The Pres MONDAY, JANUARY 8, 1914.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 15793, 8 January 1917, Page 6

The Pres MONDAY, JANUARY 8, 1914.

The Latest Apocalypse.

It would probably bo difficult to sustain a close comparison between President Wilson and St. John the Divine. But one quality they have in common : each is, after his kind, a seer of visions and a dreamer of dreams. St. John's vision, it is perhaps well to recall, was of the new heaven and- the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, to the early realisation of which the Christian community in the first flush of its newfound hope looked forward with such undoubtiug confidence. President Wilson, more in touch, it may well be, with the immediate and the actual, less attuned to spiritual values, sees in his dreams a world delivered from caprice, and cruelty, and wrong, by what he calls a Leaguo of Nations. The seor of «id felt the need of an antecedent change in men's hearts, and in the motives which actuate and give aim to their livoe, before what lie would have called the Kingdom of God, could be established on earth. The latter day seer, characteristically perhaps, puts his trust in the machine. Elaborate a great council of the nations with a

permanent committee always in session, reduce armaments by international agreement, compel the nati.in* or the world by tlio pressure of general opinioa to submit all grievances and dis-

putcs to an international arbitration

court, inaintaiij an international police force strong enough to coerce the recalcitrant, and to ensure that the court's awards he accepted as final, and all is accomplished and the work is dono. Wars and rumours of wars will be eliminated. a> it were by automatic action, and the world at once be free to pursne its business, and its pleasures undisturbed by turmoil, and to realise for the first time in its long existence the fabled happiness of the Golden Age. That is the programme of the latter day idealist. It is a l>old conception, and ha« at least this much of merit that it witnesses to a deep dissAisfaction with tilings as they are, and to a

reaching out of the spirit of mail to something nobler r.nd freer and more generous. But it takes too much for granted to afford the plain man ground for reasonable hope, and is, in fact, little more than an o'd fallacy with a new face. A-, far back" as the year 181-3, tile Czar Alexander pressed on the reluctant attention of the statesmen of his age a similar scheme. One of the most interesting in history, Alexander was at one and tho same time the Autocrat of all tho Russias. a revolutionary by early training and sentimental conviction, a devotee of " paradoinania,"' a devout believer in peace, a mystic, aud in the view of some of his contemporaries, a madman. et it lias long been admitted by impartial history that in inaugurating the Holy Alliance. which was destined to incur so much obloquy, lie was actuated by the best and most sincere of motives. Regarding all tlie nations of tho Christian world as one family under the sovereignty of God, bo invited his brother sovereigns

to enter into a pact "to take for their

" sole guide the precepts of the Cliristian religion, the- precepts of jus-

" tice. Christian charity, and peace. " which, far from being applicable only

" to private concerns, must have an " immediate influence upon the eour- " sels of princes, and guide all their "steps as being the only means of "consolidating human institutions and " remedying their imperfections."' They \iere to remain united by tho bonds of a true and indissoluble fraternity, and considering each other as fellow-coun-trymen, on all occasions and in. all places, lend each other aid and assistance, and lead their subjects in tho spirit of brotherhood to protect religion, peace, and justice. The alliance was to be no mere close corporation of powerful nionarchs. All the Powers, groat and small alike, were invited to make the .same high profession of faith, and thereby bo admitted "with "equal ardour and affection" into tho new fellowship of nations.

■ The first adherent to thi.s impressive compact was Frederick AV.illiam of Prussia, whoso sensible mind, so Treitschke tells us, recognised that the Czar's oracular sentences "after all " laid the Prussian State under no " obligation whatever."' The second was tho Emperor Francis, who demurred at first in the interests of his friend tho Suitan, necessarily excluded by the very wording of the document, but was overruled by the cynical comment of Prince Metternich that the whole thing was no more than "pious " prattle." Minor rulers hastened to follow in footsteps so .august. But there , were dissentients. Pius VII., who had just reinstituted tho Order of Jesus, and wad on the point of throwing down the glove to Liberalism, "re- " fused his adhesion to a league found"ed by a lieretic and a Liberal." Lord Castlercagh, our own Foreign Secretary who is moro and more coming to be looked on as the embodiment of sober, British common-sense, and tho worthy inheritor of the great Pitt tradition, declined to commit England to what he, rightly or wrongly, characterised as "a piece of sublime "mysticism and nonsense." It- was too vague and too indefinite for him, and in its very vagueness and indefiniteness lay, in his judgment, a menace to tho liberties of the world. Into an alliance, or agreement, with clearly defined aims for clearly defined ends he was ready to permit England to enter, but he declined to be put off by talk about the millennium.

Times l have changed since those old days, the believers in President Wilson's new formula will no doubt remind us, and the old dynastic system has been displaced by the truer principle of nationality. It mav be so, and in fact to some extent it is so. But between aspirations, however lofty, and their realisation in practical working form, a great gulf is still fixed, it is not wise to forget Sir Frederick Pollock's weighty warning that before an ideal "system of Europe," still less a world-wide League of Nations, can actually be formed, "the political constitutions and ideas prevailing in the " chief nations of the world will have " to become much more nearly uniform "than they are," and, he might well have added, a working formula of what really constitutes a nation will have to be devised. "We are apt to lose sight of the very • important fact that even the splendid unity of the Allies is a unity ad hoc, directed to an immediato and pressing end. And it is of evil augury for the projected League of Nations that the Kaiser should be so eager to proclaim the adhesion of Germany, and his own disinterested passion for the peace of the world. Compulsory international morality enforced hy bayonets is, it appears, an ideal that commends itself to his exalted mind.