PEACE OF NATIONS

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 219, 12 June 1930, Page 8

PEACE OF NATIONS

American Speaks to Reichstag WISDOM OF KANT At the invitation of the Reichstag, an address was given recently before that body by Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and of Columbia University. Interest attached to the address inasmuch as it was the first time an American had been invited to speak in the Reichstag. Dr. Butler, who spoke in German, referred to his student days in Berlin. Taking as his subject “Imponderables,” Dr. Butler recalled the work of Fichte in awakening German peoples to a sense of nationhood. “It is to Fichte as prophet, and to Bismarck as constructive statesman," he said, “that we trace the upbuilding of a truly German nation, and finally of a single federal Government for that nation.” If Fichte's oratory promoted the idea of unity of peoples. Kant’s were the voice of the pen, in his essay “Zum ewigen Frieden,” that pointed to the nath on which the nations should progress. “It is literally astounding to find how much of the wisest and best philosophy of modern life is set forth in this essay by Kant so many years ago. He lays down the principle that no treaty of peace shall be esteemed valid on which is tacitly reserved matter for future war. He insists that no State of whatever extent shall ever pass under the of another State, since a State is a society of men over whom that State alone has a right to command and to dispose. “Nor is the thought of Kant restricted to national policy alone. "The public right,’ he continues, ‘ought to be founded upon a federation of free States.’ There, in a single sentence, is the prophecy, of the League of Nations and the function of international law. . “For ten years past the civilised world! has been marching, now Consciously, now unconsciouslv. toward that happy goal which Immanuel Kant so clearly saw and so clearly defined. In the League of Nations the era of consultation has found an organ of expression, and in the Pacts of Locarno the signatory Powers have highly and finely resolved upon the peaceful settlement of their international differences, whether these be of long standing or have newly arisen. ' Finally, in the Pact of Paris, the world has renounced war as an instrument of national policy."