LIBRARY UNIVERSITY Of CAUFQRHII RlYERSfOE THE GREATER WAR BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE MENACE OF PEACE $1.00 WOODROW WILSON AND THE WORLD'S PEACE 1.50 GERMANISM AND THE AMERICAN CRUSADE .50 THE GREATER WAR BY GEORGE D. HERRON NEW YORK MITCHELL KENNERLEY 1919 COPYRIGHT 1919 BY MITCHELL KENNERLEY n I PRINTED IN AMERICA CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I THE PROPOSED LEAGUE OF NATIONS 1 II GERMANISM AND BOLSHEVISM AND THE FORCE BEHIND THEM 19 III WHICH SHALL REMAKE THE PEACE GERMANY OR DEMOCRACY ? 41 IV THE JUDGMENT DAY OF DEMOCRACY 65 THE PROPOSED LEAGUE OF NATIONS THE PROPOSED LEAGUE OF NATIONS IT is our duty to accept the League of Nations handed to us by the Paris Conference, despite its almost brazen defects, and to make of it a point of departure toward that world-society, that real brotherhood of nations, which dwells in the expectation, in the determination indeed, of the peoples now duped and despairing 1 . I do not suppose the present League is what the President desired; but, against doubtless overwhelming odds, against a diplomatic skepticism well-nigh universal, he has held fast to his primal purpose, and has taken what accomplishment he could get. It is something that the Great Idea is in the world, that it has forced the consent of governments, even though it be but badly formed, as yet, and scantily clothed. 3 4 THE GBEATES WAS That it is badly formed, that it is much more shadowy than substantial, is the truth. We shall get nowhere with our hopes for a federate world by blinking the truth, by evading the facts. If the present League of Nations were a finality, if we were to take it as more than a point of departure, then we should doom ourselves and the expectant peoples to perilous disappointment. But those of us who have hoped so much during these terri- ble years, who have almost exhausted our souls as well as our bodies in labors that predicated the end of the war as an approach to the kingdom of heaven we can only frankly face the failure of our labors, we can only acknowledge the defer- ment of our hopes, and seize upon the shadow that has been offered us with the consecration of our- selves to the work of creating substance within the shadow. n League of Nations presented by the Peace Conference is a name and no more : no such thing as a League of Nations exists : no such thing has been created at Paris. The most we can say is, that a doubtful League of Governments has been put forth j and, practically, a League of only three governments at that. As it turns out, what has been accomplished at Paris is a new Triple Alliance masquerading as a general League. And this new Triple Alliance, if a real Society of Nations be not soon created, will become an intolerable nuisance, a tyranny not to be borne. Moreover, it will inevitably 1 pro- voke an ultimate Teutonic Alliance of all Europe east of the Ehine and south of the Alps. If the present industrial and commercial order remains, if capitalist production and distribu- tion endures, if the existing occult govern- ment of the world by the mobilized Ancient Appetites continues, then the Peace of Paris 5 O THE GBEATEE WAB and its fabled League are but a preparation for a new and later Armageddon, in which two great opposing groups shall settle between them- selves the ownership of the world. That which alone can prevent this future Armageddon is an early and international awak- ening of the democratic peoples, and the organiza- tion of our industrial activities and political insti- tutions, of the totality of our human life indeed, upon the basis of an actual democracy. The democratization of the world, or at least of our western civilisation, beginning with the creation of a real Society of Nations to supplant the present so-called League this alone can turn back or dissolve the Bolshevist flood; this alone can present a universal reaction to autocracy, when the deeps of the flood have passed over mankind. Ill IT is the fatality of the so-called League of Nations that it comes forth without one syllable concerning the only basis upon which an actual League can be founded. Indeed, the League con- stituted at Paris is without any foundation what- soever. Its would-be founders were so fearful of facing reality, they were so dominated by the mind of international capital, that they did not even dare mention the foundation in their dis- cussion. The only foundation upon which a League of Nations can be built is this : absolute free trade and intercourse between the nations that are its members. The abolition of economic frontiers, the freedom of movement among people, the liberty to exchange products and opinions, this is the sole basis of any real human society, whether it be within a single nation or between all nations. There can be no communion of peoples not based upon a communion of work, a com- 7 8 THE CREATES WAB mtmion of the things which the respective peoples produce. Trade or exchange is not a mere material but a spiritual operation and the spiritual and the material are inseparable. The separation of the spirit of man from the work of man is the evil imagination of a false religion and a false politic. Life is one, and may not be divided, in thought or in action, except to our destruction. The division of life into compartments is the devil at work the devil administrating human society. Humanity is therefore one economic organism, a single social unity. We are all bound up together in one common interest, in one common destiny, whether we will or no. No nation really prospers at the cost of another nation, no man finally gains by the loss of another man. There is no separate security for the nation, for the indi- vidual no security for one except in the security of all. The bread of no man is secure, the free- dom of no man is secure, the prosperity of no man or nation is secure, until the bread, the freedom, the prosperity of all men and all nations is secure. As long as one smallest tribe, as long as the hum- PBOPOSED LEAGUE OP NATIONS 9 blest individual, is denied complete freedom of spiritual and political intercourse, complete free- dom of trade with all tribes, with all individuals, just so long is society diseased and dishonest, and the whole world endangered. Disunion of inter- est between nation and nation, between man and man, is nothing else than the destruction of the nations and the men thus divided. The erection of economic barriers is in reality a blasphemy against the Spirit of God, a profanation of the mankind that professes to come from the hand of God Hence the League formed at Paris, ignoring as it does the basal fact of our collective existence, has no foundation whatsoever upon which to hmld. And the first work of those who would have a League of Nations that is a reality, or rather a World-Society instead of a League of Tribes, is to lay a foundation of economic free- dom and reciprocity whereupon the society can build. Upon this foundation and no other can the building rise and endure. IV 'T'HE next change that must be made in the present League of Nations, in order to make it a reality, is to democratize its constitution. In its present form, it is not a League of Nations, but a League of Governments, and a League of thoroughly capitalized governments at that. The nations or peoples have as little to do with the League, as it is now constituted, as Christianity has to do with Christ or the Peace of Paris with the famous Fourteen Principles. The constitu- tion must be so changed that the peoples shall directly elect their own representatives in the League. It is no profit to the peoples that diplo- matic appointees of divers governments, and governments financially controlled at that, shall sit in solemn session over the world's arrange- ments. Such a League can only be, so far as the peoples thus disposed of are concerned, a heartbreaking mockery as well as hideous des- potism. 10 PEOPOSED LEAGUE OF NATIONS 11 A real League of Nations will correspond with its name; that is, it will be a League of the peoples, of their chosen representatives, and not a close corporation of self-appointed members not a corporation imposed, as the proposed League is imposed, upon the peoples by govern- ments administered in the interests of the inter- national money-lenders. IN the next place, in a real Society of Nations there will be equality of representation and power between the peoples. The League formed at Paris is brazenly materialistic in its concep- tion of the proportioning of power. It is based upon the superstition that mere size is supremely important : quality is relatively of no importance. Power, in the present League, is proportioned according to terrestrial bigness, according to the areas of the earth each government controls. The small nations are insolently treated as incon- sequential. Until the constitution of the League of Nations is cured of this besotted materialism of concep- tion, until it is cleansed of the devil's notion that mere size constitutes value, until it provides for an actual equality of voice and opportunity between the nations, without regard to size or material power, until then it is no League of Nations, but a mere diplomatic masquerade of capitalist governments. 12 VI A GAIN, the rejection of the principle, pro- ^^ posed and urged by Japan, of the equality of races, so far as public law and diplomatic procedure count, was a flagrant sin and fatal blunder. Not only was the rejection a sin against the Holy Ghost : not only was it faithless and cowardly: it has sown the seed of a sinister and ominous unfaith in three-quarters of the earth's population. It has established in the minds of the black, the brown, and the yellow peoples the conviction that the white man's moral professions, his proclamations of public law and justice, the benevolence of his administration of the lands of other races, are all a lie. Particu- larly, do these now think of the Anglo-Saxon the American and the Briton as the most ob- vious hypocrite of history. "For some years," said a Japanese diplomat to me, "we in Japan believed that justice and righteousness really existed in Christian and Western civilization. But, of late years, we know this is not so. The 13 14 THE GREATER WAR professions and doctrines of the Christian nations are only pretentions masks for greed and injus- tice. We now know that no such thing as inter- national righteousness exists, and that Western capitalist might can be limited only by greater might. Japan has learned this, and all Asia is learning it. And this explains our course in China: we know that we can depend upon no justice, no fair-dealing, on the part of the Western powers. They will divide and exploit China, and thence reduce Japan to vassalage, without con- science or consideration or delay, if we of Japan do not dominate and develop China- ourselves; and, in the end, the Western exploitation of China will be China's final ruin, while ours will be China's final salvation. In China, in the Pacific, we must be full-armed and sufficient to defend ourselves. To depend on an Anglo-Saxon-made League of Nations, to depend on any righteous- ness latent or regnant in Christian or Western civilization, would be to prove ourselves imbecile prove ourselves deserving of the national un- doing that would certainly come upon us from Christian hands." PROPOSED LEAGUE OF NATIONS 15 Thus speaks Japan, the strongest of the Oriental peoples. But the rejection of the prin- ciple of the equality of races by the Paris Confer- ence has also had its effect upon the Afghan and the Hindoo, upon the Arab and the fellah. The infamous news is by this time the gossip of the Congo; is abroad through the whole Dark Conti- nent; is troubling the breast of the American negro already cast out from the protection of law ; is traversing the pastures of the wild Kurds, the towns of kindly Bokhara, the tents of Araby Felix. Beyond all our understanding and imagi- nation, this rejection by the makers of the Cove- nant of the League of Nations has stamped the white man, in the minds of three-quarters of the peoples of this planet, as an unconscionable liar and looter. He is, in their minds, the man who, masking his predatory purposes in his Christian creed and professions of free and equal justice, niches from the weaker peoples their lands and natural resources. The yellow and brown races, as well as the black, have long suspected this master-hypocrisy of the white man: now they know it they know 16 THE GREATER WAS it once and for all. And they are biding their time Asia and Africa are biding their time. Yes, this that seemed a mere item to the ' ' Great Four", will prove, if their repentance be not writ in the Covenant soon, one of the most calamitous sins of history a shame, a spiritual fatuity, pregnant with the White Man's doom. Until the rejected principle is inscribed indelibly in the Covenant of the League, the Covenant is charged with a sin against the Holy Ghost, and the League advances to despotism and death. vn DUT to bring my criticisms to a close, and to end where I began, I repeat that we must accept and seize upon the League of Nations that has been offered us. But we must face the truth about it, recognize it for what it is, and instantly proceed to reconstitute it so that it shall become indeed a Society of Nations, a communion of free and equal and fraternal peoples. If we hide from the truth, if we continue to juggle and com- promise as the incredible peacemakers of Paris have done, we need expect nothing but a genera- tion and perhaps a century of disintegration and desperate darkness for all mankind. Yet even now, in the last quarter of the eleventh hour of this most stupendous opportunity of history, we may yet act with such swiftness and honesty and courage as to restore faith to the peoples, and make this awful human tragedy through which we have passed a veritable door through which the kingdom of heaven shall shortly descend around the earth. 17 GERMANISM AND BOLSHEVISM AND THE FORCE BEHIND THEM GERMANISM AND BOLSHEVISM AND THE FORCE BEHIND THEM is not a Bolshevist in Germany," said my friend, as we sat secluded and brooding in the coffee-room of the inn. I named Liebknecht and Eosa Luxemburg. "They were savagely slain and shamelessly de- famed," I avowed. "But were they not Bolshev- ist, in the end!" "Liebknecht was not Bolshevist," he replied; "nor was Rosa Luxemburg. They were mad, if you like. But their madness was akin to that of the early Christian martyrs: it was the madness of an outraged faith. They had labored and suffered, through many tempestuous but hopeful years, for a co-operative and truly democratic society: they were socialist in fact as well as in 21 22 THE CREATES WAE name. And, behold ! they stood face to face with a people betrayed and debauched by the official leaders of the socialist hope, the socialist party. It was their cheated cause, their cheated Germany, and the cheated world, that made them mad; it was an Apocalyptic rage that possessed them; but they had nothing in common with Eussian Bolshevism. " "German Bolshevism is a phantom," he con- tinued, ' ' a phantom conjured forth by the Junkers and financial magnates for the deception and the coercion of the Allies, and for the destruction of the elements of democracy/' n TV /IY friend is German: but he is an upstanding *** man, with a clear integrity of soul and a singular power of discernment. He served many years in the German Foreign Office, renouncing high position and further promotion when Ger- many sprang full-armed upon the relatively un- armed nations. He was then, as he still is, a patriot of the noblest type, keeping sleepless watch upon his country, working without rest for the changing of Germany into an efficient world-servant and social savior. He agreed with me that Germany was disinte- grating ; that the total social structure was falling in upon itself. But not through Bolshevism; nor are the disintegrating forces, the revolutionary uprisings, the Sparticist riots, however widely and wildly they range, moving toward a Bol- shevist reintegration. And they who cry the approach of a Bolshevist Germany are steeped in the ignorance wherewith the German poli- 23 24 THE GREATER WAR ticians have encircled them. Or they are mercen- aries of the Ancient Appetites, now internation- ally mobilized, now occultly omnipresent, and the Peace Conference unwittingly in their hands. Of course Germany is full of revolution there need be no doubt about that. But, in order to understand this, we must think of revolution in the future tense. There has been no German revolution up till now. There has been no change in the German state of mind; nor in its politics; nor its purpose to recast the world in the German mould. The fabled revolution that formed the still more fabulous German republic is utterly a lie; nor doth history present an imposture more malignant or menacing to mankind. The republic whereof Ebert and Scheidemann are the chiefs is nothing but the militarist regime masquerading. Behind this republic, and shaping it to their own ends, are the industrial magnates and the Junkers. Dissembling the socialist state, the German re- public is but a thin disguise, a new dress, for the old pan-Germanism which, full of all political uncleanness and reeking with universal intrigue, has not taken its first moral bath. GERMANISM AND BOLSHEVISM 25 The German government of today is no more revolutionary, no more socialistic, no more demo- cratic, than Ludendorf and the Kaiser are social- istic and democratic. It is merely the nucleus of that return of autocracy for which the mobilized Appetites are planning first in Germany, and thence through the world. It is wholly a military government also a government of the officers who, slinking from pnblic view at the time of the signing of the armis- tice, are now strutting the streets of Berlin and giving the orders which Weimar implicitly obeys, and wherewith Weimar makes havoc with the Conference at Paris. HI DUT there are the elements of real revolution in Germany the seed and the divine ferment of a fundamental democracy are there. If this real revolution be not arrested and thwarted, if the democratic seed be permitted its springtime and harvest, then the autocratic order, and the mind that makes it, will be altogether overthrown : and Germany may become the pioneer of a democracy, political and social and economic, that shall be even as a new birth of the primitive Christian ideal and community. All the inner disintegra- tion of Germany, calamitous and incalculable as it seems, is withal pregnant with this stupendous possibility. And it is in order to prevent this democratic revolution that the spectre of German Bolshevism has been so threateningly thrust forth by the pan- German Junkers and industrial magnates. Every movement toward a really changed Germany will henceforth be branded as Bolshevist will be so 26 GEBMANISM AND BOLSHEVISM 27 pictured as to terrify America and the associated nations into aiding the destruction of both Ger- man and European democracy; into supporting, under the illusion that they are saving Germany from Bolshevism, a Prussian state socialism which is nothing else than a militarist autocracy. Germany is deliberately and boldly preparing just such a trap a trap, planetary in its scope and infernal in its effects upon political humanity, whereunto the Allied peace-makers, their feet full of confusion, have day by day been stumbling. And if once the trap closes upon them, if once the Allies follow the strong delusion that makes them the destroyers of German democracy, then the future Prussian re-organization of Europe and Western Asia, from the port of Calais to the gates of India, is assured; then out of the whelming general chaos already on its way, and whether its years be two or five or twenty, the German Iron Age will emerge ; and Germany will have won the war and have conquered the Conti- nent of Europe, with West Asia and .Africa at her feet. IV "PHIS new German menace is no distempered * watchman's dream. The German prepara- tion for the war, not believed in nor heeded nntil the barbarous hordes sprang upon the astonished and unprepared nations, expecting to paralyse and subdue them by such quick murder, such theft and rapine, as history has never known this German military assault now shrinks into the incidental before the immeasurably vaster Ger- man menace which will soon be loosed, for God knows how long, upon an again unexpectant and unready world. For, notwithstanding the seeming severity of the terms imposed by the Conference, Germany counts that she has not lost the war eventually. Nor has she as we shall in due time see. Nor now does it matter whether, precipitated into final panic by the pressure of the bestirred peoples, the Conference renders terms to Ger- many that shall be vindictive and destructive, or 28 GEBMANISM AND BOLSHEVISM 29 whether the terms be so moderated as to be acceptable to the government at Weimar: in either case, the Germany that made the war has potentially won it. If as is improbable she refuses to sign, she will call the German peoples to the defence of the fatherland; and the call will be heeded, even though a period of national disintegration inter- vene ; or, if she sign the terms, she will not keep them; nor will any intention of keeping them be implicit in her signature. And while she is gaining time by her pretended acquiescence, the government of Ebert and Scheidemann may be able to effect the destruction of the German democracy represented by such men as Dr. Muehlon and Professor Foerster, and to lay the foundations of a State Socialist autocracy; which autocracy, enleagued with a Germanized Bolshev- ist Russia, may extend its dominion throughout Europe and Western Asia. DUT during the war, also, and watchful and formative of every ebb and flow of victory between the Allies and the Central Powers, certain international forces, so materially and psychically powerful as to be almost almighty, worked sleeplessly to shape the war's end to Germany's advantage. Since the signing of the armistice, these same forces, working by ways occult but no less pervasive and effectual, have pervaded the Peace Conference. The armistice was, so far as America and the associated nations are concerned, a blunder which our generation may not repair. Nor have I spoken with a single authentic German espe- cially among those who had hoped that the war would result in the birth of a German democracy who does' not frankly and sorrowfully agree with this opinion. Doubtless were saved, for the moment, many thousands of lives of lives very precious too that the finishing of the war and 30 GEBMANISM AND BOLSHEVISM 31 the actual defeat of Germany would have required. But, in one manner and another, unnumbered millions of lives, and years of unimaginable hu- man suffering and confusion, may be the price of the comparatively few lives that were saved by the halt of the associated armies upon the threshold of victory. The moment America and the associated nations consented to the armistice, that moment the vantage-ground for the negotiations of peace was occupied by Germany. At that moment, Germany was left in a position to effect an eventual recovery of what she had lost by the war, and to plan for mighty additions to that recovery. Her armies would claim that they had never been defeated. The fatherland, in which was heaped or hid the loot of territories reaching from the walls of Paris to the lands beyond the Caucasus, had not been invaded. German spies and agents, schooled and skilled in a devilry still unintelligible to Anglo-Saxons, were and still are employed in every nation's diplomatic and consular service, in every religion's missions and ministries. And these are now engaged in secretly directing 32 THE GREATEE WAR and shaping the general revolutionary movement. They are foully infecting each nation's efforts towards social reconstruction, everywhere poison- ing the purposes and perverting the organisations of labor. Just as they wrought the ruin of Russia, just as they wrought the treason and disgrace of international socialism, so they are now engaged in the destruction of such meagre moral founda- tions as remain underneath European or Western civilisation; and they are also preparing an en- veloping chaos for the Asian and African con- tinents. Germany expects that, once the dissolu- tion of the world is accomplished, she will reshape it according to her evil heart's desire. VI f HAVE said that certain great forces have steadily and occultly worked for a German peace. Bnt I mean, in fact, one force an inter- national finance to which all other forces hostile to the freedom of nations and of the individual soul are contributory. The influence of this finance has permeated the Conference, delaying its decisions, increasing division between people and people, between class and class, between peace-makers and peace-makers, in order to achieve two definite ends ; which two ends are one and the same. The first end is so to manipulate the minds of the peace-makers, of their hordes of retainers and "experts," as to bring about, if possible, a peace that will not be destructive to industrial Germany. The second end is so to delay the Russian ques- tion, so to complicate and thwart every proposed solution, that, at last, either during or after the 33 34 THE GREATER WAR Peace Conference, a recognition of the Bolshevik power as the de facto government of Russia may seem the only possible solution. vn DUT why, it will be asked, should an inter- national finance desire a peace favorable to Germany? And why, above all, should this finance assist a Bolshevist Russia? I will answer the two questions in their order. First: Germany's recovery means autocracy; and the concessionnaires have always been on the side of autocratic government. The desired autocracy might be managed, it is true, by forms apparently republican. But downright autocracy is the international concessionnaire 's preferable and most nurturing element. Now the whole mentality of the German gov- erning class, and the whole mind of the Ger- man people as well, is moulded by and for the autocratic mood and method. There is no demo- cratic past in Germany, either in experience or aspiration; nor, prior to the war, was there any seed or promise of democracy. Nor is there any essential diiference between the government of 35 36 THE GREATER WAR the Kaiser and the Junkers and that of the fabled German Social Democracy. The Marxian is just as autocratic as the Junker, and believes just as little in democracy. The program of German socialism is, as certainly as the divine right to rule which the Kaiser proclaimed, based upon sheer might. Both official and theoretical German socialism is just as much the enemy of democracy, just as much the enemy of essential socialism, just as much the enemy of an actual social free- dom, just as much the enemy of the right of the human soul to fulfill itself, as the Kaiser and the Junker. Had the Marxians prevailed in Prussia, before the war, the nature or substance of the state would have undergone little change; and what change it would have undergone would have been freedom's decrease and not its increase. A col- lectivist autocracy would have been established in place of the autocracy of the Junkers and the dynasty; and the German peoples would have obeyed the Marxian autocracy and its iron rule with the same docility wherewith they had obeyed the rule of the Prussian. GEBMANISM AND BOLSHEVISM 37 And the social democracy of Germany, had it come into power, would have been nothing more or less than a supremely capitalist state. Thus the Kaiser and the industrial magnates had nothing to fear from the fabled social democrat. And thus the international finance whereof I speak has everything to gain and nothing to lose by the support which it renders to the socialist republic of Ebert and Scheidemann. Further- more, there is an expectation, not only among financiers, but among all reactionary forces, that the chaos fast coming upon Europe will dissolve even the semblance of democratic institutions, and all democratic hopes as well; and that Ger- many the old regime riding into power upon the reactionary tide will gather all Europe under her protecting wings. It is hoped that the several peoples, despairing of order elsewhere and else- wise, will turn to Prussia as possessing the only restraining and reconstructive power in Europe. And when that expectation is realised, then the Ancient Appetites will have their fill. Second: The support of Bolshevism by the Appetites therefore becomes logical. The Appe- 38 THE GBEATEB WAE tites are right in their calculation that it is democ- racy that Bolshevism will destroy, and autocracy that Bolshevism will provide with a long and strong renaissance. Bolshevism the inevitable Nemesis of a century of increasing materialism in human faith and action the Nemesis, also, of a faithless and phrase-mongering democracy is freedom's most mendacious yet alluring enemy. The Bolshevist dictatorship of the proletaire is nothing else than the enslavement of the prole- taire is the eventual harnessing of the proletaire to the triumphal chariot of the financier. Hence the American millionaires who have been con- tributing to the Eussian Bolshevist cause have been acting exactly according to an evilly enlight- ened self-interest. I do not mean, from what I have said in my answer to these two questions, that all financiers are plotting for this Bolshevik devastation as preparatory to a Prussianization of Europe and Asia and Africa. There are chiefs of great finan- cial institutions who are today bowed down with a foreknowledge of the universal terror drawing GERMANISM AND BOLSHEVISM 39 near, and who would, I am certain, gladly sacrifice their lives and possessions to turn back the terror. There are splendid and upstanding Americans, such as Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip of New York, who would spend themselves willingly to deliver the world from that German dominion which Bolshevism is preparing. Or one has only to read Mr. Clarence W. Barren's book on "War and Finance, ' ' to discern how a man who has given his life to the study of financial problems presents a uniquely spiritual and well-nigh apocalyptical understanding of the German menace and the present peril of mankind. But even such as these, with all the material and spiritual resources they may be able to marshal, are not sufficient unless the understand- ing peoples are behind and supporting them. And the Bolshevism that is Russian and real, if it be not understandingly interpreted and con- quered by the democratic peoples, can have no other end than this a tide of reaction whereon the Prussian shall ride into planetary power, possessing and exploiting, for a long time to 40 THE GEEATEB WAB come, the nations whose representatives at Paris were but able to prove, as it has not been proved in two thousand years, how the oppor- tunity of man may be immeasurably greater than man himself. WHICH SHALL REMAKE THE PEACE- GERMANY OR DEMOCRACY? WHICH SHALL REMAKE THE PEACE GERMANY OR DEMOCRACY? YV7ITHOUT discussing whether American Senators hostile to the Peace of Paris be inspired by patriotism or party politics, no mat- ter whether high or low their motives, their pres- ent action will prove of advantage only to the German and the Bolshevist. I am myself among those who see no permanent peace coming out of Paris. I see no fellowship of democratic peoples, no true Society of Nations, provided by the Covenant which the Conference has adopted. But, though the Peace be pro- visional only, though the League be far from the Society of Nations for which we hoped, nothing can be gained by the Allied peoples through delay in confirming the work, imperfect as it is, of the 43 44 THE GBEATEE WAS Conference. On the contrary, by rejection or delay, everything for which we fought, both in the war and since the armistice, may be lost. Moreover, if the Treaty and the Covenant be accepted and ratified immediately especially with a clear understanding, on the part of the democratic peoples, of the merely rudimentary or germinal character of these instruments they can hence be changed and developed into a durable peace, and a Society of Nations may yet take the place of the League for Dominion which issues from Paris. The present peace is all that can be expected from the Conference, constituted as it is; and it is the best that can be expected from existing governments. It is the Peace of Paris, for the moment, or no peace at all perhaps for more than one generation. If we accept this Peace, however provisionally, we may at least hope that sanity will come to a world which has been for a long time, even for many years before the war, without sanity or sense or true progress. To reject it, or to delay its confirmation, means the disintegration of a civilisation already shattered GEBMANY OB DEMOCBACY? 45 to its foundations, and sick with every civil and social disease. I know that international despair prevails; it would seem as if no faith were discoverable upon the earth. Yet, terrible as the human plight is, black and deep and wide as is the abyss upon which we seem to be brinked, there is withal a ground of hope beneath our feet that has never been there before; and, strangely and paradoxi- cally enough, we may behold, if we have discern- ing eyes, a braver immediate prospect than has hitherto been ours. For it is certain that the world will never go back to where it was before the war; the old order can never be restored; nothing less than a free, federate and truly socialised world will henceforth content mankind; and upon this cer- tainty we may internationally proceed. n 'T'HE future, however, depends upon this: will the democratic peoples, having provisionally accepted the Peace of Paris, then awake quickly and act collectively act with clear and purpose- ful heads, with clean and resolute souls? Will they see and resolve upon a course of reconstruc- tion that cancels the peril of an international Bolshevist revolution and class dictatorship on the one side, and prevents a reversion to reac- tionary and merely capitalist social control on the other? It is between these two perils, each menacing the world with unimaginable miseries and tyrannies, that democracy must now shape its course the only course that leads to the world's nobler remaking. And if now we clear-sightedly and courageously prepare and walk the democratic way, it may well be we shall be wondrously re-enforced : it may be we shall indeed find that they who fight for us are more than they that be against us. We may find 46 GERMANY OB DEMOCRACY ? 47 that the millions who sacrificially died are now valiantly with us in our struggle for the new world wherewith so many of them were envisioned. We may find that the war's physical and moral dev- astations, that the hate and the hatefulness which seem to have permeated and degraded the world since the signing of the armistice, that the seem- ing universal breakdown of truth and fidelity and all spiritual decency, that all these are but the harvest of a manifold ancient wickedness, now to be gathered and cast into the unquenchable fire. And it may be, finally, that just as the war, which so few foresaw or believed possible, was the pre- cipitation of history's black passions and forces, so now a collective resolution and consecration of the democratic peoples may predicate a great and unprecedented precipitation of universal good- will and spiritual power. in IF the peoples who hold to the democratic hope fail in this their hour of trial, if they fail to charge themselves with the radical remaking of the Peace of Paris, then Germany will make the new peace, and, after a time of chaos, eventually reorganize Europe. Her pattern is already pre- pared, and the weaving thereof will soon be pro- ceeding. She will not proceed in the open and directly. Her plans for procuring the new peace will be of the precise moral order of her preparations for war before August, 1914. She will subsidize and intensively cultivate now, as she has hitherto subsidized and cultivated, every subversive or disintegrating movement throughout Europe, Asia and Africa and in America also. The Bolshevism which she fos- tered in Russia, and which keeps for Germany her Eastern gates, will be secretly spread abroad by her agencies. China, Afghanistan and India are 48 GERMANY OB DEMOCRACY? 49 examples of a Bolshevist propaganda, resourced by Germany, which may permeate and persuade the entire Mohammedan world. Her policy now, as before, will be to ruin the world, in order to re- make it according to the German pattern, to ex- ploit and rule it according to the German mind. This is in Germany's program, whether the peace be signed or not. But if America refuse to confirm the peace, thus practically nullifying the total work of the Paris Conference, then the Ger- man program will have the free course it could not have if the Peace, imperfect as it is, were pro- visionally established. IV TOUT the chief agency which Germany will use ** for yet procuring a peace according to her liking is the official Socialist Movement. In each of the Allied countries, as well as in the Central Empires and in Eussia, the majority of the Socialist parties continually sought, during the war, a peace measurably favorable to Ger- many. These parties were at once the refuge of the pacifist element in all nations, and the focal places of German intrigue. In Germany itself, the Kaiser and the government had no more con- sistent and faithful supporters than the Social- Democratic party; without the support of this party, Germany could not have begun or con- tinued the war. In France, Socialist leaders like Jean Longuet and Marcel Cachin worked for a negotiated peace from the war's beginning; they also worked for the restoration of the old Inter- national which was international only in name and altogether German in fact. .In Italy, only in 50 GERMANY OB DEMOCRACY? 51 times of serious national crisis did the Socialist leaders render a nominal support to the prosecu- tion of the war. In England, the Independent Labor Party, officially in the ascendant and chiefly pacifist, plotted for a peace of compromises. The American Socialist Party was honestly and frankly pro-German. Thus the rare leaders who were possessed of real statesmanship such as the truly great Hyndman of England and Vandervelde of Bel- gium were forced to stand forth against the International Socialism in which they themselves had played so great a part. In America, such men as Walling and Spargo, Bohn and Stokes, as well as the humble writer of these words, were compelled to withdraw from the Socialist party. HPHE German dominance is understandable * enough. It was from Germany that Social- ism came. From Germany came the great dog- matists of materialism, Marx and Engels; and they came so Prussianly as to impose themselves upon all political and labor movements making for radical and revolutionary change. Socialism was not born in Germany, it is true, but in France, fathered by Saint-Simon and Fou- rier, and with much of the inspiration and pur- pose of primitive Christianity. But the French movement was first discredited and then seized upon by the German dogmatists; and, like every movement that has gone to Berlin, it underwent the Prussian debasement and took on the Prus- sian image. Hence International Socialism, so far as its official or recognized parties count, so far as its Marxian basis is concerned, has ever been Prussian in its mentality; and it has ever proceeded upon a program essentially an amplifi- 52 GEBMANY OB DEMOCBACY? 53 cation of the Hegelian or Prussian state. Its claim to be socialist, its claim to be democratic, has been sheerest self-deception and a stupendous imposture upon international labor and radical- ism. Bismarck himself, even in his time, came to value and patronise the Social Democratic Party of Germany as a means toward the accomplish- ment of his imperial capitalist ends. And, since the beginning of the war, the German govern- ment has been able to use Socialist parties, in all the Allied nations except Belgium, for the propa- ganda of Germanism. This is denied, of course, by the official leaders; but it is no less true no less true that the negotiated peace which Socialist leaders either secretly or openly worked for has been a peace acceptable to Germany. And today all these parties are preparing for the remaking of a peace according to the German desire. VI nnHE Peace of Paris will have to be remade this I have already declared but it is of su- preme importance to the human future that it shall be made by democracy and not by existing International Socialism the Socialism which has proved itself faithless and incompetent in both war and peace, and whose Marxian program, not- withstanding its revolutionary jargon, is pat- terned precisely upon the capitalist politic and the Prussian state. Yet it is just this peril which is coming upon the world apace the peril of a German peace procured, in the course of two or three years, through International Socialist agencies. No other than a German peace can come out of the Socialist parties of the present. The Social- ists of today believe in Germany; in German eco- nomic and political doctrine; in the efficiency of the German state; in the general superiority of 54 GERMANY OB DEMOCRACY? 55 the German Socialist mind and leadership. Thus any peace made by International Socialists, as their parties are now constituted, will be the handiwork of German believers of men such as Troelstra of Holland, of Longuet and Cachin of France, of Henderson and MacDonald of Eng- land. Any peace made by these leaders will be, no matter what they say to the contrary, a Ger- man peace. It will professedly be a peace made upon the basis of international justice and good- will and if it were such a peace in fact, then we could work for its coming and welcome its appear- ance. But it will be nothing of the kind; it will be a peace inspired and formed by the German mind a peace formed unto the German concep- tion of international justice and good- will; a peace made in Germany as well as for Germany. For just as the fetish and superstition of German authority and superiority is over International Socialism, so a conception of the inferiority and incapacity of all other nations is regnant in the minds of its German high priests. And this Germanized Socialism, this Germanized inter- nationalism, is Germany's first-chosen agency for 56 THE GEEATEB WAB still winning the war if she has not already won it through the delinquent peace of Paris. No, the Peace must not be remade by the Inter- national Socialism of today Socialism itself must be remade ere it can be trusted by the peo- ples. As certainly as the bankruptcy of sheer capitalism has been demonstrated by the war and the Paris Conference, so certainly has the intellec- tual incapacity and moral infidelity of existing International Socialism been demonstrated; the political and spiritual incompetence of its mate- rialist philosophy and tactic are manifoldly mani- fest. Not unto such forces as these can the democratic hope and the new social creation be committed. VII A NOTHER important if not equally powerful agency for yet procuring a German peace is Germany's organized economic penetration. This was incredibly universal before the war; it con- tinued during the war; it proceeds now. What we of the Allied nations so fatally fail to realize is the fact that Germany is prepared to cope with even the most disastrous defeat, and with the most drastic peace based upon that de- feat She has long ago prepared for defeat she is today preparing for defeat as thoroughly as she was previously preparing for war. The ma- chinery of her industry is unharmed, ready for operation the moment peace is signed. Her power for quick industrial recuperation is im- measurably greater than she has led us to believe, or than we have foreseen. The gates of the East will be open to her, no matter what happens in Russia. Her commercial agents, who are always diplomatic agents also, are today active in War- 57 58 THE GREATER WAB saw, in Moscow, in Teheran, in Kabul, in Peking; nor are they absent from Prance and Italy, from England and America. Along the cross-ways of Switzerland, commercial intercourse between Ger- many and Allied countries has been proceeding since the signing of the armistice. Great capi- talist interests of the Allied countries, as well as of Spain and Holland and Switzerland, though listed in other than German names, are really Ger- man property. German efficiency, in this field of economic penetration and exploitation, coupled with intrigue in the domestic affairs of all nations, is beyond anything within the range of our Anglo- Saxon perspicacity or practice. It is a fact we have ignored, but a fact we shall have to face and to challenge. It is a fact that may, if evaded and unchallenged, occultly transmute the Allied vic- tory into a German domination of Europe and Asia and Africa. Germany counts upon this efficiency for the accomplishment of just this end. vm DUT we shall meet none of the ways or weapons of this new German menace by mere procla- mation or suppression. The German commercial efficiency can be dealt with only by a more highly energised efficiency of our own. The peril that inheres in the German mind of International Socialism cannot be met by the attempted sup- pression of Socialist movements or leaders. It can only be met by openly and tolerantly debating, with both these and other leaders and movements, the whole international future. In fine, the new and greater German peril, preg- nant with possible German world-dominion, can be met only by a renascent and anointed democ- racy, arisen and resolute through all the nations that have been with Germany at war, co-operating with the incipient German democracy so highly championed by such men as Muehlon, Foerster and Schlieben even by such as Bernstein and Haase. 59 IX CO often, in the course of the war, and with little effect I fear, I tried to explain that the war would only begin when the war ended. The Great War is but a prelude to a greater war; and this greater war -the war between Germanism and democracy now spreads its vaster and more fate- ful fields. It is identical with the war between reactionary capitalism and democracy. For the reactionary capitalism of the Allied nations, if it succeed not in the utter political destruction of Germany and the seizure of German industry and trade, will straightway ally itself with a counter-revolution in Germany, making the restored Prussian power its citadel. It is altogether to the interests of the international money-lenders, of the mobilized Ancient Appetites, to restore and preserve an autocratic Germany. Reactionary international capitalism will turn to this, in the end in fact is already revolving this program, already tenta- tively planning its fulfilment. 60 KTOE is Germanism the only menace democracy will have to discern and withstand. The forces of disintegration, all roughly bearing the name of Bolshevism, will malifically assail the movements making for democratic reconstruction. Nor only in the rear, but from every side, will Bolshevism seek to undermine the ground beneath the democratic advance. And all these disinte- grating movements will, for the time being, work in alliance with Germany. So, thus beset by the forces making for the class autocracy of the Bolshevist, and each of these forces the deadly enemy of the truly socialised and democratic man, each the deadly enemy of freedom and the human soul, so, thus encirc- lingly beset, must an emboldened and purified democracy go forth to conquer and create the new world for which all the baffled generations of men have waited, and for which the tribes and the nations now stretch forth worn and appealing hands. 61 62 THE GEEATEB WAB But who, or what, is sufficient for these things T God knows, not I. But that both sufficiency and efficiency are embryon in our democracy, and that they are appointed to birth and to love's lordship of society, this I believe. I am beset, even in this darkest hour, with a great hope, not passive but active and vigilant, and sometimes ascending into ineffable faith, that out of this evil time will arise a world-citizenry, gifted with a wise and universal good-will, and altogether able for the creation of a noble and beautiful world-order. I have glimpsed, I think, from my watch upon Europe's quaking walls, an impending freedom and fraternity, that would, if laid hold of, over- pay the world for the war's worst woes. An earth wherein the nations choose righteousness for their portion, wherein they choose each other's good, and each of them replete with the peace and the progress which righteousness begets, this is at least, is at last, humanly possible. Beyond this evil time, and in plain view, if our sight be cleansed for the vision, outspreads the Canaan of our ageless quest that providential society, that immortal community of nations, that candor and GERMANY OB DEMOCRACY? 63 equality of opportunity, that democracy and fra- ternity in the exercise of power, that beatification of all labor and all being, that common reverence for each soul and all service, which the heart of the world desires, and which the justice of love provides. THE JUDGMENT DAY OF DEMOCRACY THE JUDGMENT DAY OF DEMOCRACY* I SHALL strive to sketch for you, though roughly and hastily I fear, somewhat of the world-drama of today as I behold it. I shall not try to pass judgment on this movement or that, but rather try to foreshadow the oncoming con- flict between the concentrating capitalist control of society and the revolutionary movements gen- erally classed under the head of Bolshevism ; and then to urge the test, the supreme and perhaps last opportunity, which this conflict sets before democracy. The great war through which we have passed so terrible in its effects as to be beyond mortal calculation is none the less but a prelude to the * An address spoken before the students of the University of Bale, May 9th, 1919, and stenographically taken down. 67 68 THE GEEATEE WAE greater struggle at hand. It is upon the real drama that the curtain is about to ring up; and it is a drama so predestinative and cosmical as to place the war in the category of the incidental. It is to give you a clue to the drama, to appraise as best I can its prophetical values, hoping thus to enable you to form your own judgment and make your own decisions, that I am now before you. II TTHE present activities of mankind are staged in what we commonly call the capitalist mode of production and distribution. There are remnants and strata of earlier societies, it is true espe- cially of feudalism. But, on the whole, human society as it is now constituted, and in all its pro- cesses, its rewards and opportunities, is em- bosomed in the profit-maker's ownership of in- dustry. And, according to the old political econo- mist, and also according to the possessing or privileged classes, this private possession and exploitation of the world's productive opportuni- ties, of its machinery and materials, stimulates the greatest initiative ; procures the largest indus- trial development and safest social administra- tion ; and achieves the best general human results. I hardly need to say to an audience of university students that capitalism, involving as it does the final social control, logically and inevitably be- 69 70 THE GEEATEE WAS comes the directive force of the world's govern- ments and governors. It inevitably comes about, too, tinder this sys- tem of production, that the owners of the world's capital control the world's sources of information. The public press, owned by the dominant interests, naturally conveys the news of the day in such forms and with such editorial comment as serve those interests. Likewise the institutions of the church, Catholic and Protestant alike, materially dependent as they are, are compelled, even though unconsciously, to support the views and interests of the owners and to distrust and discredit the movements and voices of organized or militant labor. The same is true of university teaching, especially in countries like America, where uni- versities are privately endowed. Indeed, in what- ever mental sphere we move, a last analysis will show that the owners of the world's raw mate- rials, of its tools of production and means of dis- tribution, are the actual if occult creators and directors of the world's state of mind. Even the action of mobs, of seemingly incoherent revolu- tions such as those in Mexico, or of the struggle JUDGMENT DAY OF DEMOCRACY 71 between the Bolshevist and the Omsk govern- ments in Russia, are ordered and directed by the capitalist though the bridled and saddled revolu- tionist knows it not. It also comes about that, up to the stage of intelligent and purposeful revolution and the will- ing self-sacrifice of whole peoples upon the revolu- tionary altar, they who control production possess a fearful and perverting power over the peoples whose lives depend thereupon. This power may extend even unto the issues of life and death the life and death of the soul as well as of the body. The man who owns a manufacturing plant upon which three hundred men depend for their bread, and to which owner they are forced to sell their labor or starve, measurably owns the men. They may refuse to work for one owner and sell their labor to another; but that does not change the fact that to be forced, at the point of starva- tion, to sell one's labor to another man is to be forced to sell one's mind and body into a sub- stantial servitude. He who owns my bread owns me unless I choose to die rather than be owned. 72 THE GBEATEB WAS I am not, for the moment, condemning this capi- talist control: I am not debating whether or no any other system be possible or practicable : I am merely trying to state the system. ni XTOW the war, the conclusions of which are still being debated and confounded at Paris, has precipitated the definitive crisis of capitalist so- ciety. It is capitalism that is on trial, so far as the peoples are concerned, at the Peace Confer- ence if such we may accomodately call it; and it is the political and spiritual incompetence of capitalism, already demonstrated by the war, that is being more decisively demonstrated by the in- credible incapacity of the Conference to procure peace for the peoples, or to read the doom now written on all the present world's walls. The capitalist society is now the stage whereon the world-drama I have bespoken shall be per- formed a drama in which all human beings shall become at once spectators and actors. The conflict whose scenes are about to be un- rolled concerns and includes our whole planetary existence. It is a conflict between the respective principles of democracy and those of a proletarian 73 74 THE GREATER WAR dictatorship. On the side of democracy the con- flict is for the transformation or democratization of society; those who follow the idea of a prole- tarian dictatorship seek the present society's de- struction, expecting the rise of a new and juster society upon the ruins. In now presenting to you, as clearly and quickly as I can, a picture of this conflict, of the supreme human opportunity which it imposes, I have gathered what I have to say under the title, "The Judgment Day of Democracy." IV I DO not need to attempt a definition of democ- racy. No man can present a definition to which another will exactly agree. Moreover, our diffi- culty is enormously enhanced by the fact that we have no democratic experience, upon a large scale, to which to appeal. It is as true as it is commonplace to say that essential Christianity has never been tried; and it is equally true that democracy has never been tried. Just as there has never been a Christian society, a Christian civilisation, so there has ex- isted no such thing as a democratic state or social order. "We have had historic Christianity: we have grown accustomed to democratic phrases: but historic Christianity has little to do with Christ and the so-called democratic states have little to do with democracy. The teachings of Christ have never been applied to world-organisa- tion; society has never been democratically ad- ministrated. The nations, or rather the govern- 75 76 THE GREATER WAS ments, which have clothed themselves and their constitutions in democratic phraseology have no notion of what democracy means, no inten- tion of putting Christ into social and industrial practice. W/HATEVER its possible variations as to form, democracy posits a state or society which, in all its scope and activities, provides equality of opportunity and freedom of choice for each individual. It does not imply equality in the communistic sense, either materially or theoret- ically. It does not mean equality of possessions ; equality of intellectual or moral conception; equality of spiritual outlook or physical stature. In the democratic society, one man might choose to hoard his share of the social product for a period of years, in order to be free to travel, to write songs or poems, or to pursue some other end in later life. Another might choose to spend his share of the social product day by day, under the knowledge that, if he faithfully serve society through his mature years, society will be equally faithful to him in his concluding years. No, the equality implicit in democracy is not arithmetical or mechanical. While it means co- 77 78 THE GEEATEB WAB operation in production and distribution, associa- tion in administration, it also means the right of each man to choose and do the work that he likes best, and to have personal possessions wherewith to express himself. It means that each man must be economically and socially free to discover and fulfil his own life, in so far as the living of his own life does not destroy or restrict the right and the power of others to like choice and fulfilment. A true democracy would indeed invite, would invoke, the largest variety of individual being and experi- ence. It would regard each life as something precious to the whole and the whole as inviolably responsible for each. Democracy, thus realised, would present a world of happy and accordant differences, of unending social and spiritual sur- prise, in contrast with the monstrous monotony and mediocrity now universally existent. Democracy conceives of the individual man as the supreme common concern; conceives that it is for the guaranteeing of the full development of each individual that men ought to associate them- selves together in mutual groups called the state. And the democratic conception is true : a civilisa- JUDGMENT DAY OF DEMOCRACY 79 tion has actual worth, it has a right to exist in- deed, only according to the measure that it liber- ates and resources the individual soul for the con- quest of liberty and life. This enablement of each man to achieve his freedom and to become a mani- fest son of God is, so far as we know, what our universe is for. And only so far as the state to this end works with God, has it any part with democracy. In democratic theory, the state is created, is constantly ordered and controlled, by the com- mon will. A truly democratic state can never be static but fluid in a constant process of upward change and unf oldment. Now you students are well aware that, as I have already declared, a democratic state has never existed. Perhaps the two nearest past approaches to democracy have been the Athenian state in the time of Pericles and this notwithstanding the ex- istence of slavery and the early Saxon communi- ties of England around and before the time of Alfred the Great. In a limited sense, the streets of Athens and the Saxon "Wittenagemote were democratic. And the Swiss Confederation, too, 80 THE GREATER WAR is a modern approach to the democratic idea. But what we are accustomed to call the great democ- racies are democratic in no true or essential sense ; and it is only the sheerest illusion, an illusion pregnant with universal woe and confusion at that, to call these European and American states democratic. VI '"THE mere fact of universal suffrage does not at all assure a democratic government. Eng- land has achieved, in the course of the centuries, a large measure of freedom. Yet England has ever been governed by a privileged or ruling class; which class, controlling the electoral and governmental machinery, has always had its way and imposed its will upon the people. France is a bureaucratic republic and far from being a democracy. The American republic has always been plutocratic in its political texture and pro- cedure, in its social mentality and morality. The constitution of the United States, so far from being an instrument to enable the peoples to govern themselves, was avowedly and success- fully devised (by Alexander Hamilton and those associated with him) with the idea of preventing such political self-government; of keeping the government in the hands of the great possessors. Even Switzerland, notwithstanding its democratic 81 82 THE GEEATEE WAS approach, has still far to go before becoming actually democratic. Consider this: in every one of the so-called democratic countries, a large majority of the peoples, if today given opportunity and effectual choice, would vote for immediate social reforms. But no government is largely enacting these reforms. I am not, for the moment, discussing whether it be peoples or governments that are right : I only want to point out that, until govern- ment and people are identical (and they are not anywhere identical) no such thing as a demo- cratic state exists. And so far are they from being identical, that, although both the labor and the intelligence of the so-called democracies are clamorous for social reconstruction, the possessing or governing class in each, manipu- lating the electoral and governmental machinery in occult ways the peoples do not understand and do not yet know how to change, are powerful enough to prevent: the possessors and their political servants are powerful enough to refuse the peoples an opportunity to choose. VII HTHE failure of democracy is not due to theo- retical flaws, but to the fact, as I have already said, that its theory has never been put into practice. Democracy has never functioned itself in the state, in society, in industry. There exist no institutional organs wherethrough democracy can effectuate itself. But, furthermore, the failure of democracy, up till now, is in part due to the philosophical and moral stupidity of its advocates: in treating the political life of man as something apart from either his economic or his spiritual life, they have never recognized the foundation fact of our planetary existence namely, that the life of man is divinely one and indivisible. Mankind is one organism, economic, political, intellectual, spirit- ual. Life cannot be divided into compartments. Neither the political nor the spiritual man can be dealt with apart from the economic man ; nor the economic apart from the spiritual or political. 83 84 THE GREATER WAR Life can only be dealt with as a whole, as a divine and indivisible unity. Thus you cannot have a democratic state without a democratized industry, a democratized order of education, a democratized sociality and morality. You cannot be an autonomous indi- vidual in the spiritual sphere, in the political sphere, and be a coerced or enslaved individual in the economic or social sphere. You cannot have your body enslaved and your soul free ; nor can you have your soul enslaved and your body free. You cannot anywhere have democracy, you cannot anywhere have freedom, you cannot any- where have truth, you cannot anywhere have organizing and administrative love, without hav- ing these living forces or substances operative everywhere. You cannot have democracy in the state unless the total exercise of social power is democratised. Democracy must be applied to the totality of man's life and activity or it cannot be at all. Hence democracy must repent of its flamboyant phrases, of its hesitations and scepticisms, of hypocrisies now guilty of the blood of a hundred JUDGMENT DAY OF DEMOCRACY 85 million humans, ere the final roll be called, must repent, and immediately enter upon the conquest of life. It must depart from the diabolic dualism that has rendered it so faithless and futile. It must rid itself of compartmental notions of life, and scale the entire octave of man's associative procedure and common interest. Not only in- dustry to which we have not yet begun to apply the democratic principle not only the processes of production and distribution, but our arts and our sciences, our social moods and habits, our religions and moral codes, and whatsoever faith the soul follows, these must all pass into the democratic communion. It is into this actual democracy, consisting of self-governing and equally empowered and autonomous individuals, that our planetary evo- lution must now proceed. This, or else the very word democracy will become a derision upon the earth. VIH pVEMOCRACY has failed thus far, because it has been faithless; because it has never, in a single crisis, kept faith with itself or with the peoples whom it pretended to possess and direct. And it is due to democracy's faithlessness that today mankind paralytically halts between two autocracies: that of the reactionaire and conces- sionaire on the one side, that of the Bolshevist revolution and dictatorship on the other. And either we must now, through some miracle of un- derstanding and decision, give ourselves over en- tirely to the democratic experiment, or our demo- cratic theory, our fabled democratic governments, will become as dust before the whirlwind of retribution soon overtaking our alike faithless Christianity and faithless democracy: for it is, I repeat, the like faithlessness of these two that has brought us into the veritable hell wherein we and all the world now wander in hopeless aston- ishment or unintelligible struggle. 86 IX HTHE stage is set for the conflict. We are beholders of democracy's last chance to con- quer, to penetrate, and to organize our life and institutions. Has democracy any inner spirit or native power wherewith to regenerate itself, first of all, and then to lay hold of existing structures of society and redeem and transform them! The question stands forth before the peoples, sharply defined and imperative, investing the international wilderness, the universal reek and ruin, with a divine and predestinative purpose. The question must be answered. We cannot stay where we are ; society is already dissolving ; and only a great democratic revival, springing out of the Divine Spirit perennial in the human soil, can change the world's dissolution into the world's new birth. Nor need we wait for political action, in order to begin the transformation. I imagine the politi- cal state will play the lesser part in both the initia- 87 88 THE GREATER WAS tion and the administration of the new society. The state is incompetent incompetent in indus- trial and social spheres when it comes to act for the democratic man. Even now, the notion of society as political is becoming obselete. Nor would the socialist state proposed by Marx be less incompetent, so far as the soul is con- cerned, nor less tyrannical in fact it would be more incompetent, more tyrannical than the plutocratic state. The way into democracy, into a free and juster order, lies not in substituting a Frankenstein collective autocracy, inevitably destructive of all that makes the soul's existence worth while, for the sheer financial autocracy under which we now plot and grope adown the ways of death and universal darkness. The way into democracy is through the volun- tary and administrative co-operation of indus- trial and commercial capital with associated labor. It is possible, by such co-operation, to convert every manufacturing plant, every organi- zation and highway of transportation, every busi- ness house, every university, and indeed every sphere of associative activity, into a happy and JUDGMENT DAY OP DEMOCRACY 89 life-giving democracy. The entire processional of production and distribution might thus be made sacramental; might be made the means of abundant and ever-enlarging life for each individual; might be made the vehicle of each man's liberation for spiritual adventure and in- crease. There is no need, I say, to wait. Every em- ployer, every labor union, can move in the demo- cratic direction at once. Many experiments will have to be made, many unforeseen and incalcul- able difficulties will have to be overcome. But the difficulties of moving into the democratic communion are as nothing compared to the diffi- culties of staying outside that communion. It is not the experimental advance into the new world it is the present reactionary halt in the old world that forebodes the centuried collapse of humanity. The democratic evolution of industry and trade may ultimately discard whom we know as the employer; but his place will remain as adminis- trator. Social administration will gradually supersede the unhappy profiteer, as well as the 90 THE GEEATEB WAE archaic political state. The organisation and leadership of each sphere of collective life and action, the functioning of each social need and its fulfilment, will be in the hands of the ex- perts of those who are the true intellectual and spiritual chieftains. The poverty and puerility, the meanness and ignorance, the intellectual and moral anarchy, the total incompetency indeed, of the present politico-capitalist government of society will thus be progressively scrapped and gladly forgotten. And all this would be soon if the peoples but knew how their world is managed. If the peoples but realised with how little brains the world is governed, of how it is governed without scruple or sense or soul, they would lose not a day in building the highway into the democratic and hence Christly society. There would have to be co-ordination of all social interests and groups, it is true. And it is for this the state would remain; but it would cease to be political in the present sense of that word, and its headship would rest with the men of the largest intellectual and spiritual compe- JUDGMENT DAY OP DEMOCEACY 91 tency men who would be, like Moses, at once envisioned prophets and keen practical adminis- trators. against this possible and importunate democracy, in red battle-lines arrayed, is the Bolshevist revolution, proposing the destruc- tion of the capitalist society and the erection in its stead of a proletarian dictatorship. Tactically, Bolshevism is an inversion of Prus- sianism. It proposes, as Prussianism does, to impose its order and culture upon the world by sheer might but by might proceeding from the bottom instead of from the top. Nor is the tactic of Bolshevism only superfici- ally Prussian: its practical procedure, as now manifested, starts from the very soul of Prussia. Bolshevism is a demonstration of Hegelianism: it is logical Marxism: it is amplified militarism: it is the apotheosis of materialism. And thus is it the opposite pole of democracy: thus is it the antithesis of essential socialism. Moreover, just as a truly democratic or a truly socialist society would be the living body of the 92 JUDGMENT DAY OF DEMOCRACY 93 Christ-spirit, with each of its members infinitely enabled and free, so an effectuated Bolshevist society, if patterned upon its present program of procedure, would be the embodiment of the anti-Christ spirit, with each of its members in- finitely and deathfully enslaved. If the apocalyptic idea of the Antichrist, or of Satan appearing as an angel of light, were ful- filled, it would be something like this : Satan would seize upon some great general yearning for social deliverance, some great messianic impulse mak- ing for a new and heavenlier society a yearning and an impulse that, gathering into round revolt, were about to sweep the world and he would diabolize this revolt with a false force, a false promise, a false glory, making it appear indeed messianic to the world's despairing disinherited. And indeed this is precisely what Satan using the word accommodatively has done by creating the Bolshevist peril and despotism out of the yearning, elementarily righteous and social, of a great people. The allurement and menace of Bolshevism lie in the very facf that it springs from an impulse primarily just even Christian. 94 THE GREATER WAR The protest of the enslaved and slain peoples is none other than the protest of the Slain Lamb of the Apocalypse. And it is the Bolshevist's seiz- ure and perversion of this primarily divine pro- test that gives unto Bolshevism its Antichrist character. And that the poor and the powerless, that those who produce all and have nothing, should at last turn to sheer economic and military might as their only way and weapon of liberation, this merely demonstrates that they have accepted the degra- dation of the rich. The meek have been deceived and betrayed by the methods of the mighty. Indeed, it is the mighty who have loosed the Bolshevist tide upon the world, in order to ride it to their own ends. It was Germany, first, that commissioned and anointed Bolshevism for the destruction of the nations, plotting the establish- ment of a German world upon the ruins which the Bolshevist had wrought. It has always been the method of Germanism to undermine the world's moral and social foundations, in order to make way for a German foundation and superstruc- ture instead. And Bolshevism follows the same JUDGMENT DAY OF DEMOCRACY 95 method, seeking first the destruction of the capi- talist world, then of the democratic hope, in order thence to lay Bolshevist foundations whereon to build a Bolshevist world-structure. Then, secondly, it is the long delay on the part of the Peace Conference, the lack of any definite policy toward Russia, combined with the secret intrigues carried on by financiers and nursery diplomats, that opened the gates for the Bolshev- ist propaganda throughout the world. Nor can the Bolshevist program of destruction be met by destruction it is never by mere de- struction that destruction is destroyed. We can only meet the Bolshevist menace by immediate and constructive democracy. It is only by a democratic organization of life and labor of man, of the totality of social power and control, that the Bolshevist destruction of civilisation can be transmuted or dissolved. Only an understanding democracy can cope with and conquer the Bol- shevist revolution and fulfil the promise, the right- eous yearning, which Bolshevist leadership has seized and betrayed. Nor must we imagine that the military over- 96 THE GREATER WAR throw of the Soviet Government of Enssia will arrest the forces making for the Bolshevist revo- lution. The capture of Moscow and Petrograd by the army of Koltchak will accomplish no more than a scattering of the Soviet seed abroad. The Bolshevist idea is traversing and permeating the tribes and the nations. XI TJENCE the crisis of the world is once more at hand. Again are we standing at the cross- roads of our planetary destiny. Soon, mayhap all too soon, will it be seen whether our human pil- grimage shall start decisively upward, or betake itself down a long and steep decline. It is be- tween a total democratic reconstruction and an utter Bolshevist destruction that the nations must now make decision. They must decide quickly, too; for to delay and to doubt is to decide for destruction, whether they will or no. Will you, therefore, you who claim to be the democratic peoples, will you at last keep faith with your ancient promise, so long unfulfilled? Will you now, first ascending anew and forever unto your ideal, and then through the sacramental use of earth's natural resources and social ma- chines, through the conversion and consecration of production and distribution, begin now the creation of a world-order wherein men shall in 97 98 THE GEEATEE WAB truth be equally free, equally advantaged, and every child heir of life's total opportunity! Nor think it is merely the Bolshevist who chal- lenges our democracy. It is the very challenge of God that calls from the midst of the Bolshevist advance. The Bolshevist movement is but the rude and red John Baptist, crying to our democ- racy out of the wilderness the war has wrought. "Kepent ye or perish!" this is the menace and message of Bolshevism to the nations which, call- ing themselves democratic and Christian, yet help- lessly halt in this foul and universal impasse of stark political and spiritual incompetence. And let me say this: if there were no indige- nous remedy for the present state of things ; if the individual and national egoisms and cupidities, if the general wickedness and governmental stupid- ity, which have brought us to our present plight were immedicable; if there were no inner spirit or native sense that could change the course which history has hitherto pursued, then it were better that the present world be destroyed, or be resolved back into its primary elements. This frightful and fraudulent civilisation can- JUDGMENT DAY OF DEMOCBACY 99 not continue. God will not stand the sight of such a world any longer. Already its foundations are rocking, and we have not an hour to lose, if we would have the world saved. We must choose, and choose now, to put the democracy we profess into practice, to render socially incarnate the Christ we call Lord, or we must expect the visita- tion of that consuming fire which the apostle in- scribed as the "wrath of the Lamb" the wrath of a Divine Love so outraged by the horror and meanness of things that it will endure them no further. And this wrath of the Lamb, this intoler- ably outraged Divine Love, if so it be loosed upon the earth, will leave no stone upon another of our unclean and blood-guilty civilisation. And may- hap not for a generation, not for a hundred years, shall be born a mankind equal to that cleaner and kindlier civilisation, that manful and songful society, certain one day to arise upon earth, which St. John saw as the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, and wherein our renascent human life, our total planetary activity, proceeds radiantly and commonly in the bosom of God. XII T TPON you young men of this ancient and honored university, upon the youth of this Switzerland wherein democracy has made its nearest approach to realisation, I would lay the burden of the world-crisis, and also the vision of the City of God. For it may be that those whom we call the great democratic peoples shall hesitate until the choice is gone by forever; that the wrath of the Lamb must needs consume this vindictive and parasitic society, with its hopelessly corrupted and corrupting institutions, ere the new world can come into being. And it may be that this Switzerland shall arise as the one green island of hope amidst a world rendered utterly deso- late, ere the abomination of abominations be swept away. But even if mankind erstwhile deeply sinks into tremendous and appalling night, even if the world become awhile a jungle, the prowling 100 JUDGMENT DAY OF DEMOCEACY 101 place of spiritual and physical terrors unimagin- able, the World-Keeper will walk therein, ever redemptive and ever-creative; and therein you may walk with him, and work with him, until the dreadful night dissolve in the dawn of the nobler society. So upon you may come such a burden of opportunity and vision, such an ineffable affair of the world, as perhaps never came to the youth of any time or clime. The bearing of this burden, your responsibility to this vision, will compel you to an adventure, to a holy quest, such as man hath never entered upon. And thereupon entering, you will become the fortunate soldiers goldenly fortunate, no matter what price you have to pay of what is perhaps mankind's final chance, and only a fighting chance at that, of at last becoming commonly adequate and divinely free. Yea, more than that, you share in God's fighting chance for mayhap it is only a fighting chance God has of unfolding a creation which shall be as the land, the fulfilled desire, of his infinitely human heart. January 1.7, 1S14 /IleraM,- THE DEATH of MRS. HERKON: Sol chi uon lascia eredita d'aifetti Poca gioia ha iiell'urna We regret to announce the death of Mrs. Carrie Rand Herron. wife of Prof. George D. Herron. the emi- nent American sociologist and poet. Some years ago, leaving the United States, Mr. and Mrs. Herron settled in Florence in their beautiful man- sion, Villa Primola, once the histor- ical abode of Benivieni, the poet friend of Savonarola, and one of the most charming spots on the lovely slopes of the Fiesole hills. To this artistic milieu and most inspiring environment the poet and thinker had come seeking in the balm of our climate benefit for his impaired health, and in this classical and picturesque part of Florence he had desired to dedicate himself to- gether with his noble minded com- panion to a life of love and work blessed with ideal and spiritual hap- piness. It was not to be. Fate, obscure and mysterious in its aims, seemed to have enhanced happiness and bliss for a few years only to render more tragic the break of an ideal love. Mrs. Carrie Rand Herron, who after a painful illness passed away last Sunday in the flower of her life, was a woman of unusual accomplish- ments and a musician of considerable talent, nor was an excessive modesty able to hide the qualities of her gifted mind and the genuine gold of DATE DUE PftlNTKO INU.S.A.