have been forced before the final, fatal moments had passed, and were irrevocable.
It is unnecessary to prolong this cursory review of immediate causes and conditions, nor does it greatly matter how the positions of the different countries have been stated. The mood of a moment may add or subtract a little coloring, without changing the fundamental facts. But is it possible for any man, however impartial he may desire to be, to state those facts now, accurately, clearly, and in such relation and sequence that only one inevitable conclusion can be drawn?
It may be possible, though it would be difficult: but it would not be worth while. For the war has not been due to, and does not depend upon, recent events; and however those events may be viewed or summarized, the only fact of importance is the one already emphasized: that every nation which has been drawn into the conflict counts its cause just and its conscience clear.
In the face of such unanimity of national feeling, it is absurd to discuss superficial conditions only, or to assume that they are of any real importance. For, apart from neutral America, and the few hundreds of really educated and intelligent men and women in each country who constitute the brains and conserve the manners of their nation, it is impossible to find any just basis for criticism and judgment. The average national is concerned with presenting an ex parte statement (in which, perhaps, he believes implicitly) rather than with discovering the actual truth, whosoever may be vindicated or discredited. The average national may therefore be disregarded, and the supreme appeal be made, not to the common folly of the nations, but to the common sense of those who have risen beyond national limitations and national littlenesses.
In the first place, that much-quoted and entirely despicable confession of faith, “My country, right or wrong, first, last and all the time,” may well be relegated,—first, last and for whatever time may remain before a kindly Providence blots out this incredible little world of seething passions and ceaseless pain and cruelty,—to the limbo of antique curiosities. Nothing can be sillier, and more contemptible, than such pseudo-patriotism, based on utter selfishness, utter ignorance, and abysmal stupidity.
The country which commits a crime, or makes a grave mistake, is in the position of an individual who commits a crime or makes a grave mistake; and no fanfare of trumpets or hypnotism of marching automata, helmeted and plumed, should confuse the issue and vitiate judgment. Mere nationalism, unregulated by intelligence, is simply one of the most irritating and blatant forms of egoism. Nationality itself depends upon so many complex conditions that the ordinary semi-intelligent man can scarcely unravel the niceties of history and discover to whom his heartfelt allegiance is really due. He therefore accepts the untutored sentiment of his immediate environment. He is essentially provincial, not patriotic. Alsace and Lorraine, with their various vicissitudes, may profitably be studied by the curious, in this connection.
Until provincialism, of the type which has been so prominent in recent controversies, can be eliminated or controlled, the settlement of the more tragic issues of the time must be undertaken boldly by those who have indubitably grown up, forsaking leading strings and the nursery, the toys of childhood and the irresponsibility of childhood. All the Governments of Europe, in which a few brilliant men are undoubtedly enrolled, have failed now, as they have failed repeatedly before, to perform their elementary duties and save their countries from the horrors of unnecessary war. Generation after generation, the peoples of Europe have been carefully led by their Governments into successive orgies of slaughter, in which the allies of one campaign have been the enemies of the next. The whole course of European history during the last hundred years (we need not go further back: we are not responsible for the dead centuries) has been indeed a subject for Olympian laughter. What has been achieved by the unending succession of wars, with all their attendant miseries and deadly consequences? Merely the necessity for increased armaments, constant watchfulness, perpetual strain—and more war. Could there be a clearer proof of the futility of war?
The Governments of Europe have failed because each, in greater or less degree, has embodied the provincialism of its own section of the armed and suspicious world. There have been a few notable exceptions to the general rule of conventional mediocrity:
but where have we found the statesman who could break away altogether from the old stupid methods, and by the sheer force of character and principle inaugurate a new era of civilized diplomacy, as Bismarck inaugurated a new era of veneered barbarism? In America, we are beginning to see the value and the fruits of government based on fairness to all nations and justice to all individuals: but neither here, nor in Europe, has the significance of the new statesmanship yet been fully recognized. Europe, indeed, still regards us with more than a little suspicion, contempt, and imperfectly concealed condescension: it has heard and seen Roosevelt, unfortunately, and the lingering impressions of crudity have not been weakened. Will it listen to us now, and realize that the New World has in verity something to offer to the Old in its time of special tribulation? For Wilson, not Roosevelt, stands for the spirit of America, the voice of America, and her chosen contribution to the civilization of the Twentieth Century.
It seems strange, perhaps, to talk of civilization in these dark days, when primitive passions and primitive methods have flung an ineradicable stain of blood across a whole continent. Yet only the coward will bend to temporary defeat, or ridicule, or pessimism. It is the task of the strong to turn disaster into triumph, and to frame a new international polity built on sure foundations. The diplomacy based on national antipathies must be made impossible by the new understanding of the criminal folly of provincialism, the new comprehension of nation by nation. For the true causes of the present war cannot be discovered in mere incidents of July and August. They go further back, and are rooted in ignorance, misconception, prejudice, selfishness.