New York Times Current History The European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 Part 28

Armed Peace Not Disarmament.

And the man of shrewd insight, who knows when that point is reached, is the leader who saves the face, so to speak, of these nations and steps in and says:

"Now, the whole moral force of the civilized world must be brought to bear upon you to make a peace, the terms of which, if possible, shall not discredit any of you, but at the same time shall be as elastic and as proportionate to your respective gains and losses as will insure at least a considerable period of peace, not an armistice, not an armed armistice, though it may be an armed peace."

We see no signs anywhere in Europe that disarmament has any substantial body of advocates in any nation. The basic principle hitherto of the German people has been to have, not the largest, but the strongest army; the basic principle of Great Britain, which sneers at militarism, has been not only to have the most powerful fleet, but twice the most powerful fleet.

And what is the basic principle of the United States? The Monroe Doctrine, to have no armed neighbor which shall compel us to violate by its presence our dislike for compulsory military service or to expend great sums for armament.

These are basic principles in each of us. Now, we have been able to maintain the Monroe Doctrine by simply showing our teeth, but whether we could maintain it in the future without an armed force sufficient to give it sanction I think is doubtful, and for that reason the Monroe Doctrine has undergone quite a number of modifications which I do not need to explain here.

But this basic principle of ours that from Patagonia to the Mexican frontier we will suffer no armed nation of Europe to make permanent settlement and endanger our peace is exactly the same sort of principle that the German holds when he says, "We must have the strongest army,"

and the same which the Englishman holds when he says, "We must have the strongest fleet."

I want it distinctly understood that I am not a partisan. I am not pro this or pro that or pro anything except pro-American, and the princ.i.p.al impulse I have in trying to clarify my mind is my hope that there may be an end to these hysterical exhibitions of partisans.h.i.+p, in which (throughout this neutral nation) men indulge who still hold too strongly, as I think, to the glory, honor, dignity, and traditions of the lands of their origin.

An Answer by Prof. Ladd

Emeritus Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at Yale University; Lecturer on Philosophy in India and j.a.pan; has received numerous decorations in j.a.pan, where he was guest and unofficial adviser of Prince Ito; ex-President of American Psychological a.s.sociation.

_To the Editor of The New York Times:_

It seems strange to me that a student of history with the training and ac.u.men of Prof. Sloane should overlook or minimize the important distinction that must hold the chief place in enabling us to understand the issues and appreciate the merits of the war now raging in Europe.

This distinction is that between the German people and Germanic civilization, on the one hand, and, on the other, the present Const.i.tution and cherished ambitions of the German Empire under the dominance of Prussia. The German people, by genuine processes of self-development, have worked out for themselves a veritable spiritual unity which manifests itself in language, laws, customs, and a large measure of substantial uniformity in moral and religious ideals.

Germanic civilization, with its love of order, its high estimate of education, its notable additions to science, philosophy, and art, const.i.tutes one of the most n.o.ble and beneficent contributions to the welfare of mankind.

But the case is not at all the same with the German Empire as at present const.i.tuted. It is not a historical development, a truly national affair, as are the Empire of Great Britain, the Republics of France and the United States, or the Empires of Russia and j.a.pan. It is a modern combination of politically divergent unities, forced by the ruthless but infinitely shrewd policy of Bismarck and his coadjutors, misdirected and perhaps driven to ruin by the man and his entourage, who, even if he is King of Prussia "by the grace of G.o.d," is only Emperor of Germany "by the will of the Princes."

We are diligently given to understand that all these "Princes" and all the German people have entered heart and soul into this war, and without the slightest doubt as to its righteousness and as to the destiny of the empire, this modern military autocracy, ultimately to be completely victorious. This is hard to believe, although it must be admitted that the cowardice of the Socialists and the obsession of the professors are remarkable phenomena. As to the latter, however, we must remember their dependence on the Government, not only for their information and their "call" to speak, but also for their positions in the Government system of education.

As to the significance of the two names most prominently quoted in this connection, I am not at all impressed, as so many of my colleagues appear to be. An intimate friend of mine some twenty years ago was several weeks en pension in the same house where Haeckel had his apartment, and even then he was notorious for his hatred of foreigners and of women. Those of us who have followed closely his career know how often he has written with more than German professorial virulence against those who differed from his theory of evolution, and that he is at present scarcely more abusive of England than he has several times been of his own Government and of the State Church because his system was not made a matter of compulsory teaching. As to Eucken, the reasons for his obsession are quite different. In his case the feeling and the utterance are due to intellectual weakness rather than to virulence of pa.s.sion.

After all, however, the temper of military and imperial Germany under the dominance of Prussia has been essentially the same from the beginning. In ill.u.s.tration of this, let me quote for your readers from a poem of Heine, written as long ago as 1842. I do this the more readily because I have recently seen, to my astonishment, Heine placed beside Goethe as representing the better temper of the Germanic civilization as opposed to the blinded judgment and immoral hatred of the modern German Empire:

Germany's still a little child, But he's nursed by the sun, though tender; He is not suckled on soothing milk, But on flames of burning splendor.

One grows apace on such a diet; It fires the blood from languor; Ye neighbor's children, have a care, This urchin how ye anger!

He is an awkward infant giant, The oak by the roots uptearing; He'll beat you till your backs are sore, And crack your crowns for daring.

He is like Siegfried, the n.o.ble child, That song-and-saga wonder, Who, when his fabled sword was forged, His anvil cleft in sunder!

To you, who will our Dragon slay, Shall Siegfried's strength be given; Hurrah! how joyfully your nurse Will laugh on you from heaven!

The Dragon's h.o.a.rd of royal gems You'll win, with none to share it; Hurrah! how bright the golden crown Will sparkle when you wear it!

But it would not be stranger than many other things which have happened in human history if the defeat of German military imperialism should result in restoring to Europe and spreading more widely over the world the beneficent influence of Germanic civilization. Certainly they are not the same thing, and they do not stand or fall together.

GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD.

Yale University, Oct. 20, 1914.

Possible Profits From War

INTERVIEW WITH FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS.

Dr. Giddings is Professor of Sociology and the History of Civilization at Columbia University; author of many works on sociology and political economy; President of Inst.i.tut Internationale de Sociologie, 1913.

By Edward Marshall.

No man in the United States is better ent.i.tled to estimate the probable social and economic outcome of the present European debacle than Prof.

Franklin H. Giddings of Columbia, one of the most distinguished sociologists and political economists in the United States.

"Today all Europe fights," he said to me, "but, also, today all Europe thinks."

That is an impressive sentence, with which he concluded our long talk, and with which I begin my record of it.

He believes that this thinking of the men who crouch low in the drenched trenches and of the women who tragically wait for news of them will fas.h.i.+on a new Europe.

He agrees with the remarkable opinions of President Butler, that that new Europe will be marked by the rise of democracy.

He sees the probability of broadened individual opportunity in it, accompanied by the breaking down of international suspicions; and he thinks that all these processes, which surely make for peace, will surely bring a lasting peace.

In the following interview, which Prof. Giddings has carefully reread, will be found one of the most interesting speculative utterances born of the war.

"The immediate economic cause of the war," said Prof. Giddings, "lay in the affairs of Servia and Austria. Servia had been shut in. She had been able to get practically nothing from, and sell practically nothing to, the outside world, save by Austria's permission, while Austria, with Germany professing fear of Slavic development, for years had been taking every care to prevent the Balkan peoples from having free access to the Adriatic.

"Some financial profit arose from this interning of the little States, but it is probable that the desire for this was all along entirely secondary to the fear of Balkan, especially Servian, political and economic development.

"In the larger economic question Germany felt especial interest.

"In a comparatively few years she had made the greatest progress ever made by any nation in an equal time, with the possible exception of that made by the United States in a similar period after our civil war, and it is probable that not even our own advance has equaled hers in rapidity or extent, if all could be tabbed up.

"She had worked out a great manufacturing scheme, she had developed an immense internal commerce by means of her railroads and her Rhine and other waterways, she had built up an enormous trade with Eastern Europe, Western Asia, South America, and the United States.

"She had highly specialized in and become somewhat dependent on the production of articles like dyestuffs and the commodities of the pharmacopoeia.

"Her s.h.i.+pping had advanced until it closely crowded England's; her finances, on the whole, were well handled and her credit was excellent, while her wonderful system of co-operation between the Government and manufacturing producers and commercial distributers of all kinds had become the admiration of all nations. The extent to which her Government facilitated foreign trade through obtaining and distributing costly information might well be taken as the world's model.

"Whatever claims be made or contested about her contributions to culture and theoretical science, there can be no argument about her material achievements."