The White Ribbon. For God and Home and Humanity. WELLINGTON, AUGUST 18, 1917. AMERICA AND THE FUTURE.

White Ribbon, Volume 23, Issue 266, 18 August 1917, Page 9

The White Ribbon. For God and Home and Humanity. WELLINGTON, AUGUST 18, 1917. AMERICA AND THE FUTURE.

(From “The Times,” London, April 26, 1917.)

We have celebrated the entry of America into the war. not merely because it means a new and powerful ally, but because it confirms our faith in the rational order of the universe, that faith which the power and the very virtues of Germany challenged. There were times when she seemed to have the nature of things with her, to have discovered it with her cold science, while we lived in a fool's paradise, and to be prevailing with the certainty of a n ttional fort e. We had believed the spirit of man was slowly

winning some mastery over the struggle for life; that mankind and not merely individual men could will to have a conscience above it, could supersede it more and more by friendliness and wisdom. But they said it was folly to be wise beyond the nature of things, or to aim at friendliness in a world where men are born enemies. As things were in the days of Assur banipal and Attila, so they arc now, and always must be. There is nothing but the struggle for 1 fe, and all th.it we call good comes from victory in it. Men must be slaves to that struggle whether they conquer 01 aie conquered. The Germans are the best and wisest of nations, be< ause they are slaves to conquer; the rest of us say we will not be slaves, and therefore we shall be conquered slaves.

That was their doctrine, though they may never have put in 111 these words; and they were such strong slaves that they came very near conquering. Now we know that their doctrine is not true, that the world will not consent to fall back into the age of iron, that the Assyrianism of Germany does not pay. The will of man asserts itself, and the nations aie in league not for revenge, or in a blood feud against one who has threatened them all, but to thrust the German doctrine back into the past, to prove to Germany herself that it is 1101 scientific, but obsolete. Certainly in war it has had many advantages, and even in peace as Germany waged peace; but now we know they were but advantages in deta I, outweighed by this disadvantage that the world will not endure her doctrine, that it has a will of its own, not against Germany, but against the tyranny of the struggle for life; that it is at last a society which can combine against the strongest outlaw. We were not sure of this so long as America remained at peace with the outlaw. She, in her power and in her distance from the struggle, represented a neutral world, made a neutral world, looking on, perhaps, with some disdain at * conflict between two parties of Europe, a conflict not different from former ones on the same blood-soaked soil. Hut now we know that our alliance is not merely one combination against an other, not Outer Europe against Central Europe; but the instrument of

the will, the conscience, the hope ot mankind against a criminal. Securus judicat orbis terrarum at last. In saying this, we cio not mean to flatter the United States. 1 he impartial spectator of a quarrel is not necessarily super or to those eng iged in it. Both sides app al to him because he i> outside the battle, not above it; and it may be mere good fortune that has set him outside it. Hut still he remains impartial; he can judge of rights and wrongs better than those who are struggling, better even than those who are wronged. So the whole neutral world has had for all of us, even for the Germans, a certain right of judgment between us, and appeals have been made to it as representing th <:ons< ience of mankind. So long as there was a neutral world the conscience of mankind had not finally passed judgment; and often it seemed merely to condemn particular acts of both belligerents, and to be defending itself against the encroachments of both. We could not quite rid our>e!ves of the thought that to the world this war was a mere nuisance, like a street brawl to peaceful passers-by when there is no policeman in sight. Hut now' there is no longer a neutral world, though there remain still some neutralj from necessity. In the absence of a p .Fee nan, the passersby have taker sides. Society itself is determin J to put down anarchy; it acknowledges the fact that we have been performing the function of the policeman all the time, that this war from the beginning has been unlike all the wars of the past; unlike even the war against Napoleon, for that began in wrongs done to France more than in wrongs done by her. i he nations were fighting at last for freedom against Napoleon; but men did not fight for freedom against him, and did not win it by victory. Hut this war, from the very beginning, was for the freedom of men, not for the freedom of 11 it 011 s; it was against the very conception of nationalism, which sets the lights of the nation against the lights of nun. Leipsic was called the battle of the Nations; but if there is to be a final and decisive battle in thU w »r, it will be the battle of mankind against a nation; and after it the wry conception of nationality wll he changed. When Mr Bonar Law said tli.it the en-

try Oi America was the tutiimg point ot the war, he told more truth, i>t*rhaps, than he knew. Ihe entry of America decided the character and purpose of the war, made it a war of mankind; made it, indeed, a war no longer in the old sense ot the word, but rath< r an exercise of the world’s will. Up to that moment, through all the long history of mankind, the world has been merely a geographical expression; now it has become a fact, and Germany is not a nation at war, but a traitor to the world.

But have we the wit and the imagination to grasp what th s chang ■ means? Can we think in terms of it quickly enough to make all that ought to be made of it ? W e have, naturally enough, seen the war as above all a struggle between Ungland and Germany; and the Germans are always telling themselves and us that it is that, and nothing more. France and Russia are our misguided vassals, just as Austria and Turkey and Bulgaria are the vassals of Germany. That is false, of course; but do we see how entirely false it is? Can we rise to the fact that this is not a war at all, and that we must not wish to make peace as if it had been a war o the result of a quarrel, between th; Germans and ourselves? That i> the question upon which the real is>ue of the war depends. For the moment the world has become a fact, and ceased to be a geographical expression. Can we all aim at a peace in which it will remain a fact, in which it will become one even for Germany? Not if we make a peace against Germany, if we think of her and treat her merely a>> a defeated nation. Not if we go to the Peace Conference as nations, each seeking its own advantage, it wc see this alliance of ours as an alliance for purposes of war, and to be prolonged in peace merely to keep Germany in subject on. We have enjoyed a brotherhood in arms with our allies; we have suddenly been aware of their virtue-, and said eloquent things about them ; but let us remember that a short time ago we were very much aware of their vices. Is posterity to smile at a!l our praises of France as mere partisanship, like the praises wlrch h ick writers give to politicians of their own party? Posterity will certainly smile so, in spite of all our present sincerity, if France and F.ngland re-

main precariously allied for purposes of war, if they are merely members of a party against the party of Central Furope. For such an alliance is bound to be precaru us and some day to come to an end.

This is the moment at which we need to be aware that when we declared war against Germany we were not entering into an alliance merely for purposes of war, we were not fighting merely for ourselves or for Belgium, or for France, but for a different order of things. We were the great neutral of Furope, as America a few weeks ago was the great neutral of the world. Her action has at last ratified and consummated our own; it has made us, or should make us, fully aware of the nature of that action, and resolved to maintain it in peace as well as in war. But this we can do only if we are ready to make sacrifices equal to our opportunity. \Y; have our own private quarrel with Germany as one nation w th another, as she with us. Her aim is to make the world believe that the war is a personal quarrel between herself and us, and that she wou'd end it now if wc wouk' let her; it is the ambition and the enmity of F.ngland that prolong the war. That is her cry, and we must prove by our freedom from ambition and eunity that it is false. We must go to the Peace Conference with no claims against her merely as of one nation against another. We must make her understand by our actions that we come not as a nation at all, but as a member of a new society, and that she, too, may become a member of it if she will. She has a blood feud with us now, and we cannot end it by killing her; but we may convince her that she lives in a world in which blood feuds will no longci be endured For this talk of blood feuds is all metaphor. The quarrel between us and Germany is not one between two men who hate each other and have dt u each other wrongs. It is between two multitudes, no one member of which has a personal quarrel with any other. It i-> the error of the Germans that they see a nation as .1 person, a romantic, sentimental error; in which they forget to see themselves or any other man as persons in which they cease to act as men or to treat men as men, or women as women, or children as children. We cannot cure them of it

by Ullioti into it ourselves, by talking or thinking of Germany as a person and a personal devil. Rather we shall cure them by knowing ourseives that this is a world of nun, not of nations, and that when nations fight it is men who die, and women who are widowed, and children who are left fatherless.

For that is the fact beh nd all the solemn talk of theorists. Germans are more real than Germany, Englishmen than England, and men than either. And now the league of the nations has become a league of men to maintain that fact, a league a thousand times more real than any alliance of the past. But it can keep its reality only if it rema 11s a league of men and does not slip back into a league of nations maintained for a particular purpose and against one particular nation. We need to sec the Germans, and to convince them that we see them, not as a nation at all, but as a multitude of men possessed by a collective madness, a multitude calling themselves Germany, which is to them another name for God. But if they will throw off the madness we will see them, and treat them again, as men; wc will forgive the wrongs which they did when they thought themselves God ; we will not exult insolently over that country of theirs which has exulted over all the world. We will remember that they, too, have their dead and their widows and their fatherless, a grief wh’ch they share with us in our common humanity. It is strange that the statement of these simple facts should be called i- sentimentality by some Englishmen, as by most Germans. Sentimentality is the statement, and the enjoyment, of unrealities; it is the enjoyment of a moral sense based on unrealities, the most dangerous pleasure that men can give themselves So the Germans have been enjoy ng the belief that they were fighting, and making necessary sacrifices, fo» the triumph of that abstraction which they called Germany. This fight for an unreality they called real politik; and under the spell of it they sacrificed all realities to it, and will continue to sacrifice them until their life becomes unendurable. We can see the truth in their case; but we need to see it in our own and all others. We need to see that the idea of nationalism be-

comes a dangerous nuisance when things more real are sacrificed to it; and, further, that if we have been fighting for any good reason at all we have been fighting for things more real, for the men, women, and children of the future, not for the nations. Sentimental nationalists try to frighten us always with the bogey of an inspid, spiritless, cosmopolitan world like the Roman Empire. They forget that the Roman Empire was not free. They forget also that it was the result of an incessant conflict of nations, and of the belief that no great nation could possibly be safe unless it had destroyed all its strong neighbours. One nation succeeded, and atally enervated the whole ancient world in the process. There followed a peace in which the world had lost hope; and we may expect the sanre end to our civilisation, the same spi itless cosmopolitanism under a supreme Germany, or Russia, or United States, or British Empire, or even a westernised China. We may expect an end of nations if we do not make an end of nationalism. Already all the first-class Powers, as they arc called, are too large for good government, for character and civilisation. The happy, clear-sighted States arc the small ones. But they live precariously among monsters; their safety, even while they are safe, is artificial; and sooner or later they will be absorbed, unless we can unthink the rivalry of the (iieat Powers. But if we can do that, then nations once again will be real; for national uniis will tend to become small and manageable. It will not be a spiritless, cosmopolitan world ; but a world of men and women not sacrificed to abstractions, and forming national units by choice and no longer from fear. We say “if we unthink the rivalry of the Great Powers,” because that r vahy is a matter of thought, an idea, and an obsolete idea. That we know now in this war. We are

fighting not as a number of Great Powers leagued together against rival Powers, but as the will and conscience of the world; and must that will and conscience cease to act as soon as peace is declared? Law and order came about among primitive peoples because men did not combine merely against some one man whose strength and greed made him dangerous to all, because the combination lasted after they had abated the nuisance, and the mass of men gave their continuing consent to it. So we can rise above our present savage anarchy among nations to a state of law and order only if our combination, having come about under pressure of danger and to abate a nuisance, continues when the nuisance is abated, if it grows from an alliance into a world league of peace. But that it cannot do if after peace it remains a combination against Germany, if no hope is offered to Germany of entering it except at the price of utter humiliation. For one thing, our latest Ally would never remain in an alliance against Germany; for another, Germany would intrigue incessantly to detach members from the alliance; and some day she would succeed. And that is why the emry of America into the war gives us a hope we have never had before. She has made the character of the alliance clear to all; she has given it the prestige of a world union; and she, more than all the rest of us, can aim at a peace in which it will keep that prestige. Not that she is necessarily wiser or better than ve are, but that she has not suffered the wrongs of France or Belgium, or even of our selves. A French nationalist newspaper lately said that hatred for the whole of Germany was a necessary andlegitimate feeling. “Granted a German Revolution, granted a German Republic,” will that undo their crimes, avenge our dead, rebuild our villages? You would fraternise with

their Republic? You are mad.* So the Germans said when Napoleon was conquered. And now they are the criminals, and vengeance is to be taken on them. But will vengeance undo their crime or bring the dead to life again? It is not for us, still less is it for the Americans, to preach to the French. But, in gratitude to them, we must think of the future of the world rather than of their vengeance. What we need now is a world in which the genius of France will be able to flower again after all her sufferings, and as it has never flowered before, in which even her enemies will learn to see that genius, how beaut ful it is; and that they would never do if tneir eyes were blinded by her revenge. But we do not believe that she desires revenge, for all her sorrow and her wrongs. Rather, her spirit is the spirit of those words which William Morris spoke over the grave of a boy who had been killed in the riots of Bioody Sunday:— “Our friend who lies here has had a hard life, and met with a hard death ; and, if society had been differently constituted, his life might have been a delightful, a beautiful, and a happy one. It is our business to begin to organise for the purpose of seeing that such things shall not happen ; to try to make this earth a beautiful and happy place.” That is the spirit in which we must end the war and begin the peace.