 
 her commerce, but like every nation that has 
 to do with Norway has benefited by it. English 
 tonnage and German tonnage competed, but 
 until Germany put herself outside the pale of 
 nations her ships were protected by the British 
 fleet. Both countries profited by the added 
 world wealth arising from the building of the 
 German merchant ships. No nation except 
 Germany herself is to-day suffering as much as 
 
72 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 Great Britain from the lack of merchant tonnage 
 due to the necessity of forbidding the sea to 
 German vessels. 
 
 In peace, the prosperity of one nation makes 
 in a lesser degree for the prosperity of all. In 
 exactly the same way in this war, in order to 
 inflict a greater injury upon Germany, it has 
 been necessary for Great Britain to inflict a lesser 
 injury upon herself, and deprive herself of the 
 German shipping, the carrying power of which 
 she so urgently needs. 
 
 The same thing will be true when the hugely 
 populous nations of Asia produce in proportion 
 to the resources of the land and the number of 
 the people. Europe will benefit from the added 
 trade far more than she will suffer from the 
 added competition. 
 
 The yellow peril is a fiction more airy than a 
 summer cloud. There will always be work for 
 every pair of hands to do in the world. The 
 hardships which come from unemployment do 
 not come from lack of work or from overplus of 
 labourers, but only from a breakdown of the 
 insufficiently organised systems of bringing the 
 two together and financing them. 
 
 Some of the little nations have been an inspira- 
 tion to the world. Switzerland has a people as 
 rugged as her own mountains and a history as 
 
THE BIG WORLD 73 
 
 noble as her own scenery. Belgium to-day has 
 written her name in letters of gold across the 
 scroll of time, and has made for herself a glory 
 and a fame that shall endure so long as the deeds 
 of men are chronicled. 
 
 Better for Germany, with all her science and 
 all she has accomplished, that she were sunk to 
 the bottom of the sea, because unborn genera- 
 tions and future cycles of mankind will see in 
 her the black and guilty cause of Belgium's noble 
 sacrifice. Better for the Kaiser that he had 
 never been, because of the infamy which shall 
 forever cling to his name for what he has done 
 to Belgium. 
 
 And even as Belgium shall be exalted in the 
 hearts of men, and shall serve to inspire and 
 ennoble those who come hereafter, so shall the 
 very name of the Germany of William the 
 Second be loathed and abhorred. Liege shall 
 rank with Thermopylae and Albert with William 
 Tell, while the name of Hohenzollern shall be 
 cursed with that of Attila and Borgia. 
 
 Other little nations have shown and are 
 showing flashes of nobility. See the splendid 
 bravery of Serbia, clouded as is her good name 
 with plot, intrigue, and murder. She shows that 
 the substance is there that can be wrought into 
 free and noble people. Greece herself may again 
 
74 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 be worthy of her past, and a new Acropolis be 
 the crown of a new Athens. 
 
 The little mercenary nations, seeking ever 
 payment in lands and moneys, the Bulgarias 
 and the Roumanias, may themselves become the 
 mothers of lofty tradition, as is Montenegro. 
 Such huge emotions, such overwhelming experi- 
 ences as the world to-day knows may engender 
 unsuspected noblenesses. 
 
 Other little nations will be born of this war, 
 and must be guarded and guided until they, 
 too, have justified themselves. A new Hungary, 
 free and proud in her race and the history of her 
 sons, will take her place among her equals. 
 Out of the reek and stench of the Ottoman 
 Empire will arise new nations, an Armenia at 
 liberty to worship the God of her choice, a Syria 
 through whose lighted paths the feet of pilgrims 
 may in safety pass to the waters of the Sea of 
 Galilee, to the Temple of Jerusalem, and to 
 Mecca. 
 
 These little nations, the new and the old, those 
 who have already proved themselves and those 
 who under the happier auspices of the future 
 shall have ample opportunity to prove themselves, 
 must all be guaranteed and protected in their 
 rights by the new big world. 
 
 Hereafter they need not look for help only to 
 
THE BIG WORLD 75 
 
 the particular power within whose sphere of 
 influence they may happen to be, but may rest 
 sure that it is the part of the world as a whole 
 to see that they are not wronged. And even as 
 they will be protected against others, others will 
 be protected against them. Frontiers, as estab- 
 lished after this war, must be inviolable and 
 alterable only voluntarily. 
 
 After this war there can and must come a 
 world peace guaranteed by every great power 
 and agreed to by every little one. The cloud 
 that has hung over the Balkans must be forever 
 dispelled. No sneering Germany may ever again 
 make a mock of littleness or tear her international 
 scraps of paper to shreds. What will be prac- 
 tically a Constitution of the World must be 
 drawn up. Thus only may the devastated cities 
 and the rows of nameless graves be justified. 
 
 February 1915. 
 
PEACE MUST MEAN PEACE 
 
 THE world cannot afford to have peace before 
 conditions are ripe to make peace permanent. 
 To-day the greatest enemies of mankind are 
 those who seek an immediate peace. 
 
 I do not believe that there exists any one who 
 more deeply desires peace than I, but I trust 
 that it will not come until the toll which the 
 world has paid and is paying has justified itself 
 in the outcome. No intelligent person can 
 think that a peace brought about now would 
 or could be permanent. 
 
 It would merely serve to make what has 
 already happened futile. We cannot afford 
 to have the lives which have been lost wasted, 
 but they must serve to rebuild a better world 
 than the one for which they were sacrificed. 
 Then truly it may be said that these countless 
 brave and splendid men have not died in vain. 
 
 Some writers, from whom greater insight 
 might have been expected, have dared to wish 
 that the outcome of the war might be what they 
 call a stalemate, that neither side should gain 
 
 77 
 
78 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 a decisive victory. They do not realise that 
 this would mean that the whole thing would 
 have to be done over again, and the opportunity 
 to advance the world a hundred years in a 
 twelvemonth would have been lost. 
 
 This advance in civilisation will no doubt have 
 cost largely in suffering, misery, and all that is 
 the base and ignoble accompaniment of war, 
 but the major part of this cost has already been 
 paid, and the world cannot permit that this 
 payment shall accomplish nothing. 
 
 I earnestly believe that it would be better 
 for the world to have Germany and all the 
 abominations which she stands for in this war 
 supremely victorious than to have the outcome 
 nugatory. In such an event the thought that 
 this war has evoked and its lessons of the neces- 
 sity for democratic advance would be such that 
 world-revolution would be inevitable, and the 
 destruction of absolutism would come from 
 within at a cost in human unhappiness probably 
 far less than in the new struggle between the 
 present systems which a failure of decision would 
 make certain. 
 
 It cannot be denied that a system which makes 
 a war like the present one possible can no longer 
 be tolerated. The twentieth century might as 
 well be the dark ages if such a thing as is now 
 
PEACE MUST MEAN PEACE 79 
 
 going on could ever happen again. A catastrophe 
 as horrible as this must carry in its very horrors 
 the lesson of how a repetition of it may be 
 avoided for all future time, else optimism is 
 dead, progress a lie, and evolution a fraud and a 
 snare. It is an insult to human intelligence to 
 say that no remedy can be found for such wars 
 between such nations. 
 
 I assert boldly that the remedy has been found 
 and the greater part of the civilised world is 
 already free from the danger of great war 
 except with the other part. The remedy is 
 democracy, and the safety of the democratic 
 part of the world demands that the other part 
 must be made immune to the war-fever. 
 
 Even as a community must protect its en- 
 lightened members by enforcing on the ignorant 
 and the stupid regulations which shall prevent 
 epidemic, so must the world take steps which 
 shall make it impossible for autocratic selfishness 
 or ambition to endanger the whole structure of 
 civilisation. The burden of militarism and all 
 the countless evils which follow in its train 
 is inherent in absolutism, and is adopted by 
 democracies only as a defence against autocratic 
 aggression. France has been compelled to con- 
 scription, but unquestionably against her will, 
 by the active fear of imperial and militaristic 
 
80 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 Germany at her borders. It will be a glad day 
 for France when this incubus of fear, only too 
 well founded as the event has proved, is forever 
 lifted from her shoulders. 
 
 This optimism for the future does not mean 
 that after this conflict all war forever will cease, 
 but it does mean that war between the great 
 powers who have attained the highest achieve- 
 ments of civilisation will be at an end. The 
 small and backward nations will undoubtedly 
 require compulsion as heretofore, and military 
 forces sufficient to compel them will be necessary. 
 
 These forces will be on a very different scale 
 from those which for a generation have made of 
 Europe an armed camp, and their duties will be 
 essentially those of an international police. No 
 community, however advanced, is free from 
 sporadic instances of criminality, and every 
 community requires a police force sufficient to 
 cope with it. The progress of a community is 
 quite accurately measured by the proportion of 
 its population required for this policing, which in 
 a country like the United States is only a fraction 
 of what was needed a few centuries ago, even 
 though life and liberty are incomparably more 
 secure. In like manner, as the constituent 
 nations of the world advance in democratic 
 understanding the percentage of the population 
 
PEACE MUST MEAN PEACE 81 
 
 of the world needed for its armies will rapidly 
 decrease. 
 
 The test of democracy lies not in the nominal 
 form of a government but in the spirit that 
 underlies it. Thus Mexico under Diaz was 
 nominally a republic, but actually an auto- 
 cratic dictatorship, and that unhappy land is 
 to-day reaping the bitter harvest sowed by that 
 absolutism. 
 
 On the other hand, monarchical Britain is 
 truly a democracy, and becoming more and more 
 so with each succeeding year. Names matter 
 nothing. The same terminology is used for the 
 Empire of the Guelphs as for the Empire of the 
 Hohenzollerns, but the things themselves are 
 as far apart as daylight and darkness. 
 
 Democracy means education, and in this lies 
 its hope and its worth, but education does not 
 always mean democracy. There may be a 
 narrow and intensive education adapted only 
 to effect a specialised value of the individual 
 and not incompatible with the worst features of 
 paternalism. 
 
 This is better illustrated by Germany than by 
 any other example. To deny German education 
 would be to limit the word to a very constricted 
 definition, although I am by no means sure that 
 it ought not to be so delimited. True education 
 
82 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 has a breadth of understanding which means 
 wisdom and is essentially democratic; a narrow 
 education may mean only knowledge and be the 
 best foundation on which to erect absolutism. 
 
 Verboten is the watchword of Germany, but 
 verboten by whom ? If the edict is the result of 
 the collective wisdom of a thinking people, it 
 means freedom ; if it is an expression of the will 
 of an oligarchy, no matter how intelligent, it may 
 mean only the efficiency of trained and specialised 
 units, an efficiency which may in its very excel- 
 lence be supremely dangerous. A democratic 
 efficiency is almost the summum bonunt of 
 humanity; an autocratic efficiency may be the 
 curse of the world. 
 
 Even after a democratic government has been 
 established, considerable time may be required 
 to bring the true fruits of democracy in the broad 
 education and understanding which alone assures 
 continuance of democracy. This time will vary- 
 according to the capacity of the people, and we 
 shall doubtless see in Germany a much quicker 
 attainment of real democracy than in many less 
 intelligent lands where opportunity has been 
 greater. This direct democratisation of Germany 
 and Austria and the tremendous impulse toward 
 underlying democratic principles in Russia will 
 be the gain of the world from the war. 
 
PEACE MUST MEAN PEACE 83 
 
 Nothing is more difficult to arrive at than a 
 comparative estimate of world-values, and it is 
 hard to say that the world-advance will be worth 
 the world-sacrifice of the war. It is clear, how- 
 ever, that the war and its consequent misery 
 having occurred, the world must so far as may 
 be get value for what it has paid, and cannot 
 afford to have the huge expenditure wasted. 
 
 Peace and its blessings require that the con- 
 ditions which have brought war must cease, and 
 peace cannot be accepted by any intelligent 
 lover of peace until autocratic militarism is 
 destroyed. No half-measures will serve. It was 
 an unspeakable crime to bring on this war; it 
 would be a crime even greater to stop it now 
 before it has purged the world of the system 
 which caused it. 
 
 If it be true as has been stated that any influ- 
 ences are endeavouring to bring about peace at 
 this time without an acknowledged defeat of 
 what Germany stands for, they are attempting 
 a most evil thing. Fortunately, there is no danger 
 of their success, as the capable hands of Sir 
 Edward Grey have the matter well under control. 
 
 The pacifists and the peace societies will find 
 in the final outcome of this war their aspirations 
 nearer to becoming facts than any one a year 
 ago would have dared to prophesy. The Hague 
 
84 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 Tribunal will stand forth doubly important, its 
 greatest injury having come from the house of 
 those who claim to be its friends in the failure of 
 the United States to regard it as more than a 
 midsummer night's dream. 
 
 It is the fashion now to laugh at Norman 
 Angell, yet nine-tenths of his conclusions are 
 true and by this war are proved to be true. It 
 is clear that even if Germany should win, her 
 victory will be Dead Sea fruit in her mouth. 
 
 Those who believe in the future of the world 
 and love their fellow-men cannot allow this war 
 to be stopped before it has run its allotted course. 
 The surgeon's knife has been laid to the cancer 
 of the world, and the operation must now be 
 carried through and the cancer eradicated. The 
 menace of organised forces of millions of men, 
 trained and equipped for aggression and foreign 
 conquest, must no longer exist in the world. 
 
 February 1915. 
 
AMERICANS IN CANADA 
 
 ARE we Americans who live in Canada doing our 
 full duty ? Have we not a moral obligation which 
 we are not entirely performing ? 
 
 It is impossible to imagine any American who 
 lives in Canada being a partisan of Germany. We 
 are too close to things. We understand the 
 Canadian people too well; we see too clearly 
 what they are fighting for; we know from our 
 own experiences too unquestionably that many 
 of the German accusations against Great Britain 
 are lies. 
 
 We live in a country as free as our own; we 
 are under laws made by the people and for the 
 people; we have found here a people like our 
 own in language and education, in religion and 
 aspirations, in all that goes to give character to 
 a nation. We have practical experience of the 
 fact that the " colonies " of Great Britain are 
 not " subjugated," but that they enjoy a system 
 of democratic government that differs in no 
 fundamental essential from our own. 
 
 We have found that the pursuit of happiness 
 can be carried on by us in exactly the same way, 
 
 85 
 
86 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 and under the same conditions, whether we are 
 living North or South of the political boundary 
 which runs across the continent. We realise that 
 we are not living under a tyranny or a despotism 
 when the flag which floats over our heads is the 
 Union Jack instead of the Stars and Stripes under 
 which we were born and which we love. 
 
 I hold no brief for England. I know well that 
 much of her history in the more distant past has 
 been entirely inconsistent with the ideals of an 
 American. But I also know that the England of 
 to-day is not the England against which we 
 fought in 1776. 
 
 I know that much of her territory was acquired 
 by methods of aggrandisement which differ in 
 no essential from those which Germany is to-day 
 endeavouring to utilise. But I also know that the 
 English world is to-day democratic and sane, as 
 the United States is democratic and sane. 
 
 The British imperialism against which the 
 American Colonies revolted is to-day a name, 
 not a fact, and is no more like Napoleonic im- 
 perialism or Russian imperialism or German 
 imperialism than is the democracy of our own 
 republic. 
 
 The pioneer in modern democracy was of 
 course the United States, but during the last 
 fifty years the British Empire has made a success- 
 
AMERICANS IN CANADA 87 
 
 ful test of inherent democracy which has been 
 even wider and more convincing than our own 
 in that it has been applied to peoples more varied 
 in race and character, and living under con- 
 ditions of surroundings, climates, and influences 
 more widely differing. 
 
 Perhaps a little personal testimony may be 
 permitted. It has been my good fortune to travel 
 widely, and I am familiar with most of the coun- 
 tries of Europe and Asia, as well as North and 
 South America. I have also the advantage of 
 speaking, more or less incorrectly, German, 
 French, Spanish, and Italian, as well as of having 
 picked up enough Japanese and Hindustani to 
 get along with. 
 
 Whenever, during the last twenty-five years, 
 I have come to a British port, I have had a feeling 
 of being at home, of safety, and sanity, and 
 civilisation, which cannot be explained by the 
 mere accident of language. In Hong Kong or 
 Calcutta, in Vancouver or London, I have found 
 the same underlying spirit of freedom, of self- 
 reliance and self-respect which we have been 
 wont to associate with our own country. 
 
 Democracy is a system of thought even more 
 than a system of government, and everywhere 
 under the British flag, as far as my experience 
 goes, the people are thinking democratically. 
 
88 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 I am emphasising these facts to show that 
 whatever anti-British feeling exists in the United 
 States is not justified by what Great Britain is 
 to-day. Present conditions count, not those that 
 prevailed a hundred years ago. The old pastime 
 of twisting the lion's tail has to a great extent 
 gone out of fashion, but there is still left enough 
 of the desire to do so to make it our duty, so far 
 as we can, to counteract it. 
 
 This old anti-British feeling in the United 
 States is in a way quite natural. Aside from our 
 civil war, the only important wars we have waged 
 have been against England, and our heroes have 
 been those who fought " the hated Red-coats." 
 Our school histories have done much to continue 
 this hostile sentiment, and have led to the general 
 idea that Great Britain was our natural foe. 
 
 The earlier British policy of hogging every- 
 thing on which she could lay her hands has 
 caused in us a hazy impression that this national 
 selfishness is still continuing. In addition to 
 this, there has been an immigration of Irish, 
 violently opposed to Great Britain, who have 
 had a political influence far greater than their 
 numbers warranted, and this, too, has tended 
 unduly to colour opinion. 
 
 We Americans who live in Canada know well 
 that however justifiable these sentiments may 
 
AMERICANS IN CANADA 89 
 
 have been a couple of generations ago, they are no 
 longer justifiable. We know that not only is the 
 British Empire not decadent, but that on the 
 contrary it has advanced in the last fifty years 
 to an appreciation of democracy which closely 
 parallels our own. 
 
 We are convinced from history and experience 
 that a true democracy is the one safeguard of the 
 world, and that this true democracy is found to a 
 greater extent under the flags of the two great 
 English-speaking nations than elsewhere in the 
 world. 
 
 With these convictions, is it not the duty of 
 every one of us to give to our friends in the 
 United States the result of our experiences of 
 living in Canada ? We cannot too often impress 
 upon them that to-day the British people have 
 the same ideals and the same conception of 
 freedom as we ourselves. 
 
 The things they are fighting for are the same 
 things which we hold most sacred. In carrying 
 on war they are governed by the same underlying 
 principles of honour and fair play in which we 
 believe. Their ways are our ways, and their 
 standards are our standards, just as their lan- 
 guage is the same as our language. They do not 
 spell Culture with a K any more than we. 
 
 There is no question but what Germany is 
 
90 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 carrying on in the United States an active pro- 
 paganda seeking to turn American sympathies to 
 the German side; and there is little doubt but 
 what this is being financed direct from Berlin. 
 If we Americans were not a patient people, we 
 would not have put up with the activities of the 
 Munsterburgs, Ridders, and Dernburgs. 
 
 Von BernstorfFs vapourings we should have had 
 to stand unless we desired to request Germany 
 to recall him and send some one with a better- 
 balanced tongue to take his place. The height of 
 German insolence has been reached when, under 
 this instigation of Kaiserism, the Germanic voters 
 are being organised into a political party threaten- 
 ing political extinction to those who are unwill- 
 ing to aid the German side. 
 
 The apparent fact that this pro-German cam- 
 paign is proving futile does not relieve us 
 Americans from doing all in our power to make 
 it fail. None of the Allies have thought it wise 
 to establish a bureau in the United States for 
 disseminating partisan literature, but have relied 
 on the good sense of the American people to 
 make a just decision as to where culpability for 
 the war lies, and as to the side to which their 
 sympathies should be extended. This makes it 
 all the more incumbent upon us Americans in 
 Canada, who have greater opportunities for 
 
AMERICANS IN CANADA 91 
 
 judging than those in the United States, to spare 
 no pains or trouble in circulating our views and 
 our sympathies as widely as possible. 
 
 Each one of us may be able to reach and to 
 influence only a few persons across the border; 
 but these people in their turn may influence 
 others. We are convinced that all that is needed 
 to bring others into our way of thinking about 
 the great issues of the war is to have them know 
 the truth and think clearly about it. 
 
 Let each one of us, to the best of his ability, 
 undertake to bring this knowledge and this 
 clarity of thought to friends and relations across 
 the border in whatever way seems most effective. 
 Let us not tire of writing them letters, and send- 
 ing them papers and pamphlets. 
 
 This spreading of the propaganda of the 
 underlying democracy of this war among any 
 people in the United States who may be inclined 
 to hold aloof from partisanship, and to regard 
 the war as something which concerns them not 
 at all, is a way in which each of us may serve 
 our country and our world. The issues at stake 
 are so vital to civilisation that we should neglect 
 nothing, no matter how small, and shrink at 
 nothing, no matter how great, to aid in the great 
 cause. 
 
 One evident object of the pro-German cam- 
 
92 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 paign is to irritate the American people against 
 the Allies, and to cause as much friction as 
 possible. Nothing would please Germany more 
 than to bring about a rupture of friendly rela- 
 tions between the United States and Great 
 Britain. 
 
 Even the absurd attempt to blow up an 
 international bridge and claim that this was 
 " an act of war " is merely a crude endeavour 
 to embroil the two nations. As I have often said 
 before, it is inconceivable that these two nations, 
 sharing the same language, underlying demo- 
 cratic government, institutions, and ideals, 
 should ever have a difference which cannot be 
 adjusted amicably; but it is none the less the 
 duty of each of us to use his influence to make 
 this impossibility doubly impossible. 
 
 War between such nations can never result 
 except from a complete misunderstanding of 
 each other; we who are of one and in the other 
 can do much to make Great Britain understood 
 in the United States. Then the vapourings of 
 the pro-German agitators will indeed fall upon 
 deaf ears. 
 
 February 1915. 
 
OPTIMISM 
 
 I AM an optimist, intensely and constitutionally. 
 If I were not, I do not think that life would be 
 worth while. This war, hideous as it is, serves only 
 to double my optimism. The lessons it teaches 
 are not those of incidental reversions to barbar- 
 ism, but of the progress of the great majority of 
 the world far beyond its earlier barbarism. 
 
 Science is evolution, and evolution is merely 
 another name for optimism. The laws of the 
 universe have been unchanged for all time, but 
 the capacity for utilising these laws by mankind 
 has come with the evolution of mankind. 
 
 The advance of mankind has not been only 
 along the lines of an understanding of the laws 
 of science as applicable to mankind, but also and 
 even more importantly of an understanding of 
 mankind itself, its purposes and its possibilities, 
 its ability to command nature and to create 
 for itself a continued growth and an increased 
 opportunity. 
 
 To-day we recognise as never before the 
 happiness that comes from service, the only true 
 happiness, I believe, that exists. It matters not 
 
 93 
 
94 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 wherein this service lies, whether it be by king 
 or by farm hand. All true service brings accom- 
 plishment, and the pride of accomplishment is 
 the greatest happiness which human hearts can 
 know. 
 
 The toymaker who has builded a Noah's Ark, 
 the engineer who has builded a mighty dam, the 
 Napoleon who has builded an empire, for each 
 the pride of accomplishment is the same, how- 
 ever different the means to bring it about. 
 
 This ambition to do is the mainspring of the 
 world that drives it steadily on. With maturity 
 of thought this ambition is more and more 
 directed into lines of usefulness, and more and 
 more serves to accelerate the progress of the 
 world. But sometimes this ambition is warped 
 and distorted, and instead of making for progress 
 makes for retrogression. Then it has to be curbed 
 and halted by the wiser part of the world, and 
 the good there is in it, the possibility of advance 
 contained in its vital force, redirected and made 
 to serve a useful purpose. 
 
 There is no nation to-day which has more of 
 the vital desire to accomplish than Germany, no 
 nation which can do more to serve the world if its 
 energy be directed aright. I do not hate the 
 Germans; in many ways I admire them more 
 than any people, but I do intensely hate the 
 
OPTIMISM 95 
 
 perversion that has misdirected their splendid 
 energy until it is an evil, not a service. 
 
 Evolution alone is as apt to work downward as 
 upward; it is only when evolution is coupled 
 with selection that it means progress. The power 
 of selection is what Germany lacks to direct her 
 progress upward ; and the sane part of the world 
 must compel Germany to reorganise so that this 
 vital energy shall become an asset of the world 
 instead of a liability. Like the elemental forces, 
 this human dynamic force must be guided and 
 controlled until it shall construct, not destroy. 
 
 The present demand of the world is for service 
 that shall straighten out the twisted German 
 mind, and undo the evil of years of false philo- 
 sophy and unworthy ambitions. The great mass 
 of the German people has never been allowed to 
 criticise or to reason about things governmental, 
 but has been fed upon militaristic ideals and pro- 
 mised riches and comfort from military successes. 
 
 When war came, they were told that the time 
 had come to profit from the years of preparation, 
 and that national solidarity would make in- 
 vincible the German Empire. They were told 
 that defeat was impossible, and that it was the 
 duty of Germany to impose upon the world the 
 German system, the superiority of which had for 
 so long been dinned into their ears. 
 
96 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 When the time comes, as it must within a 
 few months, when the falsity of these statements 
 becomes apparent to the German people, when 
 the country is invaded and the impotence of the 
 authorities to prevent it is evident, there will be 
 an awakening and an upheaval among the people 
 which will mean the destruction of Prussianism 
 and the birth of a real Germany. 
 
 Once the idols of a people are overthrown, 
 none are so quick to see the feet of clay as those 
 who used to worship. Heavy as has been the 
 burden which Prussianism has laid upon the rest 
 of the world, it is the German people themselves 
 who have felt its weight the most, and who will 
 gain the most from being freed from it. When this 
 fact is brought home to them, they will them- 
 selves insist upon the regeneration of their nation. 
 
 This world-service of recreating Germany has 
 got to be done with fire and sword. The cancer 
 of militarism has eaten so deeply into the German 
 body politic that no remedies milder than laying 
 knife to the root of the evil will avail. It is there- 
 fore the duty of every man of every nation which 
 has undertaken this world duty to give himself 
 up whole-heartedly to this service. Let him be 
 very sure that from the pride of accomplishment 
 of this service will come to him greater happi- 
 ness than he has ever known. 
 
OPTIMISM 97 
 
 The hugeness of these present times is creating 
 vision in the minds of men, vision of a world 
 speeding ever onward and upward to nobler 
 ideals and loftier conceptions. We glory as never 
 before in being a part of this world, and we 
 rejoice in being active units in the movement of 
 civilisation. We feel the exhilaration of being in 
 great things and of great things, and the personal 
 share that each of us is taking thrills us as never 
 before with an appreciation of the bigness of 
 humanity. 
 
 What do we care for the fatigues and the dis- 
 comforts of our training, of the dangers and 
 sufferings and wounds and even deaths of our 
 battle lines, compared with the pride of seeing 
 our duty clearly and doing it steadfastly and un- 
 selfishly? Life and the world we live in has 
 become for us immeasurably bigger because of the 
 vision that has come to us, and the pettinesses 
 that used to loom so large now count as nothing. 
 
 Why should I not be optimistic ? I see around 
 me everywhere men aroused to a splendid realisa- 
 tion of duty who of old seemed to have no thought 
 or soul above the sordid commonplaces of life. 
 I see sacrifices and sorrows borne willingly and 
 uncomplainingly for the sake of an ideal. I see 
 courage and bravery intelligently used and taken 
 as a matter of course. 
 
98 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 I see women holding back their tears lest they 
 should even for a moment unnerve the husbands 
 and sons whom they are sending into danger and 
 perhaps to death. I see whole nations laying 
 aside small and unworthy things and accepting 
 the obligations of their nationhood. More than 
 ever do I believe in the men who make the 
 world. 
 
 Most of all, I see the whole world sane and un- 
 corrupted. In vain for years has Germany sought 
 by specious argument and cynical promise to 
 spread its doctrine of the Philosophy of Force. 
 The world has listened and turned away abso- 
 lutely unconvinced. To-day Germany and what 
 she stands for has no friend in the world aside 
 from Austria, her catspaw, who already in bitter- 
 ness is bewailing her subserviency, and Turkey, 
 the barbarous, who is finding that German gold 
 is of a verity only dross. 
 
 Everywhere have the peoples of the world had 
 the vision to see that freedom could not exist if 
 German aggression should be triumphant, and 
 everywhere have these peoples lent their aid and 
 their sympathy to the cause of liberty. There is 
 no neutral people in the world, even those whose 
 governments have taken no official stand having 
 made it very clear to which side go out their 
 hopes for success. Should the present allied 
 
OPTIMISM 99 
 
 forces prove unequal to the task, these other 
 nations would undertake the duty. 
 
 Again, almost the whole world believes that 
 out of this war permanent good can come, and 
 that no such wars between great nations can in 
 the future take place. It believes that inter- 
 national questions can be settled by means more 
 civilised than blood and slaughter, and that there 
 will be no need of such armaments as have in the 
 past overburdened the world. It is only among 
 the few who are partisans of Germany that I 
 hear the pessimistic belief that war must always 
 be and that it is inherent in humankind. 
 
 The world is awake and the world is sane. 
 There has come to the peoples of the world vision 
 of a future brighter than any they have ever 
 before dared to conceive, and for this vision they 
 are willing to suffer and to die. Why, indeed, 
 should I not be an optimist ? 
 
 February 1915. 
 
THE FIRST SIX MONTHS 
 
 ALMOST all the progress which. Germany has suc- 
 ceeded in making was accomplished during the 
 first six weeks of the war. Since then the Allies 
 have been able to prevent any further consider- 
 able invasion of their territory, and in several 
 places German and Austrian land has in turn 
 been invaded. 
 
 This initial success emphasises the advantage 
 of knowing a couple of years in advance the date 
 on which war is to occur. In this instance it gave 
 Germany an advantage which to say the least 
 was not fair play. But the world has come to 
 realise that Fair Play and Kultur (spelled with 
 a K) are not always synonymous. 
 
 So many volumes have been written about the 
 responsibility for beginning the war that it is 
 futile to go over the matter again. The impartial 
 world has weighed the matter carefully, and has 
 come to the unbiased conclusion that the fault 
 was Germany's, and that Austria was merely 
 used as a catspaw; that the war was determined 
 upon some time in advance ; and that every pre- 
 paration for it had been made by Germany which 
 
 101 
 
102 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 could be effected without making clear to other 
 nations that war was intended. 
 
 Two governing factors decided the time when 
 war was wanted, as it is now easy to see by 
 looking back. The first of these, which made it 
 necessary for the militaristic oligarchy to bring the 
 war on as soon as possible, was the constant 
 growth of socialism in Germany. 
 
 This growth was taking place in spite of the 
 absence of a free press, and was the outlet for 
 the ever-fermenting forces striving for democracy, 
 forces always at work in an autocracy. It was 
 merely another manifestation of the inherent 
 desires for liberty which was the cause of the 
 German revolution of 1848. 
 
 The socialistic movement was beginning to 
 threaten the supremacy of the military clique, 
 and if allowed to continue unchecked might even 
 have become a menace to the whole imperial 
 system of government. The release of Germany 
 from absolutism, which is going to be accom- 
 plished through the slaughter and defeat of this 
 war, stood a good chance of being brought about 
 internally by the socialists. 
 
 The final overthrow would undoubtedly have 
 been through revolution, and would unquestion- 
 ably have involved bloodshed, but its cost to 
 Germany in lives would have been a mere 
 
THE FIRST SIX MONTHS 103 
 
 nothing in comparison with the losses of the war. 
 There never yet has been an autocracy which had 
 enough patriotism to be willing to sacrifice itself 
 for the sake of the people, and the Junker ele- 
 ment did not hesitate to involve the country 
 in war to save their own precious necks and 
 positions. 
 
 To be sure, they thought that the outcome of 
 the war would be very different from what it 
 will be, but none the less they knew that it would 
 cost the people heavily. They were well aware 
 that even if their armies were supremely success- 
 ful the people of the country would get nothing 
 out of it to repay the cost of war; all the ad- 
 vantage in added wealth and power would be 
 absorbed by the Junker leaders. 
 
 They realised fully that the call to arms 
 and the pathos of the appeals for the Vater- 
 land would arouse a spirit of patriotism which 
 would for the time being utterly overwhelm the 
 socialists, who had not yet become strong enough 
 to resist such an appeal. They also knew that the 
 longer such a national call was delayed the more 
 the danger that the socialists would become 
 strong enough to resist it at the outset. 
 
 Only a year or two more of the growth of the 
 movement might have made it impossible for 
 the declaration of war to find a unified nation. 
 
104 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 Already there is evidence that in spite of the 
 military repression of all such outbursts and in 
 spite of the fact that German territory has not 
 yet to any great extent been invaded, there are 
 beginning to be insistent demands for peace from 
 the socialists. 
 
 It would not have taken a much longer in- 
 cubation of socialistic doctrines to have caused 
 these demands to be made before war was 
 actually in full swing, and then where would 
 Junkerism have been ? But if the war had been 
 successful throughout and the German armies 
 had dictated terms of peace while in possession 
 of Paris and Warsaw, Junkerism would have 
 been too firmly in the saddle to run any risk 
 of being unhorsed, and the threat of socialism 
 would have been postponed for many a long 
 year. 
 
 In addition to these internal conditions which 
 urged the bringing on of the war as soon as 
 possible two external influences also forbade 
 delay. One of these was the fact that France, 
 terrorised by the addition of half a million men 
 to the regular German standing army, had de- 
 cided that it was necessary to increase the term 
 of compulsory military service from two years 
 to three years, and if Germany and France were 
 to fight it was obviously better for the former to 
 
THE FIRST SIX MONTHS 105 
 
 have the war take place before this change in the 
 French conscription became effective. 
 
 Also it was evident that Russia was rapidly 
 recovering from the loss of military power conse- 
 quent upon the defeats of 1904 by Japan, and 
 each year of delay in bringing on war meant 
 greater strength for the Russian armies. Ger- 
 many had no idea that they were anything 
 like as effective as they have proved, or that a 
 military genius like Grand Duke Nicholas would 
 be in command of them, or that the Russian 
 nation would show a solidarity in favour of war 
 against Germany as striking as its opposition to 
 the Japanese war, but Germany none the less 
 realised that each year of delay made the Russian 
 nut a harder one for the Teutonic hammer to 
 crack. 
 
 Against these conditions all calling for the 
 bringing on of the war as soon as possible was 
 one compelling and unavoidable factor which 
 prevented the declaration of war before 1914. 
 This was the fact that the Kiel Canal was not 
 ready until then, and without the Kiel Canal 
 Germany could scarcely hope to be successful 
 against Russia and France at the same time, even 
 if England should remain neutral. 
 
 These considerations make it clear why this 
 war did not occur before 1914 and why it was 
 
io6 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 not postponed until after 1914. The very date 
 is an added proof that this war was desired 
 and brought about by the German military 
 authorities. 
 
 In their plan of campaign the Germans made 
 two vital errors, both of them due to the fact that 
 they fail to comprehend the hearts of men. They 
 never thought that Belgium would be heroic, or 
 that in their sweep across that ill-fated land they 
 would encounter more than a merely perfunctory 
 opposition. 
 
 The Philosophy of Force, the Sacredness of 
 Might, had for so long been their idol that they 
 could not conceive of a little nation willing to 
 oppose their war machine and to suffer martyr- 
 dom for an ideal. Idealism has never gone with 
 the militaristic brand of Kultur, and Germany 
 failed to make any allowance for it. 
 
 The delay of two weeks which the glorious 
 defence of Liege imposed upon Germany upset 
 all the plans of Berlin and was the salvation of 
 France, allowing time for the French army to be 
 mobilised and for the little band of British to 
 reach the neighbourhood of Mons for their heroic 
 retreat. It also allowed time for the French to 
 retrieve their original colossal mistake of ex- 
 pecting the real invasion to come through Alsace- 
 Lorraine, and the march through Belgium to 
 
THE FIRST SIX MONTHS 107 
 
 be not much more than a demonstration of 
 force. 
 
 The French strength was massed along the 
 line from Verdun to Belfort, and but for the delay 
 in Belgium could not have got to the Marne in 
 time. Liege fell, but Paris still is Paris. 
 
 The other great mistake of Germany was in 
 underrating the promptness with which England 
 would act. Berlin was probably well aware that 
 the violation of Belgium would be sure ultimately 
 to bring England into the fray, but Berlin un- 
 doubtedly counted on England's muddling about 
 for three weeks or a month before she entered 
 -the war, by which time all the fat would have 
 been in the fire. 
 
 One of the reasons for the present bitterness of 
 German hate against the British lies in the fact 
 that all the German plans were dislocated by 
 the quickness of Great Britain's decision. The 
 very attitude of Grey throughout the fateful days 
 from the 23rd of July to the 2nd of August, when 
 he was doing everything in his power to prevent 
 war, probably made Germany all the more sure 
 that he would be slow to enter his country in the 
 war. 
 
 The petulant surprise of the German chancellor 
 that Great Britain would undergo the pains of 
 war for her treaty with Belgium, " for a scrap of 
 
108 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 paper," shows the German inability to under- 
 stand that a country which uncompromisingly 
 desired and sought peace would none the less 
 unhesitatingly and immediately declare war 
 where the honouring of treaty obligations re- 
 quired it. 
 
 This surprise at England's entering the war 
 when she did shows the insincerity of the present 
 German claim that this war is one which Great 
 Britain has forced upon Germany from jealousy of 
 the growing German commerce. But then con- 
 sistency has never been characteristic of the 
 German State Department, as is shown by the 
 six different official explanations or excuses for 
 the violation of Belgian neutrality, each one of 
 them inconsistent with the others. 
 
 The German drive against Paris having been 
 turned back at the critical moment when it 
 appeared as if it would prove successful, and the 
 armies forced back to the Aisne, they proceeded 
 then to entrench themselves and to extend their 
 lines until they reached from the Swiss border to 
 the North Sea. 
 
 Tremendous efforts were put forth to advance 
 to Calais and threaten England by holding one 
 side of the Channel at its narrowest point, and 
 also to break through in the neighbourhood of 
 Soissons and St. Mihiel to renew the drive against 
 
THE FIRST SIX MONTHS 109 
 
 Paris. These endeavours proved futile, and no 
 material change in positions has taken place. 
 
 Both sides have shown wonderful heroism and 
 bravery, and the losses on both sides have been 
 heavy. The Germans have suffered most, both 
 because of their habit of charging in mass forma- 
 tion and because the offensive against entrench- 
 ments is always more costly than the defence. 
 At the outset the German artillery held a marked 
 superiority, but this seems to have been entirely 
 overcome and the superiority now appears to be 
 on the side of the Allies. 
 
 The marksmanship of the allied infantry has 
 been from the beginning much superior, and in 
 the matter of mobility the network of railways 
 available for both sides has given neither any 
 great advantage. The use of aeroplane scouts 
 has prevented any great surprise by either, as 
 movements of great bodies of troops cannot be 
 concealed from the enemy. 
 
 In the Eastern theatre the changes have been 
 much more spectacular than in the West. As a 
 whole, it may be stated that the Austrian armies 
 have proved far inferior to their adversaries, 
 while there has been little to choose between the 
 success of the Germans and the Russians. The 
 one Austrian deed which stands forth is the 
 heroic defence of Przemysl, which at the time of 
 
no WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 writing is still holding out against a Russian 
 siege certain of ultimate success. 
 
 In every other great clash the Austrian armies 
 have melted away before Russian attacks, and 
 even little Serbia, by heroic efforts, has driven 
 the invaders from her territory with enormous 
 loss. 
 
 As a result, Austrian powers of resistance 
 have been nearly destroyed, and, except where 
 stiffened by the presence of Germans, Austrian 
 troops are able to offer no great opposition to 
 the Russian armies. It would seem fair to 
 prophesy that within a very few months Austria 
 will be as helpless to assist Germany to any great 
 extent as is Turkey, which has yet to score 
 a victory of any account. 
 
 The great advantage which Germany has held 
 over Russia has been the mobility of her troops 
 due to the splendid system of strategic railways 
 along her frontier. The Russians have been able 
 to move only slowly and ponderously, while the 
 Germans have been whirled from one point to 
 another for tremendously concentrated attacks. 
 
 These attacks have seldom failed to make 
 progress, but in every case they necessitated the 
 withdrawal of men from some other part of the 
 line. As a result, the retreat of the Russian 
 troops at one point has been accompanied by an 
 
THE FIRST SIX MONTHS in 
 
 advance at another, and the German nimbleness 
 has given more exercise than progress. 
 
 Thus the Russian defeat at Tannenberg in the 
 early part of the war was accomplished by the 
 withdrawal of German troops from the west and 
 probably had much to do with the German 
 defeat on the Marne, while the invasion of 
 Galicia went steadily forward. The German 
 drives against Warsaw were accompanied by 
 Russian advances in Bukowina and East Prussia, 
 and now that the latter movement requires 
 German opposition in force, Russia will be able 
 to regain the ground lost in Poland. The losses of 
 men on both sides have been enormous, but on 
 the whole the German losses have probably been 
 heavier than those of the Russians who opposed 
 them. 
 
 The net result of nearly seven months of war 
 has been that the German armies have been able 
 to make no material progress beyond what was 
 accomplished in the first six weeks, that German 
 commerce has been driven from the seas and the 
 German navy weakened much more than the 
 navies of the Allies, and that all around Germany 
 is a throttling and slowly closing line of enemies 
 through which she has been unable to break no 
 matter how spendthrift she has been willing to 
 be of the lives of her soldiers. 
 
ii2 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 Were conditions to continue as they are, it 
 might be fairly said that the struggle was a drawn 
 game or a stalemate. But conditions cannot 
 remain as they are. The supremacy of the 
 British fleet is causing economic distress which 
 is certain to have a telling effect in increasing the 
 German agonies. The question of food and war 
 supplies is becoming more and more urgent, and 
 most of all, the shortage of men is what is certain 
 to defeat Germany. 
 
 At the very outset, German strength was at its 
 maximum. Her losses have been so huge that 
 she has been able to do little more than replace 
 the men who have been disabled, and as time 
 advances she will scarcely be able to do this. Her 
 adversaries, on the contrary, were weakest at the 
 beginning, and are steadily growing stronger. 
 
 The collapse of Austria and Turkey will shortly 
 free all the troops that have been engaged against 
 them for operations against Germany. France 
 has been able not only to make good the losses 
 in her ranks, but will be able in the spring to 
 increase her fighting forces by not less than a 
 million and a half of men. 
 
 Great Britain will be able to bring forward 
 about two million new men " when the war begins 
 in May," as Lord Kitchener is said to have 
 expressed it. Russia's countless population 
 
THE FIRST SIX MONTHS 113 
 
 makes the forces which she can furnish almost 
 inexhaustible, and the slow -moving Russian 
 military machine is steadily equipping them and 
 bringing them forward. 
 
 Three million men is a low estimate of the 
 number of new troops which she can furnish in 
 1915. 
 
 In addition to this, there is every prospect 
 that Roumania with half a million effectives, 
 Greece with almost the same number, and Italy 
 with a million and a half of soldiers will be among 
 Germany's foes before next summer. To offset 
 these new foes she can look for no new allies, the 
 best that she can hope for being that German 
 gold can buy Bulgarian neutrality. 
 
 These considerations show that Germany's 
 case is hopeless, and the sooner she recognises 
 this fact and sues for peace the less onerous will 
 be the terms. She cannot hope to retain her 
 former place in the world, her colonial dreams 
 must be abandoned, her own territories shorn, 
 her armies disbanded, and her idea of dominating 
 Europe ended forever. 
 
 If, in her blind stubbornness, she continues a 
 strife in which ultimate victory is absolutely 
 impossible, if she makes it necessary, as she can, 
 that a vast additional number of lives be sacri- 
 ficed to force the fortifications on her own soil 
 
 H 
 
ii4 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 before the victorious Allies can pitch their tents 
 in Berlin, the degradation she will have to suffer 
 will be even more bitter. Then will the voices of 
 her misguided children be raised in even greater 
 lamentation, and the progress of the world pur- 
 chased at an even greater price. 
 
 February 1915. 
 
THE VOLUNTEER ARMIES 
 
 WHY do the men of the non-conscript armies of 
 the British Empire enlist ? All the other armies 
 in the war are easily understood, for the men who 
 make them up have no choice but to be soldiers. 
 But in the great armies now being made ready 
 in the United Kingdom there is no man who has 
 been forced against his will to become a unit in 
 the huge machine. 
 
 Yet by the time the war has been in progress 
 for a year, Great Britain will have under arms 
 almost the same proportion of the population as 
 conscript France, and the British Dominions are 
 preparing contingents as fast as they can be 
 equipped and trained. It is certainly worth while 
 to study the incentive which makes these men 
 willing to undergo hardship and the chance of 
 death, and to find out whether in it lies the reason 
 that these volunteer troops are the most effective 
 of all the armies. 
 
 In the first place, the average of intelligence in 
 this volunteer army is probably higher than in 
 any of the others. We certainly believe that the 
 
 "5 
 
n6 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 average intelligence of the English - speaking 
 nations is as high or higher than that of any other 
 people, no matter how insistently the Germans 
 may claim that their brains are the best in the 
 world. 
 
 In a conscript army, the average intelligence 
 must be the same as the average intelligence of 
 the nation from which it is drawn, as the men 
 are taken indiscriminately and the question of 
 psychological selection does not enter into the 
 matter. But in the British armies the question of 
 voluntary choice is a factor, and the causes which 
 lead to enlistment might appeal more strongly 
 either to those above or to those below the 
 average intelligence of the country. 
 
 It seems very clear that in this war it is those 
 above this national average of intelligence who 
 are moved to volunteer. Undoubtedly there is a 
 considerable number of men who have enlisted as 
 a last resort, of men out of employment and out 
 of money, who could look for no relief from 
 the sufferings of poverty except by entering 
 the army. The number of these is, however, 
 quite insignificant in comparison with the total 
 army. 
 
 There must be nearly three million able- 
 bodied men on the rolls, and it is, of course, 
 absurd to suppose that even during the hard 
 
THE VOLUNTEER ARMIES 117 
 
 times resulting from trie war any great part of 
 this huge number would be driven by necessity 
 to enlist. The unemployed belong, as a class, to 
 the less efficient, and all that is necessary to 
 convince us that this army is not in any great 
 degree made up of the inefficient is to see the 
 men themselves, or to study the reports of what 
 they have done and how they have done it 
 when in the presence of the enemy and under 
 fire. 
 
 The Kaiser would give a good deal to have the 
 British armies made up of the inefficient, but 
 neither the first small force of British regulars 
 who underwent the already historic retreat from 
 Mons, nor any of the hundreds of thousands who 
 have been sent to reinforce and increase this 
 original British Expeditionary Force have failed 
 to do steadfastly and efficiently the work which 
 has been entrusted to them. 
 
 No, the British armies are clearly not made up 
 of the unemployed nor of the dregs and scourings 
 of the slums of London and Manchester, Glasgow 
 and Dublin. It would be better for the cause of 
 Germany if they were. 
 
 The bulk of the army is made up of the great 
 middle class, the strength of every nation. These 
 men have gone voluntarily, leaving conditions 
 of safety and comfort for danger and hardship. 
 
ii8 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 The vast majority of them made a distinct sacri- 
 fice in money when they took the small pay of the 
 army in place of the earnings from their regular 
 pursuits. They surely do not enjoy fighting, 
 except, perhaps, in the excitement of the battle 
 itself, and much less do they enjoy the toilsome 
 days of training and preparation. 
 
 No one can make me believe that these men 
 do not understand what is the underlying issue 
 which is to be decided by this war, and that the 
 conviction of the justice of the British cause is 
 not the real reason of the sacrifice they are 
 making. 
 
 To accomplish results as big as this voluntary 
 enlistment there are various contributing causes. 
 One of these is the loyalty to the country which 
 this crisis has made evident. This is the finest 
 tribute which a nation can have, and is a com- 
 plete and irrefutable answer to any accusations of 
 tyranny or bureaucracy. 
 
 No country can have such loyalty from such 
 an intelligent mass of its citizens unless it deserves 
 it. No autocracy or oligarchy has ever had such 
 loyalty. The nation is of one mind in regard to 
 the war, and one in determination that it must 
 be carried to a successful conclusion. Politics 
 are thrown aside and only statesmanship counts, 
 and the statesmanship which has taken control 
 
THE VOLUNTEER ARMIES 119 
 
 can rely on the unanimous assistance of an un- 
 divided people. 
 
 There is, however, an even more potent cause 
 than the loyalty to the nation, and this is the 
 loyalty to the great and idealistic conceptions of 
 democratic freedom of which the nation is the 
 immediate representative. 
 
 It might be possible to imagine a nation 
 which deserved well of its own people but not 
 of the world, although this would be almost a 
 paradox. It is conceivable that in some structure, 
 such as Germany, a government, while seeking 
 forcible and unjust tribute from other nations, 
 should seek to distribute its acquisitions for the 
 welfare and benefit of the mass of its own people, 
 and thereby gain a selfish approval which would 
 have the appearance of loyalty. 
 
 But this would be very different from the 
 loyalty which Great Britain is to-day finding in 
 her sons. They are loyal, not for what they are 
 going to get from Great Britain, but for what 
 Great Britain is and what she stands for in this 
 war. 
 
 It would, of course, be foolish to say that the 
 ordinary enlisted man in the army has reasoned 
 out first causes and second causes, and after a 
 philosophical examination of them has decided 
 that his country is right and entitled to his help. 
 
120 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 Although the army is perhaps the best 
 educated and most intelligent great army that 
 has ever been organised, with the possible ex- 
 ception of the American armies at the end of the 
 Civil War, such a mass of men will never analyse 
 a complicated issue to its component parts. 
 It is too much to expect. 
 
 But none the less, although he could not put 
 it into words, Volunteer Tommy Atkins knows 
 what is at the bottom of things and what he is 
 fighting for. He knows that Great Britain is 
 right, and that she is not seeking her own 
 welfare only, but also the welfare of the world. 
 He may phrase it that the German blighters 
 must not be allowed to run things, but in the 
 back of his head he knows what it is all 
 about. 
 
 This comprehension of fundamental and 
 abstruse things, even without the ability to put 
 them into words, is the wonder of democracies 
 and is what makes democracies safe and sane. 
 The volunteer army is essentially democratic, 
 even though it has to submit to discipline and 
 orders that may appear quite undemocratic. 
 
 This army knows that it is not fighting to 
 determine whether British commerce or German 
 commerce shall be dominant on the seas, or 
 whether Germany shall extend her borders to 
 
THE VOLUNTEER ARMIES 121 
 
 include Belgium and Poland, but rather to decide 
 whether democracy shall grow and spread or 
 absolutism prevail, whether free peoples in a 
 free world shall have freedom to govern them- 
 selves or not, whether the world is to be liberated 
 from autocratic militarism and allowed, without 
 fear, to develop, each nation according to the 
 capacity and deserts of its people. 
 
 Volunteer Tommy may not be able to express 
 this, but he knows it, and has volunteered that, 
 with his sweat and the blood of his body, he may 
 help to bring it about. 
 
 Then here's to Volunteer Thomas Atkins, who 
 is serving his world with an altruism as fine as 
 has ever been seen. He does not know what the 
 word means, but he knows that something in 
 him forbids him to stay behind, and that he 
 would not be pleased with himself if he did not go. 
 He is true to his best instincts. 
 
 Besides the mass of the army, made up as I 
 have shown, there is an extraordinarily large 
 number of men of the highest stations in society, 
 to whom their present duty has come as a re- 
 vealing light. They have cast aside idleness and 
 luxury, and found in an increased self-respect and 
 a willing and patriotic sacrifice such happiness 
 as they have never known. Where they have 
 been unable to get the positions as officers to 
 
122 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 which their education and knowledge entitle 
 them to aspire, they have enlisted as privates, 
 and are doing uncomplainingly and thoroughly 
 work such as they never expected to have to do. 
 To them also all honour. 
 
 February 1915. 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 GIVEN AT AN INTERNATIONAL DINNER OF THOSE 
 WHO DESIRED TO EXPRESS THE ESSENTIAL UNITY 
 OF DEMOCRATIC IDEALS OF THE UNITED STATES 
 AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE, HELD AT TORONTO, 
 
 FEBRUARY 23, 1915 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN : 
 
 It seems especially fitting that in this year, 
 1915, when the two great English-speaking 
 nations are celebrating the centenary of peace 
 between them, we should be meeting on an 
 occasion like the present one, where our object 
 is to strengthen those bonds of friendship that 
 already exist between the people of the British 
 Empire and the people of the United States of 
 America to an extent probably greater than 
 between any other two nations in the world. 
 
 We believe that both of these great nations 
 have during the last hundred years reached a 
 degree of civilisation which makes it impossible 
 that differences between them should ever arise 
 incapable of being settled by amicable negotia- 
 tion. We believe that, so far as the other is con- 
 
 133 
 
124 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 cerned, each nation could disband its armies and 
 do away with its navies, and that the roll of the 
 drum or the blast of the bugle calling the citizens 
 of either nation to war against the other will 
 never again be heard. 
 
 The fact that for a century there has been a 
 frontier between Canada and the United States 
 extending for three thousand miles, without 
 fortifications on land, and without vessels of war 
 on the Great Lakes, and that during all this time 
 no disputes have arisen which made either nation 
 feel this lack of military preparation, surely is of 
 good augury for the future. We have proof by 
 the experience of a hundred years that we have 
 reached a degree of civilisation where the various 
 differences which are certain to arise between 
 such nations can be settled without injustice to 
 either by the decision of an impartial tribunal, 
 and that the two nations will accept and abide 
 by such decisions in exactly the same way as 
 civilised men abide by the decisions of the estab- 
 lished authorities in their private affairs. 
 
 I believe that the underlying cause which 
 makes this international amity possible is the 
 fact that the fundamental conceptions of freedom 
 are the same in the two countries. The systems 
 of government of the two nations may differ in 
 unimportant details, but this does not prevent 
 
ADDRESS 125 
 
 them from being in their great essentials of 
 democratic freedom, and government of the 
 people, by the people and for the people, the 
 same in their objects and their ideals. 
 
 The great war now in progress in Europe is 
 much more than a war between certain nations 
 ranged on one side and certain other nations 
 ranged on the other side. The forces of the 
 Allies are fighting to make possible of continu- 
 ance the democratic forms of government wherein 
 free peoples may exercise the rights of choice in 
 so far as these rights are not inconsistent with 
 the rights of others. Democracy is a system of 
 thought even more than a system of government, 
 and the advance in the world of true democracy 
 during the last hundred years has been remark- 
 able and encouraging. 
 
 In opposition to this, the German nation is 
 attempting to establish the medieval system of 
 government by force, irrespective of the wishes of 
 the people governed, and to extend the scope 
 of this government far beyond the borders of 
 Germany itself. The obsolete doctrines of the 
 divine right of hereditary rulers is there coupled 
 with a feudalism which is entirely out of date, 
 and which has been made possible even within 
 the boundaries of Germany itself only by the 
 denial to the people of a free press and the 
 
126 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 repression of public expression of criticism of the 
 government. In other words, the struggle is 
 between the future and the past, between the 
 twentieth century and the dark ages, between 
 the happiness, safety, and freedom of the masses 
 of the population of the world and the desire for 
 the extension of power on the part of a few here- 
 ditary rulers and the favoured bureaucrats who 
 always fawn upon such hereditary governments. 
 The greatest nation of the world to-day which is 
 not actively taking part in this colossal struggle 
 between progress and reaction is the United 
 States. This nation more than any other has 
 been the leader of modern democracy, and has by 
 its example of successful democracy done more 
 than any other to cause the wonderful growth of 
 democracy in Europe. The United States came 
 into being as a result of a revolution against 
 Great Britain at a time when Great Britain had 
 not learned the lesson of democracy of which 
 to-day she is so great an example, and this very 
 revolution did more to make Great Britain 
 clearly understand the importance of democracy 
 and the unwisdom of attempting to continue 
 feudalism into the twentieth century than any 
 other event in history. The greatness of the 
 present British Empire is largely due to this 
 lesson which she has so thoroughly learned. 
 
ADDRESS 127 
 
 To-day perhaps the most striking thing which 
 has been brought out by this war is the unfailing 
 loyalty to Great Britain and to the British system 
 of democratic freedom shown by all the parts of 
 the British Empire. No government ruling by 
 force and by fear has ever had such loyalty, and 
 the most significant fact I know is that from New 
 Zealand and Canada, from India and Australia, 
 and even from the great mass of the population of 
 South Africa which has been a part of the British 
 Empire for so short a time that it has not 
 had an opportunity fully to realise the value of 
 British freedom, have come not only expressions 
 of sympathy but active participation in the 
 burden of the war, and a practically unanimous 
 offer of assistance to the last man and the last 
 dollar. 
 
 The lesson learned from India is most illumin- 
 ating. Here is a land proud in an ancient civilisa- 
 tion, rich in tradition, and teeming with a 
 population the great mass of which has never 
 had the opportunity to acquire education as we 
 of Western nations know it. For centuries the 
 different states and different races that go to 
 make it up have been at war with one another, 
 and the bitterness of these feuds has been greatly 
 intensified by religious zeal and fanaticism. 
 When first India came under the domination of 
 
128 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 England, the old ideas of the possibility of using 
 a subject nation for profit, of exploiting a colony, 
 still prevailed, and led to the scandals incident 
 to the regime of Warren Hastings. 
 
 But for the last half-century Great Britain has 
 appreciated that she could profit from India 
 only through India's prosperity, and she has ad- 
 ministered India for the welfare of India. As a 
 result India has known peace and has made great 
 strides forward, and has been fired with a loyalty 
 incomprehensible to Germany which can only 
 understand the old and outworn theory of 
 colonial exploitation. Germany expected that at 
 this time of British peril India would grasp the 
 opportunity to revolt, and expected that, in 
 addition to war in Europe, Great Britain would 
 have great wars in Asia to carry on. 
 
 But the people of India have realised that their 
 state has been better than ever before, and those 
 who in the black year of 1857 sought to extermin- 
 ate the English now ask only to be permitted 
 to die in the British cause. No endeavours to 
 stir up religious fanaticism, no proclamations of 
 Jehads, have availed; but with a splendid unani- 
 mity Rajah and Maharajah, Prince and Nizam 
 have come forward, and Sikh and Ghurka, 
 Pathan and Bengalee, Hindu and Mohammedan, 
 are serving eagerly beneath the Cross of St. 
 
ADDRESS 129 
 
 George. Thus even to a people not yet ready for 
 a full enjoyment of democratic responsibilities 
 has come an understanding of the inherent un- 
 selfishness of British democracy, and the result 
 has been a loyalty which has astounded Germany 
 and has made it certain that British institutions 
 are essentially right and are to continue to pre- 
 vail in the world. 
 
 There is no question but what in the United 
 States public opinion is intensely sympathetic 
 with the British cause, and but what in view of 
 the past history of the United States and the 
 democracy upon which the country has been 
 founded, and in view of its ideals and its position 
 among the leaders of civilisation, it would be 
 impossible for American sympathy to be with the 
 doctrines for which Germany is fighting. The 
 very origin of the United States was due to the 
 refusal of its inhabitants to live under a system 
 which at that time paralleled the present German 
 system of colonial administration almost as 
 closely as the British democracy of the present 
 day parallels the democracy of the United 
 States. 
 
 Great Britain and her Allies have been so 
 certain of this understanding of the fundamental 
 conditions leading to the war by the people of 
 the United States that they have not thought it 
 
130 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 necessary to establish any bureaus in the United 
 States for disseminating partisan information, 
 or for endeavouring to colour American opinion, 
 but have relied upon the good sense of the 
 American people to make a just decision as to 
 where lies the culpability for the war, and to which 
 side the welfare of the world requires that victory 
 shall come. 
 
 I think that the American people has made 
 up its mind as to which side desired the war; 
 and the invasion of unoffending Belgium, 
 together with the policy of terrorism carried out 
 in that country, has greatly prejudiced the 
 German cause. 
 
 Much more important than the question of the 
 origin of the war is that of the fundamental 
 issues to be decided by it, and what will be the 
 result to the world of a victory by either side. 
 As to these questions, opinion is still much mixed 
 in the United States, and it is essential that the 
 truth in regard to them should be made clear and 
 apparent. It is a condition of actual warfare 
 which is our present concern much more than the 
 theory of its beginnings, about which opinion has 
 already been formed. Many people still hold 
 hazy views about it, and even have an idea that 
 the German assertions that commercial jealousy 
 is the real cause of the strife have a basis of fact. 
 
ADDRESS 131 
 
 They fail to recognise that the real issue is 
 whether the progress of democracy which has 
 done so much to increase the happiness of the 
 world shall continue, or whether it shall be set 
 back a century by the success of autocratic 
 militarism. Further, they fail to give due weight 
 to the fact that a great and real advance in world 
 conditions as a result of the war is only possible of 
 accomplishment by a total defeat of Germany. 
 We all hope to see this the last great war between 
 great nations, and we have every reason to 
 expect it to be so. But should Germany prevail, 
 it is clear that progress can only come from a 
 new and even greater war against a successful 
 despotism of which military power is the gospel, 
 or else by the overthrow of such a despotism by 
 revolution. 
 
 The hope of a Federation of Europe, of an in- 
 ternational tribunal to which all international 
 disputes must be referred, and which shall have 
 under its direction military forces contributed by 
 the nations in due proportion and sufficient to 
 enforce its decrees, is possible only through a 
 success of the allied nations. Optimism can only 
 expect immediate essential amelioration of world 
 conditions through the defeat of Germany. 
 
 The Germans in America, together with others 
 especially sent for the purpose, are carrying on an 
 
132 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 active propaganda in the United States. At first 
 their desire was to turn American sympathies to 
 the German cause, but the failure of this en- 
 deavour has been so evident, except among 
 those of German origin, that to a great extent this 
 has been abandoned. At present most of the 
 energies of these people are being devoted to 
 attempts to cloud the real issues at stake and to 
 cause friction and irritation between the United 
 States and the Allies. 
 
 There is little doubt but what this propaganda 
 is being financed direct from Berlin, and that it 
 is being carried out with the thoroughness so 
 characteristic of Germany. It began many years 
 ago, and has been helped forward in every way 
 possible, from the gift by the Kaiser of Germanic 
 museums to the tour of Prince Henry, the Kaiser's 
 brother. The political power of citizens of 
 German origin has been carefully fostered, and 
 endeavours have been made by the organisation of 
 associated German societies to make this political 
 power a serious menace. Of late these people 
 have had the effrontery to come out in the open 
 and declare that this organised political power 
 will be used to defeat any candidates who have 
 not aided the German cause. Pro-German repre- 
 sentatives have been elected to Congress from 
 communities where the German element is strong, 
 
ADDRESS 133 
 
 and every endeavour is being made to interfere 
 with the assistance to the Allies which American 
 citizens would naturally seek to render. 
 
 This organised German effort in the United 
 States clearly imposes upon individuals of the 
 allied nations the duty of opposing it and counter- 
 acting its evil influences, since officially the Allies 
 have taken no steps to accomplish it. This meet- 
 ing to-night is for the purpose of again emphasis- 
 ing the insistent importance of this duty, and of 
 awakening each individual to a sense of his duties 
 in this regard. 
 
 Those who live in Canada are best situated, 
 . both in geographical location and in the intimacy 
 of relations social and commercial with the 
 United States, to carry out this great duty. 
 
 Those who, like myself, are American citizens 
 resident in Canada, can perhaps do more to 
 promulgate our views than the Canadian citizens 
 themselves, and I believe that the duty of each 
 American to work for this end is clear and not 
 to be denied. 
 
 It is impossible to imagine any American who 
 lives in Canada taking the part of Germany. We 
 are too close to things, we understand the 
 Canadian people too well, we see too clearly what 
 they are fighting for, we know from our own 
 experience too unquestionably that the German 
 
134 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 assertions that the colonies of Great Britain are 
 living under a despotic tyranny are lies. We live 
 in a country as free as our own, we have laws 
 made by the people and for the people. We have 
 found here in Canada a people like our own in 
 language and education, in religion and aspira- 
 tions, in all that goes to give character to a 
 nation. 
 
 We have found that the pursuit of happiness 
 can be carried on by us in exactly the same way 
 and under the same conditions whether we live 
 under the Union Jack or under the Stars and 
 Stripes, which we love and to which we are loyal. 
 We know that what is called British imperialism 
 is a name, a term, and does not represent any- 
 thing like the imperialisms of history, and that 
 it differs from German imperialism as daylight 
 differs from darkness. 
 
 The people of the United States are too intelli- 
 gent not to realise that they are interested to 
 almost as great an extent as Europe in the out- 
 come of this war. The world to-day is very dif- 
 ferent from the world of a hundred years ago in 
 its essential economic unity and in the fact that 
 now each nation is influenced by the conditions 
 prevailing in other nations to a much greater de- 
 gree than formerly. The advances in methods of 
 communication and transportation during the 
 
ADDRESS 135 
 
 last seventy-five years have done more to bind 
 the whole world together than the whole period 
 of recorded history before that time. 
 
 In the old days, a nation might exist secluded 
 and apart from other nations of the world, and 
 might be touched only lightly by the conditions 
 prevailing elsewhere in the world. This old 
 national circumscription is a thing of the past, 
 and no nation which aspires to even a small 
 degree of modern civilisation can fail to be vitally 
 affected by conditions elsewhere prevailing. The 
 commerce and finance of a nation are no longer 
 dependent merely upon its internal conditions, 
 but are world wide and international to an extra- 
 ordinary extent. Money surpluses seeking invest- 
 ment are no longer confined to the country of 
 their origin, but are liquid, and flow to whatever 
 country offers the most attractive prospects in 
 safety and profits. 
 
 The United States can no longer hold aloof 
 from Europe as in the days of Washington. In 
 view of the growth of the nation since that time 
 to a great world power, having a huge area, a 
 vast population, and weighty interests in every 
 capital of the world, it is of necessity vitally 
 interested in any event which is of such world 
 importance as the present war. It is, therefore, 
 unquestionably the duty of the United States 
 
136 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 to use its great influence to make this war bring 
 about a lasting bettering of world conditions. 
 Even if it shall be possible for the United States 
 throughout the duration of the war to remain 
 governmentally neutral, and to avoid the neces- 
 sity of active participation in the war, this does 
 not alter the obligation of the nation to interest 
 itself in the outcome, and to strive to make the 
 changed conditions resulting from the war such 
 as will promote the safety and happiness of 
 mankind. 
 
 Furthermore, it is universally recognised by 
 all writers on international law that the official 
 governmental neutrality of a nation imposes 
 upon its individual citizens no obligation of 
 personal neutrality. So long as the nation as 
 such, and through its established government, 
 does nothing to aid either party to hostilities, 
 there is nothing to prevent the maximum of aid 
 being rendered by individuals of the nation. 
 Almost the only activities by individuals which 
 international law recognises as inconsistent with 
 national neutrality, and which therefore a neutral 
 nation is obligated to prevent, are the organising 
 within its boundaries of armed forces for use 
 against one of the belligerents, and the sale of 
 armed vessels of war. Other individual activities 
 are not only permissible, but at a time like this 
 
ADDRESS 137 
 
 appear to me to be the moral duty of the citizens 
 of the nation. 
 
 It is impossible to conceive of the people of any 
 nation being neutral in any world crisis as vital as 
 that caused by the present war. The conditions 
 of life, both during the war and at its conclusion, 
 are certain to be affected to so great an extent 
 that every intelligent citizen must of necessity 
 have a deep concern in it. This war belongs to 
 every man and every nation. 
 
 I think that there can hardly be any American 
 in Canada who will disagree with the views that 
 I have expressed to-night, however unwilling he 
 may be to go with me the full length of my beliefs 
 in regard to the present duty of the United States 
 as a nation. I, therefore, wish to impress upon 
 every one of my fellow-countrymen living in 
 Canada the overwhelming importance of making 
 Canada, as one of the component parts of the 
 British Empire, and the British Empire as 
 illustrated by Canada, understood in the United 
 States. Each individual may be able to reach 
 only a few persons in the United States, but these 
 persons may in turn influence others, and in this 
 way the good which we seek to accomplish may 
 be made to spread throughout the nation. 
 
 War between such nations as the United States 
 and Great Britain can never result except from 
 
138 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 a complete misunderstanding of each other. We 
 Americans who are of one nation, and in the 
 other, can do much to make Great Britain 
 understood in the United States, and it is our 
 duty to do so to the uttermost of our ability. 
 Those in control of the German propaganda are 
 doing their utmost to cause friction between the 
 governments of the United States and of Great 
 Britain, and nothing would please them more 
 than to be able to bring about a rupture of the 
 existing friendly relations. 
 
 I desire again to emphasise the fact that such 
 a rupture can only come from a complete failure 
 of the two nations to comprehend the funda- 
 mental democracy upon which they are both 
 established, and there lies upon the individual 
 citizen of each nation a weighty moral obligation 
 to do all in his power to make this fundamental 
 democratic unity understood at home and abroad. 
 This obligation is heavy upon the citizen of 
 Canada because geographically he is in a position 
 to make his country known and appreciated in 
 the United States, but it probably rests even 
 more heavily upon the United States citizen 
 living in Canada. He is in an even better posi- 
 tion to bring about real accomplishment in the 
 direction of mutual respect and confidence. Let 
 us, therefore, both Americans and Canadians, 
 
ADDRESS 139 
 
 spare no effort to promulgate the understanding 
 of this essential unity of democratic government 
 and democratic ideals in the United States and 
 in the British Empire. If we can succeed in making 
 this unity understood, we may rest certain that 
 nothing can ever occur to break the bonds of 
 peace between the two nations. No German 
 machinations, no isolated centres of pro-German 
 sympathy in the United States, will have power 
 to cause more than a momentary irritation. 
 
 I believe, also, that we ought to impress upon 
 the people of the United States the fact that, 
 until the time shall come, which as a result of this 
 war may be nearer than any of us have hereto- 
 fore dared to hope, when the commerce of the 
 world which affects the world as a whole, and 
 which is carried out along the sea routes of the 
 world, shall be guarded and have its safety 
 assured by an international navy established to 
 perform this international duty until such time 
 shall come, I say, it is safe for the world to entrust 
 to Great Britain the policing of the sea routes. 
 
 For generations Great Britain has held un- 
 questioned supremacy upon the seas, and during 
 the last hundred years the instances in which 
 she has used this supreme control of the ocean 
 routes unjustly are few and isolated. It is im- 
 possible not to believe that Great Britain is 
 
140 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 steadily advancing in democratic civilisation, 
 and it is impossible, therefore, to believe that 
 Great Britain will not in the future, as in the past, 
 use her mastery of the seas to further the safety 
 of international commerce whether the same shall 
 be under the British flag or under that of any 
 other nation. 
 
 It is foolish to attempt to frighten the 
 American people with the threat of danger to its 
 commercial interests from Great Britain's sea 
 power, as it is only necessary to call attention to 
 the fact that British sea power has prevailed for 
 many years and American commercial interests 
 have not been thereby damaged. Great Britain 
 for many years has herself paid the cost of carry- 
 ing out what should be an obligation of the world 
 in policing the trade routes and making them 
 safe for the commerce of the world, and no 
 nation has been injured by the fact that Great 
 Britain has policed them. 
 
 Germany in this war seeks to wrest from Great 
 Britain her naval supremacy. We have no assur- 
 ance that should Germany be successful and 
 acquire this supremacy it would be used with 
 the same restraint as has characterised British 
 supremacy. In this matter it would surely be 
 unwise to change the guardianship which for 
 generations has proved safe and trustworthy 
 
ADDRESS 141 
 
 unless the change were to make such guardian- 
 ship purely international, and dependent upon the 
 world as a whole rather than upon any one nation. 
 
 To sum up, therefore, it is fair to say that the 
 struggle now going on is not so much a struggle 
 between enumerated nations on one side and the 
 other, as it is a struggle between two systems of 
 government, between two systems of thought, 
 between modern democracy and medieval feu- 
 dalism, and in this struggle the people of every 
 nation in the world are vitally interested. 
 
 The people of the United States with a history 
 behind them of one war fought for their own 
 liberties, of one war fought for the liberties of a 
 race held in bondage within the nation, of a third 
 war fought for the liberties of a weak and im- 
 potent people at the borders of the country, 
 cannot but be vitally concerned in this struggle 
 for the liberties of the world, and even should the 
 United States not take part in actively promoting 
 the preservation and extension of these liberties 
 by an actual participation in the war against 
 Germany, it must render all the help to the cause 
 of the allied nations which its intelligent and 
 patriotic citizens can render without involving 
 the nation in the war. Upon each of us rests a 
 great and important duty to perform. The place 
 of America in history will be largely dependent 
 
H2 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 upon the attitude taken at this time by the 
 citizens of America. Let us, therefore, spare no 
 pains, each according to his ability, to make this 
 attitude one which shall redound to the lasting 
 credit of the nation, and which shall be consistent 
 with the history of its past and its hopes and 
 aspirations for the future years. 
 
 I wish again to emphasise the fact that the 
 reason that the sympathies of the United States 
 have been, and ought to be, extended to the allied 
 nations is that the fundamental issue is the ex- 
 tension of democracy. This growth of democracy 
 is what may succeed in making possible a federa- 
 tion of the nations and the establishment of an 
 international conclave or tribunal which shall 
 make future great wars impossible. The govern- 
 ment of the United States is essentially the estab- 
 lishment of a federation in which self-governing 
 and autonomous states have voluntarily ceded 
 to a federal government such of their sovereign 
 rights as seemed necessary to make the federation 
 effective, and have given to this federal govern- 
 ment power to enforce its federal regulations. 
 
 In like manner, the British Empire during the 
 last fifty years has shown a marked tendency to 
 become a federation much the same in effect as 
 the United States federation, and this movement 
 towards this form of government in the British 
 
ADDRESS 143 
 
 Empire is still continuing. The chief difference 
 between the origin of this British federation and 
 that in the United States is that in the former the 
 central government granted to the component 
 parts of the Empire powers and authorities not 
 inconsistent with the exercise of federal control, 
 whereas in the case of the United States the com- 
 ponent states originally had complete sovereignty 
 and gave up part of it to the central government. 
 The result in each case is much the same, 
 although historically it was reached through 
 different methods. 
 
 A federation is founded essentially upon an 
 idea which is sure to have more and more im- 
 portance in the highest civilisations. This is what 
 may be termed super - nationalism, and is a 
 recognition of the loyalty due by a people to a 
 conception of freedom and of order higher than 
 what is due to the nation. The states of the 
 United States are in effect each of them free 
 nations, which have, nevertheless, recognised 
 that there is a duty superior to that which they 
 owe to themselves, and the federal government 
 is in effect a recognition of this super-nationalism. 
 Much the same is true of the component parts of 
 the British Empire as at present constituted. 
 
 The greatest safeguard for the future of the 
 world and for permanent peace between such 
 
144 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 nations as the United States and the British 
 Empire will come from a recognition of a funda- 
 mental super-national loyalty due not only to 
 an established government greater than the 
 different states in America and greater than the 
 local governments of the various parts of the 
 British Empire, but to a conceptionof a civilisation 
 greater than any government hitherto established. 
 It will be a loyalty due to a system of world con- 
 trol which shall be superior to any nation. 
 
 This may serve to make more clear what I said 
 earlier in the evening that I believe democracy 
 is more a system of thought than a system of 
 government. If a people thinks democratically, 
 it means that this people has an appreciation of a 
 super-national loyalty which is due not merely 
 to the nation but to the world as a whole. This 
 super-national loyalty is by no means incon- 
 sistent with loyalty to the nation, in exactly the 
 same way that loyalty to a federal government 
 is not inconsistent with loyalty to one of the 
 states which compose it, or to a municipality 
 within the state. 
 
 It is the underlying recognition of the super- 
 national obligations of a people which restrains 
 the nation and makes it worthy. It matters not 
 what you term this spirit which I have called 
 super-nationalism, as it might in many cases 
 
ADDRESS 145 
 
 equally well be called ethics, or national morality, 
 or an understanding of the meaning of freedom, 
 or true civilisation, or any of various other terms. 
 I am convinced, however, that it exists, and that 
 in it lies the hope of the world. 
 
 Many fear that after this war the world will be 
 endangered by the Russian autocracy in exactly 
 the same manner in which it has been endangered 
 by the German autocracy. I cannot believe this, 
 for the reason that however much we democrats 
 disapprove of the existing form of Russian 
 government we cannot fail to see there an insistent 
 demand by the people for democratic freedom. 
 The people there are thinking democratically, 
 and an ultimate accomplishment of democracy 
 cannot fail a people which thinks democratically 
 and earnestly desires democracy. 
 
 This unrest and constant struggle towards 
 freedom in Russia is in marked contrast to the 
 supine and phlegmatic acceptance by the people 
 of Germany of the autocracy there prevalent. 
 The German people has been willing to accept 
 the efficiency of an able dictatorship, and has 
 lacked the protesting individualism which is 
 making the Russian people democratic. An eager 
 individualism is a necessary accompaniment of 
 a people which thinks democratically, and when 
 such individualism within an autocracy becomes 
 
146 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 powerful and insistent it must of necessity mean 
 an end to the autocratic system of government. 
 A consideration of these things makes it 
 evident that if the time shall come when the 
 United States, which seeks no direct profit in 
 territory or indemnity from the European 
 struggle, can, nevertheless, no longer keep aloof 
 and becomes involved in the war, it must be on 
 the side of the allied nations and against Germany. 
 The people of the United States hope to be able 
 with honour to avoid an active participation in 
 the war, however deeply some Americans may 
 feel that the struggle is not national but super- 
 national, and that, therefore, the United States 
 ought to be carrying its share of the burden. 
 Public opinion in the United States is being 
 educated to an appreciation of the truly super- 
 national character of the war, and if any concrete 
 event shall occur to bring home to the United 
 States its immediate interest in the struggle, the 
 fact that this opinion has been created and exists 
 will be of great importance in making the nation 
 ready for its decision. If such time shall come, the 
 world will see that the same people who shouted 
 " Cuba Libre " and bled to prove their words 
 will be ready as freely and as nobly to bleed to 
 prove that Belgium is a country and not a road. 
 
FRANCE 
 
 THE pathos of incidents caused by the war is 
 often such as to wring the heartstrings, and to 
 double the determination that this war must be 
 the last one ever to take place between great 
 nations. Next to Belgium, the burden of the 
 war has fallen most heavily upon France, and the 
 calm resignation and uncomplaining self-sacrifice 
 with which the people of France have met the 
 calls upon their patriotism serve as an inspiration 
 to those who believe that men and women can 
 rise to heights of unselfishness which shall make 
 war a thing of the past. 
 
 Ever since 1870 the spectre of Germany 
 militant along the frontier of ravished Alsace- 
 Lorraine has compelled France to a conscription 
 which she did not wish. The French people have 
 no longing for military aggression, and no desire to 
 extend the boundaries of their European domains, 
 other of course than the wish for the home-return 
 of the lost provinces. But they recognised the 
 threat of Germany, and knew that it was neces- 
 sary for the safety of their land that each son of 
 France should give up to his country two years 
 
148 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 to be devoted to military training, and that so 
 long as physically able to serve he must remain 
 subject to the call to arms. The patience with 
 which the people accepted this obligation and 
 this national duty is sometimes intensely pathetic. 
 
 The announcement that war had been declared 
 found the people unspeakably sad, but unswerv- 
 ing in their determination to meet the crisis. 
 There was no excitement, none of the marching 
 and shouting which we should have expected 
 from a nation which we have always considered 
 as much more mercurial than we. 
 
 From the very beginning, the war was accepted 
 as a thing as inevitable as fate, as a thing bigger 
 than all the interests of the individual, as a thing 
 to which such interests must be subordin- 
 ated without question. Whatever orders the 
 authorities gave were obeyed unhesitatingly and 
 without criticism, and the bare statement that 
 it was " pour la patrie " justified every sacrifice. 
 The dignity with which the mass of the people 
 accepted their duties under the new conditions 
 imposed by war was as remarkable as it was 
 admirable. 
 
 In Paris there was practically no disorder, only 
 an inexpressible unhappiness and sorrow which 
 contrasted strangely with the accustomed gaiety 
 of the city. On the first night of war a few men 
 
FRANCE 149 
 
 marched along the boulevards and a few stones 
 were thrown against shops bearing German names, 
 but nothing which could be termed rioting took 
 place. The next day such shops bore placards 
 giving the name of the regiment and the position 
 in it of the owner of the shop, followed by a 
 statement that during his absence the shop was 
 entrusted to the people of Paris. This ended all 
 disorder, the populace accepting the confidence 
 placed in it, and showing itself worthy. 
 
 This confidence in the people of France was 
 illustrated by another incident. The call came 
 to one reservist to appear for entrainment for the 
 front at one of the railway stations. This man 
 had just lost his wife, and was left with two 
 children, three years old and one year old. He 
 had no near relatives, and had been taking care 
 of the children himself. 
 
 At the appointed time he appeared at the 
 station, carrying the baby and leading the other 
 child. There was the usual crowd of persons 
 present, and the soldier addressing them said : 
 
 " My country has called for me, and I am here. 
 But my children, I have no one with whom to 
 leave them. What shall I do with my children ? " 
 
 A working woman among the spectators 
 stepped forward and said: 
 
 " Give them to me, I will take care of them 
 
ISO WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 for you until after the war, and in this way I, 
 too, can help la France." 
 
 The wonderful thing was that neither thought 
 that there was anything extraordinary in it, and 
 the soldier went to the battle-front sure that this 
 woman whom he had never before seen or heard 
 of would take care of the children and return 
 them to him if he ever came back from the war. 
 
 Occurrences like this, of which, did we but 
 know them, thousands have taken place since 
 the war broke out, make us firm believers not 
 only in France but in the men and women who 
 make the world. We cannot but know that in 
 Germany, too, there is the same inherent good in 
 human nature, and that the whole trouble has 
 been caused by the wrong German system which 
 has repressed the people instead of stimulating 
 them to individual progress. It is their mis- 
 fortune that they have not enjoyed democratic 
 opportunity; it is their fault, to a much smaller 
 degree, that they have not demanded a freedom 
 which they were prevented from learning. 
 
 France came out of the war of 1870 chastened 
 in spirit and with the consciousness of a great 
 injustice against which she was helpless. The 
 evil of the Second Empire was made clear, and 
 republicanism was born of her very misfortunes. 
 Her people, with a splendid courage, met the 
 
FRANCE 151 
 
 financial burdens of that war, and astonished the 
 world by paying off the indemnity imposed by 
 Germany in three years. 
 
 But until the present time France has never 
 been able quite to recover her old self-respect; 
 the knowledge that she had been forced to act 
 under compulsion, and had been powerless to 
 prevent the ravishing of Alsace and Lorraine, 
 left her not perhaps embittered, but certainly 
 with a sadness as a nation. Now she has again 
 found her soul, and as a nation can meet any 
 nation as an equal. Her soldiers have met the 
 finest fighting machine in the world, and have 
 shown not only the old Gallic fury of the charge, 
 but an immovable firmness and steadfastness in 
 the trying days of retreat and impending disaster. 
 The devotion of the army to its best ideals, even 
 when the prospects were most discouraging, was 
 almost British in its doggedness. 
 
 France does not seek to gain much materially 
 from this war; her great gain is the moral restora- 
 tion of her self-respect. The only European terri- 
 tory which she will seek will be her own lost 
 provinces; in money she will not get back more 
 than what was taken from her in 1870 with 
 interest and part of her present war costs; in 
 foreign lands she may strengthen her colonial 
 interests. 
 
iS2 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 But she will gain an added freedom for her 
 people; her democracy, which since the Franco- 
 Prussian war has been largely on trial, will be 
 strengthened and assured; and she will for all 
 time be freed from the fear of an insolent and 
 sneering Germany at her gates. The sacrifices 
 that she has made for her army have justified 
 themselves, but these sacrifices will no longer be 
 necessary. As an outcome of the war military 
 conscription will cease throughout Europe, and 
 the relief will perhaps be more grateful to France 
 than to any other nation. The national qualities 
 of France, the cheerfulness under conditions that 
 would have disheartened many nations, the 
 thrift and the genial kindness that have char- 
 acterised her, will have an added opportunity for 
 growth and expansion. Vive La France! 
 
 February 1915. 
 
GERMANY UNCIVILISED 
 
 CIVILISATION does not consist in knowledge; 
 that is often one of its least important attributes. 
 Neither does it consist in religion or in the much 
 misused term of culture in the sense of what the 
 Romans called the humanities. 
 
 It is almost impossible to give to civilisation 
 a definition which will not fall short at one point 
 or another; it is inclusive of so much which is 
 ethical, which is scientific, which is govern- 
 mental, which is artistic, which is social, that to 
 know what the word really means we have to 
 study the history of all that has happened since 
 the birth of man with a view to understanding 
 its bearing upon what man is to-day and what 
 he may become during the development of the 
 future. 
 
 A true civilisation must be both exceedingly 
 complex and exceedingly simple, however para- 
 doxical this may sound. Its simplicity lies in 
 the fact of its universality, of its catholicity, 
 of the fundamental broadness that must make 
 it applicable to every unit in the body politic. 
 Its complexity lies in the need that it be equal 
 
154 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 to the assimilation of every discovery and every 
 advance, and that it be able to meet every new 
 condition and new need. It must be above 
 nothing, no matter how small, and beneath 
 nothing, no matter how great. 
 
 One of the clearest evidences of civilisation is 
 toleration. This presumes a broadmindedness 
 which can eliminate the relative unimportance 
 of personal views wherever these views do not 
 ripen into action prejudicial to the existence and 
 growth of civilisation. This toleration applies 
 to many things, social as well as religious. 
 
 If the world were truly civilised, it would of 
 necessity mean an end to war, for war would be 
 quite superfluous, and could accomplish nothing 
 of value. This is the truth underlying Norman 
 AngelPs Great Illusion. That war has been 
 brought about by a nation is in itself a proof of 
 the lack of civilisation of that nation, and when 
 the methods of carrying on the war are even more 
 barbarous than the fact of its inception, this 
 proof is doubly clear. No matter how the analysis 
 of present European conditions is made, one of 
 the most salient facts that becomes evident is that 
 scientific and educated Germany is fundament- 
 ally uncivilised. 
 
 In its very derivation, civilisation is what 
 pertains to the citizen, and differs but slightly 
 from politics in its broadest meaning. It would 
 
GERMANY UNCIVILISED 155 
 
 therefore seem impossible that in an autocracy, 
 where the citizen as such has but little influence, 
 a true civilisation could fructify; and a considera- 
 tion of history will emphasise this fact. More of 
 the essentials of a true civilisation will be found 
 in the town meeting of the New England village, 
 with its unadulterated democracy, than in the 
 scientific complexities of a German militarism. 
 
 We look back with horror upon the Inquisition, 
 and regard the acts of a Torquemada in trying to 
 compel a belief in the Roman Church by means of 
 rack and wheel as the acme of barbarism. But 
 wherein does this differ in kind from the acknow- 
 ledged intention of Germany to spread the virtues 
 of its " Kultur " with fire and sword and to impose 
 them upon unwilling peoples ? 
 
 The Pilgrim Fathers sought the right to 
 worship as they chose, and, like the Huguenots 
 of France, were willing to suffer for this funda- 
 mental of freedom. Can Germany believe that in 
 this twentieth century those who have been bred 
 to an appreciation of the right of individual 
 choice will be content to have a German system, 
 to which they are antagonistic, thrust upon them, 
 and that a German success, if such a thing were 
 believable, would be more than a temporary lull 
 while the forces of freedom were recruiting them- 
 selves for revolution ? 
 
 No people which has ever ruled itself will be 
 
156 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 content to be ruled by others, and no people 
 which has known freedom will ever return to 
 bondage. Any attempt to bind a free people is to 
 breed revolution ; it is a sowing of the wind from 
 which the whirlwind will inevitably be reaped. 
 
 In contrast with this intent to extend by force 
 beliefs and systems upon those unwilling to 
 accept them voluntarily, let us note the tolera- 
 tion of British government since Britain became 
 democratic. It pleases Great Britain to call her- 
 self a Christian nation, and she has even dignified 
 a particular creed of Christianity with govern- 
 mental approval and entitled it the Established 
 Church. But nowhere have other branches of 
 Christianity or other religions more freedom to 
 exist and to proselytise than in Great Britain, 
 and some very respectable drawing-rooms are 
 even open to those monists who believe they have 
 progressed far beyond what Christianity has to 
 offer. 
 
 Much more striking, however, than the 
 religious toleration in Great Britain, where 
 religion matters not a fig, is the British toleration 
 in countries like India, where religion is still a 
 vital and active thing, and may at any moment 
 burst into a devouring flame. The King chooses 
 to call himself Defender of the Faith, but he 
 proves himself infinitely greater than his title in 
 being a defender of every faith that any of his 
 
GERMANY UNCIVILISED 157 
 
 subjects choose to embrace. Some of the concrete 
 results of religions have been detrimental to 
 orderly government and have had to be sup- 
 pressed, such, for instance, as the practice of 
 suttee by Hindu widows, but, in as far as 
 religious rites have not been inimical to the 
 essentials of government, all persons in British 
 territory are free to believe and to worship as 
 they choose. 
 
 This toleration is perhaps the greatest proof 
 that Great Britain is as much entitled to claim 
 to be civilised as any nation to-day existing. 
 With the United States, she shares the most 
 universal freedom of belief, and with the United 
 States she holds the best promise for the future. 
 
 Along with religious toleration goes toleration 
 of criticism. This is the greatest safeguard of 
 democracy and of civilisation, and the lack of it 
 in Germany is the fundamental cause of her 
 barbarism and of this war. Since the German 
 Empire was erected there has been no free press 
 there, and the lack of it alone has enabled the 
 militaristic powers to deceive the people and to 
 prevent an understanding of democratic ideals 
 which would have made impossible an acceptance 
 of the Philosophy of Force. It is true that in 
 English-speaking countries this freedom has 
 sometimes almost degenerated into licence, but 
 it cannot be misused to such an extent that it 
 
158 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 ceases to be supremely valuable, and to make 
 toward civilisation as much as any other one 
 factor. 
 
 Civilisation presupposes a sanity of vision 
 which will prevent excess even under new and 
 different conditions. Cannibalism is impossible 
 to a civilised people; it is revolting to the con- 
 ception of the dignity of man upon which every 
 civilisation must be based. Equally impossible 
 to a truly civilised people should be terrorism and 
 reprisal, and the fact that, in Belgium and 
 Poland, Germany has made use of them, forbids 
 her any right to claim civilisation. 
 
 Justice is one of the foundations of civilisation, 
 and justice rests upon responsibility. To seize 
 hostages and shoot them for the acts of others 
 over which they have no control is an act of 
 injustice entirely incompatible with even a 
 modicum of civilisation. Yet Germany admits 
 and glories in this barbarism, and by so doing 
 ranks herself with the Huns and the Visigoths. 
 
 Every one has a bit of the barbarian in him, 
 and civilisation is an artificial product. An eye 
 for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is human nature, 
 and it is impossible not to expect that those who 
 have suffered from German barbarism will have 
 a strong impulse to retaliate in kind when the 
 opportunity comes. The degree of civilisation to 
 which the British nation has attained will largely 
 
GERMANY UNCIVILISED 159 
 
 be measured by the restraint which it shows 
 when it has both opportunity and provocation. 
 I believe that the British armies as a whole will 
 show that they have an understanding of the 
 duties imposed by civilisation which will dif- 
 ferentiate them sharply from the Teuton war 
 machine. 
 
 It is, of course, inconceivable that Great 
 Britain should forget herself to the same extent 
 as Germany, and should commit acts of slaughter 
 and destruction where no military advantage 
 other than terrorism could be gained. On the 
 other hand, vengeance is a very human quality, 
 and however safe German women and children, 
 burgomasters and civilians may be, it will un- 
 doubtedly be hard to prevent acts of revenge 
 upon German soldiery. Let those upon whom 
 rests Great Britain's reputation spare no en- 
 deavour to keep British hands clean of such acts. 
 
 Civilisation is largely an appreciation of the 
 rights of others, and under the breadth of this 
 definition no one could claim that Germany has 
 shown herself civilised. The invasion of Belgium 
 was one of the most uncivilised acts of history, 
 and no sophistry or casuistry can make it 
 other. 
 
 The temptation to Great Britain to violate 
 Holland has been enormous, but no one has ever 
 suggested that Great Britain do so. The chances 
 
160 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 are that Holland herself has reached a state of 
 civilisation where she will realise that she is com- 
 pelled to enter the war against the barbarism of 
 Germany, and that when the time is ripe Holland 
 will invite England to pass through Dutch land 
 to the performance of her great task, but Holland 
 knows well that she can rely on British civilisa- 
 tion, and that until she enters the war her 
 boundaries are safe from British invasion. 
 
 Civilisation and unselfishness are closely re- 
 lated, and here also we find that Germany fails 
 to measure up to the standard, and that most of 
 the other nations also fail to a lesser degree. The 
 most selfish and most uncivilised of modern 
 national institutions is the custom house, and as 
 might have been expected it has been the most 
 prolific cause of war. It is possible from a philo- 
 sophical viewpoint to justify the existence of the 
 custom house only as a convenient means of 
 raising revenue, of taxing the people within a 
 country. When its scope is admittedly extended 
 beyond this, as when protective duties are 
 imposed, it is a national selfishness incom- 
 patible with the highest civilisation, which should 
 aim to give equal opportunity to all people re- 
 gardless of national boundaries. 
 
 This conception of civilisation may seem 
 Utopian when the development hitherto attained 
 is considered, but it is none the less logically 
 
GERMANY UNCIVILISED 161 
 
 sound. A perfected world-civilisation ought to 
 aim at giving no selfish advantages to any one 
 people; this is the root of world democracy, just 
 as national democracy aims at the destruction 
 of selfish privilege within the nation. 
 
 The uncivilised and selfish desire to seek special 
 advantages by one nation over other nations, a 
 narrow and egotistic nationalism, is the funda- 
 mental cause of all wars, and the custom house 
 is the instrument by which this selfishness is most 
 frequently carried out. 
 
 Incidentally, I might mention that from a 
 philosophical standpoint the most evil of all 
 tariffs is the preferential tariff, which seeks not 
 only to create unnatural economic conditions 
 between those within the nation and those with- 
 out, but further seeks to destroy any fair equality 
 of opportunity for those outside of the nation. 
 This is true in spite of the sentimental and even 
 altruistic arguments which have often been used 
 to justify a preference and to make it appear as 
 a noble and unselfish action of devotion. 
 
 The world still has far to go to reach a real 
 civilisation, but the nearer it can come to it the 
 more impossible will war become, and the greater 
 will be the happiness of mankind. Let us imagine 
 what would exist in a completely civilised world. 
 Democracy would be universal, and with it would 
 be universal education. Every people would be 
 
162 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 governed in units of the size desired by them- 
 selves. There would be no incentive to national 
 extension or conquest, because there would be 
 nothing to be gained by it. The citizens of one 
 nation where population was becoming unduly 
 dense would be free to go to whatsoever other 
 land they wished, there to find democracy and 
 opportunity. With universal democracy there 
 would be no governmental advantage in colonies 
 or subject territory; with universal free trade 
 there would be no economic advantage in them. 
 Equality of opportunity would create an aris- 
 tocracy of ability regardless of race, creed, or 
 nationality. It would be a world where justice 
 would be more nearly universal than ever before. 
 There is no nation in the world which yet 
 approaches this ideal of civilisation, of super- 
 national civilisation, but the evidence shows that 
 Germany is farther from it than any other nation, 
 with the possible exception of those which, like 
 Turkey, are frankly barbarous and anachronistic. 
 We come back again and again to the old thesis 
 that the only thing which can lead to civilisation 
 is democracy, and that an autocracy, no matter 
 how sedulously it may ape the appearance of 
 civilisation, lacks and must lack its fundamental 
 requirements. 
 
 March 1915. 
 
PATRIOTISM 
 
 PATRIOTISM is a sentiment which may be made 
 use of to accomplish any national purpose, good 
 or evil. It is an effective means of appealing to 
 those who do not have the keenness of insight 
 necessary to analyse causes and conditions, and 
 frequently stands for much that is wrong and 
 retrogressive. It is often used as the cloak under 
 which national selfishness and even bureaucratic 
 selfishness may conceal its ugliness. 
 
 A real patriot is one who insists that his 
 country shall act worthily, not one who is willing 
 to support his country through thick and thin 
 no matter whether its course be praiseworthy or 
 not. In other words, a true patriot is he who 
 demands that his country shall take the course 
 which shall develop in it the highest ideals of 
 which it is capable, and who is willing to sacrifice 
 everything for the fructification of these ideals. 
 
 It is therefore clear that in a given event the 
 world will be better or worse off for the existence 
 of patriotic sentiment according to whether the 
 success of the cause for which the country stands 
 and for which the spirit of patriotism is aroused 
 
 163 
 
164 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 is one which shall benefit the world or which 
 shall injure it. If the former, there is nothing 
 which can be of more service in creating in men 
 a willingness to undergo the sacrifices needed to 
 attain the end; if the latter, there is nothing 
 which more dangerously can cause worthy men 
 to give unselfish endeavour for that which is 
 unworthy. 
 
 The spirit of nationalism is what may be un- 
 worthy and is what is commonly called patriotism 
 and evoked under that name. Whether this 
 nationalism is truly patriotic depends on the 
 worthiness of the nation and its cause. 
 
 There are few things which are in their nature 
 more wrong than to use noble motives for base 
 accomplishment. This is a perversion which 
 when understood vaguely, but not clearly dis- 
 tinguished, can do more to discredit nobility of 
 motive and make it seem not worth the while 
 than almost anything else. It is the converse of 
 the Jesuitical, and seeks to make the means 
 appear to justify the end. It may serve to dim 
 those ideals which hold the hope of progress. 
 
 It therefore behoves the true patriot, he who 
 feels that his loyalty and his endeavours are due 
 to his world, to determine whether his country 
 is worthy, and whether by promoting his country's 
 cause he is promoting the cause of civilisation 
 
PATRIOTISM 165 
 
 and the welfare of mankind. These latter objects 
 are what the evolution of the world requires, 
 and it is to these supremely that loyalty and 
 patriotism are due. 
 
 To come from the abstract to the concrete, it is 
 of value to note in this war how each nation has 
 made appeals to patriotism, and to try to see in 
 each case whether the appeal is one which will 
 help or will hinder progress. 
 
 The case of Germany is, of course, the most 
 interesting and the most vital, because of all 
 nations Germany is the one from whom most 
 might have been expected by the world. No nation 
 has itself advanced more in scientific knowledge 
 or in certain phases of industrial efficiency, and 
 no nation had more possibilities in it for advanc- 
 ing the world. If these qualities were the ones 
 sought to be perpetuated and enlarged by the call 
 to patriotism, if these qualities were threatened 
 from without and needed defence, every German 
 ought to have answered the call willingly and 
 enthusiastically. 
 
 But the preservation and protection of the 
 good qualities of the nation were not the object 
 of the call to the people. These things were not 
 endangered, but that which has been for years the 
 most evil thing in Germany, that which has more 
 than nullified all the good coming from the 
 
i66 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 nation, was at stake. The military caste, the 
 Junkerism, the bureaucracy, had been threatened 
 by the great increase in Socialism. True, the 
 Socialists could only speak through their repre- 
 sentatives in the Reichstag, and under the 
 peculiar form of German government it mattered 
 not at all what they said in the Reichstag. 
 Germany has the forms of a parliamentary 
 chamber, but this chamber has none of the 
 powers of a real parliament. It is absolutely 
 subject to the throne and to the Bundesrat, and 
 is nothing except a safety valve through which 
 the dissatisfactions of the people might be harm- 
 lessly blown off. The brilliance of Bismarck's 
 ability was in no way more clearly manifested 
 than in his giving much of the appearance with 
 none of the substance of popular representation. 
 Powerless as the Reichstag was, it was none 
 the less very disconcerting to the Junker rulers 
 to see the seething Socialism which was becoming 
 so prevalent throughout the country, and they 
 realised that however impotent this Socialism 
 might be under existing forms of government, 
 any further great extension of it might easily 
 make it so powerful that it would overthrow the 
 regulations which made it impotent, and with 
 them bring the Junkers crashing down. The 
 burdens of militarism were becoming almost too 
 
PATRIOTISM 167 
 
 heavy for the people to support, and any great 
 revolt against militarism would be a revolt 
 against the Junker caste who lived only by it. 
 What course then would be so effective for the 
 Junkers as to bring on a war, to justify their army 
 by its use, and to shout for the Vaterland and 
 scream patriotism with voices that should drown 
 any protests from helpless socialists and serve to 
 make a deceived populace turn to the Junkers 
 through a mistaken patriotism ? It is not the 
 first time that foreign wars have been brought 
 about to conceal a domestic malady of the nation, 
 nor the first time that a generous but mistaken 
 patriotism has been aroused to act as the bul- 
 wark of an absolutism which was in reality the 
 greatest foe of the people cajoled into rallying to 
 its defence. 
 
 Once the war was afoot, the German rallying 
 cry was that the Empire was fighting for its very 
 existence. This was absolutely true if its exist- 
 ence as heretofore constituted was intended, for 
 the world cannot afford to tolerate its continu- 
 ance. But the German people are not fighting 
 for their own existence; indeed aside from the 
 losses and suffering of the war and the burden of 
 hatred and debt under which they will have to 
 labour for many years, the lot of the people will 
 be far better under the new conditions of demo- 
 
168 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 cratic freedom which will come to them after 
 the inevitable defeat of Germany. The longer 
 Germany continues her hopeless struggle and the 
 greater the losses she inflicts upon the nations 
 opposing her, the heavier will be the burden 
 which the people of Germany will have to shoulder 
 after the war, and the longer will it take them to 
 regain the conditions of peaceful prosperity which 
 is their right. 
 
 It would have been altogether too much to 
 expect from the bulk of a people that they should 
 appreciate these facts and have the wit to detect 
 how false a note was struck in the appeal to their 
 patriotism. They had had only forty-five years 
 of nationhood, and for all this time into their 
 ears had been dinned panegyrics of this new 
 nation. The doctrine that the state was the 
 supreme excellence, to which every right of the 
 citizen must be subordinated, had been pro- 
 claimed as an established fact, and any attempts 
 to attack this doctrine had been treated as 
 treason. With wonderful skill the Junkers had 
 identified themselves with the state in the 
 popular mind, and had instilled into the people 
 the belief that to the state their highest loyalty 
 was due. It was therefore only natural that, 
 when the cry of danger to this state was raised, 
 the people believed that they were acting with 
 
PATRIOTISM 169 
 
 a noble patriotism in sacrificing everything for 
 what was in fact their greatest enemy and 
 oppressor. 
 
 Even if this was to be expected from the mass 
 of the people including the socialists, from whom 
 clear thinking was not to be anticipated, how- 
 ever much we must sympathise with the restless- 
 ness which was manifesting itself in impossible 
 methods, the fact that the intellectuals also 
 accepted the call as one of a true patriotism is 
 almost incomprehensible. When one reads the 
 weak and futile expositions of men like Eucken 
 and Haeckel, when one sees the names of men of 
 .world-wide reputation for learning and sagacity 
 appended to a justification childish in its self- 
 evident falsities, one can only presume that 
 despotism in Germany has gone even farther 
 than supposed, and that these men wrote and 
 signed these things because they were ordered to 
 do so. It is impossible that they believed in such 
 puerilities. To approve their sincerity is to insult 
 their intelligence, and these men have long ago 
 proved that they are not unintelligent. 
 
 The only manly voice that has been heard from 
 Germany is the voice of Harden. He justifies 
 his country with an avowed acceptance of the 
 Philosophy of Force. The rest are cowards and 
 hypocrites. 
 
1 70 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 How different is the call of patriotism in a 
 country in the position of England! There the 
 call rings out true and unashamed, and there is 
 no conflict between the narrow loyalty due to 
 the nation and the broader loyalty due to the 
 world and to mankind. However much national 
 interests and selfishnesses may have been in- 
 jected into the war, however much Great Britain 
 and France and Russia are going to gain in 
 national advantage from the victory which is 
 coming to them, this sinks into insignificance in 
 comparison with what the world as a whole and 
 the progress of mankind is to gain from their 
 triumph. The colour of patches on a map matters 
 little so long as it does not mean injustice and 
 exploitation; that democratic freedom may be 
 made to spread across all the colours on the map 
 matters supremely. That a big green or purple 
 splotch shall not absorb a little yellow or blue 
 one and hold it in bondage is essentially im- 
 portant; and this war is going to make it safer 
 and easier for the great masses of people in every 
 colour to carry on their pursuit of happiness and 
 to continue the evolution to which they are 
 entitled. 
 
 Again and again we come back to the same 
 consideration which this war has driven home to 
 us with such trip-hammer blows, that the struggle 
 
PATRIOTISM 1-71 
 
 is between democracy and absolutism. The very 
 patriotism which when it is given to aid in 
 democratic advance is the noblest unselfishness 
 of which human nature is capable becomes 
 when given to autocratic reaction hideous and 
 dangerous. This difference has always been felt 
 even if it has not been reasoned out and analysed, 
 and every great patriot of history will always be 
 found to have been on the side of the mass of the 
 people and against those who sought to enslave 
 them. Patriotism is the love of country, and 
 country is the people who make it, and the world 
 of which it is a part, not the dictator who rules it. 
 And when a nation among nations seeks to play 
 the role of dictator and despot, that nation is no 
 more entitled to the sacred patriotism of its 
 people than would be an Attila or a Nero. 
 
 March 1915. 
 
THE DECREASING VALUE OF 
 NATIONHOOD 
 
 ONE of the most important things taught by this 
 war is that the value of nationhood is lessening. 
 This may seem an extraordinary assertion, but 
 none the less I believe it to be true. 
 
 In the early development of mankind, the 
 nation was of paramount importance, and was 
 necessary for the physical safety of its citizens. 
 The first nations were little more than the re- 
 striction within geographical boundaries of the 
 old tribal relationships, which theretofore had 
 been merely sociological and not dependent upon 
 location. They were a direct and natural result 
 of the development of tribes from wandering 
 communities, subsisting on the chase and follow- 
 ing wherever the promise of game might lead 
 them, into agriculturists with a definite interest 
 in a definite locality. The need for mutual assist- 
 ance in self-protection had caused the organisa- 
 tion of the nomadic tribes; this same need 
 continued even after their wanderings had 
 ceased, and was the basis of the establishment 
 of nations. These early tribal and national 
 
174 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 relationships were the first evidences of the 
 principles of co-operation, and were established 
 both for protection against the inroads of other 
 tribes and nations, and in turn for being able 
 more effectively themselves to accomplish pre- 
 datory expeditions upon their neighbours. 
 
 With the advance of civilisation, the need of 
 the organisation of nations for the physical pro- 
 tection of their inhabitants became less, but 
 the advantages of a continuance of co-operation 
 for governmental and administrative purposes 
 became more and more evident. The rulers of 
 these nations found that they could best accom- 
 plish their desires by instilling into the people 
 under them a sense of the sacredness of the 
 national entity and of the obligation due to the 
 state above that due to family or self. This 
 patriotism, often false, often evoked for selfish 
 and sordid reasons, has been one of the most 
 important influences of history, and has some- 
 times fructified into the most splendid instances 
 of philanthropic unselfishness, and sometimes 
 degenerated into the most evil examples of 
 aggression. Belgian heroism and Prussian in- 
 solence have both been effected by this means. 
 
 Up to comparatively recent times it was almost 
 wholly within a nation that civilisation developed, 
 and it is only with the modern facilities of com- 
 
VALUE OF NATIONHOOD 175 
 
 munication that the internationalism which is so 
 marked an accompaniment of recent advances 
 in the arts and sciences became possible. To-day 
 most of the things which count in life are inter- 
 national, and this very fact of the broadness of 
 their foundation permits them to attain a per- 
 fection and a rapidity of growth impossible 
 under the old restrictions of nationalism. Thus 
 art, religion, medicine, literature, and the many 
 applications of science are not confined to any 
 one nation, but, as soon as they exist for one 
 nation, of necessity and automatically they 
 become part of the wealth of every nation. 
 Finance, along with commerce, has become 
 notoriously international, and even social aristo- 
 cracies are to a certain extent becoming inter- 
 nationalised. 
 
 This extension of the chief interests and pur- 
 suits of mankind beyond national boundaries is 
 perhaps the most valuable result of advancing 
 civilisation, and in the course of time will do 
 much to bring about a uniformity of the benefits 
 of civilisation throughout the world. It will tend 
 to create a uniformity of knowledge and under- 
 standing which as time goes on will make 
 national boundaries of less and less importance. 
 The ultimate limit of this development of inter- 
 nationalism will be when there is a universal and 
 
1 76 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 advanced civilisation throughout the world, at 
 which time the divisions between nations will 
 be of little more importance than are the 
 divisions between counties at the present time. 
 
 Such a Utopian condition can of course only 
 result from a universal adoption of the funda- 
 mental principles of democracy, but if anything 
 in the future is certain it is that in the develop- 
 ment of the world these principles will be uni- 
 versally adopted. Democracy is a necessary 
 consequence of the general education of a people, 
 and the greater efficiency of an educated people 
 makes progress in education sure to come. 
 
 It is interesting here to note the fact that the 
 interdependence of nations has already become 
 such that it can no longer be said that any 
 nation is at liberty to govern itself as it chooses 
 regardless of the ideas of others. Such a govern- 
 ment if fundamentally undemocratic may in its 
 effect upon the people governed be such as to 
 cause the nation to be dangerous to others. 
 Thus, for example, it is clear that all of Europe 
 had a vital interest in the fact that Germany has 
 permitted no freedom of the press, because it is 
 evident that only by denying to the people their 
 right to a free press could the Prussian absolutism 
 have built itself up to a strength where it became 
 a menace to Europe, and the cause of the present 
 
VALUE OF NATIONHOOD 177 
 
 war. No matter from what direction the first 
 cause of the war is sought, ultimately an investiga- 
 tion will inevitably show that the underlying 
 cause was the fact that the people of Germany 
 have not been allowed to discuss and to criticise 
 the government imposed upon them. 
 
 Both the early growth and the later decline of 
 the importance of the national entity have been 
 necessary results of the development of civilisa- 
 tion. When a people first began to advance 
 beyond the savagery of their neighbours they 
 required this nationality to protect them from 
 the inroads of barbarism from without, and to 
 allow of progress within the nation of the arts of 
 peace in accordance with its capacity. Along 
 with this protective need was joined the desire 
 for aggressive conquest, belief in the value of 
 which up to a century ago was an accepted 
 doctrine of almost every nation, and the sur- 
 vival of which in Germany up to the present time 
 constitutes one of the clearest proofs that she is 
 far behind other nations in the essentials of 
 modern civilisation. 
 
 Practically all of recorded history deals with 
 this phase of the development of the world, and 
 concerns itself with the efforts of people as 
 members of a nation, and not with their efforts 
 as members of the human race or as citizens of 
 
 M 
 
1 78 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 the world. A natural result of this is that history 
 has to relate chiefly the annals of war and battle 
 and the endeavours of nations to advance them- 
 selves at the expense of other nations rather 
 than by their aid. 
 
 A great change is, however, now taking place 
 in the course of this development of the world, 
 and I firmly believe that the present war is the 
 termination of the earlier progress along lines 
 chiefly national, and that it marks the culmina- 
 tion and end of the endeavours that have existed 
 for thousands of years to localise culture and 
 knowledge, or to confine them to any one lan- 
 guage or any one race. If the war accomplishes 
 this, as I believe it will, no matter what its cost 
 it will have justified itself to the world. 
 
 This fundamental change of progress from 
 lines merely national to lines universal, a change 
 which marks a great turning point in the history 
 of mankind, has only been made possible within 
 the last century by the advances in methods of 
 communication and transportation. The world 
 to-day is for all practical purposes smaller than 
 were most countries two hundred years ago, 
 and it has much greater unity than many of the 
 great empires of history. This unity is sure to 
 increase steadily with the increase of knowledge 
 and the wideness of its dissemination, and the 
 
VALUE OF NATIONHOOD 179 
 
 next few centuries will bring about far greater 
 changes in the basic establishments of civilisa- 
 tion than has the whole Christian era up to this 
 time. The co-operation of the thinking men of 
 the whole world, and the communication to each 
 other of the results of their work, allowing each 
 to begin his researches where the others left 
 off, will also permit a rapidity of development 
 hitherto unprecedented. It is this universal co- 
 operative influence, only felt for a hundred years, 
 which has allowed the last century to produce 
 greater scientific discoveries and greater results 
 in their application than all of history before, and 
 this influence will prove cumulative and will 
 serve to speed up progress to an extraordinary 
 extent. 
 
 The development of civilisation along inter- 
 national lines is certain to make great wars im- 
 possible in the near future, and the world may 
 confidently look forward to a time when war 
 will be merely the exercise of police powers upon 
 backward, uncivilised, or recalcitrant nations. 
 International civilisation, international com- 
 merce, international finance, international brains, 
 have already developed to a degree which will 
 shortly make impossible the barbarism of such 
 a war as the present one. The only thing that 
 made it possible in 1914 was the survival of 
 
1 80 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 medievalism in the German government, a 
 medievalism existent in the great nations of 
 to-day only in Germany, and perhaps to a lesser 
 extent in Russia. In Germany it will be forcibly 
 destroyed; in Russia it will be ended by the 
 example of the fate it brought to Germany and 
 by the influence of Russia's progressive allies. 
 Moreover, the world has been made to realise as 
 never before the cost of such wars ; and the con- 
 certed wisdom of the nations will be exercised 
 as never before to make them impossible. 
 
 As a result of the war there is no question but 
 that militarism on any such scale as has been 
 existent in Europe will no longer be tolerated. 
 The false proposition that preparedness for war is 
 the greatest assurance of peace has been definitely 
 contradicted, and this old bulwark of nationalism 
 has been destroyed. In addition to the philo- 
 sophical reasons showing the futility of arma- 
 ment, the very practical one will be felt that 
 Europe will have been so nearly bankrupted by 
 the war that she cannot afford the expense. 
 
 It has been evident for many years that no one 
 nation, no matter how powerful, could maintain 
 a military strength sufficient to protect itself 
 against a combination of the other nations, the 
 nearest approach to the accomplishment of this 
 having been the British ability by naval supre- 
 
VALUE OF NATIONHOOD 181 
 
 macy to protect the natural isolation of an 
 island kingdom. Consequently the great Euro- 
 pean powers have sought to establish a balance 
 of power under which the abilities of one group 
 should be maintained more or less on an equality 
 with those of the other group. This alignment 
 necessitated an admission, no matter how tacit, 
 that disagreements between the nations of one 
 group could be adjusted by methods other than 
 war, and the very fact of this grouping of friendly 
 nations under the practical necessity of remain- 
 ing friendly and not fighting each other has de- 
 monstrated that war itself is needless and has 
 become an anachronism. 
 
 The result of this war will be to destroy utterly 
 the balance of power, and to leave one group 
 enormously preponderant. The detachment of 
 Italy from the unnatural Dreibund, the de- 
 struction of Austria-Hungary as an empire and 
 of Germany as a military power, and the flocking 
 of all the weak and hungry nations, eager for 
 some of the spoils of victory, to the side of the 
 conquering Entente powers, will leave these 
 powers entirely unopposed and supremely able 
 to do what they choose. It is impossible to 
 believe that they, who have proved that they 
 are able to agree under the stress of war, and 
 who will have the horrors of war so new before 
 
1 82 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 their eyes, will be unable to agree upon a basis 
 of peace between themselves. They are already in 
 alliance, and the greater the number of nations 
 which join them before the final collapse of the 
 German coalition, the greater will be the pro- 
 portion of the world prepared by the brotherhood 
 of war for the brotherhood of peace. For this 
 reason, if for no other, it is from a world point of 
 view desirable that all the Balkan nations, Italy, 
 and perhaps Holland and the Scandinavian 
 kingdoms should definitely join with the great 
 protagonists, and most of all that America should 
 have the vision to see that now is being fought the 
 last great world-fight for the principles which 
 have made America, and that every civilised 
 consideration demands that she ally herself 
 definitely with the progressive powers and under- 
 take at least some of the financial burdens of 
 the war. 
 
 Alliance in war and federation in peace are not 
 very far apart, and it is surely not too much to 
 expect and to demand that one shall grow into 
 the other. The greater part of the world will at 
 the end of the war be in active alliance. The 
 whole world outside of Germany, Austria, and 
 Turkey is united in its sympathies with the 
 Entente powers. When all of this world is united 
 in federation, as it can and must be made to be 
 
VALUE OF NATIONHOOD 183 
 
 united by this war, it will be easy to open a 
 link in the circle and to admit a reconstructed 
 Germany and Austria along with other minority 
 nations to complete a federation of the world. 
 
 The ideal, of course, which we all hope to see 
 will be an international federation with a tribunal 
 to which all international disputes must be sub- 
 mitted, and which shall have military forces 
 sufficient to enforce its decrees. This last con- 
 dition will probably be impossible of immediate 
 accomplishment, and for a time the enforcement 
 of such decrees will have to depend upon a 
 voluntary acceptance of them by the nations 
 interested, backed by the very effective pressure 
 of international opinion. It may also be possible 
 to have a majority of the more powerful nations 
 engage to compel an acceptance of these decrees. 
 
 When such a tribunal has been in existence 
 for a number of years, when obedience to its 
 orders has become customary throughout the 
 world, when with disarmament the power of any 
 one nation for instant effective military action 
 has become greatly diminished, it will be com- 
 paratively easy to bring about an acceptance by 
 the nations of complete individual disarmament 
 coupled with proportionate contributions to an 
 international force competent to compel obedi- 
 ence to the mandates of the international 
 
i8 4 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 tribunal. Only when such a condition exists can 
 the world as a whole be said to be approaching 
 civilisation. 
 
 From the foregoing considerations it is clear 
 that the great value of national entity has become 
 merely its military power, and that with this war 
 and the disarmament which will necessarily be 
 consequent upon it this value will be greatly 
 decreased. Military power has been shown to be 
 a danger rather than a protection. The strength 
 of France or Russia or Great Britain could not 
 keep them out of the war; the weakness of 
 Holland and Denmark has not dragged them 
 into it. The accident of Belgium's location, not 
 her impotence, is the cause of her martyrdom. 
 
 Never again will the doctrine that the state 
 exists except for the benefit of the citizen be 
 allowed to prevail. The false conception of a 
 holy and sacred abstract thing, greater than the 
 citizens who compose it, is forever destroyed. 
 The world recognises that the greatness of a 
 man depends upon what he is, not upon the 
 nation to which he may chance to belong. Is 
 Chopin less valuable because Poland has ceased 
 to be Poland, or Maeterlinck of less account 
 because he is a Belgian, not a Russian or an 
 Englishman ? It matters little to a man nowa- 
 days whether his country be weak or powerful so 
 
VALUE OF NATIONHOOD 185 
 
 long as it gives him safety and opportunity; it 
 is evident that mere bigness can give neither. 
 
 The best example of what the evolution of 
 a federation of the world will be is what the 
 federation called the British Empire already is. 
 The nations which make it up are free and self- 
 governing, and yet war between Canada and 
 Australia is inconceivable. The moral force of 
 the federation to which they belong has, however, 
 been enough to make them voluntarily contribute 
 in men and money to this war, even though they 
 were not themselves actively threatened and 
 though an invasion of either Canada or Australia 
 was most improbable. If it were not for the name, 
 there would be nothing to prevent every free 
 nation in the world voluntarily joining and be- 
 coming a part of the British Empire or of the 
 United States or of any other similarly con- 
 stituted federation. A nation doing so would 
 lose nothing of its freedom or of its right of 
 independent self-government, but would enter a 
 brotherhood which would make fratricidal war 
 impossible. The federation of the world is nothing 
 more nor less than a big British Empire or a big 
 United States, and the evolution of mankind 
 and the progress of civilisation make it inevitable 
 that it shall come. The steamship and the 
 telegraph and the railroad train have made it 
 
1 86 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 inevitable ; it is merely a question of the time at 
 which, it is to take place. I believe that it can be 
 made to follow as a result of the present war, and 
 if this is accomplished William II. will have 
 proved himself the greatest benefactor the world 
 has ever known by making it clear that such as 
 he must for evermore belong to a bygone and 
 unregretted past. The contrast of medieval 
 Prussia with the world of to-day will make 
 possible the universal federation of a near 
 to-morrow. 
 
 April 
 
AMERICAN AMMUNITION IN BRITISH 
 TRENCHES 
 
 THE New York papers are printing full-page 
 advertisements, signed by the publishers of a 
 large number of foreign newspapers issued in the 
 United States, appealing to the American people, 
 industries, and workmen not to manufacture, sell, 
 or ship powder, shrapnel, or shot of any kind or 
 description to any of the warring nations of 
 Europe or Japan. 
 
 The thing to me as a citizen of the United 
 States most appalling in the attitude of my 
 country is the failure of vision of many of my 
 fellow-citizens, including the President. They 
 cannot see that this war is not a conflict between 
 nations, " a quarrel," to use Mr. Wilson's phrase, 
 but is a struggle between two incompatible 
 systems. The great change in the world during 
 the last hundred and fifty years has been the 
 growth of democratic institutions, and the present 
 war is the last struggle of reactionary feudalism 
 to stem this tide of democratic advance. The 
 national ambitions and selfishnesses which have 
 
 been injected into it are insignificant in compari- 
 
 187 
 
i88 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 son with the importance of the main issue, which 
 is to decide whether government of the people, 
 by the people, and for the people is a fraud and 
 a delusion and is to perish from off the earth; 
 whether Runnymede and Waterloo and the 
 French revolution were in vain ; whether Bunker 
 Hill and Valley Forge and Gettysburg were in 
 vain. 
 
 Even if many Americans are too blind to see 
 this, Great Britain and France know it, and are 
 determined that no peace shall be permitted until 
 the great purposes of the war shall have been 
 fully achieved. Prussianism must be destroyed, 
 and its destruction will prove, not only for Europe, 
 which it will free from ever-present fear and the 
 burden of preparedness, but even more for the 
 honest and intelligent people of Germany, whom 
 it will emancipate, the greatest good which has 
 ever come to them. 
 
 The allied powers are going to win decisively, 
 and the war will not end until they have done so. 
 The greater the superiority in men and munitions 
 which they are able to command the sooner will 
 Germany be overwhelmed and the less will be 
 the payment of suffering and misery for the world 
 and for the people of Germany. 
 
 The truest friends of permanent peace and of 
 the people of Germany are those who seek to have 
 
AMERICAN AMMUNITION 189 
 
 this accomplished as quickly as possible. The 
 mistaken persons who signed the appeal to 
 Americans to desist from supplying munitions of 
 war to the allied powers are enemies of mankind, 
 of America, which has an interest as great as 
 Europe in seeing the principles of democracy on 
 which the nation has been established made 
 possible of perpetuation, and of the people of 
 Germany, whose agonies they seek to prolong. 
 Their lack of vision causes them to perpetrate a 
 wickedness. If they were heeded they would 
 bear the responsibility for needless months of 
 war and the needless deaths of hundreds of 
 thousands of men. 
 
 I rejoice that such mawkish and mistaken 
 sentimentality is mostly confined to the foreign- 
 born and the hyphenated. This is a time when the 
 makers of shells and of gunpowder are working 
 for the cause of permanent peace. The greater 
 the output of their factories now the sooner will 
 it be possible to remodel them to serve the arts 
 of peace and the more quickly will the world be 
 in a position to continue its democratic advance 
 with the spectre of a threatening medieval 
 feudalism for ever banished. 
 
 April 1915. 
 
THE SADNESS OF THE WORLD 
 
 THE world is sadder than ever before, but this 
 sadness is not all evil. There is in it much of 
 inspiration, much of nobility, much of unselfish- 
 ness. The determination to accomplish, the 
 unalterable decision to do what is needful re- 
 gardless of cost, the grim certainty that the 
 devotion of all that is dearest to danger and to 
 death is warranted and justified, imparts to our 
 sadness a quality of pride which ennobles it. 
 
 The nature of the sadness in England and 
 in France seems quite different from that in 
 Germany. In the first two countries there is a 
 singular lack of bitterness in it; it is the result 
 of obedience to a duty almost religious in its 
 purity; of a sacrifice to all that is loftiest in 
 human aspirations. The call of the spiritual has 
 been heard, and the resources of these countries 
 are being dedicated to the purposes of the exist- 
 ence of mankind, the advancement of the world 
 of men. There is little of malice, little of hate, 
 nothing of fear; only an understanding that the 
 biggest thing is happening which has ever taken 
 
 place, and a knowledge that the people must be 
 
 191 
 
192 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 broad and whole-souled to be equal to the 
 occasion. There is an appreciation that now 
 more than ever before must there be an over- 
 whelming example of that co-operation which is 
 the foundation of civilisation. 
 
 The German sadness is of a different quality. 
 In it is the gall of hate; it has a bitterness which 
 seems wholly without consolation. The doctrine 
 of the super-man, the super-race, the super- 
 state, has not in it the seeds of happiness to be 
 found in the ideals of world federation; and of 
 necessity the sorrow over sacrifices for this 
 doctrine has not the cleanness of sorrow over 
 sacrifices for less selfish ends. Hate and happi- 
 ness are incompatible; in like manner grief 
 impregnated with hate is far more bitter than 
 grief over a perished happiness. 
 
 John Jay Chapman is right when he says that 
 the cause of the German reversion to barbarism is 
 fear; much more right than Dr. Sarolea who 
 attributes it to a collective insanity such as 
 came over France in 1793. That madness was 
 emotional, intensely emotional; the present 
 German outrages are calculated, cold, and in- 
 tended. Germany realises that the thing she is 
 attempting is the biggest thing in history; she 
 is frightened at her own temerity in attempting 
 it, and is trying to bolster up her courage with 
 
THE SADNESS OF THE WORLD 193 
 
 bluster and braggadocio. She is endeavouring to 
 persuade herself that she is not afraid of what 
 she is doing, and that she is indifferent to the 
 judgment of the world; like an Oriental running 
 amok she tries to hearten herself by spitting in 
 the face of civilisation and shouting that she 
 cares nothing for the opinion of others. And the 
 sorrow she is experiencing is correspondingly 
 polluted and unclean, drenched with a black 
 fear that no assumption of carelessness of con- 
 sequences can mitigate. 
 
 The sadness of the civilised world is like the 
 grief for the ending of a noble and useful life; 
 the sadness of Germany is mingled with an un- 
 relenting shame like that of a mother mourning 
 over a murderer son strangled upon the gallows. 
 The one has left a heritage of honour and a 
 legacy of light; the other has bequeathed only 
 disgrace and a sense of inconsolable horror. 
 
THE WAY OUT 
 
 AT this time the heart of Canada is heavier than 
 ever before as the lists of the casualties to her 
 soldiery near Ypres are coming in. This loss is 
 bitterly hard to bear, and the houses of mourning 
 are pitifully numerous. It seems in truth as if 
 Death loved a shining mark, and among the 
 fallen are many of our noblest and our bravest, 
 struck down by murderous and illegal methods 
 in the prime of their strength and their useful- 
 ness. Their high ambitions, their noble unselfish- 
 ness availed them not; their courage and their 
 devotion to duty could not save them; they lie 
 many of them in unmarked graves in an alien soil, 
 their only memorials being the unchanging love 
 in the anguished hearts they have left behind to 
 sorrow for their untimely deaths. 
 
 Say not that these men have died in vain. 
 Rather have they justified their world and their 
 ideals. Their example shall serve to quicken the 
 pulse of those who are weak and who hesitate; 
 their willingness to surrender life itself for duty 
 shall bring home the eternal truth of the prin- 
 ciples of freedom and liberty for which they died; 
 
196 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 their sacrifice shall make more certain the sane 
 and wholesome progress of the world for which 
 they gave their lives. The people of Canada are 
 more determined than ever that the just cause 
 for which these men strove shall prevail, and 
 that there can be no payment so heavy as not 
 to be warranted for this purpose. The noble 
 deaths of noble men given in a noble cause is an 
 inspiration which reaches to the understanding 
 of even the dullest, and from the seed that these 
 men have sown will grow blossoms in soil from 
 which such flowers could scarcely be expected. 
 
 There is only one thing more horrible than 
 such a war as this, and that is the condition which 
 makes such a war possible. The frightfulness of 
 the crime of this war is being impressed upon the 
 world to such an extent that the determination 
 to end once and for all time the sources from 
 which such wars can spring is unalterable. We 
 will pay the cost this time; we will send our 
 bravest and our best beloved ; we will endure all 
 that is necessary to establish our just purpose 
 to the end that neither our children nor our 
 children's children shall ever again be called 
 upon to pay such a toll to barbarism. 
 
 We believe that we know the cause of wars and 
 that the remedy which shall make them impos- 
 sible between enlightened peoples is clear and 
 
THE WAY OUT 197 
 
 evident. We believe that desire for war does not 
 exist in the mass of the citizens of any civilised 
 nation, but that it results from the selfish 
 ambitions of rulers, of men who seek by the 
 sufferings of others to advance their own desires. 
 We believe that when those to whom the 
 destinies of a people are entrusted derive their 
 power from the will of the people and retain their 
 power only so long as they are faithful to the 
 people they can be trusted to prevent the un- 
 necessary horrors of war. We believe that war 
 between two enlightened democracies has become 
 next door to impossible. The common sense of 
 millions of people is too great to permit of unjust 
 wars ; the sense of justice of millions of people is 
 too exact to allow of unjust demands. 
 
 Autocracy and absolutism have existed since 
 the birth of history, and since the birth of history 
 autocrats and dynastic rulers have caused wars 
 in order to advance their own ambitions. It is 
 only within the last century that the possibility 
 of the people of a nation being educated to a 
 degree where they are capable of self-government 
 has been realised; it is only within the century 
 that the possibility of eternal peace between great 
 nations has become more than a filmy dream; 
 it is only the concerted wisdom of free and intelli- 
 gent democracies that can accomplish it. We 
 
198 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 cannot conceive to-day of any condition arising 
 which, could cause war between the United 
 States and Great Britain, not because the two 
 nations are of the same blood and the same 
 language, but because they are of the same de- 
 mocracy and have the same intelligent ideals. 
 When their blood and their language were even 
 closer than now they fought against each other, 
 but this was before England had adopted to her- 
 self the great experiment of democracy instituted 
 in modern times by the United States. 
 
 Militarism is a universal attribute of absolu- 
 tism; it is entirely foreign to the spirit of 
 democracies and is adopted by them only as a 
 defence against threatening autocracies. The 
 conscript armies of France existed not because 
 France desired them but from fear of the Prussian 
 absolutism at her borders. When by this war 
 Germany has been made democratic as is the 
 inevitable result of her inevitable defeat, France 
 will do away with militarism as have England 
 and America. With the most evil of the modern 
 autocracies, Germany and Austria - Hungary, 
 forced to democracy by this war, with democratic 
 ideals and influences regenerating Russia and 
 Japan, the world may confidently expect that 
 great wars between great nations shall never 
 again occur. It is for this that our inspired young 
 
THE WAY OUT 199 
 
 manhood has suffered and has died, and we are 
 prepared to continue until the purposes of this 
 struggle have been accomplished. 
 
 The thing to me most pitiful, sadder even than 
 the losses of those soldiers who are dying on the 
 field of battle, is the blindness and lack of vision 
 of those who see only the horrors of the war and 
 not its fundamental cause and the advance in 
 the world we love that must be made to result 
 from it. It matters not how much we may 
 abominate this war, no intelligent and sincere 
 altruist can wish that it end until its results have 
 justified it. Those misguided pacifists who would 
 have it cease without the absolute overthrow of 
 the Prussian absolutism are enemies of mankind; 
 they should heed the noble rebuke of Theodore 
 Roosevelt to those who are unable to differentiate 
 between Belgium fighting for her honour and 
 her existence and Germany the desecrator and 
 violator of an unoffending nation. 
 
 War is almost the most horrible thing that can 
 come to a people, but even more horrible would 
 be a slothful ease that would sacrifice faith, 
 honour, justice, and truth if they entail war. Let 
 us rejoice that our leaders, chosen by ourselves, 
 have the vision to appreciate this, that our eager 
 and splendid young men will dare and die for 
 their ideals, and that our noble womanhood will 
 
200 WAR THOUGHTS OF AN OPTIMIST 
 
 continue to send forth their dearest and nearest, 
 bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, at the 
 call of duty. May those of us who cannot share 
 in the battle-lines themselves be worthy of the 
 heroes who have gone, and in our turn do what 
 we can for the world we love, the welfare of which 
 has been so gloriously supported by the blood 
 of those who have fallen at Langemarck. 
 
 May 1915. 
 
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