DR. ELIOT'S FIFTH LETTER.
A Hopeful Road to Lasting Peace
To the Editor of The New York Times:
The great war has now been going on long enough to enable mankind to form approximately correct views about its vast extent and scale of operations, its sudden interference with commerce and all other helpful international intercourse, its unprecedented wrecking of family happiness and continuity, its wiping out, as it proceeds, of the accumulated savings of many former generations in structures, objects of art, and industrial capital, and the huge burdens it is likely to impose on twentieth century Europe. From all these points of view, it is evidently the most horrible calamity that has ever befallen the human race and the most crucial trial to which civilization has been exposed. It is, and is to be, the gigantic struggle of these times between the forces which make for liberty and righteousness and those which make for the subjection of the individual man, the exaltation of the State, and the enthronement of physical force directed by a ruthless collective will. It threatens a sweeping betrayal of the best hopes of mankind.
Each of the nations involved, horrified at the immensity of the disaster, maintains that it is not responsible for the war; and each Government has issued a statement to prove that some other Government is responsible for the outbreak. This discussion, however, relates almost entirely to actions by monarchs and Cabinets between July 23 and Aug. 4—a short period of hurried messages between the Chancelleries of Europe—actions which only prove that the monarchs and Ministers for Foreign Affairs could not, or at least did not, prevent the long-prepared general war from breaking out. The assassination of the Archduke and Duchess of Hohenberg on the 28th of June was in no proper sense a cause of the war, except as it was one of the consequences of the persistent aggressions of Austria-Hungary against her southeastern neighbors. Neither was Russian mobilization in four military districts on July 29 a cause of the war; for that was only an external manifestation of the Russian state of mind toward the Balkan peoples, a state of mind well known to all publicists ever since the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. No more was the invasion of Belgium by the German Army on Aug. 4 a true cause of the war, or even the cause, as distinguished from the occasion, of Great Britain's becoming involved in it. By that action Germany was only taking the first step in carrying out a long-cherished purpose and in executing a judicious plan of campaign prepared for many years in advance. The artificial panic in Germany about its exposed position between two powerful enemies, France and Russia, was not a genuine cause of the war; for the General Staff knew they had crushed France once, and were confident they could do it again in a month. As to Russia, it was, in their view, a huge nation, but very clumsy and dull in war.
The real causes of the war are all of many years' standing; and all the nations now involved in the fearful catastrophe have contributed to the development of one or more of these effective causes. The fundamental causes are: (1) The maintenance of monarchical Governments, each sanctioned and supported by the national religion, and each furnished with a Cabinet selected by the monarch—Governments which can make war without any previous consultation of the peoples through their elected representatives; (2) the constant maintenance of conscript armies, through which the entire able-bodied male population is trained in youth for service in the army or navy, and remains subject to the instant call of the Government till late in life, the officering of these permanent armies involving the creation of a large military class likely to become powerful in political, industrial, and social administration; (3) the creation of a strong, permanent bureaucracy within each nation for the management of both foreign and domestic affairs, much of whose work is kept secret from the public at large; and, finally, (4) the habitual use of military and naval forces to acquire new territories, contiguous or detached, without regard to the wishes of the people annexed or controlled. This last cause of the war is the most potent of the four, since it is strong in itself, and is apt to include one or more of the other three. It is the gratification of the lust for world empire.
Of all the nations taking part in the present war, Great Britain is the only one which does not maintain a conscript army; but, on the other hand, Great Britain is the earliest modern claimant of world empire by force, with the single exception of Spain, which long since abandoned that quest. Every one of these nations except little Servia has yielded to the lust for empire. Every one has permitted its monarch or its Cabinet to carry on secret negotiations liable at any time to commit the nation to war, or to fail in maintaining the peace of Europe or of the Near East. In the crowded diplomatic events of last July, no phenomenon is more striking than the exhibition of the power which the British people confide to the hands of their Foreign Secretary. In the interests of public liberty and public welfare no official should possess such powers as Sir Edward Grey used admirably—though in vain—last July. In all three of the empires engaged in the war there has long existed a large military caste which exerts a strong influence on the Government and its policies, and on the daily life of the people.
These being the real causes of the terrific convulsion now going on in Europe, it cannot be questioned that the nation in which these complex causes have taken strongest and most complete effect during the last fifty years is Germany. Her form of government has been imperialistic and autocratic in the highest degree. She has developed with great intelligence and assiduity the most formidable conscript army in the world, and the most influential and insolent military caste. Three times since 1864 she has waged war in Europe, and each time she has added to her territory without regard to the wishes of the annexed population. For twenty-five years she has exhibited a keen desire to obtain colonial possessions; and since 1896 she has been aggressive in this field. In her schools and universities the children and youth have been taught for generations that Germany is surrounded by hostile peoples, that her expansion in Europe and in other continents is resisted by jealous powers which started earlier in the race for foreign possessions, and that the salvation of Germany has depended from the first, and will depend till the last, on the efficiency of her army and navy and the warlike spirit of her people. This instruction, given year after year by teachers, publicists, and rulers, was first generally accepted in Prussia, but now seems to be accepted by the entire empire as unified in 1871.
The attention of the civilized world was first called to this state of the German mind and will by the triumphant policies of Bismarck; but during the reign of the present Emperor the external aggressiveness of Germany and her passion for world empire have grown to much more formidable proportions. Although the German Emperor has sometimes played the part of a peacemaker, he has habitually acted the war lord in both speech and bearing, and has supported the military caste whenever it has been assailed. He is by inheritance, conviction, and practice a Divine-right sovereign whose throne rests on an "invincible" army, an army conterminous with the nation. In the present tremendous struggle he carries his subjects with him in a rushing torrent of self-sacrificing patriotism. Mass fanaticism and infectious enthusiasm seem to have deprived the leading class in Germany, for the moment, of all power to see, reason, and judge correctly—no new phenomenon in the world, but instructive in this case because it points to the grave defect in German education—the lack of liberty and, therefore, practice in self-control.