"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attempts to judge the future by the old standards or to force the future back to them will be found to be hopelessly out of date.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.