Towards an enduring peace

A SYMPOSIUM OF PEACE PROPOSALS AND PROGRAMS 1914-1916
COMPILED BY RANDOLPH S. BOURNE
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR INTERNATIONAL CONCILIATION NEW YORK

VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK



When the storm has gone by and the skies after clearing have softened, we may discover that a corrected perspective is the result of the war that we are most conscious of. Familiar presumptions will appear foreshortened, and new distances of fact and possibility will lie before us.
Before the fateful midsummer of 1914 the most thoughtful part of mankind confidently held a lot of agreeable presumptions which undoubtedly influenced individual and collective conduct. The more intangible of them were grouped under such name symbols as “idealism,” “humanitarian impulse,” “human brotherhood,” “Christian civilization.” The workaday ones were pigeonholed under the rubric: “enlightened economic interest.” Between the practical and the aspirational were distributed all the excellent Aristotelian middle course presumptions of the “rule of reason” order.