"The United States of Europe"
INTERVIEW WITH NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER.
Dr. Butler is President of Columbia University; received Republican electoral vote for Vice President of the United States, 1913; President of American Branch of Conciliation Internationale; President American Historical Association; Trustee Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Commander Order of the Red Eagle (with Star) of Prussia; Commandeur de Legion d'Honneur of France.
By Edward Marshall.
The United States of Europe.
Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, firmly believes that the organization of such a federation will be the outcome, soon or late, of a situation built up through years of European failure to adjust government to the growth of civilization.
He thinks it possible that the ending of the present war may see the rising of the new sun of democracy to light a day of freedom for our transatlantic neighbors.
He tells me that thinking men in all the contending nations are beginning vividly to consider such a contingency, to argue for it or against it; in other words, to regard it as an undoubted possibility.
Dr. Butler's acquaintance among those thinking men of all shades of political belief is probably wider than that of any other American, and it is significant of the startling importance of what he says that by far the greater number of his European friends, the men upon whose views he has largely, directly or indirectly, based his conclusions, are not of the socialistic or of any other revolutionary or semi-revolutionary groups, but are among the most conservative and most important figures in European political, literary, and educational fields.
This being unquestionably true, it is by no means improbable that in the interview which follows, fruit of two evenings in Dr. Butler's library, may be found the most important speculative utterance yet to appear in relation to the general European war.
Dr. Butler's estimate of the place which the United States now holds upon the stage of the theatre of world progress and his forecast of the tremendously momentous rôle which she is destined to play there must make every American's heart first swell with pride and then thrill with a realization of responsibility.
The United States of Europe, modeled after and instructed by the United States of America! The thought is stimulating.
Said Dr. Butler:
"The European cataclysm puts the people of the United States in a unique and tremendously important position. As neutrals we are able to observe events and to learn the lesson that they teach. If we learn rightly we shall gain for ourselves and be able to confer upon others benefits far more important than any of the material advantages which may come to us through a shrewd handling of the new possibilities in international trade.
"I hesitate to discuss any phase of the great conflict now raging in Europe. By today's mail, for example, I received long, personal letters from Lord Haldane, from Lord Morley, from Lord Weardale, and from Lord Bryce. Another has just come from Prof. Schiemann of Berlin, perhaps the Emperor's most intimate adviser; another from Prof. Lamasch of Austria, who was the Presiding Judge of the British-American arbitration in relation to the Newfoundland fisheries a few years ago, and is a member of the Austrian House of Peers. Still others are from M. Ribot, Minister of Finance in France, and M. d'Estournelles de Constant. These confidential letters give a wealth of information as to the intellectual and political forces that are behind the conflict.
"You will understand, then, that without disloyalty to my many friends in Europe, I could not discuss with freedom the causes or the progress of the war, or speculate in detail about the future of the European problem. My friends in Germany, France, and England all write to me with the utmost freedom and not for the public eye; so you see that my great difficulty, when you ask me to talk about the meaning of the struggle, arises from the obligation that I am under to preserve a proper personal reserve regarding the great figures behind the vast intellectual and political changes which really are in the background of the war.
"If such reserve is necessary in my case, it seems to me that it also is necessary for the country as a whole. The attitude of the President has been impeccable. That of the whole American press and people should be the same.
"Especially is it true that all Americans who hope to have influence, as individuals, in shaping the events which will follow the war, must avoid any expression which even might be tortured into an avowal of partisanship or final judgment.
"Even the free expression of views criticising particular details of the war, which might, in fact, deserve criticism, might destroy one's chance of future possible usefulness. A statement which might be unquestionably true might also be remembered to the damage of some important cause later on.
"There are reasons why my position is, perhaps, more difficult than that of some others. Talking is often a hazardous practice, and never more so than now.
"The World is at crossroads, and everything may depend upon the United States, which has been thrust by events into a unique position of moral leadership. Whether the march of the future is to be to the right or to the left, uphill or down, after the war is over, may well depend upon the course this nation shall then take, and upon the influence which it shall exercise.
"If we keep our heads clear there are two things that we can bring insistently to the attention of Europe—each of vast import at such a time as that which will follow the ending of this war.
"The first of these is the fact that race antagonisms die away and disappear under the influence of liberal and enlightened political institutions. This has been proved in the United States.
"We have huge Celtic, Latin, Teutonic and Slavic populations all living here at peace and in harmony; and, as years pass, they tend to merge, creating new and homogeneous types. The Old World antagonisms have become memories. This proves that such antagonisms are not mysterious attributes of geography or climate, but that they are the outgrowth principally of social and political conditions. Here a man can do about what he likes, so long as he does not violate the law; he may pray as he pleases or not at all, and he may speak any language that he chooses.
"The United States is itself proof that most of the contentions of Europeans as to race antagonisms are ill-founded. We have demonstrated that racial antagonisms need not necessarily become the basis of permanent hatreds and an excuse for war."
Hyphens Are Going.
"If human beings are given the chance they will make the most of themselves, and, by living happily—which means by living at peace—they will avoid conflict. The hyphen tends to disappear from American terminology. The German-American, the Italio-American, the Irish-American all become Americans.
"So, by and large, our institutions have proved their capacity to amalgamate and to set free every type of human being which thus far has come under our flag. There is in this a lesson which may well be taken seriously to heart by the leaders of opinion in Europe when this war ends.
"The second thing which we may press, with propriety, upon the attention of the people of Europe after peace comes to them is the fact that we are not only the great exponents but the great example of the success of the principle of federation in its application to unity of political life regardless of local, economic, and racial differences.
"If our fathers had attempted to organize this country upon the basis of a single, closely unified State, it would have gone to smash almost at the outset, wrecked by clashing economic and personal interests. Indeed, this nearly happened in the civil war, which was more economic than political in its origin.
"But, though we had our difficulties, we did find a way to make a unified nation of a hundred million people and forty-eight Commonwealths, all bound together in unity and in loyalty to a common political ideal and a common political purpose.
"Just as certainly as we sit here this must and will be the future of Europe. There will be a federation into the United States of Europe.
"When one nation sets out to assert itself by force against the will, or even the wish, of its neighbors, disaster must inevitably come. Disaster would have come here if, in 1789, New York had endeavored to assert itself against New England or Pennsylvania.
"As a matter of fact, certain inhabitants of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania did try something of the sort after the Federal Government had been formed, but, fortunately, their effort was a failure.
"The leaders of our national life had established such a flexible and admirable plan of government that it was soon apparent that each State could retain its identity, forming its own ideals and shaping its own progress, and still remain a loyal part of the whole; that each State could make a place for itself in the new federated nation and not be destroyed thereby.
"There is no reason why each nation in Europe should not make a place for itself in the sun of unity which I am sure is rising there behind the war clouds. Europe's stupendous economic loss, which already has been appalling and will soon be incalculable, will give us an opportunity to press this argument home.
"True internationalism is not the enemy of the nationalistic principle.
"On the contrary, it helps true nationalism to thrive. The Vermonter is more a Vermonter because he is an American, and there is no reason why Hungary, for example, should not be more than ever before Hungarian after she becomes a member of the United States of Europe.
"Europe, of course, is not without examples of the successful application of the principle of federation within itself. It so happens that the federated State next greatest to our own is the German Empire. It is only forty-three years old, but their federation has been notably successful. So the idea of federation is familiar to German publicists.
"It is familiar, also, to the English, and has lately been pressed there as the probable final solution of the Irish question.
"It has insistently suggested itself as the solution of the Balkan problem.
"In a lesser way it already is represented in the structure of Austria-Hungary."
America's Great Work.
"This principle of nation building, of international building through federation, certainly has in it the seeds of the world's next great development—and we Americans are in a position both to expand the theory and to illustrate the practice. It seems to me that this is the greatest work which America will have to do at the end of this war.
"These are the things which I am writing to my European correspondents in the several belligerent countries by every mail.
"The cataclysm is so awful that it is quite within the bounds of truth to say that on July 31 the curtain went down upon a world which never will be seen again.
"This conflict is the birth-throe of a new European order of things. The man who attempts to judge the future by the old standards or to force the future back to them will be found to be hopelessly out of date. The world will have no use for him. The world has left behind forever the international policies of Palmerston and of Beaconsfield and even those of Bismarck, which were far more powerful.
"When the war ends conditions will be such that a new kind of imagination and a new kind of statesmanship will be required. This war will prove to be the most effective education of 500,000,000 people which possibly could have been thought of, although it is the most costly and most terrible means which could have been chosen. The results of this education will be shown, I think, in the process of general reconstruction which will follow.
"All the talk of which we hear so much about, the peril from the Slav or from the Teuton or from the Celt, is unworthy of serious attention. It would be quite as reasonable to discuss seriously the red-headed peril or the six-footer peril.
"There is no peril to the world in the Slav, the Teuton, the Celt, or any other race, provided the people of that race have an opportunity to develop as social and economic units, and are not bottled up so that an explosion must come.
"It is my firm belief that nowhere in the world, from this time on, will any form of government be tolerated which does not set men free to develop in this fashion."
I asked Dr. Butler to make some prognostication of what the United States of Europe, which he so confidently expects, will be. He answered:
Has Advanced Much.
"I can say only this: The international organization of the world already has progressed much further than is ordinarily understood. Ever since the Franco-Prussian war and the Geneva Arbitration, both landmarks in modern history, this has advanced inconspicuously, but by leaps and bounds.
"The postal service of the world has been internationalized in its control for years. The several Postal Conventions have been evidences of an international organization of the highest order.
"Europe abounds in illustrations of the international administration of large things. The very laws of war, which are at present the subject of so much and such bitter discussion, are the result of international organization.
"They were not adopted by a Congress, a Parliament, or a Reichstag. They were agreed to by many and divergent peoples, who sent representatives to meet for their discussion and determination."
One of the Examples.
"In the admiralty law we have a most striking example of uniformity of practice in all parts of the world. If a ship is captured or harmed in the Far East and taken into Yokohama or Nagasaki, damages will be assessed and collected precisely as they would be in New York or Liverpool.
"The world is gradually developing a code for international legal procedure. Special arbitral tribunals have tended to merge and grow into the international court at The Hague, and that, in turn, will develop until it becomes a real supreme judicial tribunal.
"Of course the analogy with the federated State fails at some points, but I believe the time will come when each nation will deposit in a world federation some portion of its sovereignty.
"When this occurs we shall be able to establish an international executive and an international police, both devised for the especial purpose of enforcing the decisions of the international court.
"Here, again, we offer a perfect object lesson. Our Central Government is one of limited and defined powers. Our history can show Europe how such limitations and definitions can be established and interpreted, and how they can be modified and amended when necessary to meet new conditions.
"My colleague, Prof. John Bassett Moore, is now preparing and publishing a series of annotated reports of the international arbitration tribunals, in order that the Governments and jurists of the world may have at hand, as they have in the United States Supreme Court, reports, a record of decided cases which, when the time comes, may be referred to as precedents.
"It will be through graded processes such as this that the great end will be accomplished. Beginning with such annotated reports as a basis for precedents, each new case tried before this tribunal will add a further precedent, and presently a complete international code will be in existence. It was in this way that the English common law was built, and such has been the admirable history of the work done by our own judicial system.
"The study of such problems is at this time infinitely more important than the consideration of how large a fine shall be inflicted by the victors upon the vanquished."
The Chief Result.
"There is the probability of some dislocation of territory and some shiftings of sovereignty after the war ends, but these will be of comparatively minor importance. The important result of this great war will be the stimulation of international organization along some such lines as I have suggested.
"Dislocation of territory and the shifting of sovereigns as the result of international disagreements are mediaeval practices. After this war the world will want to solve its problems in terms of the future, not in those of the outgrown past.
"Conventional diplomacy and conventional statesmanship have very evidently broken down in Europe. They have made a disastrous failure of the work with which they were intrusted. They did not and could not prevent the war because they knew and used only the old formulas. They had no tools for a job like this.
"A new type of international statesman is certain to arise, who will have a grasp of new tendencies, a new outlook upon life. Bismarck used to say that it would pay any nation to wear the clean linen of a civilized State. The truth of this must be taught to those nations of the world which are weakest in morale, and it can only be done, I suppose, as similar work is accomplished with individuals. Courts, not killings, have accomplished it with individuals.
"One more point ought to be remembered. We sometimes hear it said that nationalism, the desire for national expression by each individual nation, makes the permanent peace and good order of the world impossible.
"To me it seems absurd to believe that this is any truer of nations than it is of individuals. It is not each nation's desire for national oppression which makes peace impossible; it is the fact that thus far in the world's history such desire has been bound up with militarism.
"The nation whose frontier bristles with bayonets and with forts is like the individual with a magazine pistol in his pocket. Both make for murder. Both in their hearts really mean murder.
"The world will be better when the nations invite the judgment of their neighbors and are influenced by it.
"When John Hay said that the Golden Rule and the open door should guide our new diplomacy he said something which should be applicable to the new diplomacy of the whole world. The Golden Rule and a free chance are all that any man ought to want or ought to have, and they are all that any nation ought to want or ought to have.
"One of the controlling principles of a democratic State is that its military and naval establishments must be completely subservient to the civil power. They should form the police, and not be the dominant factor of any national life.
"As soon as they go beyond this simple function in any nation, then that nation is afflicted with militarism.
"It is difficult to make predictions of the war's effect on us. As I see it, our position will depend a good deal upon the outcome of the conflict, and what that will be no one at present knows.
"If a new map of Europe follows the war, its permanence will depend upon whether or not the changes are such as will permit nationalities to organize as nations.
"The world should have learned through the lessons of the past that it is impossible permanently and peacefully to submerge large bodies of aliens if they are treated as aliens. That is the opposite of the mixing process which is so successfully building a nation out of varied nationalities in the United States.
"The old Romans understood this. They permitted their outlying vassal nations to speak any language they chose and to worship whatever god they chose, so long as they recognized the sovereignty of Rome. When a conquering nation goes beyond that, and begins to suppress religions, languages, and customs, it begins at that very moment to sow the seeds of insurrection and revolution.
"My old teacher and colleague, Prof. Burgess, once defined a nation as an ethnographic unit inhabiting a geographic unit. That is an illuminating definition. If a nation is not an ethnographic unit, it tries to become one by oppressing or amalgamating the weaker portions of its people. If it is not a geographic unit, it tries to become one by reaching out to a mountain chain or to the sea—to something which will serve as a real dividing line between it and its next neighbors.
"The accuracy of this definition can hardly be denied, and we all know what the violations of this principle have been in Europe. It is unnecessary for me to point them out.
"Races rarely have been successfully mixed by conquest. The military winner of a war is not always the real conqueror in the long run. The Normans conquered Saxon England, but Saxon law and Saxon institutions worked up through the new power and have dominated England's later history. The Teutonic tribes conquered Rome, but Roman civilization, by a sort of capillary attraction, went up into the mass above and presently dominated the Teutons.
"The persistency of a civilization may well be superior in tenacity to mere military conquest and control.
"The smallness of the number of instances in which conquering nations have been able successfully to deal with alien peoples is extraordinary. The Romans were unusually successful, and England has been successful with all but the Irish, but perhaps no other peoples have been successful in high degree in an effort to hold alien populations as vassals and to make them really happy and comfortable as such.
"One of the war's chief effects on us will be to change our point of view. Europe will be more vivid to us from now on. There are many public men who have never thought much about Europe, and who have been far from a realization of its actual importance to us. It has been a place to which to go for a Summer holiday.
"But, suddenly, they find they cannot sell their cotton there or their copper, that they cannot market their stocks and bonds there, that they cannot send money to their families who are traveling there, because there is a war. To such men the war must have made it apparent that interdependence among nations is more than a mere phrase.
"All our trade and all our economic and social policies must recognize this. The world has discovered that cash without credit means little. One cannot use cash if one cannot use one's credit to draw it whenever and wherever needed. Credit is intangible and volatile, and may be destroyed over night.
"I saw this in Venice.
"On July 31 I could have drawn every cent that my letter of credit called for up to the time the banks closed. At 10 in the morning on the 1st of August I could not draw the value of a postage stamp.
"Yet the banker in New York who issued my letter of credit had not failed. His standing was as good as ever it had been. But the world's system of international exchange of credit had suffered a stroke of paralysis over night.
"This realization of international interdependence, I hope, will elevate and refine our patriotism by teaching men a wider sympathy and a deeper understanding of other peoples, nations, and languages. I sincerely hope it will educate us up to what I have called 'The International Mind.'
"When Joseph Chamberlain began his campaign after returning from South Africa his keynote was, 'Learn to think imperially.' I think ours should be, 'Learn to think internationally,' to see ourselves not in competition with the other peoples of the world, but working with them toward a common end, the advance of civilization."
A Note of Optimism.
"There are hopeful signs, even in the midst of the gloom that hangs over us. Think what it has meant for the great nations of Europe to have come to us, as they have done, asking our favorable public opinion. We have no army and navy worthy of their fears. They can have been induced by nothing save their conviction that we are the possessors of sound political ideals and a great moral force.
"In other words, they do not want us to fight for them, but they do want us to approve of them. They want us to pass judgment upon the humanity and the legality of their acts, because they feel that our judgment will be the judgment of history. There is a lesson in this.
"If we had not repealed the Panama Canal Tolls Exemption act last June they would not have come to us as they are doing now. Who would have cared for our opinion in the matter of a treaty violation if, for mere financial interest or from sheer vanity, we ourselves had violated a solemn treaty?
"When Congress repealed the Panama Canal Tolls Exemption act it marked an epoch in the history of the United States. This did more than the Spanish war, than the building of the Panama Canal, or than anything else I think of, to make us a true world power.
"As a nation we have kept our word when sorely tempted to break it. We made Cuba independent, we have not exploited the Philippines, we have stood by our word as to Panama Canal tolls.
"In consequence we are the first moral power in the world today. Others may be first with armies, still others first with navies. But we have made good our right to be appealed to on questions of national and international morality. That Europe is seeking our favor is the tribute of the European nations to this fact."