There are, no doubt, all sorts of objections that could be raised against this suggestion. But they can be met satisfactorily if the matter is taken up in earnest and with practical mind. The principal difficulty to overcome is time; no time must be wasted by research in far-fetched details. It is a comparatively short list of pertinent questions which would have to be answered, and the materials of their examination are already at hand in the declarations and documentary publications of the different governments themselves which want to be verified by juxtaposition with the corresponding publications of the other side and to be scrutinised upon their intrinsic significance. Works of conscientious legists and historians that could serve as specimens are not missing. But they are occasioned by private enterprise and express opinions not always in the measured language that would alone fit the purpose here in view.
This purpose is to direct the minds of the greatest possible number of people in the affected countries to such way of regarding the questions of the war and to such comprehension of the feeling of the other side as are the necessary conditions of a sane and sober appreciation of the nature and the possibilities of a reasonable peace. The present feeling in these sections of the public which form public opinion in this country as in England and in France, is as full of bitterness as can be. A cure is badly wanted, but it does not proceed automatically. Weariness of the war is there, but it is counteracted partly by the manifold incidents of the war itself, by the appetites it has awakened, by the mutual distrust it has created.
It might be objected that one can hardly expect a number of even neutral experts to come to a concerted opinion on these points. But it would be of little consequence if the experts, instead of agreeing on a common report, would publish majority and minority reports. What matters is that opinions of qualified experts are at all drawn up and published, so that discussion is as much as possible free from the effects of the biased speeches of interested statesmen and other politicians and their press. The report or reports would also be of use when an armistice at least had been agreed upon and a conference for the conclusion of a peace is sitting. And even if the work of the invited experts should take more time than the conclusion of the peace itself, the reports might still be of considerable value. For what matters is not only that a peace is come to but also that the nations should afterward possess authoritative impartial opinions on the main questions of consequence connected with the origin and the conduct of the war. For such opinions would educate the poisoned minds to an objective and argumentative discussion of the means to prevent a repetition of the present disaster.
Only those who live in the affected countries can be aware how great the need is for providing the general public with unbiased authoritative expositions of these questions.
Finally the conference could and should also discuss in a pertinent way the question of disarmament. This question has to-day reached a stage much beyond that of mere desirability. It is now a question of commanding necessity, one can justly say of life and death of the reached stage of civilisation. Not pious wishes or theoretical expositions will in regard to it now suffice. We must have practical proposals, proposals of a scheme to put disarmament into practice and proposals of the means to induce the different states to accept the scheme and to carry it out.
It is a big and pretentious programme here suggested, the first to be decided by breaks with the old principle of non-interference in state affairs. But the times are so exceptional that extraordinary measures cannot be shunned. If one sees two lads fight each other with their fists or even sticks one may well say, "Let them first fight it out and then we shall see to bring them to reason." But if they stand on board a ship and, mad with rage, and, without interruption and unremittingly, throw incendiary matter at each other you would rather stop them before the ship is in flames. Under other conditions it might be the right thing to convoke a conference to be held after the war is over. As it is now, reason would demand not to adjourn the term to that juncture. This is not the place to adjudicate responsibilities. Suffice it to say that the present aspect of the conflict is the worst since its beginnings and threatens aggravations of its horrors.
Of all the neutrals none is more predestined to take the initiative in this grave matter than the United States of America, by their great power, by their geographical position, by the ethnological composition of their citizens and last, but not least, by their historical traditions they before all are called to act. The small European nations are already, as it were, too much under the fire around them to be so free in their action as is the government of the giant republic on the western hemisphere. But that they would with the greatest readiness join in the convocation of a conference for the settlement of at least the two first of the described subjects is sure beyond any doubt.
The leader in the arrangement of this conference is, in my opinion, the least objectionable, and at the same time it is the most promising help that in the present appallingly entangled situation America can give Europe. The Old World is poisoned. The virus of the most irrational hatred of its component sections against each other, inoculated into them by all sorts of false leaders of opinion, eats deeper and deeper and threatens to mortify all the roots of a wholesome life. May the United States of America help a disunited Europe to find the way out of the deadly miasmatic jungle into which it has lost itself.
THE HELPLESSNESS OF EUROPE
BY —— ——, MEMBER OF THE REICHSTAG