Clifton, Mass., June 9, 1915.
Dear Sir: I beg to express my thanks for the courtesy of the invitation to attend the conference of the League of Peace in Independence Hall under the Presidency of the Hon. W.H. Taft. I feel myself, of course, in deepest sympathy with the spirit of justice and peacefulness which has suggested the foundation of such a league. Nevertheless, I beg to be excused from attendance, as I am convinced that this time of international excitement and prejudice is unfit for the crystallization of new forms for the common life of the nations.
I venture, however, to add that I feel in any case grave doubts of the value of any plans which aim to secure future peace by the traditional type of agreements and treaties. We live in the midst of a war in which one belligerent nation after another has felt obliged to disregard treaties and to interpret agreements in a one sided way. Only yesterday Italy, without any reason of vital necessity, annulled an agreement and a treaty which had appeared the firmest in European politics, and which yet failed in the first hour of clashing interests. A psychologist has no right to expect that the national temper of the future will be different.
Moreover, the Supreme Court of the United States has sanctioned the idea, which is shared practically by all nations, that treaties are no longer binding when a situation has changed so that the fulfillment of the agreement would be against the vital interests of the nation. We have learned during the last ten months how easily such disburdening changes can be discovered as soon as the national passions are awakened.
The new plan depends upon only one new feature by which the mutual agreement is to be fortified against the demands of national excitement. The plan of the League of Peace promises the joint use of military forces in case that one nation is unwilling to yield. But the world witnesses today the clear proof that even the greatest combination of fighting forces may be unable to subdue by mere number a nation which is ready to make any sacrifice for its convictions. One hundred and fifty millions are attacked by eight hundred and fifty millions, by joint forces from five continents, which moreover are backed by the economic forces of the richest country in the world; and yet after ten months of fighting one million prisoners, but no other hostile soldiers, stand on German soil. After this practical example the plan merely to join the military forces will less than ever appear a convincing argument in an hour in which a nation feels its existence or its honor threatened. For a long time we heard the claim that the Socialists and the bankers would now make great wars impossible; both prophecies have failed. The threat that the warring nation will have to face the world in arms will be no less futile. But the failure in this case will be disastrous, as the terms of such an agreement would draw many nations into the whirlpool which would have no reason of their own for entering the war.
The interests of strong growing nations will lead in the future as in the past to conflicts in which both sides are morally in the right and in which one must yield. We have no right to hope that after this war the nations will be more willing to give up their chances in such conflicts without having appealed to force. On the contrary, the world has now become accustomed to war and will therefore more easily return to the trenches. The break between England and Russia and finally the threatening cloud of world conflict between Occident and Orient can already be seen on the horizon; the battles of today may be only the preamble. In such tremendous hours the new-fashioned agreements would be cobwebs which surely could not bind the arms of any energetic nation.
But, worst of all, they would not only be ineffective—they would awake a treacherous confidence. The nations would deceive themselves with a feeling of safety, while all true protection would be lacking. The first step forward toward our common goal must be to learn the two lessons of the war of today and to face them unflinchingly; mere agreements do not and can not bind any nation on the globe in an hour of vital need, and the mere joining of forces widens and protracts a war, but does not hinder it. We must learn that success for peace endeavors can be secured only from efforts to avert war which are fundamentally different from the old patterns of pledges and threats. These old means were negative; we need positive ones.
If a psychologist can contribute anything to the progress of mankind, he must, first of all, offer the advice not to rely on plans by which the attention is focused on the disasters which are to be avoided. Education by forbidding the wrong action instead of awaking the impulses toward the right one is as unpromising for peoples as it is for individuals. We must truly build up from within. But a time in which the war news of every hour appeals to sympathies and antipathies is hardly the time to begin this sacred work, which alone could bring us the blessed age of our vision, the United States of the World.
HUGO MUENSTERBERG.