THE 
 
 AND 
 
 
 DWIN DAVIES 
 CHOONMAKER 
 
Class ^ 
 
 Book 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr. 
 
THE 
 WORLD STORM 
 
 AND BEYOND 
 
THE 
 
 WORLD STORM 
 
 AND BEYOND 
 
 BY 
 EDWIN DAVIES SCHOONMAKER 
 
 AUTHOR OF "the SAXONS," "tHK AMERICANS," ETC. 
 
 ««««Ws»i9^ 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1915 
 

 Copyright, 1914, 1915, by 
 The Century Co. 
 
 Published May, 1915 
 
 JUN 2 1915 
 ©GI,A401192 
 
TO 
 
 N. M. S. 
 
 COMRADE IN 
 PEACE AND WAR 
 
FOEEWORD 
 
 I have tried in the following pages to set forth in 
 their historical perspective some of the causes of the 
 great war and also to trace some of its probable con- 
 sequences. Never in all history was it so difficult to 
 put the significance of a war between the covers of a 
 single book, for aside from the difficulty of distinguish- 
 ing in the prevailing confusion what is important from 
 what is incidental, never before were so many and such 
 longstanding dynastic, national, and racial ambitions 
 the tools of such complex social forces. Looking out 
 over Europe to-day one sees as from all sides of a vast 
 arena an outrushing of all the wild beasts which for a 
 century society has kept partially pacified. All the 
 problems which we have inherited from the past and 
 have elbowed toward the future, making the present 
 comfortable with compromise, have come out under 
 cover of the storm and are seeking in war those solu- 
 tions which in peace were seemingly impossible of at- 
 tainment. It is the flaring up of these long-smoldering 
 aspirations of humanity for larger freedom and better 
 conditions of life that is giving to the present conflict a 
 meaning immeasurably greater and an issue of far 
 vaster consequence than at first could possibly be di- 
 vined. Indeed, within the past few months, the char- 
 
FOEEWOED 
 
 acter of the war has undergone a surprising' change. 
 Starting with an assassination, an attack upon a dy- 
 nasty, then rushing to a conflict between nations and 
 between races, recently, as though a veil were being 
 slowly lifted, we have become aware that all these are 
 but streams flowing into a sea of a mighty social war. 
 It is not at all improbable that this may be its final 
 name, the Great Social War. For in the absence of 
 the armies upon the borders and under the urgency of 
 keeping them there, reforms nothing short of amazing 
 are swiftly and surely transforming Europe into some- 
 thing which the sociologist will have difficulty in recog- 
 nizing as the Europe of yesterday. "While kings are 
 speaking, humanity is also having its say. A moiety 
 of consolation for a sacrifice so immense. And yet, 
 who knows ? Peace has had its curses quite as blight- 
 ing as war. 
 
 Particularly is it important that America should 
 keep her eyes upon the social changes that are taking 
 place in Europe. For while we are congratulating 
 ourselves upon our good fortune in that peace is still 
 with us, we are in imminent danger of losing sight of 
 the fact that the present war has lessons for us beyond 
 field operations and armament construction. For if 
 when the conflict is ended we are wiser only in defend- 
 ing our shores from a foreign foe, we shall find beyond 
 doubt that Europe has marched through blood and 
 death into a new and better age and that America has 
 been left hopelessly behind. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 OHAPTBB PAGH 
 
 I FROM O^SAB TO KAISER 3 
 
 II RUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA 29 
 
 III THE DEMOCRATIC RUSSIANS 55 
 
 IV LAND AND WAR 83 
 
 V EMPIRE OR FEDERATION 113 
 
 VI THE FALL OR RISE OP SOCIALISM 137 
 
 VII HAS THE CHURCH COLLAPSED? 165 
 
 VIII THE COSMIC MEANING OF WOMAN 193 
 
 IX POETOGAMY 221 
 
 X THE CULTURAL OBSESSION 249 
 
 XI THE MORAL FAILURE OF " EFFICIENCY "... 273 
 
FEOM C^SAE TO KAISER 
 
THE WORLD STORM 
 AND BEYOND 
 
 FROM C^SAR, TO KAISER 
 
 NOTHING is more striking to the student 
 of history, especially to one interested in 
 the growth of institutions, than to watch through 
 the centuries the specter of Caesar moving north- 
 ward over Europe. The shadow of a dark 
 cloud passing over a field on a clear day in 
 summer is not more visible to the physical eye 
 than is this other shadow that gathered head 
 over Rome two thousand years ago, spread out 
 for a time east and west and south, but finally 
 all but withdrew itself from these quarters, and 
 made northward like a thing that had at last 
 found its way. It is not by mere chance that 
 the German Emperor wears to-day the title of 
 Kaiser, a modification of CsBsar, or that his 
 royal cousin to the north wears the title of 
 Czar, another modification of the same name. 
 
 3 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 Nor is it strange that this old title should have 
 entirely disappeared from the South, where it 
 originated. 
 
 Taking the world as a whole, the movement 
 of civilization, with all its paraphernalia, good 
 and evil, is westward; but taking Europe by 
 itself, the movement is northward. Italy, 
 France, Germany, Russia — these are the suc- 
 cessive steps of civilization on the continent of 
 Europe. And over these in this order the 
 shadow and the sunlight have passed and are 
 passing. England, separated from the Conti- 
 nent geographically, is also something of a law 
 to itself in the matter of its development, and 
 for this reason chiefly it has escaped the full 
 blight of Csesarism, and has thus been enabled 
 in times of crisis to come forth as the deliverer 
 of her sister-nations. England is like a rocky 
 shore where the strength of the wave is broken 
 and scattered, whereas on the Continent the 
 surge has had, as it were, an open sea over 
 which it could travel freely to the farthest lands 
 that men have conquered in the North. And 
 looking out over the expanse of history, we can 
 follow this surge of Csesarism, with its dark 
 shadow of militarism, from its ominous rise in 
 Italy twenty centuries ago ; over France, where 
 
 4 
 
FROM C^SAR TO KAISER 
 
 it was shattered; over Germany, where it tow- 
 ers to-day; and on up into Russia, where in 
 outward appearance it is piling high for the fu- 
 ture. 
 
 Let us see what this Caesarism is that is just 
 now setting Europe in tumult, and under the 
 leadership of the German Kaiser is hurling its 
 might in every direction, as in those old days 
 when Rome flung her legions to every point of 
 the compass. 
 
 The first Caesar, whose name in a modified 
 form is to-day in the mouths of more than one- 
 half of the population of Europe, was the first 
 great Roman to turn the face of his martial 
 nation toward the north. Julius Caesar was not 
 a man to plow over old fields. Asia and Africa 
 had no attraction for him ; and so when it came 
 to choosing a province for his activities, he 
 turned toward the Alps, and led his legions 
 across into Gaul, which is now France. If Ju- 
 lius Caesar had been simply a man, his name 
 would long ago have been forgotten. But he 
 was more than a man. He was an idea and 
 an ideal, the embodiment of imperial Rome 
 itself, with all that that means — law and un- 
 questioning obedience to law. And with this 
 ideal he came among a people that had al- 
 
 5 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 ways been a law to themselves, that even in the 
 case of murder had never brooked the interfer- 
 ence of their own governments in their private 
 affairs. And it was upon this people — the 
 people that just now on the west bank of the 
 Rhine are in arms against the imperial power 
 of the Kaiser — that imperial Caesar, two thou- 
 sand years ago, began welding the Roman yoke. 
 And well he succeeded. Gaul became a Roman 
 province. Roman forts sprang up everywhere, 
 and Roman legions moved quickly to and fro 
 over the marvelous Roman roads. 
 
 Caesarism and militarism — for of course 
 among a freedom-loving people the one cannot 
 exist without the other — ^had taken their first 
 step northward over Europe. Tribes that up 
 to this time had been accustomed to govern 
 themselves now became accustomed to being 
 governed by others, began to tolerate a law en- 
 forced by the sword. And finally they them- 
 selves, as soldiers of the Roman Empire, began 
 to assail the freedom of their brothers farther 
 north. But beyond the Rhine they could make 
 no headway against the fierce spirit of liberty 
 of those kindred tribes, and this river soon be- 
 came recognized as the northern boundary of 
 the empire. But for several centuries more, 
 
 6 
 
FROM C^SAR TO KAISER 
 
 over what is now France, the system of the 
 Caesars, which to-day we call militarism, held 
 sway, slowly consuming the life-blood of the 
 people and itself rotting npon the wealth it ab- 
 sorbed. Then quietly the scepter of the em- 
 pire in the South passed into the hands of the 
 popes, and the objective of militarism under- 
 went a change. Where of old it had enforced 
 the Roman law, it began now to enforce the 
 Christian faith, by which it was seen that a new 
 hold could be gotten upon peoples that would 
 otherwise slip away. 
 
 There is no more interesting chapter of his- 
 tory than that which records this subtle trans- 
 formation and shows us the native kings of 
 these Northern peoples, although politically 
 they had thrown off the yoke of Rome, con- 
 tinuing to be none the less faithful agents of 
 Rome in the establishment of its new hold upon 
 the North. Csesarism was still alive, and mili- 
 tarism was still its tool. For several centuries 
 political and religious absolutism went forth 
 from its ancient seat upon the Tiber, until the 
 sprit of the people was broken, especially on 
 the side of the Rhine where the burden had lain 
 long. But in Italy, where it had lain longest, 
 a new day began presently to dawn. The old 
 
 7 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 German spirit, which had infused itself into the 
 race with the coming of the Lombards, broke 
 out into flame. In vain the German emperors, 
 the representatives of Csesarism in the North, 
 came down upon them with their armies. The 
 Italian peoples valiantly defended themselves, 
 and liberty was again established in the South. 
 The shadow had passed off. 
 
 But over France it still lay dark, and with 
 the passing of the centuries grew darker and 
 darker. "I am the state," proclaimed Louis 
 XIV with an arrogance befitting the most ty- 
 rannical of the Caesars. And his successors, 
 gathering their minions about them in the court 
 at Versailles, fiddled while France was burning 
 — ^burning underground. For several centuries 
 the political agents of the Caesars had nominally 
 sat first upon the Swabian and later upon the 
 Austrain throne ; but in France, where the peo- 
 ple had suffered perhaps more than elsewhere, 
 there was a rumbling and a gathering of mighty 
 forces that were to eject into the arena of Eu- 
 ropean politics a successor of the Caesars worthy 
 of the name. As in Italy it was a group of free 
 cities that first sprang into new life and kindled 
 the new age, in France it was a group of free 
 men — ^men with their ears to the ground and 
 
 8 
 
FROM C^SAR TO KAISER 
 
 with their pens uttering the agony and the 
 smoldering desperation of France. It is im- 
 possible to understand the real character of the 
 encyclopedists and those later fiery leaders of 
 the Revolution without some acquaintance with 
 those old Gauls like Orgetorix and Vercinge- 
 torix who, almost eighteen hundred years be- 
 fore, had grappled with the forces of Caesarism 
 when they first made head beyond the Alps. 
 For these sons of the Revolution were full 
 brothers of those older Gauls, and the foe in 
 both cases was the same. The French Revolu- 
 tion was the long-delayed answer of the con- 
 quered Gauls to their conquerors, the Caesars, 
 now intrenched not in Rome, but in Paris. 
 ** Liberty, equality, and fraternity,'* the battle- 
 cry of the rising people of France, was a refined, 
 philosophic expression of what those dumb 
 Gauls had tried to say with their swords to the 
 advancing legions of Caesar. 
 
 And now arises one of those strange para- 
 doxes of history — a real Caesar emerging out 
 of the swirl of the Revolution, and gathering 
 its mighty forces into his own person, and in a 
 way turning them from their own great ends, 
 and yet in a deeper way seized by those forces 
 and used to spread their tremendous message 
 
 9 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 from one end of Europe to the other. Napoleon 
 Bonaparte was beyond question a real Csssar in 
 his understanding of the power of militarism 
 for the accomplishment of a given end. And 
 the end, too, possibly as far as Napoleon him- 
 self could see it, and certainly as far as it 
 touched his own fortunes, was very CsBsaresque. 
 For the armies which he hurled across the Rhine 
 and the Danube and finally on into the heart of 
 the Muscovite empire, bore on their banners the 
 name of Napoleon, as the legions of Caesar had 
 borne the name of Caesar, and the power which 
 he saw growing up about him was lifting him 
 to the throne of a new empire, a French em- 
 pire, just as similar forces, directed in a similar 
 way, had lifted the first Caesar to the mastery 
 of the Roman empire. 
 
 But the paradox is only a seeming one. In 
 the larger social use to which he was put, Na- 
 poleon Bonaparte was a true Gaul, a creature of 
 the rising forces of anti-Caesarism, as the 
 crowned heads of Europe knew very well. He 
 was a tyrant hitched by the Fates to the plow 
 of liberalism, and if his approach produced a 
 shuddering in the bosom of the rulers of Aus- 
 tria and Prussia, and even in that of the Czar, 
 it was chiefly because of this very fact that they 
 
 10 
 
FROM C^SAR TO KAISER 
 
 isaw behind him the great plowshare of repub- 
 licanism that threatened to uproot not simply 
 thrones, but, worse still, that reverence of the 
 people upon which their thrones were estab- 
 lished. And so it was not against the man Na- 
 poleon so much as against the idea behind him 
 that their cannon were loosened. If there was 
 ever any doubt of this during the twenty years 
 in which Napoleon went up and down Europe, 
 scattering everywhere, with the very songs of 
 his soldiers, those firebrands of the French Rev- 
 olution, liberty, equality, and fraternity, that 
 doubt was dissipated at the Congress of Vienna, 
 which met after Napoleon had been permanently 
 eliminated from the situation. For to this con- 
 gress from the comers of Europe came the refu- 
 gee defenders of the old order, to piece together 
 as best they might the shattered fragments of 
 absolutism. 
 
 It was quite in keeping with her ancient char- 
 acter that Austria should assume the leadership 
 in this reactionary enterprise, for not Napoleon, 
 as we have seen, but the Emperor of Austria 
 was the real representative of those imperial 
 ideas which Rome had introduced beyond the 
 Alps. Unconquerable foe of human progress, 
 Austria has alternately attacked and broken up 
 
 11 
 
THE WORLD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 the three great races of Europe, the Latin, the 
 German, and the Slav. Never once has she been 
 a leader of the forces of freedom. Every one 
 knows how, during the Protestant Reformation, 
 that uprising of the German people for liberty, 
 it was the House of Hapsburg, the ancestors of 
 the present Francis Joseph, that went through 
 this unfortunate land with fire and sword. And 
 for more than half a century after the overthrow 
 of Napoleon the history of Europe is virtually 
 the history of the mind of Mettemich, the evil 
 genius of Austria, in its efforts to smother the 
 volcano which France had lighted, and whose 
 lava had set all Europe on fire ; whose sparks, 
 indeed, had blown clear across the Atlantic, and 
 kindled republicanism in South America. 
 
 It is particularly interesting just now, when 
 the seed sown in those old days by Austria is 
 yielding its terrible harvest, to watch the ef- 
 forts of those frightened Caesars, banded in 
 Vienna, to gather up and thrust back under- 
 ground the embers of freedom in Europe. In- 
 deed, one cannot understand the full meaning 
 of the tremendous Armageddon that is on to-day 
 without some knowledge of how the stage was 
 prepared in the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury under the malign influence of that same 
 
 12 
 
FROM C^SAR TO KAISER 
 
 Austria whose hand has just rung up the cur- 
 tain for the momentous drama just begun. 
 
 First and most important of those efforts to 
 restore what they called the ** peace" of Eu- 
 rope, then, was to stop the mouth of the still 
 active volcano; and so the Bourbons were re- 
 placed upon the throne of France. Second, 
 Italy, whose whole northern half had caught 
 fire, must be taken under the fatherly care of 
 Austria. Third, in those scattered German 
 principalities, some of which Napoleon had cap- 
 tured from Austria and which he had built into 
 a sort of buffer-wall beyond the Rhine, the con- 
 stitutions which the people had won from their 
 rulers were now taken away from the people, 
 and even the student organizations, which with 
 a fervor worthy of the French Jacobins were 
 working for the freedom of the German people, 
 were broken up. 
 
 Quickly now the reactionary movement, which 
 up to this time had been dominated by Austria, 
 began to come to a head, but not, as the Haps- 
 burgs had hoped and expected, in Austria. 
 Quietly and almost in a night the spirit of Cae- 
 sar crossed the borders of Austria and passed 
 on to the north to a small state where the soil 
 lay virgin, and where for years the scattered 
 
 13 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 forces of Europe had been gathering for the 
 building up of a militarism the like of which the 
 world had never seen. 
 
 During all the centuries that she had held the 
 scepter of the Holy Roman Empire, which, in 
 the language of Voltaire, was ''neither holy nor 
 Roman nor an empire," Austria had shown a 
 conspicuous incapacity to reproduce the empire 
 beyond the Alps, and this not at all because 
 her ideas were at variance with the ideals 
 of the Caesars. The great flaw in her make-up, 
 so far as it affected the Romanization of 
 the Continent, was her lack of that construc- 
 tive vision and that dominating energy which 
 were marked in the first Caesar. To bring into 
 subjection and to control people — especially 
 people with ancient traditions of freedom that 
 have always lived in the hearts of Europeans 
 even under long-continued tyranny — requires a 
 youthful power and a capacity for organization 
 such as Austria has never possessed. Therefore 
 it is that we see her to-day playing the part she 
 has always played, the enemy of freedom, with- 
 out the ability to fill the role of the supreme ty- 
 rant, trouble-maker still, setting all Europe on 
 fire, and yet lacking the eye to see that it is her 
 own house she is reducing to ashes. A mind 
 
 14 
 
FROM C^SAR TO KAISER 
 
 of this sort is no place for the spirit of the first 
 Caesar. But Austria, blind then as now, did 
 not know that the spirit had taken its depart- 
 ure, and so held on to the empty scepter until the 
 forces of the North came down upon her, and 
 Prussia sprang full armed and vastly ambitious 
 into the troubled arena of Europe. 
 
 It is significant to note, in studying the north- 
 ward movement of militarism in Europe, that 
 at this time when the surge was lifting its great 
 head in northern Germany, a wide stir for lib- 
 erty was abroad in Italy. That people, which 
 centuries before, at the point of the sword, had 
 forced its iron law upon the free peoples of 
 the North, was now battling with a Northern 
 tyrant for its own liberty. The war which 
 Prussia fought with Austria was fought with 
 a view to gaining power, whereas Italy's strug- 
 gle with the same despot was for the purpose 
 of achieving freedom. The victory over the 
 Hapsburgs won by these two peoples, the one in 
 the North and the other in the South, are usually 
 compared, with a view to pointing out resem- 
 blances. Cavour, it is explained, is Italy's Bis- 
 marck; Garibaldi is a lesser Moltke; while Vic- 
 tor Emmanuel is the southern William I. Both 
 movements, we are told, were movements to- 
 
 15 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 ward unification. And this is true ; but no one 
 can read even casually the history of those times 
 and not perceive at once that the movement in 
 Italy was set afoot with a view to escaping from 
 a despotic militarism, while the movement in 
 Prussia was launched for the purpose of con- 
 structing one. 
 
 And to find an adequate counterpart for the 
 one which there arose, we cannot stop at the 
 regime of Napoleon, which was the result of ab- 
 normal conditions and contrary to the aspira- 
 tions of the people whom it burdened, but we 
 must go back at least to the days when Rome 
 was at the height of her military career. In- 
 deed, it is extremely doubtful if we shall find it 
 even there ; for by militarism we mean not the 
 bluster and movement of conquest, but the com- 
 plete and permanent organization of a people 
 for military purposes. If a nation's energies 
 are absorbed in the practice of arms, especially 
 if this practice is the result of a deliberate plan 
 for a later aggressive movement, that nation is 
 in the grasp of militarism even in times of pro- 
 tracted peace, though the chances are, if the 
 practice continues, that the peace will not be 
 long protracted. 
 
 So, without going into the causes of the con- 
 16 
 
FROM C^SAR TO KAISER 
 
 flict, within five years after her seven-weeks' 
 triumph over Austria we find Prussia at the 
 throat of France. Now, France, as we know, 
 is south of Prussia, and so if we knew nothing 
 of the history of Europe except that militarism 
 is constantly moving northward, and if we knew 
 nothing of the history of France during the 
 half -century succeeding the downfall of Napo- 
 leon, we should be quite safe in assuming that 
 the spirit of liberty was there leavening the 
 people ; in other words, that the light which we 
 have seen breaking over Italy, and which al- 
 ways follows the dark shadow of militarism, was 
 shining more or less brightly over her Northern 
 neighbor. And such was the case. With all 
 their restoration of Bourbonism, the powerful 
 coalition of reactionaries had not been able to 
 stamp out in France the love of liberty and the 
 movement toward a freer government. 
 
 Such was the condition of things in the coun- 
 try west of the Rhine when the Prussian thun- 
 derbolt fell upon her. From this shock France 
 rebounded toward republicanism, and Prussia 
 even further toward that system of imperial au- 
 thority against which her Socialists have ever 
 since battled in vain. The German empire, 
 homogeneous, or almost so in a racial way, in 
 
 17 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 those deeper elements that go to make up her 
 character, is as much of a dual empire as Aus- 
 tria-Hungary, only in the former case the two 
 empires, instead of lying side by side, as in the 
 latter, are superimposed the one upon the other. 
 And it was probably as much for the purpose of 
 holding and welding these two antagonistic, tur- 
 bulent empires together as it was to establish 
 and protect pan-Germanism in Europe that the 
 stupendous machine that is now in motion was 
 wrought out. Socialism in Germany, the lower 
 layer in the dual empire of which the upper layer 
 is the war party, or the Government, is the in- 
 dustrial projection of that political Revolution 
 which more than a hundred years ago shook 
 France, and indeed all Europe, to its founda- 
 tions. 
 
 To perceive the truth of this statement, we 
 need only lay side by side those pages of history 
 dealing with the rise of the Third Estate in 
 France with those later pages which describe 
 the revolt of the working-classes in Germany. It 
 is the same struggle transferred to the cities. 
 Karl Marx is clearly the Rousseau of the Revo- 
 lution beyond the Rhine. And those able men, 
 his contemporaries and successors, who have 
 wrought out into an exact science and fearlessly 
 
 18 
 
FROM C^SAR TO KAISER 
 
 disseminated througliout the empire tlie new 
 economics, bear a resemblance to the French en- 
 cyclopedists too striking to be mistaken. In 
 the later case, it is the same fierce light turned 
 not upon the state, but upon the strongholds of 
 capital. 
 
 But we are living in an age of speed, when 
 revolutions accomplish in decades what for- 
 merly required centuries. Kaiser Wilhelm is 
 evidently the Grand Monarch overtaken by the 
 deluge. The expression, "I am the state," fits 
 quite as well in the mouth of William II as in 
 that of Louis XIV. 
 
 But the parallel does not stop here. The 
 Bourbon, who seems to have been born with the 
 idea that he was France, soon got it into his 
 - head that he was Europe. And this idea re- 
 mained there and grew until the disillusionment 
 came at the sword-points of the surrounding 
 nations, with the help of England. And just as 
 for a time the Bourbons were able to deceive the 
 people into identifying their interests with that 
 of their rulers, so it would seem that the deadly 
 parallel is projecting itself into the future. 
 
 But there came a time in France when the 
 people awoke to the true meaning of what was 
 going on. Then all those forces which had 
 
 19 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 fought the imaginary enemy on the borders 
 turned terribly toward their real enemy in Paris. 
 We all know the result, how the whole upper 
 crust of France, with its gilded and shivering 
 aristocracy, was shattered and blown into frag- 
 ments. 
 
 It is of course not to be expected, in following 
 out a parallel of this sort, that the comparison 
 will hold good in minor details. We do not ex- 
 pect, for instance, to find the Kaiser toying with 
 a Montespan or a Pompadour, or to see at Pots- 
 dam the idle courtiers that thronged the court 
 at Versailles. Times have changed. The del- 
 uge of democracy has wrought wonders. The 
 spirit of work, long confined to the masses, is 
 electrifying even the upper classes. And so far 
 as their social duties will permit, even monarchs 
 are becoming workmen. Of no nation is this so 
 true as it is of Germany. Potsdam is not only 
 the royal residence, but it is also the commercial 
 office of the empire. But we must not be misled 
 by these facts. We must not imagine, because 
 the German Emperor and his courtiers have 
 gone to work, that what is happening in Europe 
 to-day never happened before. 
 
 It would be strange indeed if the Kaiser, 
 shrewd man that he is, and familiar as he is 
 
 20 
 
FROM C^SAR TO KAISER 
 
 with tlie disasters that overtook the royal auto- 
 crats on the other side of the Rhine, should re- 
 peat the blunders that brought down those dis- 
 asters. The later Bourbons saw the approach 
 of the deluge, but lifted no hand to stay its com- 
 ing. Enough for them if only they could bum 
 the fragrant candle and get away before the 
 storm should break. Even the Grand Monarch 
 was something of a decadent. But the Hohen- 
 zollerns are not the Bourbons. William 11 is a 
 man of business, and business imparts alertness, 
 develops the faculty of organization and deci- 
 sion. And the decision to which the Kaiser has 
 come, to which he probably came years ago, is 
 that something must be done to save his regime 
 from the rising waters of German socialism. 
 
 To accomplish this he must begin where all 
 monarchs begin. The people must be deceived 
 into identifying their interest with that of the 
 reigning house. Second, they must be educated, 
 for years if necessary, to see that the Kaiser is 
 arming the empire not to maintain his own me- 
 dieval regime, but to save the workshops of the 
 fatherland, and this in the face of the fact that 
 hand in hand with peace German trade has been 
 conquering the world! And third, if the plan 
 is to succeed, the machine must be set in motion 
 
 21 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 from the outside, else the mask falls off and the 
 whole ghastly thing is laid bare. 
 
 Compared with this subtle and far-reaching 
 conspiracy against the rising spirit of the Ger- 
 man people and the peace and freedom of Eu- 
 rope, compared especially with the thorough- 
 ness of the preparation, how shallow and loose 
 the statesmanship of the Bourbons! Indeed, 
 the coup that has just been sprung by the hand 
 of Austria is Napoleonic, with the hue possibly 
 of that madness which characterized the Corsi- 
 can in his last days. For while it is perhaps too 
 early to forecast with any degree of certainty 
 the outcome of the gigantic game, signs are not 
 wanting that the Grerman emperor, like the 
 French emperor before him, is being used de- 
 spite himself by those very forces which he im- 
 agines he is thwarting, and is struggling blind- 
 folded for the emancipation of Europe. 
 
 It is right in keeping with this theory of the 
 northward movement of militarism in Europe, 
 and is another proof of the correctness of this 
 theory, that in this critical moment when mili- 
 tarism is threatening the whole Continent, Italy 
 should have dropped away from the Triple Alli- 
 ance and arrayed herself in heart at least with 
 France. And that she should have been able 
 
 22 
 
FROM C^SAR TO KAISER 
 
 even thus far to hold herself aloof from the 
 conflict is further proof that a better day is 
 dawning for the South. And it is obvious that 
 the present war in which France is engaged is in 
 all essentials a replica of that war which, almost 
 half a century ago, Italy waged with Austria. 
 Aside from the fact that it is a Latin people 
 against a German people, it is also true that the 
 underlying motive is the same. If Italy's was a 
 struggle for freedom, so also is the present 
 struggle of France, not of course for freedom 
 from oppressive institutions, but, what amounts 
 almost to the same thing, from a permanent and 
 well-grounded fear of such oppression. And 
 unless signs are misleading, that aggressive 
 militarism which through the centuries we have 
 seen come up from the south and move with peri- 
 odic pauses and conflicts to the north, is prepar- 
 ing for another migration northward. Indeed, 
 it is not at all improbable that this desperate 
 and apparently aggressive movement of Csesar- 
 ism in Europe is the taking up of baggage for a 
 retreat. 
 
 And there is only one country left on the Con- 
 tinent with anything like the character of people 
 and the width of dimensions demanded where 
 this monstrous institution can find refuge. And 
 
 23 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 that is Eussia. From centuries of slaughter of 
 the Latin and the Teuton, will it find a home 
 with the Slav and with him round out its life? 
 In the following pages I shall try to throw some 
 light upon this question in so far as it concerns 
 the character of the Eussian people. As for the 
 Eussian government, no one of any intelligence 
 is misled as to its real attitude toward Caesarism 
 by its alinement in the present contest. If the 
 Czar is striking at the Kaiser, it is not of course 
 because he is opposed to what the Kaiser stands 
 for. Czar and Kaiser, as we have seen, mean 
 Caesar, and the two emperors, cousins by blood, 
 are full brothers in politics. It has been 
 pointed out time and again that their rivalry 
 is racial, the Slav against the Teuton. There 
 is doubtless some truth in this ; but the rivalry 
 is also personal. There has never been, and 
 there is not now, room enough in Europe for two 
 Caesars. One must give way. Just as fifty 
 years ago in the contest for the same imperial 
 primacy within the German race one of the 
 claimants was obliged to give way. In that case, 
 true to the movement we are tracing, the North- 
 ern champion proved the stronger. Indeed, the 
 position of Grermany to-day bears a striking 
 resemblance to the position then occupied by 
 
 24 
 
FROM C^SAR TO KAISER 
 
 Austria. Then, as we have seen, Italy, to the 
 south, was fighting with Austria for freedom, 
 while Prussia, to the north, was trying to wrest 
 from the same power the ancient scepter of the 
 Holy Roman Empire, which, as an idea at least, 
 still rested in the hands of the Hapsburgs. 
 Now France, to the south, is battling to main- 
 tain its freedom against Germany, while Russia, 
 to the north, is snatching at that old scepter 
 which Prussia won from Austria. 
 
 The movement as well as the character of 
 militarism in Europe is well expressed in the 
 person of Napoleon Bonaparte. Born an Ital- 
 ian, operating all his life from France, and now 
 for years the openly avowed inspiration of the 
 leaders of Germany, seldom has it fallen to the 
 lot of one man as it fell to the lot of Napoleon 
 Bonaparte to dominate his own age and to 
 chart the drift of two thousand years. Having 
 passed through her militaristic period, Italy 
 could not use him, and so he was obliged to move 
 northward to France as he now moves north- 
 ward to Germany, to northern Germany. 
 
 It is greatly to be hoped, yet possibly, at least 
 just now, hardly to be expected, that the German 
 people, intelligent as they are and thoroughly 
 versed as they are in the evolution of history, 
 
 25 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 will see the real meaning of the struggle in which 
 they are engaged and will avail themselves of 
 the present crisis to exorcise forever the spirit 
 of the Caesars. They are in the throes, if they 
 only knew it, not of a foreign war, but of an in- 
 ternal revolution, and the mighty sounds of ap- 
 proaching armies all about them are simply the 
 rest of Europe coming to their aid. Their long 
 and strenuous struggle for liberty is on the 
 point of bearing fruit, for the freer institutions 
 beyond the Rhine seem likely to be extended. On 
 the other hand, the unparalleled social and in- 
 dustrial progress which the Grerman people have 
 made in the short half-century of their national- 
 ity, and that, too, in the face of an antiquated 
 and repressive political system, bids fair at last 
 to overflow their boundaries and spread all over 
 Europe. Defeat at this price, if defeat must 
 come, is victory, just as the defeat of Napoleon 
 was a victory for the French. For this contest 
 also is a contest not of arms, but of ideas, and 
 that nation whose ideas shall come out of this 
 great threshing best fitted to undertake the so- 
 cial and industrial reorganization for which all 
 Europe is waiting will, whether in victory or de- 
 feat, be ultimately and essentially the winner. 
 
 26 
 
RUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA 
 
II 
 
 EUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA 
 
 WHATEVER may happen to tlie other na- 
 tions whose swords are crossed in the 
 great conflict that is now waging, no one expects 
 that the destiny of the colossus of the North will 
 be seriously interfered with. France may be 
 overrun or a similar fate may overtake Grer- 
 many, Austria may disappear from the map or 
 the British empire may be broken up; but be- 
 tween Eussia and any great harm still lie those 
 impenetrable spaces where the armies of Na- 
 poleon lie buried — those armies that Europe has 
 not forgotten. When the swords that are now 
 clashing are put up and the game is over, Ger- 
 many and Austria or England and France may 
 divide the present, but the future belongs to 
 Russia. 
 
 Let us look for a moment at the history and 
 aspirations of this great people, and see how she 
 lies with relation to things that are happening 
 and to things that will happen when the wounds 
 that are now opening are healed, and the chil- 
 
 29 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 dren of fathers that are now dying have become 
 the masters of Europe. 
 
 For centuries the Slav has lived and, so far 
 as the rest of the world is concerned, still lives 
 just beyond the horizon. There is about him 
 something of the wonder with which our fore- 
 fathers regarded the hyperboreans, something 
 of the awe with which dwellers in valleys look 
 upon high mountains, upon the Alps or the 
 Himalayas. He appears and disappears, strikes 
 or is ever about to strike. He is the Apache 
 of Europe and Asia, the Ishmael of the Cau- 
 casian race. To the south of a ragged line 
 touching the civilizations ancient and modern 
 of virtually the whole earth, eyes are eternally 
 fixed upon the North, wondering where he will 
 appear next. Indeed, this anxiety is a kindred 
 bond uniting the heterogeneous peoples of the 
 temperate zone of the two continents. To find 
 anything like it we must go back to the days 
 when along borders much less extensive tb3 
 people of the Eoman empire looked toward the 
 north, where a similar menace was gathering. 
 While the Swede is out on his watch-towers in 
 the west, the Japanese is patrolling his coast, 
 and between them what motley sentinels move to 
 and fro, what strange tongues are naming the 
 
 30 
 
RUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA 
 
 common fear ! Where will lie appear next? In 
 what numbers will he come! And how much 
 land will he seize? Not a year passes, not a 
 month probably, that the matter is not up in 
 some cabinet or other of Europe or Asia. And 
 a good guess is fame for any statesman. 
 
 But what scant material to work upon ! One 
 could take a map of the earth, and in nine cases 
 out of ten lay his finger upon those spots where 
 England or France or Germany or any other 
 of the leading commercial nations will appear, 
 provided he knows where, in unappropriated re- 
 gions, rich mines or timber or reservoirs of oil 
 will be found. But what of the Slav, who is still 
 almost wholly outside the pale of the commercial 
 age? With him it is enough if it is only land. 
 There are times, of course, when even England 
 will pick up a piece of territory that is not too 
 dangerously attached to a strong nation — a 
 piece that has none of the allurements I have 
 mentioned. But if you will look closely, you 
 will see that it has at least population. For a 
 market for finished products is quite as essential 
 as sources of raw material. But Russia, stu- 
 pidly unmoved, it would seem, by these refine- 
 ments, gathers up with the same avidity the 
 mountain fastnesses of the Caucasus and the 
 
 31 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 cities of China. This it is more than anything 
 else that makes it difficult for the statesmen of 
 commercial nations to understand Russian di- 
 plomacy or to predict with any certainty just 
 where along her interminable borders the Cos- 
 sack will appear. To know, as every one knows, 
 that Russia is seeking always an outlet to the 
 sea, to the open sea, is of little help. For ex- 
 perience has shown that she is quite as capable 
 of moving upon one a thousand miles away as 
 upon one within sight. And coupled with the 
 capacity for a quick stroke, like the cobra, what 
 glacier-like patience! Other nations must 
 hurry or stand still,, choose either the present 
 or the future; Russia can do both. Hence the 
 wonder and the perplexity, the eagerness to 
 thwart her, and yet the certainty of ultimate de- 
 feat. For while other nations are obliged to 
 conquer peoples, Russia can seep out from her 
 own land and absorb them. 
 
 What is it that has made Russia the great 
 enigma, the stranger both to Europe and Asia! 
 Beyond doubt the fact that she is herself neither 
 one. To the Asiatic she is something of a Eu- 
 ropean ; to the European she is something of an 
 Asiatic : yet to both she is not wholly either the 
 one or the other. She is like a great tree with 
 
 32 
 
RUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA 
 
 her ancient trunk rising up out of the Caucasus, 
 the early home of the Slavic people, and tower- 
 ing up into the ices of the North, and with her 
 branches extending east and west into the sun- 
 rise and the sunset. And yet her leaves are 
 neither of the East nor of the West. She is 
 white like the European, and yet the brown man 
 and the yellow man understand her. And un- 
 der her immense shade what multicolored gar- 
 ments, what a strange cluster of tongues ! Peo- 
 ple of the older races of Asia have often ob- 
 served that the cosmopolitanism even of the 
 Briton,, the European world-man, is a matter of 
 manners, the affected suavity of the drummer, 
 whereas the Slav, certainly that type which the 
 great mother throws out in inexhaustible thou- 
 sands along her borders, is hon vivant with all 
 the races and classes of the earth. The other 
 nations of Europe have made the acquaintance 
 of alien peoples, but Russia — ^Russia, it would 
 seem, has always known them. Their small 
 lives found comfortable places in her vastness, 
 their children are at home in her great lap. 
 
 It behooves the nations, especially those that 
 expect to travel the road of the future, to learn 
 something of Russia, as it behooved the Roman 
 to learn something of the Gaul. They cannot 
 
 33 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 afford to go on drawing the sword whenever she 
 appears. But right now, when new alinements 
 are being made for the future, they should be- 
 gin that rapprochement which will admit Russia 
 into the family of nations not as a menace, but 
 as a friend. At least we here in America, aloof, 
 it is to be hoped, from the prejudices of the 
 Old World — ^we, young as Russia is young, het- 
 erogeneous as Russia is heterogeneous, and en- 
 tering upon our world life as Russia is entering 
 upon hers, should without delay turn with 
 open and friendly mind to this great stranger. 
 We should not be satisfied with a report of her 
 crimes delivered to us over the cables of other 
 nations, or even with the reading of her novels, 
 or the viewing of her dances. We ourselves 
 would not be satisfied with a judgment of our 
 own country based upon such materials. We 
 should try to find out something not only of 
 what she is, but of what she is trying to be. 
 And to understand her, three things at least are 
 indispensable : first, a general knowledge of Eu- 
 ropean peoples and institutions ; second, a simi- 
 lar knowledge, smattering at least, of the great 
 peoples of the near East and the far East, who 
 for generations have felt the push of this human 
 glacier along that ever-southward-moving line 
 
 34 
 
RUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA 
 
 between the Black Sea and tlie China wall ; and 
 thirdly, a knowledge, of what two such ingredi- 
 ents will produce in the way of a third. It is 
 this last, of course, that has made Eussia the 
 despair of travelers and psychologists. For 
 human chemistry, while it may be, as some claim 
 it is, a science, is as yet a science of the future. 
 *' Scratch a Russian and find a Tartar" is a for- 
 mula too evidently drafted for the convenience 
 of those who contemplate a summer sojourn in 
 this immense land, a reed too slight at least for 
 statesmen to lean upon. 
 
 But let us ''scratch" this Russian, and this 
 Tartar, too, and see if we can discover what it 
 is that has made him the world figure he is and 
 that threatens to make him the figure of the 
 world, though at present he is only beginning to 
 be seen behind the towering shadows of Ger- 
 many and France and England that for cen- 
 turies have filled the horizon. 
 
 Looking first, then, into his past, we find dur- 
 ing the short thousand years that, properly 
 speaking, he has occupied the stage of history, 
 three events stand out as of prime importance. 
 One of them is a call to Europe, another a call 
 from Asia, while a third has tied him to that un- 
 settled region between Europe and Asia, that 
 
 35 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 boiling-pot of the races where the sword for cen- 
 turies has never dried and which has at last set 
 all Europe aflame. 
 
 The first of these events is an invasion, if we 
 may call it so — an invasion of that same Scandi- 
 navian race whose vikings at about the same 
 time were pouring down into England and 
 France, down even into Sicily and southern 
 Italy. But upon these latter lands they came 
 as brigands, sword in hand, at first for booty, 
 and then for permanent homes in the comfort- 
 able sunshine which they found there. But into 
 Russia, so the story goes, they entered not as 
 robbers, but upon invitation, and that, too, not 
 as the Saxons were invited into Britain, to help 
 stem the rising tide of rapacious neighbors, but 
 to aid in the establishment of an orderly govern- 
 ment. It was an extraordinary procedure, cer- 
 tainly, and one which should not be forgotten; 
 for here we see for the first time, and that, too, 
 far back in the twilight, the hand of the Slav 
 held out in brotherly friendship, asking help. 
 * ' Our land is great and fruitful, but it lacks or- 
 der and justice; come and take possession and 
 govern us." Significant appeal! 
 
 Just how much of the subsequent history of 
 Russian conquest is due to this fiery drop of 
 
 36 
 
RUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA 
 
 viking blood which, infused in a somewhat 
 larger quantity into Britain, has goaded her out 
 over the seas into every comer of the globe, it is 
 of course impossible to say. In Russia the 
 Northmen never acquired that complete and per- 
 manent control which they secured in Britain. 
 For the expanding Scandinavian race, instead of 
 following in the path of Rurik, preferred to turn 
 their ships to the south, and Russia was again 
 cut off. 
 
 When next she appears, it is again with hands 
 outstretched, not this time for governors, but for 
 teachers. The Dark Ages, which had come over 
 Europe with the fall of the Roman empire, were 
 giving way in the South to the light of civiliza- 
 tion, and missionaries, who were wandering 
 everywhere, finally reached Russia. But when 
 they came, they came, unfortunately, not from 
 Rome only, but from Constantinople also. For 
 the great schism was already a fact, and there 
 was now an Eastern as well as a Western 
 church. 
 
 Probably nothing in all the history of Russia 
 has so affected her destiny, and possibly also the 
 ultimate destiny of Europe and Asia, as this 
 great schism in the South. For more than any- 
 thing else, possibly more than all other things 
 
 37 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 combined, this it is that has opened the chasm 
 between Russia and the rest of Europe. For 
 when once the ambassadors whom the ruling 
 prince Vladimir sent out to canvass the reli- 
 gions of the world with a view to determining 
 which was the best for the Russian people, re- 
 turned and reported in favor of the Orthodox, 
 or Greek Catholic, with its seat at Constanti- 
 nople, and the prince indorsed this recommenda- 
 tion, from that moment the face of Russia was 
 turned toward the East. From that moment 
 she began to be a stranger. Henceforth her 
 music, her architecture, her government, her 
 whole national character indeed, began gradu- 
 ally to be molded not after the models of Eu- 
 rope, but after those of Asia. Henceforth there 
 was to be misunderstanding between the rest 
 of Europe and their Northern neighbor — a mis- 
 understanding which is utterly incomprehen- 
 sible without this explanation. For the Slavic 
 people are full cousins of the German, of the 
 French, of the English, of all the great peoples 
 of Europe ; for all these, including the Slav, are 
 Aryan. 
 
 This, then, is the seed out of which have 
 arisen those tremendous complications which 
 to-day embroil the world. 
 
 38 
 
EUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA 
 
 The last event, second only in importance to 
 the one I have just mentioned as far as its effect 
 upon the character and institutions of Russia is 
 concerned, came as the result not of a peaceful 
 sending of ambassadors among the civilized na- 
 tions to inquire into and report upon things 
 which might be of value to the Russian people, 
 but as a sudden and irresistible deluge of wild 
 barbarians from the East, the horde of that 
 greatest of all conquerors and autocrats, Jeng- 
 hiz Khan. To Europe, waking to the first rays 
 of the Renaissance, the coming of these savages 
 was as though the mineral kingdom should sud- 
 denly rise and attack trees and grain and grass. 
 In the South, however, thanks to the knowledge 
 and practice of Roman arms, the plague was 
 stayed and finally beaten off; but over Russia, 
 disorganized and cut off from this advantage, 
 the horde swept on, and for more than two cen- 
 turies raped and pillaged and oppressed at will. 
 And all this while the rest of Europe, to which 
 at this time a half-Christian was more execrable 
 than a heathen, looked on with unconcern, pos- 
 sibly with gratification that God at last was pun- 
 ishing the heresy of her neighbor. During these 
 centuries of outrage such as Italy never experi- 
 enced in the darkest days of the Goths and 
 
 39 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 the Vandals, the spirit of the Russian people 
 was broken. Little wonder that among these 
 cousins of the Gaul, the Saxon, and the German, 
 revolutions rise and spend themselves in foam. 
 
 This was the call from Asia — a call that has 
 since been answered even to the shores of the 
 Pacific. 
 
 With the ebbing of this dark tide that had 
 overwhelmed her, at last Russia awoke to the 
 fact that she was cut off from the rest of Eu- 
 rope; or at least one man awoke and, looking 
 about him, became aware that during the long 
 night of his country's enslavement a new day 
 had dawned in the South, while in the North 
 all was torpor and darkness. What Alfred the 
 Great is to early Britain, that Peter the Great, 
 in his crude way, is to Russia. If ever a race 
 of people found adequate expression in one per- 
 son, that race was the Slavic race in their great 
 czar. As an acorn enfolds an oak, the type of a 
 great forest, so Peter the Great enfolded the 
 Russian people. Into him they have flowed 
 from the twilight of time, and from him they 
 have gone out to the ends of the earth. And 
 this was one of his dreams, that his country 
 might have ample boundaries. 
 
 But wide boundaries are not greatness. Had 
 40 
 
RUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA 
 
 Peter imagined that they were, he would prob- 
 ably have taken his place in history among those 
 secondary men whose names are known simply 
 as conquerors. But it was primarily of the Rus- 
 sian people he was thinking, of the Russian peo- 
 ple taking their place and marching in the van 
 with the other peoples of Europe. Former 
 czars had made pilgrimages to Asia, to pros- 
 trate themselves at the feet of their Tartar mas- 
 ters; Peter's pilgrimage was in the opposite di- 
 rection, to Prussia, to Holland, to England. 
 Here, then, we have a third instance of that 
 Slavic hunger for higher things and that willing- 
 ness to learn from her more advanced brothers, 
 uttering itself in this case not in invitations to a 
 neighboring people for ** order and justice," or 
 in ambassadors seeking the fittest religion, but 
 in a journey of the czar himself for the purpose 
 of bringing back to Russia the much-needed 
 civilization of Europe. 
 
 Only the keenest realization of the immense 
 chasm that yawned between these countries and 
 his own can account for the tremendous energy 
 with which this man, single-handed and in the 
 face of such opposition as few reformers have 
 ever encountered, set to work to dispel the bar- 
 barism of his people. Having discovered civili- 
 
 41 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 zation and having tasted its snnsMne, lie deter- 
 mined that his country should share it and that 
 never again should she go back into the. dark- 
 ness. Soldier, statesman, absorber and dissemi- 
 nator of knowledge, builder, captain of industry, 
 brutal, of course, as his age was brutal, but 
 with a brutality aimed mainly at the great goal 
 toward which he was striving, it is exceedingly 
 doubtful if there can be found in all history an- 
 other ruler who wrought so strenuously and per- 
 sistently for the elevation of his people as didi 
 this great czar. Petrograd, that "window into 
 Europe '^ which he built, and through which 
 he expected the sunlight would shine forever — 
 Petrograd, rising out of the fiUed-up swamps of 
 the Neva, is only a symbol of these gigantic 
 labors. No wonder the Russian people think 
 of his spirit as still with them, shaping and di- 
 recting their destiny. 
 
 Unfortunately, the work so energetically be- 
 gun has not been carried on. With the excep- 
 tion of the great Catharine, who introduced into 
 Russia the arts of Europe, as Peter the Great 
 had introduced the mechanics, subsequent czars 
 have, for the most part, been cast in a different 
 mold. Russia is still the backward brother of 
 Europe. The short day has given place to twi- 
 
 42 
 
RUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA 
 
 light. The ''window into Europe" has been 
 closed. There is probably a wider gap between 
 the Russia of to-day and those enlightened lands 
 which Peter visited than there was before he be- 
 gan his work. 
 
 What is the reason for this? Why is it, for 
 instance, that Russia is shoulder to shoulder 
 with the most advanced nations in rifles and 
 behind the most backward in schools? Along 
 her borders, where her armies mingle with the 
 armies of other nations, she seems one of them. 
 But pass into the interior that the great Peter 
 labored so long and so prodigiously to waken 
 and transform, and you have passed, as far as 
 the great mass of the people is concerned, from 
 a world of stir into a world of slumber, from the 
 age of the biplane into an age not far removed 
 from that of the early Gauls. What, I repeat, 
 is the explanation of this tragedy, this retarded 
 growth of millions upon millions of people? 
 
 It is easy enough to lay it upon the czars, 
 upon the bureaucracy, that wide-reaching, nev- 
 er-relaxing hand within whose grasp generation 
 after generation has lain benighted and help- 
 less; but there is another cause, one of which 
 possibly even czarism and bureaucracy are re- 
 sults. 
 
 43 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 Peter the Great had a third dream, one which 
 lay as close if not closer to his heart than either 
 of the other two, and one which his country has 
 ever since labored with vast zeal and patience to 
 fulfil — a dream of the open sea! 
 
 It is astonishing that this inland-born man 
 should have heard almost from his birth the call 
 of the distant oceans. It is pathetic to watch 
 him in his early boyhood, like some interior- 
 exiled viking, groping for his native waters. If 
 one can tell him something of the sea, with what 
 hunger he clasps him to his bosom ! A toy boat 
 upon a canal near his home, and he is restless 
 until a whole flotilla is launched ; and even this 
 only adds to his hunger. He must have larger 
 boats that he can manage and sail. And once 
 he has learned this upon a neighboring lake, 
 there wakes within him the call of the seas. 
 
 Immediately upon attaining his majority, he 
 starts for the north, to Archangel, and is the 
 first of all the rulers of his land to look upon 
 wide waters. And having looked upon them, he 
 resolves that his country, too, shall look upon 
 them ; shall, like other nations, have ports and 
 ships and commerce. For even then Peter di- 
 vined the meaning of the sea ; and straightway 
 he set to work to learn the art of the sea, the 
 
 44 
 
EUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA 
 
 construction and management of sMps. And 
 how like a modem American he began, this czar 
 of all the Eussias ! Just as before in learning 
 the new art of European warfare, he had begun, 
 this autocrat, as a drummer-boy in the regiment, 
 that he might master the whole thing from top 
 to bottom, so he began again at the bottom, 
 sweeping the deck, serving in the cabin, fetching 
 coals for the skipper's pipe. Then, and then 
 only, up the masts. And in learning to build 
 them it was the same, not with guides, but in a 
 workman's blouse, in the shipyards of foreign 
 lands. And from here came memorable words, 
 which he wrote back — words which have ever 
 since been the cry of his country, "It is not land 
 I want, but water." Within a few years after 
 his return home he had won for his people ports 
 on the Baltic, the Black, and the Caspian. 
 
 But why did Peter dream of the open sea? 
 For the same reason that, from the dawn of 
 time, humanity has dreamed of the sea. Land 
 is existence, but water is life. The open sea 
 is the open mind. The oceans are civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 Watch the movements of the progressive 
 races. It is from land to water, from water to 
 wider water. First there are the rivers, like 
 
 45 
 
THE WORLD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 the Euphrates and the Nile, and the civilizations 
 upon their banks are vastly superior to the civili- 
 zations of the interiors. But once the seas are 
 discovered and mastered, the civilizations of the 
 rivers sink into second place, and nations like 
 Greece and Rome wake into life. Then the 
 oceans. And once the oceans are conquered, 
 you have France and Germany and England. 
 
 Suppose back there in the long ago, a naked 
 sword had been laid across the mouths of the 
 Euphrates and the Nile. And suppose human- 
 ity, having discovered an overland route to the 
 southern peninsulas of Europe, had found bar- 
 ring their further march another sword across 
 the Strait of Gibraltar. And suppose that 
 thereafter all overland routes to the oceans had 
 been blocked, say, with long lines of cannon. 
 If the democracy of Greece never arose on the 
 Euphrates, and the strong type of the independ- 
 ent Roman never developed on the Nile, or if, 
 in the second case, that sane, stable constitu- 
 tional government that is the pride of England 
 never bloomed in Greece, and the splendid edu- 
 cational system that is the pride of Germany 
 never flourished in Rome, upon which lands 
 would the blame lie, upon those on the inside or 
 upon those on the outside, upon those that found 
 
 46 
 
RUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA 
 
 the sword across their path or upon those that 
 laid it there 1 
 
 Ahnost from the day that Peter the Great set 
 forth to blaze for his country a way to the open 
 sea Russia has found across her path the swords 
 of virtually all the nations of Europe and Asia. 
 And the sword most often confronting her in 
 her march toward the open sea, toward free- 
 dom, commerce, civilization, has been the sword 
 of England, mistress of the seas. In the West, 
 in the South, in the East, as a silent menace or a 
 sweeping blade, leading the way or urging 
 others on, but always there with unwavering 
 purpose, is the sword of England — England, the 
 Enlightener ! 
 
 And what have been the consequences of this 
 ** caging the bear,'* as it is facetiously called in 
 the chancelleries of Europe, this shutting out of 
 Russia from intercourse with civilized nations 
 and compelling her to be eternally the com- 
 panion of barbarians'? Within a little more 
 than half a century, to go back no further, there 
 have been four great wars, every one of them, if 
 we will only look behind the mask of diplomatic 
 pretext, clearly traceable to this one cause, this 
 arresting of a great people in its march toward 
 civilization. 
 
 47 
 
THE WOELD STOBM AND BEYOND 
 
 First, there are the Crimean War, and the 
 Eusso-Turkish War. Though the professed 
 reason of these was to protect the Christians 
 and pnt an end to Turkish atrocities in the Bal- 
 kan States, no one familiar with the eternal 
 pressure behind Eussian diplomacy can fail to 
 see that the underlying motive of these two 
 wars was the acquisition of Constantinople. In 
 the Crimean War this ambition was thwarted 
 by England, who, with the help of France and 
 Sardinia, clasped hands with Turkey against 
 Eussia, with the Moslem against the Christian, 
 with the brown man against the white man. 
 And all for the purpose of laying her sword 
 across the Dardanelles and preventing Eussia 's 
 exit to the Mediterranean. 
 
 In the Eusso-Turkish War, after she had won 
 from Turkey, by the Treaty of San Stefano, a 
 protectorate over the Slavic Balkan States, 
 whose liberation from Turkey she alone had se- 
 cured, Eussia was forced by the European pow- 
 ers, at the Berlin Congress, to withdraw, where- 
 upon the spoils of the war were very largely 
 seized by Austria, a power that had no racial 
 connection whatever with the Balkan peoples 
 and one that had lifted no hand to put a stop to 
 the outrages of the Turk. 
 
 48 
 
EUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA 
 
 It would be interesting to know what England 
 thinks to-day of the statesmanship which she 
 displayed in these two wars. Does she think it 
 was a good bargain to exchange Eussia for Ger- 
 many in Turkey and Asia Minor ? Is Germany, 
 seeking land, a safer neighbor to India than 
 Eussia would have been, seeking the open sea? 
 Is it well for England to-day that for de- 
 cades she has been the self-appointed protector 
 of the Turk? 
 
 If Eussia had been allowed to take Constanti- 
 nople, which, had Europe not interfered, she 
 could undoubtedly have done, there is no ques- 
 tion that Europe would have escaped many of 
 those troubles which have plagued her in the in- 
 tervening years. For there is little doubt that 
 Eussia would have policed Turkey on the one 
 hand, and, on the other, who will say that she 
 would not have kept peace in the Balkans f Not 
 England, not Germany, but Eussia is the natural 
 bridge between Europe and Asia, and by every 
 consideration of race and religion and character 
 is the logical power to keep order in the near 
 East. For be it remembered, that not only the 
 Balkan States but many of the provinces of 
 Austria itself, are old Slavic territory and the 
 people there are full brothers of the Eussians. 
 
 49 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 Indeed for years, thirty millions of Slavs have 
 cried out to their elder brother for liberation 
 from the Austrian yoke and other bordering 
 millions for an ending of the Austrian menace. 
 Bnt for the meddlesome interference of powers 
 that had no rightful claim upon this territory, 
 Russia would here have had her harbor, a small 
 price, it would seem, for the elimination of those 
 crimes which for more than half a century have 
 shocked the civilized world. 
 
 But with all the powers of Europe arrayed 
 against her from the very beginning in the West, 
 and now shut out in the South, Russia, as a last 
 hope, was obliged to set forth on that long jour- 
 ney across Asia to the far East. And there, 
 strange to say, she was allowed her heart's de- 
 sire — allowed, that is, to spend millions in the 
 construction of her great harbor. Is England 
 asleep? Are the nations of Europe aware of 
 what is going on? Or is it that they have come 
 to see that perhaps Russia has the same right 
 to civilization as themselves? Not at all. The 
 sword is a little late in appearing, that is all. 
 And again we have a war, this time not with 
 England, but with England's ally, Japan. 
 
 And now we are in the midst of a fourth war 
 as clearly traceable as are the other three to 
 
 50 
 
RUSSIA AND THE OPEN SEA 
 
 this fatuous determination to keep Eussia from 
 the open sea. Or let us rather say this present 
 war is the aftermath of the other three, the in- 
 evitable aftermath. If Eussia were a less pow- 
 erful nation than she is, or if the spirit of liberty 
 were dead in the Slavic race, these three wars 
 would probably have been sufficient. But with 
 a territory three times as large as all the rest of 
 Europe, with a population larger than that of 
 England, France, and Germany combined, and 
 of kindred blood with those nations that, despite 
 every obstacle, have won their way to the oceans 
 and a world life, it would have been strange in- 
 deed had the Eussian people resigned them- 
 selves to the barbarism of the steppes. Instead, 
 she turns back to that old pass where for more 
 than two centuries her dreams have centered 
 and where, as we have seen, she logically be- 
 longs, and with a vigor and determination 
 worthy of her Aryan blood and the high aim for 
 which she is battling, she begins once more her 
 struggle for the open sea. And that which hap- 
 pens is what always happens when every safety- 
 valve through which a great people can express 
 itself is closed. There is a rushing of mighty 
 forces toward those weaker seams in the Bal- 
 kans, and — the explosion ! 
 
 51 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 It is fortunate that circumstances have again 
 drawn Eussia Enropeward, for Eussia needs 
 Europe, needs her now as in the past when more 
 than once, as we have seen, she held her hands 
 out toward the West. And Europe, aristo- 
 cratic and suffering from a false conceit of 
 cultural values, will sooner or later discover, 
 as I shall try to show in my next chapter, that 
 all these years she might have been learning as 
 well as teaching. Especially is it fortunate not' 
 only for Eussia and England, but for the world, 
 that England has found it to her advantage to 
 join hands with Eussia. England, whose life is 
 a world life, can, if she will, become the door- 
 opener for the Eussian people. England, the 
 advanced, can become the tutor of Eussia, the 
 backward. It is to be hoped that England real- 
 izes her great opportunity, and will avail herself 
 of the present crisis to take her sword from the 
 path of the Eussian people in their march to- 
 ward civilization. Credit may still be won by 
 yielding to the inevitable. And it is inevitable. 
 Turkey must go back to her ancient home in 
 Asia where ample tracts of fertile land lie wait- 
 ing her ; and Eussia must come out of her long 
 prison to the free and open seas. 
 
 52 
 
THE DEMOCEATIC RUSSIANS 
 
Ill 
 
 THE DEMOCEATIC RUSSIANS 
 
 OF all the changes that have come over the 
 thought of the world within the last few 
 decades, none is so remarkable as that which 
 has to do with democracy. For centuries the 
 word was confined to the narrow circle of poli- 
 tics. A democracy was a kind of government ; 
 a people was democratic if it had won for it- 
 self the right to make its own laws. In the 
 matter of religion they might have nothing to 
 say; a few might own the land and enjoy the 
 revenues of industry; there might be a dozen 
 slaves to one free man; but if the citizens were 
 free to meet and discuss public affairs and make 
 laws, that country or city was a democracy, that 
 people was a democratic people. It is un- 
 doubtedly true that among millions, even in 
 enlightened lands, this old habit of thought still 
 persists, but gradually all over the world the 
 new idea is making way. Certainly the leaders 
 of humanity everywhere are aware of this revo- 
 lution that has taken place, and the unparal- 
 
 55 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 leled changes which to-day are shaking and re- 
 casting the world are due chiefly to this new 
 vision that democracy means something more 
 than government. 
 
 Indeed, no word in the language has so en- 
 larged its circle as has this word democracy. 
 Faster than we have been able to follow it, the 
 commotion has spread to the very bounds of 
 life. State, church, school, industry, the rela- 
 tions of man to man — all these are being jostled 
 by this new unifying force. 
 
 It is this sudden crowding of institutions 
 upon the soul of man and their demand for new 
 interpretation and reshaping that has set the 
 ground to trembling beneath our feet, and has 
 startled us into consciousness that the hour for 
 great things has come. Democracy, the power 
 of the people — that is the tocsin of the new age. 
 Never before in the history of the world was 
 it so important to get clearly in mind the mean- 
 ing of a word as it is to-day to get the meaning 
 of the word democracy. For upon our concep- 
 tion of this one word depends not only the peace, 
 but also the well-being of every man, woman and 
 child of the generations to come. 
 
 To start with, then, let us put away once for 
 all the view of democracy as a phase of govern- 
 
 56 
 
THE DEMOCRATIC RUSSIANS 
 
 ment, and with mind and heart open and un- 
 afraid journey out to the rim of that wide circle 
 and see if we cannot spell out the larger meaning 
 of this powerful word that for years has been 
 making itself flesh among men, and is now 
 through blood and death thrusting the old order 
 into the trenches, there to be buried forever. 
 
 Perhaps we can best arrive at what we are 
 after if, instead of attempting to keep the whole 
 world in view, we separate some part of it, 
 as a chemist takes a part of an element and 
 finds out the nature and laws of the whole, no 
 matter how widely scattered it may be, whether 
 it is buried in the earth or blazing in the gases 
 of the farthest sun. And probably no land will 
 afford a better illustration of the lights and 
 shadows that play about the word democracy 
 than will Russia, a country where, if looked 
 at from the old point of view, no such thing 
 as democracy exists. And it is true that 
 writers on democracy have a way of ig- 
 noring Russia or of using her as a dark 
 background against which to bring out and 
 emphasize the democratic institutions espe- 
 cially of England and the United States. In 
 these latter, it is pointed out, the power of the 
 people is supreme ; whereas in Russia even the 
 
 57 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 ideal of free institutions has not yet been born. 
 Eussia and the czar are synonymous. But these 
 writers also have a way of ignoring the larger 
 circle, of using words with the meaning that 
 attached to them a hundred years ago. To 
 classify Eussia as an autocracy and then pass 
 on, as is conunonly done, is just as unfair as it 
 is to speak of England as a monarchy and stop 
 at that. To find the heart of any land you must 
 go below the government. Especially is this 
 true in Eussia where under the iron regime of 
 government lies a life peculiarly rich in color 
 and in sentiment, a life of which we in the 
 western world know far too little. 
 
 Democracy is the passionate movement of a 
 people toward power in every social endeavor, 
 and it is the presence of this passion in a people, 
 not their form of government, that determines 
 their part in the future renovation of the world. 
 
 With new test of democracy in hand, let us 
 consider the Eussian people and what their rise 
 to power augurs for the world. Is the Slav, 
 whose light or shadow, as it is variously inter- 
 preted, fills the northern horizon of Europe and 
 Asia, a friend or a foe of democracy? That is 
 by far the greatest question that has to do with 
 the present war. If he is a foe, there can be no 
 
 58 
 
THE DEMOCEATIC EUSSIANS 
 
 permanent peace until lie is destroyed or put 
 down. If he is a friend, there is hope for a 
 long period of international cooperation and 
 brotherhood. 
 
 In the popular imagination, which invariably 
 seizes upon a single point and rushes to a gen- 
 eralization, three things stand out as represen- 
 tative of Eussia: the czar, the Cossacks, and the 
 Siberian penal system. The vast unknown 
 spaces between these three, where the Eussian 
 millions come and go have been filled in with 
 these dark colors of oppression and crime to 
 harmonize with the objects in the foreground; 
 so that to-day, in almost every land, especially 
 where the light of truth comes dimly through the 
 painted windows of the newspapers, a Eussian, 
 be he muzhik or grand duke, hand-worker or 
 brain-worker, is looked upon as a police official 
 in disguise, as a Siberian exile who knows the 
 inner workings of the Eevolutionary movement, 
 or at least as one of those wild riders about 
 whom many hair-raising stories have been told. 
 Just so for decades in the minds of the Euro- 
 pean every American was either an Indian 
 fighter or a cowboy. 
 
 It is of course always the daredevil, roman- 
 tic elements in a people that first catch atten- 
 
 59 
 
THE WORLD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 tion, and these are bandied about and played 
 upon until they become national traits. How 
 long it will take the Russian people to eradicate 
 this popular misconception and stand forth in 
 their true character, it would be hard to say. 
 Possibly as long as it will take present-day 
 America to live down in the minds of the Euro- 
 pean the idea that every American is a brag- 
 gart or a millionaire. Until a people has had 
 an opportunity to create its own institutions, it 
 is obviously unfair to draw conclusions with re- 
 gard to their character from abuses connected 
 with such institutions. Probably in no country 
 on earth, as we shall see later, is the government 
 so misrepresentative of the people as is the Rus- 
 sian Government. The Siberian penal system, 
 the Cossacks as a military institution, as well as 
 all those persecutions with which the whole 
 world has been made familiar, are creatures of 
 the Government, not of the people. 
 
 But it is the people we are here concerned 
 with, for it is the qualities of the people that 
 eventually will show forth in the institutions 
 of Russia, just as the character of the Saxon 
 has asserted itself in English institutions, and 
 the character of the old Teuton that has molded 
 Germany into what it is. 
 
 60 
 
THE DEMOCRATIC RUSSIANS 
 
 What, then, are the deeper traits of the Rus- 
 sian muzhik, or peasant ? For what the Russian 
 peasant is to-day, that, quickened and refined by 
 education and by the stir of larger interests, will 
 the Russian nation be to-morrow. What rudi- 
 mentary idea of his own rights and the rights 
 of others lies enfolded in the slow brain of this 
 shaggy fellow of the steppes? 
 
 Let us enter at random any one of the thou- 
 sands of villages that dot the immeasurable 
 spaces of this vast land and examine in the 
 seed this world-shaper of to-morrow. 
 
 Long ago, as far back as we can see, the Rus- 
 sian had emerged from the wandering state of 
 the nomad and had settled down to till the soil. 
 And after twelve hundred years it is with this 
 occupation that by far the largest part of the 
 people is still engaged. Therefore it is the vil- 
 lage, not the city, that is the center of national 
 life, and it is to the village that we must go if 
 we wish to get light upon Russia's future. 
 Just here possibly has arisen the mistake we 
 have made in our judgment of the Russian peo- 
 ple. It is through Petrograd we have seen 
 them, a glass too highly colored by foreign influ- 
 ences, and the crimes of a corrupt aristocracy 
 to afford a fair view of a people whose life from 
 
 61 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 time immemorial has been one witli the open 
 fields. 
 
 The first thing that strikes ns is that the Eus- 
 sian village is a democracy similar to the Saxon 
 village of early England. Bnt in the Saxon 
 there has always been an element which rebelled 
 against social control. The Saxon is by nature 
 an individualist. He is willing to take his 
 chances in a general mix-up. And therefore it 
 is that at the earliest opportunity he threw off 
 the shackles of collective ownership. In that 
 long and successful assault which the barons of 
 England made upon the people's land, and 
 which I shall treat more at length in the follow- 
 ing chapter, the Englishman fell far short of that 
 unconquerable spirit of resistance and counter- 
 assault which we think of as the natural reaction 
 of the Saxon to injustice. Had the aggression 
 been political, there is no doubt that he would 
 have shown his old spirit. It is this inability 
 of the Saxon to comprehend the larger meaning 
 of democracy that has made England what it 
 is — a people willing to see their land taken over 
 by the barons, though it means starvation for 
 themselves. For this is right in line with the 
 Saxon theory of the rights of the individual, 
 whereas group control is slavery. The wide- 
 
 62 
 
THE DEMOCRATIC RUSSIANS 
 
 spread poverty in which England finds herself 
 to-day is due to this excessive individualism. 
 The age of cooperation has come, and the Briton 
 cannot adjust himself. He will starve, hut he 
 will not give up his lords. 
 
 Let us now pass into Russia, the land of 
 autocracy. Here we see an exactly opposite de- 
 velopment. Instead of the baron absorbing the 
 property of the commune, the commune is suc- 
 ceeding to the property of the baron. It is the 
 village, not the individual, that owns the land, 
 and at irregular intervals redistributes the land, 
 though not the homes, among the members of 
 the commune, or mir, as it is called, — every fam- 
 ily is a member, and is represented by its head — 
 according to the size and the respective needs of 
 the families. And there is here none of that in- 
 stinctive rebellion on the part of the individuals 
 composing it, but, on the contrary, a submis- 
 sion to its will which to-day, to any man of 
 Germanic blood, is irritating and inconceivable. 
 While in Russia, too, there is poverty, this con- 
 dition is at least not due to the fact that the 
 people are outcasts from the land. That is the 
 chief difference, one might say, between Russia 
 and the *' civilized" nations, namely, that 
 whereas in the former the poverty of the people 
 
 63 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 is due to the Government, to wliat it has done 
 and what it has left undone, conditions in the 
 latter are due to the people themselves. And 
 therefore while in Eussia education and the re- 
 sultant political changes may remedy the condi- 
 tion, in the more "advanced" nations an im- 
 provement can be brought about only by a social 
 revolution. And it is worth mentioning in pass- 
 ing that the starost, or head, of the Eussian vil- 
 lage never seeks the office, but has it thrust upon 
 him, another illustration of the difference be- 
 tween the mild Slav and the assertive Saxon. 
 
 Though unquestionably there are evils con- 
 nected with this system of agricultural com- 
 munism — ^many of these could undoubtedly be 
 eliminated or at least lessened by the establish- 
 ment of schools — consider what it means for a 
 people throughout the length and breadth of a 
 great land to own their homes, rude though 
 these homes may be, and a few acres of land to 
 which, if for any reason they have left them, 
 they may return in their old age or during those 
 times when work has become scarce in the large 
 centers of population. Is there any compen- 
 sation for this in the consciousness enjoyed by 
 the expropriated masses of the English people, 
 and other people as well, that at least they have 
 
 64 
 
THE DEMOCEATIC EUSSIANS 
 
 remained loyal to the sacred principles of indi- 
 vidual freedom? 
 
 No better illustration of the fundamental dif- 
 ference between the Saxon and the Slav can be 
 found than that afforded by the respective ways 
 in which Saxon America solved the slave prob- 
 lem and Slavic Eussia the serf problem. Pass- 
 ing over the fact that in America it required 
 half a century of the most active propaganda to 
 convince the people, even the people of the 
 North, that slavery was wrong, whereas in Eus- 
 sia no such extensive agitation was required, 
 we come to the still wider chasm that yawns be- 
 tween the ways in which, after their emancipa- 
 tion, the slave and the serf were treated in their 
 respective countries. So obsessed is the Saxon 
 mind with the idea that freedom is a matter of 
 politics that it seemed even to the abolitionist 
 that ample justice had been done the negro 
 when, after his liberation, he was given the 
 vote. In Eussia, on the other hand, where the 
 people are unpractised in politics and see things 
 rather in their social aspect, the permanent free- 
 dom of the serf seemed to depend not upon 
 the franchise, but upon the essentials of liveli- 
 hood. Therefore, while the armies of the North 
 at the point of the bayonet were enforcing the 
 
 65 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 negro's riglit to the ballot, tlie Eussian Gov- 
 ernment was quietly endowing its fifty million 
 serfs with land. And when we remember that 
 in both cases the emancipated peoples were a 
 childlike people, the supreme folly of the Saxon- 
 American becomes apparent. And he himself 
 has become aware of this, or rather half aware 
 of it; for while he has reversed his policy, he 
 has reversed it only half-way. He has recov- 
 ered the vote which he gave to the negro, but 
 the latter 's right to some part of the land which 
 he has tilled for centuries the Saxon-American 
 will not concede. And the reason why he will 
 not concede it is as clear as day: the Anglo- 
 Saxon is inherently an aristocrat. 
 
 But the vast energies of Eussia are employed 
 not solely in agriculture, though it is her tre- 
 mendous resources in this respect that have 
 made possible the enormous expenditures that 
 have been required for the building of her great 
 railroad system and the development of her 
 gigantic military organization. Along with her 
 field labor there goes on, especially during the 
 six months when, owing to the severity of the 
 climate, field labor is out of the question, that 
 variety of craft employment which is necessary 
 to supply the simple wants of an agricultural 
 
 66 
 
THE DEMOCRATIC RUSSIANS 
 
 people. And here again is emphasized that fun- 
 damental difference between the Russian people 
 and the peoples of the Grermanic race which we 
 have just seen. 
 
 In studying the evolution of industry among 
 the Germanic peoples, much has been made of 
 the gild. And wisely so, for out of this small 
 institution has unfolded the whole vast and com- 
 plex structure of modem industry. All those 
 elements of efficiency which have made it possi- 
 ble for this race to conquer the markets of the 
 world, as well as all those abuses which, in their 
 aggregate, have created among these peoples 
 a menacing proletariat, lie in embryo in the old 
 gild system. It requires only the most casual 
 acquaintance with the growth of this institu- 
 tion, as it developed first in the merchant gild 
 and later in the craft gild, to discover in it the 
 germ of that plutocratic aristocracy against 
 which the forces of socialism are making head. 
 
 As far back as the very beginning of Eng- 
 lish trade the right to buy and sell was enjoyed 
 exclusively by the owners of property, just as 
 until within recent times the right to vote de- 
 pended upon a similar qualification. And these 
 landowners who controlled the trade of the 
 towns came very shortly to control the towns 
 
 67 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 themselves and tlie populations of the towns. 
 Inside a baronial feudalism there grew up a 
 feudalism of merchants that shut the people out 
 of the privileges of the markets and grew rich 
 upon the tribute which they levied without hav- 
 ing recourse to the laws. It was against the in- 
 tolerable oppression of this aristocracy of mer- 
 chants that the craft gilds were formed, organ- 
 izations of men whose hands produced those 
 articles from the sale of which the merchant 
 class became rich. And under the assault of 
 these artisan bodies the power of the merchant 
 class as a rival for leadership in the commer- 
 cial world was ended forever. Henceforth the 
 position of middleman, the buyer and seller, was 
 to be subordinate to that of the producer. But 
 it would be a serious mistake to confound this 
 artisan producer of the gild system with the 
 working-classes of to-day. For in this old sys- 
 tem of production it was the master workman, 
 the employer, who was supreme and who has 
 since expanded into the powerful figure of capi- 
 talist-manufacturer, just as the old Saxon and 
 German chiefs through the centuries have 
 evolved into king and kaiser. The mass of 
 workers, the journeymen and apprentices, had 
 no voice whatever in determining the conditions 
 
 68 
 
THE DEMOCRATIC RUSSIANS 
 
 of their labor, and every effort wliicli they made 
 in this direction was for centuries successfully 
 thwarted by the controlling industrial aristoc- 
 racy, at first by the sheer power of their organi- 
 zations and later by the aid of the state, which 
 they had finally come to control. 
 
 There is a tragical significance in the term 
 *' journeyman" thus early applied to the Eng- 
 lish workman, a man who had then, and was to 
 have through the centuries, no permanent home, 
 but was to wander from place to place in search 
 of work, and for a long time, as we know, even 
 this wandering was forbidden him. To what 
 vast numbers has this journeyman increased, 
 this free Anglo-Saxon, stripped through the 
 ages of his land and finally of his very tools of 
 industry! Along with the other institutions 
 which this world-conqueror has built, is the in- 
 stitution of pauperism. 
 
 Re-reading the history of England in the new 
 light which is spreading over the world, it is 
 incomprehensible that we should ever have been 
 beguiled into conceiving of the Anglo-Saxon as 
 the pioneer of democracy. That he is an in- 
 dividualist, and that his dogged insistence upon 
 the rights of the individual in matters of state 
 has been of incalculable service, there can be no 
 
 69 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 doubt; but times have shown only too clearly 
 that individualism may be as great a foe to de- 
 mocracy as the most unrestricted autocracy. 
 
 Consider now the Russian workman. Despite 
 the early start which the other nations had over 
 Russia in industrial development, there has 
 quietly grown up in the latter an institution 
 which shows her in reality much further ad- 
 vanced than the former in the conception, as 
 well as in the establishment, of industrial de- 
 mocracy. This institution, which is known as 
 the artel, had its origin, according to a report 
 recently made to the British Government, 
 among the Cossacks of the Dnieper before the 
 gild system appeared in England or in Germany. 
 Though still in the hunter stage, these Cos- 
 sacks perceived a truth which the leading na- 
 tions of Europe and America are only now be- 
 ginning to perceive, namely, that it is better to 
 cooperate than to compete. And so, instead of 
 hunting individually, they hunted in groups and 
 divided the game. It may be said that savages 
 everywhere have done the same. If so, it is to 
 the glory of the Russian people that they have 
 realized that in certain respects the savage is 
 superior to the civilized man. Despite the al- 
 lurements of ** civilization," they have continued 
 
 70 
 
THE DEMOCRATIC RUSSIANS 
 
 this barbarous practice of cooperating, and it 
 is to-day to be found in sucb widely separated 
 parts of the country, both in the rural districts 
 and in the cities, as to prove beyond controversy 
 that the Russian is instinctively democratic; in 
 other words, that he naturally foregoes those 
 pleasures of self-assertion which would work 
 to the injury of the people as a whole. And 
 therefore we find him grouped in these artels, 
 pure democracies, the heads of which are elected 
 by the members, performing all sorts of work, 
 from the simplest field labor to the building of 
 houses and the carrying of the mails. In the 
 craft gilds of the Teutonic peoples it was the 
 master workman who took the contract or 
 financed the home manufacture, and who ex- 
 ploited to his heart's content those whom he 
 hired, whereas in the artel it is the group that 
 is the master; it is the group that, like a joint- 
 stock company, pools its labor, and sometimes 
 its capital, and shares the profits. While indi- 
 vidualism in industry exists in Russia, as it 
 does in every other commercial nation, the artel 
 exists only in Russia, and may therefore be 
 taken as an index of what the Russian people 
 will do when their great strength, which is now 
 wasting itself upon the borders, is called back 
 
 71 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 to begin the work of internal development. For 
 though in some cases this institution has been 
 sapped and has gone down before the more ag- 
 gressive individualistic system of the Teutonic 
 peoples, as the national consciousness deepens, 
 and Eussia discovers the true value of her own 
 creations as other peoples have discovered 
 theirs, the artel will replace the Cossack in the 
 attention of the world. 
 
 Already signs are at hand that the hour of 
 its conquest has begun. In various parts of the 
 empire these artels are enlarging the sphere of 
 their activities and are entering the broader 
 field of manufacture. Eural workshops, called 
 svietelhas, owned and operated by these artels, 
 are being established to take over the house- 
 hold industries. And in autocratic Eussia the 
 establishment of these industrial democracies is 
 being encouraged by the authorities. Compare 
 this long stride which the Eussians have made 
 toward a wide democracy with what has been 
 done in America by the labor-unions. These 
 latter have not advanced even in thought beyond 
 the old aristocratic wage system. Their aim 
 has been toward shortening the hours and rais- 
 ing the wage of labor, not at all toward own- 
 ership and freedom. Does this prove nothing 
 
 72 
 
THE DEMOCEATIC EUSSIANS 
 
 as to the relative democracy of the two coun- 
 tries? 
 
 It has been maintained, however, that these 
 democratic tendencies of the Eussian people are 
 simply primitive impulses surviving from their 
 barbaric past, and that these will be outgrown 
 and left behind, as they invariably are as a peo- 
 ple becomes more enlightened. The answer to 
 this lies deep in the character of the Eussian 
 people. It is true that the influence of sur- 
 rounding nations has altered Eussian institu- 
 tions and will probably continue to alter them, 
 but we must not overlook the fact that within 
 these nations themselves a profound change is 
 taking place — a change which, when in full force 
 it reaches Eussia, will tend toward the preserva- 
 tion rather than the destruction of these crude 
 democracies. Socialism, which is democracy at 
 work in the bread-getting business of life, will 
 see to it that these precious seeds are not de- 
 stroyed. Just what modifications this influence 
 will bring about cannot be foretold. The de- 
 ciding factor, as has been said, will be the char- 
 acter of the Eussian people. 
 
 But how does the Eussian character fit in with 
 the aspirations of democracy? How shall we 
 reconcile Eussia the known with Eussia the un- 
 
 73 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 known, the Russia of the Siberian penal system, 
 of pogroms and world-wide conquests, with the 
 Russia of the mir, of the artel and the svietelJcaf 
 It would be futile to attempt to reconcile them, 
 for no reconciliation is possible. We are here 
 confronted by a contradiction similar to that 
 which we face in nature when we see on the one 
 hand the healing of a bird's wing and on the 
 other the tidal wave and the earthquake. In 
 no other nation perhaps are these two qualities, 
 kindness and cruelty, brotherhood and tyranny, 
 so accentuated as they are in this twilight land 
 where day and night mingle. Usually it is 
 either the one or the other that stands out as 
 the chief characteristic, but in Russia it is both. 
 Her temperament is a compound of opposites; 
 her history is a contradiction. On every page 
 are crimes against humanity that make the 
 heart sink and the blood run cold; in every 
 chapter are monsters compared with whom the 
 later Caesars are novices. On the other hand, 
 open any book in Russia, whether written by 
 friend or foe, and note the epithets employed 
 to describe the Russian people. Dreamy, im- 
 aginative, inoffensive, simple, affectionate, 
 childlike — all these are almost invariably the 
 words one meets. Nowhere is there a hint of 
 
 74 
 
THE DEMOCRATIC RUSSIANS 
 
 those qualities which are thrown up as dark 
 shadows on the canvas of her horizon. It is 
 the unanimous verdict among even casual ob- 
 servers that the Russian people **have none of 
 those stem qualities of which conquerors are 
 made.'* And yet almost from her earliest his- 
 tory she has gone forth sword in hand. This is 
 the dualism which confronts us. While with 
 one hand she is conquering the world, with the 
 other she is writing appeals for the establish- 
 ment of a Hague court. In the same generation 
 she produces a Plehve and a Tolstoy, both in a 
 way true to the national type. 
 
 No one living in countries inhabited by Ger- 
 manic or Latin peoples can possibly understand 
 the Russian nation, even that part of it which 
 lies west of the ;Urals, if he conceives of it as 
 an entity similar to that of his own nation. 
 Russia is made up of two parts that have never 
 fused and that never can fuse, for the first part 
 is to the second as a school of sharks is to a 
 colony of corals. The real Russian people lie 
 almost unseen imder a foreign overlay which 
 has somehow got itself recognized among the 
 nations as Russia, and which began to be de- 
 posited more than a thousand years ago when 
 Ruric the Norseman, with his followers, came 
 
 75 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 in and establislied themselves as rulers of the 
 land. 
 
 Then for more than two centuries the land 
 was under the heel of the Tartars, another con- 
 quering people who left behind them a deep de- 
 posit of violence and crime. And almost im- 
 mediately after the expulsion of the Tartars 
 there began a third period of foreign domina- 
 tion, that peaceful Germanic invasion which 
 from the days of Peter the Great has persist- 
 ently warred against the ideals of this peace- 
 ful people, which became the source of the re- 
 pressive bureaucratic system and which, as an 
 active influence in Eussian politics, is respon- 
 sible for many of those crimes that the world 
 has ignorantly laid at the door of the Slavic 
 people. It is not generally known that the pres- 
 ent house of Eomanoff, which has held the scep- 
 ter for three hundred years, is half German. 
 We in America who know something of the 
 part played by George III of the House of Han- 
 over-Brunswick in the oppression of the Col- 
 onies and how, in opposition to the idealists of 
 England, he fought this conflict to the bitter 
 end, will understand something of what two 
 hundred years of Germanization has meant to 
 the Eussian people. 
 
 76 
 
THE DEMOCRATIC RUSSIANS 
 
 For a long period when the great mass of the 
 peasantry were serfs upon the estates of the 
 Russian nobility, the task-masters upon these 
 estates were as a rule Germans who had been 
 imported to wring a larger return from the la- 
 bor of this unfortunate people. And the record 
 which they left in the land accounts in a very 
 large measure for the enmity between the Slav 
 and the German which is finding vent in the 
 present war. And in the higher offices of the 
 ministry, too, it has been the hand of the Ger- 
 man, especially the German of the Russian Bal- 
 tic provinces, that has too often set the Russian 
 Government in opposition to the Russian peo- 
 ple. Count Witte, for example, the famous 
 financial minister, who has probably had a 
 greater influence in shaping the policy of the 
 Russian Government than any other man dur- 
 ing the reign of Nicholas II, is one of these. 
 According to a German writer, no man has laid 
 a greater burden upon the Russian people in 
 order to bolster up the false system of Russian 
 expansion. And, if we except Pobiedonostsef, 
 the fanatical Procurator of the Holy Synod, 
 Count "Witte has been the ablest champion of the 
 reactionary movement. He it was who fought 
 the establishment of the Provincial Assemblies 
 
 77 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 and who, in a manifesto to the Czar, expressed 
 his conviction that there was no way of ruling 
 the peasant except by the knout. And Plehve, 
 the notorious Minister of the Interior, was an- 
 other Baltic German. I do not mention these 
 facts as a reflection upon the Grerman people, for 
 they too have suffered at the hands of these 
 same oppressors in the Fatherland, but simply 
 to show that neither upon her borders nor 
 within her interior can all the inhumanity of 
 Eussia be fairly charged to the Eussian peo- 
 ple. In speaking of the Eussian character as 
 it shines through the enforced service of the 
 Eussian soldier, von der Briiggen, the eminent 
 historian, who certainly cannot be charged with 
 prejudice in their favor, makes it all too plain 
 that even in the brutal business of conquest the 
 Eussian does not forget, in his contact with for- 
 eign peoples, that kindly brotherhood which 
 marks him in his association with his kindred. 
 *' Wherever the Eussian finds a native popula- 
 tion in a low state of civilization, he knows how 
 to settle down with it without driving it out or 
 crushing it; he is hailed by the natives as the 
 bringer of order, as a civilizing power, and does 
 not awaken the embittered feeling of dependence 
 50 long as the Government does not conjure up 
 
 78 
 
THE DEMOCRATIC RUSSIANS 
 
 national or religious strife/' The italics are 
 mine. 
 
 That this whole vicious system of Russian 
 outrage is a thing entirely separate from the 
 Slavic people and absolutely contrary to their 
 nature becomes even clearer when we remem- 
 ber that of all the idealists and friends of free- 
 dom who have assailed this system not one of 
 them compares in passionate utterance to Rus- 
 sians own prophet, Tolstoy. Here is the living 
 voice of the Russian people, as Lincoln is the 
 living voice of the American people. Tolstoy 
 is the glorified Russian peasant uttering his 
 heart to the world from the cross of the ages. 
 From this man alone, in modem times, has gone 
 out the living conviction that peace and brother- 
 hood are realities destined sooner or later to 
 conquer the world. From this heart of the 
 Russian people we see, like a saving spirit in 
 the midst of blood and death, spreading out 
 over the world, that wide circle of democracy 
 beyond which you cannot go. 
 
 79 
 
LAND AND WAR 
 
IV 
 
 LAND AND WAR 
 
 AS far up toward its source as we can fol- 
 low the stream of civilizajtion, we find the 
 land problem already pared to the quick. In 
 the valley of the Nile, among the cities of 
 Greece, in Eome, both republican and imperial, 
 and on down through the welter of the Dark 
 Ages, even to the present day, this question of 
 food sources for the individual and the nation 
 is the one question that has successfully defied 
 permanent solution. Slavery, that trailed man 
 for ages, we have left behind us. Eeligious 
 wars will probably never again redden the 
 planet. The power of the rulers is gradually 
 being circumscribed by constitutions so that in 
 general froni political oppression the individual 
 is measurably secure. For all these we have 
 either found or are in the way of finding so- 
 lutions. But in the matter of the land prob- 
 lem, lying as it does at the very foundation of 
 life, we are still in the maze, and our progress 
 toward a solution is annoyingly slow. 
 
 83 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 If we consider the wars of the world, we shall 
 find them falling into one of two classes j wars 
 for personal ambition and wars of human need. 
 And of both classes by far the larger per cent, 
 has been over land : conquerors extending their 
 dominions, or a people expropriated for one 
 reason or another seeking homes in some other 
 region or, within their own state, rising against 
 the upper classes to recover their ancestral pos- 
 sessions. Upon the first of these we need not 
 particularly dwell, for history is full of them, 
 and every schoolboy has at his tongue's end the 
 names of their leaders. And even where no 
 conspicuous leader emerged, these wars of con- 
 quest are in a class by themselves and easily 
 distinguished from the others. By the unani- 
 mous opinion of mankind, this class of wars 
 has been branded as infamous. But for those 
 conflicts which have arisen from a people's need 
 of land, there has always been a universal sym- 
 pathy and in many cases an outspoken admira- 
 tion. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact and yet one which not 
 infrequently confronts us in history, that the 
 land holdings of a people individually are gen- 
 erally in inverse ratio to the land holdings of 
 their state ; or in other words, that as the state 
 
 84 
 
LAND AND WAR 
 
 begins to win the world the people of that state 
 begin to lose their own farms. This it would 
 seem is the Nemesis that follows the armies of 
 conquerors, that a people which aids and abets 
 its state in a lawless assault upon the territory 
 of a foreign people will themselves be obliged 
 eventually to drain the same bitter cup in their 
 own individual lives. He who helps steal a 
 province shall lose his own farm. How comes it 
 we have never perceived the truth of this, when 
 it is written out in capitals on the pages of his- 
 tory? Unquestionably because we read history 
 for cultural, never for ethical, purposes. Or 
 shall we say that those who can afford the lei- 
 sure for reading history are never the ones who 
 bear the burden of conquest but are rather di- 
 rectly or indirectly the beneficiaries of the rob- 
 bery? Whatever the reason may be, the fact 
 remains that so far as our handling of the land 
 problem is concerned, it is as though there were 
 no such things as the lessons of history. We 
 go round and round on the same old wheel that 
 is worn smooth by the feet of generations dead 
 and gone. In other things we progress, be- 
 cause we build upon the experience of the past. 
 In mechanics, in agriculture, in sanitation, iii 
 almost everything that one can mention, we 
 
 85 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 carry along witli us the wisdom of the past. 
 But in this most vital of all questions, the land 
 problem, our yesterdays are as nothing. We 
 go off hither and thither after the thousand and 
 one interests of life and again and again come 
 back utterly naked to this oldest of all prob- 
 lems. Is this an extravagant statement? 
 
 Let us open the great book of history and, 
 choosing some nation of the long ago, tear out 
 those pages which deal with the relation of its 
 people to their land, and lay them side by side 
 with similar pages just written. And in order 
 that the comparison may be a fair one and throw 
 light upon as many phases as possible of this 
 problem, let us take in each case a nation with 
 wide land holdings, empires if we can find them, 
 whose history has been so thoroughly explored 
 as to leave no doubt that it is facts we are deal- 
 ing with. If among the nations we can find two 
 of this sort, one ancient and one modern, and es- 
 pecially if they are alike in this also, that in 
 both the land problem became acute, we should 
 be able to make a comparison which would help 
 us in determining how much progress, if any, 
 we have made in this respect, and also clear up 
 certain matters of fundamental importance in- 
 volved in the present war. 
 
 86 
 
LAND AND WAR 
 
 It is evident that if we are to meet all the 
 above requirements we shall be obliged to take 
 from the past Eome and from the present 
 Britain. Here we have two empires with ter- 
 ritories reaching in each case to the limits of 
 the known world, whose records are clear, and 
 in both of which the land problem early became 
 and for centuries remained a most irritating 
 one. 
 
 It was the policy of Eome in her acquisition 
 of foreign territory to take from a conquered 
 people a portion, usually a third, of their land, 
 and this thereafter was considered the peculiar 
 property of the Roman state. Upon this public 
 land, with the exception of those parts of it 
 that were set aside for the veterans of the Ro- 
 man army, Roman citizens were allowed to set- 
 tle on condition that a portion of the product 
 of the land should be turned over to the state. 
 The part still unsettled became "commons," 
 upon which Romans of all classes could turn 
 their stock. Eventually these open tracts were 
 claimed by the wealthy classes who, despite op- 
 position, succeeded in forcing from the state 
 a recognition of their claim. Owing to this 
 stealthy confiscation of the public lands, large 
 numbers of the people were deprived of their 
 
 87 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 livelihood, and, in tlie hope of improving their 
 condition, sought refuge in the capital. This 
 was the beginning of that turbulent population 
 for whose poverty and loss of independence, ever 
 rising into a menace, the upper classes of Eome 
 felt compelled to make a quieting restitution in 
 tremendous charities of grain, the distribution 
 of which only aggravated the evil by attracting 
 to Eome the outcasts of the world. Later, a 
 similar encroachment was begun by the same 
 wealthy class upon that other portion of the 
 conquered land which had been given to the 
 poorer Eomans. More money could be made 
 and with less danger of an uprising of tenants 
 by converting farms into pasture for sheep and 
 cattle. In this way finally, either by open rob- 
 bery or by forced sale, the Eoman people were 
 dispossessed of their small holdings and turned 
 adrift to wander and to take at last the wide 
 road to Eome. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Eoman armies with recruits 
 eternally drawn from this vagrant population 
 were conquering the world. By a people that 
 were steadily losing their acres, province after 
 province was being added to the already vast 
 possessions of the state. By a species of jug- 
 glery which has been practised over and over 
 
 88 
 
LAND AND WAR 
 
 since the beginning of the world, sons of fathers 
 who had lost their little farms were tricked into 
 taking up the sword to win kingdoms for the 
 robbers. And every attempt to expose this 
 monstrous crime against the freedom and life 
 of a great people was ruthlessly smothered. 
 We shall probably never know how many ar- 
 dent champions of a better order of things lost 
 their lives in this unequal contest. Between 
 Spurius Cassius, the ''first social reformer of 
 Rome" and also the first martyr to this cause 
 of simple justice, and Gains Gracchus, the first 
 to make any headway and whose blood also 
 stained the streets of Eome, lie more than three 
 hundred and fifty years of almost futile strug- 
 gle. 
 
 If England had never heard of Rome, if her 
 statesmen had never read of the transforma- 
 tion of that sturdy, independent, agricultural 
 people into an idle, broken-spirited city mob, 
 fed and amused by the Caesars, we should not 
 be surprised at what has happened in the Island 
 Kingdom. I do not know that attention has 
 ever been called to the similarity in social de- 
 velopment between England and Rome, We 
 have probably been so disarmed by the marked 
 difference between them in their political evolu- 
 
 89 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 tion, the one entering her civilized period as a 
 republic and thence converging toward mon- 
 archy, the other moving in the opposite direc- 
 tion, that we have failed to note the parallel 
 currents of their social development. But no 
 one can read the history of the rise of the land- 
 lords in England and not perceive at once the 
 appalling resemblance between the republic of 
 yesterday and monarchy of to-day. 
 
 Turn back to the period of the early Tudors 
 and you will find pages which might have been 
 torn bodily from the history of early Eome. 
 Here under English names the plebeians and 
 patricians are again at war. The Anglo-Saxon 
 is going round the old wheel of the Latin. And 
 the cause of the struggle is identical with that 
 which tore Eome. It has become more profita- 
 ble to raise sheep than to turn over the sod, 
 and steadily before the advance of sheep the 
 people disappear. It is really a question, as 
 we come down through the ages, whether men 
 have preyed more upon the animal kingdom 
 or the animal kingdom more upon man. If man 
 has driven the wild animal farther and farther 
 into the depths of the wilderness, the domesti- 
 cated animal, in Britain certainly, has driven 
 man farther and farther from the health of 
 
 90 
 
LAND AND WAR 
 
 the open fields into the slums of the cities. Not 
 only are the great tracts of the lords of the 
 manor converted into pastures, but the commons 
 are enclosed. And after the commons, the 
 small farms. The little hedge of right ceases 
 any longer to protect the small acres. By this 
 relentless broom of the landlord even the cot- 
 tages are swept away. In the place of villages 
 are stretches of the returned grass, with here 
 and there a lonely spire and thatched roofs fallen 
 into ruin. That devastation which we think of 
 as following only in the wake of armies was 
 here diffused through centuries. The yeomen 
 of England, whose fathers had fallen in many a 
 battle for the glory of England, had entered 
 upon the same path toward city pauperism as 
 that which seventeen hundred years before the 
 Romans had taken to misery and oblivion. In 
 order that flocks might have pasture, and let 
 us add, that foxes and pheasants might thrive, 
 a diversion for royal hunters from the boredom 
 of idleness, thousands of people were set adrift. 
 Men, women, and children were turned out that 
 primal nature might again have sway. It had 
 become more important in the eyes of England 
 to raise an abundance of wool than to preserve 
 a sturdy race of men. 
 
 91 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 It is to the credit of the English people that, 
 like the Eomans before them, they resisted these 
 attempts to dispossess them, at first by laws 
 which proved of no avail and later by that last 
 resort of free men, their good right arm; but 
 unfortunately, as I have pointed out elsewhere, 
 with none of that unconquerable spirit that 
 through the centuries has won for them a far 
 larger measure of political freedom. As far 
 back as the early Tudors, so inhuman were the 
 outrages of the landlords that in several parts 
 of England there were uprisings which before 
 they were finally put down cost the lives of thou- 
 sands. In Somerset, the Protector, who sympa- 
 thized with the people and for a time tried to 
 aid them and who because of this opposition to 
 the patricians of England was later tried for 
 treason and executed, we have a worthy suc- 
 cessor of Spurius Cassius, who for advocating 
 the same cause lost his life in early Eome. 
 
 And from the days of Somerset down all the 
 intervening years this expropriation has gone 
 steadily on, often by leaps and bounds. Indeed, 
 if it had been a matter of deliberate policy, if 
 the small landowners had been an alien race and 
 England had determined from the first to weed 
 
 92 
 
LAND AND WAR 
 
 tliem out, she could not have gone about it more 
 effectively than she has done. It is open to 
 serious question if the people of England would 
 not to-day be better off if the island had been 
 conquered by Napoleon. For, compared to the 
 French people who entered the race for liberty 
 far behind the people of England, it must be 
 confessed that the French are infinitely better 
 off. Indeed, there is not a people in Europe 
 whose livelihood is so precarious as the Saxon 
 of England. Possessed of one-fifth of the hab- 
 itable globe, they are either tenants upon the 
 confiscated freeholds of their ancestors or in 
 crowded cities dependent for their daily bread 
 upon the slender thread of foreign trade. Here 
 are the records of what the Roman policy of the 
 Island Kingdom had accomplished at the be- 
 ginning of the latter half of the Victorian era, 
 records which without the least exaggeration we 
 may call the records of a crime. But because 
 it was accomplished by England instead of Rus- 
 sia, because it has blighted the lives of a whole 
 people instead of a few rubber gatherers in the 
 Belgian Congo, we have heard little of it. I 
 quote from a member of the English Parliament 
 who in turn quotes from government statis- 
 tics. 
 
 93 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 ''The Return (1872) shows that 852,000 land- 
 owners only possess on an average a little more 
 than one-fifth of an acre, while the Duke of Suth- 
 erland possessed seven times as much as their 
 entire holdings. Dividing the Return into two 
 great classes, 1,105,000 landlords hold about 
 5,000,000 acres, while 67,978 landlords hold 67,- 
 000,000 acres. From the same Return we 
 gather that twenty-eight dukes hold estates to 
 the amount of nearly 4,000,000 acres, thirty- 
 three marquises 1,500,000 acres, one hundred 
 and ninety-four earls 5,862,000 acres, and two 
 hundred and seventy viscounts and barons 
 3,785,000 acres. The Return shows that 2,250 
 persons owned in that day nearly half the en- 
 closed land of England and Wales. Nine-tenths 
 of Scotland was owned by 1,700, and two-thirds 
 of Ireland by 1,942 persons." 
 
 Yet in face of these facts, facts written, if 
 ever facts were written, in a people's blood, the 
 devourer had continued his advance unchecked. 
 "Within thirty years immediately following the 
 above-shown condition, familiar all the while 
 to the law makers of England, so great was the 
 decline in agriculture during this period, accord- 
 ing to a recent writer in the Fortnightly Review, 
 that "the crops produced by our farmers have 
 
 94 
 
LAND AND WAR 
 
 so seriously decreased that of the capital in- 
 vested in British agriculture no less than £1,000,- 
 000,000 has been lost. ' ' More than $165,000,000 
 of capital withdrawn every year from farming, 
 while every year because of intolerable condi- 
 tions more than 200,000 people leave England to 
 seek homes elsewhere ! In not one nation of con- 
 tinental Europe does the proportion of the * * oc- 
 cupied population" engaged in agriculture 
 fall below 30 per cent., whereas in Great 
 Britain the per cent, is 9.2. Think of half of 
 Great Britain, an island of unsurpassed fer- 
 tility and climate, lying in grass while fifty 
 per cent, of the children of the cities and larger 
 towns in England are underfed. In a speech 
 delivered not long ago, Winston Churchill 
 summed it all up in one terrible phrase. * ' The 
 fortunate people of Britain are more happy than 
 any other equally numerous class have been 
 in the history of the world. I believe the left- 
 out millions are more miserable. Our van- 
 guard enjoys the delights of the ages. Our rear 
 guard straggles out into conditions that are 
 crueler than barbarism." The statement is a 
 conservative one. Compared to actual living 
 conditions in France under the Bourbons from 
 which that mighty people rose in successful re- 
 
 95 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 volt, conditions in England under George Y 
 are incontestably worse. And when we remem- 
 ber what, during the last two hundred years, 
 England's far-flung battle line has been doing, 
 how thousands upon thousands of Englishmen 
 have bought colonies for Britain at the price of 
 their own homes, the analogy of the fate of the 
 Saxon to the fate of the Eoman becomes tragi- 
 cally clear. In England, as in Eome, the army 
 of sheep has been more terrible than an army 
 with banners. Little wonder that the ravages 
 of drunkenness in the Island Kingdom are 
 ''more terrible than war." There comes a time 
 in the history of nations as of individuals 
 when the supreme blessing is the ability to for- 
 get. 
 
 If England, traveling these long centuries the 
 road of Eome, has thus far escaped the utter 
 decay which overtook her imperial sister, her 
 good fortune is due not to the fact that the greed 
 of her landlords has been less or that the pro- 
 tection given by the government to the people 
 has been more than in ancient Eome, but solely 
 to her superior commercial development. That 
 wool for which she early sacrificed her people 
 became the foundation of a foreign trade that 
 has come as a saving hand between the English 
 
 96 
 
LAND AND WAR 
 
 people and that dire fate which crept upon their 
 brothers in the South. If England has not 
 felt obliged to distribute her charities quite so 
 ostentatiously but has resorted to the more 
 modern palliatives of old-age pensions, sick ben- 
 efits and the like ; if she has not been driven to 
 supplying circuses to divert the bitter broodings 
 of a menacing population, it is certainly not due 
 to her having solved any better than Eome this 
 eternal problem of land. Looms, it is true, 
 afford a more solid foundation for a people's 
 well-being than do circuses, but always there is 
 danger that these looms may stop. This is the 
 haunting thought, the pursuing ghost that 
 everywhere gives such a somber aspect to the 
 separation of a people from their land. Once 
 let England's foreign trade be menaced, as it 
 has already been menaced, and the Island King- 
 dom faces the dilemma, Circuses or Land. 
 
 In view of these facts, it is not particularly 
 surprising that England has at last awakened to 
 the realization that during all these centuries 
 of accumulating disaster there was such a thing 
 as history to guide her, and that now with the 
 lions of the arena on the one hand and her great 
 landlords on the other she turns weakly toward 
 those vast enclosed tracts, barren of population, 
 
 97 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 that were once tlie homes of a thrifty and con- 
 tented people. 
 
 It is fortunate for England that she has pro- 
 duced at this crucial period a man of the vision 
 and courage of Lloyd-George. If it is not too 
 late, if this long dependence has not already 
 sapped the manhood of the people, something 
 may yet he done. But when we remember that 
 the disease has been the cause of wide and un- 
 relieved distress for more than two hundred 
 years, and when we see that vast masses of this 
 unfortunate people have already forgotten that 
 the land is really theirs and are either uncon- 
 cerned or ready to defend the title of the pres- 
 ent owners, the long hard task confronting Eng- 
 land becomes clear. 
 
 And right here I would call attention — es- 
 pecially the attention of England — to an even 
 greater dilemma than that which she faces at 
 home, one indeed of which the condition we have 
 just been describing is one horn and of which 
 the other horn has seriously to do with the pres- 
 ent war. 
 
 While England has been developing exten- 
 sively, Germany has been developing inten- 
 sively; while England has been winning prov- 
 inces, Germany has been fertilizing her acres; 
 
 98 
 
LAND AND WAR 
 
 while England's drum-beat has been going 
 round the world and her traders have been fol- 
 lowing in its wake, the German hive has been 
 humming with the labor of an increasing and 
 well-cared-for population. It is as though im- 
 perial Rome had divided and one-half of her, 
 her lust of conquest, had found refuge in Eng- 
 land, and the other half, her aptitude for arms 
 and organization, had established itself in Ger- 
 many. Though we have not grasped their full 
 meaning, though we have failed even to attend 
 them, side by side for the instruction of the 
 world two tremendous social experiments have 
 been going on. And now having reached their 
 culmination, these two systems, the extensive 
 and the intensive, provinces and acres, world 
 dominion and individual efficiency, confront one 
 another across the Straits of Dover. 
 
 No one can read the history of these two 
 countries and not be filled with amazement that 
 two peoples of the same stock should have pur- 
 sued paths so divergent. From the very begin- 
 ning it would seem that England was destined 
 to play the role of the landlord both at home and 
 abroad. Virtually all her problems, both do- 
 mestic and foreign, have been such as, on a 
 small scale, her peers have had to meet in the 
 
 99 
 
THE WOELD STORM ANB BEYOND 
 
 management of their estates, to draw from their 
 tenants for the upkeep of the castle the largest 
 possible revenue consistent with similar con- 
 siderations for the future. Germany, on the 
 other hand, though she too has had her prob- 
 lems, has never allowed herself to be haunted 
 by the specter of a population dispossessed by 
 landlords. Never in Germany has the primal 
 grass encroached upon the cultivated field, never 
 have men fled before sheep. If her people 
 have crowded into cities, it has at least not been 
 to escape the clutch of the landlord. If they 
 have gone into factories, it has been of their own 
 free will and with a realization doubtless that 
 in this field lay greater opportunities for the 
 exercise of their peculiar genius for organiza- 
 tion. 
 
 Two things have diverted attention from the 
 land question in Germany — ^her stupendous mili- 
 tary system and the amazing expansion of her 
 foreign trade. But it is evident that we can- 
 not fairly judge a state unless we know some- 
 thing of the relation of its people to their land. 
 For after all, free institutions depend for per- 
 manency upon this relation. And where the 
 relation is one of injustice it is to no purpose 
 that a glittering superstructure is erected. 
 
 100 
 
LAND AND WAR 
 
 There is no power, either of parliaments or of 
 armies, that can save such a nation from even- 
 tual decay or from an ultimate revolution that 
 will steadily gather strength and motion or sub- 
 side and intermittently break out, until this 
 foundation is put in order. It is a pity that a 
 knowledge of what Germany has done in the 
 matter of land ownership and cultivation has 
 not been more generally spread abroad. Her 
 record in this respect, like that which she has 
 made in city management, is something for 
 which humanity would show much more sym- 
 pathy and admiration than it has shown for her 
 military or even for her cultural development. 
 And, moreover, the world is in need of every 
 stray gleam of light upon this subject. 
 
 At the very outset of our investigation we are 
 met by a condition which, compared to the wide 
 misery beyond the North Sea, goes far toward 
 explaining the more evenly distributed pros- 
 perity of the German people and which, like a 
 thick layer of granite, upholds the colossal 
 structure of German efficiency that both in peace 
 and in war has been the astonishment of the 
 world. 
 
 In England less than thirteen per cent, of the 
 land is cultivated by its owners and the other 
 
 101 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 eighty-seven per cent, by tenants, whereas in 
 Germany just the reverse is true; the thirteen 
 per cent, are tenants and the eighty-seven per 
 cent, are owners. Again, when we compare the 
 agricultural output of the two countries the dif- 
 ference is even more astounding. With a cul- 
 tivated area approximately one-third larger 
 than that of the United Kingdom, the product 
 of the German farms is four times as great as 
 those of the United Kingdom. And even these 
 facts, that should have rung like a warning bell 
 over England and turned her face not in rivalry 
 toward her thrifty neighbor but toward her own 
 depopulated acres — even these facts do not tell 
 the full story of the relative rise and fall of 
 these two great peoples. During the thirty 
 years ending 1911 the grass lands of England in- 
 creased by 3,000,000 acres and the sheep by 
 2,000,000, whereas in Germany during the same 
 period the grass lands fell off by 7,000,000 acres, 
 and the sheep by 14,000,000 ! While to keep up 
 her foreign trade, the nurse of her exhausted 
 cities, England has felt compelled to sacrifice 
 her people to sheep, Germany has sacrificed her 
 sheep for the good of her people and has found 
 other ways of securing a foreign trade that is 
 fast overtaking that of England. 
 
 102 
 
LAND AND WAE 
 
 But within the past few years a new age has 
 dawned for Germany, as sooner or later it must 
 dawn for every nation. Eventually, after 
 prodigal wandering, humanity must again face 
 the problem of the soil. And no matter how 
 economically the ancestral territory may have 
 been used, to an expanding race sooner or later 
 the ancient question will return. So far as 
 Germany is concerned, that day has already ar- 
 rived, "With an area one-fifth less than Texas 
 and with a population over two-thirds that of 
 the whole United States, Germany finds herself 
 facing identically the same problem that Eng- 
 land is facing, the problem of land. But for 
 Germany, unfortunately, it has proved a gor- 
 dian knot, the untying of which has brought her 
 into conflict with her neighbors, whereas for 
 England the problem is altogether a domestic 
 one. Let us look into this a little more closely, 
 for here it is we shall find that terrible dilemma 
 between the horns of which at last, after cen- 
 turies of evasion, England is caught. 
 
 By what blunder of the Fates has it come 
 about that the German people should wake up 
 to the fact that they need land just when the 
 English people were waking up to a similar 
 need? "Where was England's perpetual good 
 
 103 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 fortune that this should have been allowed? 
 Why could not the one or the other have been 
 postponed? For consider the irony of the 
 situation, the difficulty in which England now 
 finds herself. 
 
 There is not one argument which the Liberal 
 Party has used against the landlords of Eng- 
 land — and they are many and weighty — that 
 Germany cannot use with equal justice against 
 England herself. For who that is acquainted 
 with the Island Kingdom and with the empire 
 over which her scepter is potent does not know 
 that England sustains the same relation to the 
 crowded peoples of the world as do her own 
 landlords to the crowded peoples of England. 
 Loosen for a moment the imagination and let 
 it lift up and flatten out the surface of the globe. 
 Now magically diminish it and lay it upon the Is- 
 land Kingdom, distributing its population ac- 
 cording to the cities. Then look at it from above. 
 London is China, Glasgow is India, Liverpool 
 is Germany, etc. And the wide grass lands 
 of the island are Canada, Australia, and South 
 Africa. If the Liberal Party, which at present 
 is the government of England, is right in its de- 
 mand that the wide acres of the landlords in 
 England be returned to the people, by what logic 
 
 104 
 
LAND AND WAR 
 
 has this same party arrived at the conclusion 
 that the crowded peoples of the world have no 
 claim upon the unoccupied provinces of Great 
 Britain? Is it because the title which England 
 holds to her provinces is sounder than that held 
 by the English landlords to their estates'? It 
 needs but the slightest acquaintance with the 
 manner in which these provinces were acquired 
 to correct this impression. How few has she 
 ever paid for, how many has she, directly or 
 indirectly, acquired by the sword ! 
 
 By the law of the talent, he that uses one 
 well shall receive two. Has the Island King- 
 dom used her seventy million ancestral acres 
 better than Germany her one hundred and 
 thirty-five million that the former is entitled to 
 more than ten times the amount of the earth's 
 surface enjoyed by the latter? Why, for in- 
 stance, should the German, if he wishes to leave 
 his native land and take up his home in foreign 
 parts, be obliged to settle in a limited area of 
 Africa or in some of the other infinitesimal Ger- 
 man possessions, uncongenial they may be, and 
 offering little opportunity for the development 
 of his talent, while the Englishman, setting forth 
 on a similar mission, has every continent and 
 every climate to choose from? 
 
 105 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 It may be said that the British colonies are 
 open to the German immigrant as they are open 
 to the immigrants of other nations, even to those 
 from England herself. While this is true, while 
 there are no barriers in the way of a German's 
 making his home in any of the innumerable Brit- 
 ish possessions, there is a condition to such set- 
 tlement which, to a proud people, is the greatest 
 barrier in the world. Fortunately or unfor- 
 tunately, there is still such a thing as patriot- 
 ism. To say to the German, forced out of his 
 own country by its growing population, that 
 there is one-fifth of the globe with vast unsettled 
 tracts upon no acre of which he can make his 
 home and take part in the government of the 
 country without becoming a British subject, is 
 essentially a ** no-permit." Undoubtedly there 
 are regions, and wide regions, that in the nature 
 of things should be under one sovereignty, but 
 it is evident that there should be some limit to 
 this. The claim must rest upon something more 
 solid than mere conquest — ^upon racial or geo- 
 graphical unity. To allow a nation to seize and 
 hold fast by the sword far-scattered possessions 
 inhabited by heterogeneous peoples and to im- 
 pose its citizenship upon every incomer who de- 
 sires to live the full life of a free man, to ex- 
 
 106 
 
LAND AND WAE 
 
 press himself in the government as well as in 
 the business of the country, is a temptation to 
 conquest and a hate-breeder which humanity 
 cannot afford to perpetuate. 
 
 Would England herself in this matter of land 
 be willing to square her domestic policy with her 
 foreign policy ? Would she be willing to accept, 
 for instance, as a compromise of the fight she 
 is waging to recover from the peers her people's 
 acres, the condition which she herself imposes 
 upon those who seek homes in her foreign pos- 
 sessions, viz.: that the people who settle upon 
 these royal estates shall become ipso facto ten- 
 ants upon the land, free to plow and sow and 
 market their products, yes ; but in the matter of 
 their civic life no longer subjects of England, 
 owing allegiance to the government of England, 
 but belonging henceforth solely to these peers'? 
 Even those nations whose sympathy is with the 
 Allies in the present conflict are awake to the 
 moral dilemma in which England is involved 
 and are wondering how when the present war 
 is over she will extricate herself. 
 
 For landlordism no less than militarism is 
 one of the problems that must somehow be 
 solved by this war, if the peace which the world 
 is hoping will come is to be a permanent peace. 
 
 107 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 For the terrible sacrifices which Europe is mak- 
 ing to end war would be to no purpose were its 
 aim simply to abolish preparations for war and 
 not also causes of war. So long as there is 
 one nation that, without restraint and as the 
 mood seizes it, is allowed to confiscate the lands 
 of weak peoples in every part of the earth and 
 to compel every person who settles within this 
 conquered territory and who wishes to partici- 
 pate in the government of his new home to sever 
 his connection with his own country and become 
 a subject of the conquering nation, it is as plain 
 as day that the present war will be followed by 
 another and still another, until landlordism too 
 has disappeared. If the matter is not settled 
 now and settled rightly, it will be brought 
 up again, we may be sure, until some measure of 
 justice shall have been secured. Any talk of 
 disarmament that does not provide also for the 
 disarmament of the landlord is a mere bandying 
 of useless words. For, as we have seen, land- 
 lordism is the main cause of militarism. And 
 of the two, if we may judge by the comparative 
 condition of the people of England where land- 
 lordism has had full sway, and the people of 
 Germany among whom militarism has come to 
 its most perfect flower, we are forced to ad- 
 
 108 
 
LAND AND WAR 
 
 mit that of the two curses landlordism is the 
 more disastrous. 
 
 If England, with the help of her powerful 
 allies and the sympathy of the neutral world, 
 can lift from the back of the German people 
 the burden of militarism, and if the German 
 people can reciprocate this favor by lifting from 
 the back of the English people the burden of 
 landlordism, grown to monstrous proportions 
 through the centuries, a solid foundation of 
 friendship will have been established between 
 the future generations of the two countries, and 
 the present war will have gone far toward de- 
 serving that enviable title, the War to End War. 
 
 109 
 
EMPIEE OE FEDERATION 
 
V 
 
 EMPIRE OR FEDERATION 
 
 IP any one liad said, during those unsettled 
 years immediately following the American 
 Eevolution when the thirteen states that had 
 been allies during the conflict were falling apart, 
 each jealously guarding its own separate iden- 
 tity, that within one hundred and twenty-five 
 years there would be, extending from sea to sea, 
 one Government which would be the arbiter of 
 all disputes among them and that this Govern- 
 ment would maintain peace within her vast bor- 
 ders, even going so far as to interfere in local 
 affairs when the state refused or was unable to 
 keep peace, ninety-nine men out of a hundred 
 would probably have jeered at such a prophecy. 
 Internationally we are to-day in a situation 
 fundamentally identical with that in which our 
 states were immediately following the Eevolu- 
 tion. And to-day as yesterday, eyes are looking 
 into the future to glimpse if possible what is to 
 be the outcome of it all, for it is evident that this 
 
 113 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 clashing of nation with nation cannot go on 
 forever. The business of humanity is growth 
 and development, and the intelligence of man- 
 kind can be counted upon eventually to take hold 
 of this international problem and prevent the 
 hurling of one people against another by state 
 rivalry. Even were there nothing at stake 
 more important to the world than trade, it 
 is inconceivable that intelligent human beings 
 will tolerate indefinitely the confusion and de- 
 struction which are now the order of the day. 
 And it is to this consideration more prob- 
 ably than to the higher ones of morality that 
 we may look for an ending of the business 
 of war. For in the last analysis this thing 
 which we call trade is the physical nervous sys- 
 tem over which the finer sentiments of mankind 
 flash to and fro to the ends of the earth. And 
 more than once in the history of the world have 
 commercial considerations supplied the main 
 motive for larger political unions. It was this, 
 we remember, that started the movement which 
 resulted in the establishment of our own Federal 
 Union. 
 
 There was a time when the people of Holland 
 were content periodically to pick up their pos- 
 sessions or such part of them as they could get 
 
 114 
 
EMPIRE OR FEDERATION 
 
 away with and flee before tlie sea, until finally 
 the futility of this procedure struck home and 
 dikes were built to hold back the ocean. What 
 the Hollanders have done to secure for them- 
 selves peace uninterrupted by the ravages of the 
 sea, the brains of Europe may be depended upon 
 to do against the intolerable ravages of war. 
 And just as in any part of the world, if a people 
 were threatened by the sea, they would, if they 
 were wise, take counsel with Holland and ac- 
 quaint themselves with the steps taken by that 
 country to put an end to her menace, so we may 
 be sure that sooner or later the nations of Eu- 
 rope will turn to the United States of America 
 for light upon the problem which now confronts 
 them. For it is becoming evident that the po- 
 litical evolution of Europe despite the innumer- 
 able obstacles that stand in its way, will follow 
 out in a general manner either those lines along 
 which the United States have come, federation, 
 or those other lines along which Germany and 
 Russia have traveled in the building up of their 
 nationality, conquest of the weaker by the 
 stronger. There is no third way. 
 
 And indeed if we will look into it, this second 
 plan has already been tried at least five distinct 
 times in the history of Europe. The Caesars 
 
 115 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 tried it and were never able to extend their 
 power beyond the Rhine. Charlemagne tried it 
 and, while he succeeded in pushing the boun- 
 daries of his empire northward to the Baltic, 
 in the South, Spain and southern Italy remained 
 aloof. The Fredericks and the Ottos tried it 
 and their failure postponed for centuries the 
 rise of modern Germany. Charles V tried it 
 and in the very heart of his empire, France, 
 despite the forces hurled against her, was able 
 to maintain her independence. Napoleon tried 
 it and for all his unequaled ability as a con- 
 queror, the North and East remained unsub- 
 dued. And every one of these partial successes 
 toward the unification of Europe has been fol- 
 lowed by a break-up; in every case blood and 
 treasure have been lavished in vain. 
 
 And yet, as though the people of Europe were 
 unaware of all this, for a sixth time it is being 
 tried. East and west, Germany is hurling her 
 might against those eternal walls at the base 
 of which, forgotten it would seem, lie the bones 
 of the ancestors of the present armies. And 
 already, as though Nature had determined to 
 convince the people of Europe that they are go- 
 ing about it in the wrong way, despite the un- 
 paralleled slaughter, the like of which none of 
 
 116 
 
EMPIRE OR FEDERATION 
 
 the other would-be conquerors of the Continent 
 ever knew, the surge has been checked, the iron 
 lines that were to encircle Europe are at bay. 
 The lesson which it took France, under Napo-^ 
 leon, twenty years to learn, and the Romans 
 centuries, Germany is learning in a few months. 
 Is it possible that Europe will require further 
 proof that she is pursuing the wrong course to- 
 ward peace and unity? Will she still persist in 
 her madness until that Power, which is ever 
 working toward the unification of separated 
 peoples, finally relents and gives Europe hei" 
 heart's desire — at the hands of Russia? 
 
 Will Italy and France wait until by some new 
 alliance — alliances are ever changing — the at- 
 present disrupted Teutonic peoples are brought 
 into a menacing unity, and one by land and the 
 other by sea go forth together to accomplish the 
 inevitable ? Will England wait until some flash 
 of common interest and common desire for those 
 rich and widely separated parts of her empire 
 shall unite against her the peoples of the Con- 
 tinent ? Will Germany wait until that which lit- 
 tle Belgium has suffered at the hands of Ger- 
 many, Germany in her turn shall suffer at the 
 hands of the over-flowing population of Russia? 
 One thing is certain : if after the present war the 
 
 117 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 lesson of tlie ages is still not learned, that sym- 
 pathy which, despite their continued folly, the 
 world still feels for the separated peoples of Eu- 
 rope will not be forthcoming when the sword of 
 the Slav shall come down and put an end forever 
 to their dissensions. 
 
 When the smoke of the present war has blown 
 away and it has become clear even to the blind 
 that for nineteen hundred years the peoples of 
 Europe have been vainly struggling in the cul- 
 de-sac of an imperial state, prophets upon the 
 mountain tops will turn their eyes across the 
 sea, and as America has in many instances 
 profited by the experience of Europe, Europe in 
 turn will profit by the experience of America. 
 We may not have distinguished ourselves in a 
 world way in the arts ; we may not have worked 
 out so well as Europe some of those social and 
 municipal problems which are daily becoming 
 more acute, but in this at least we stand su- 
 preme : we have solved the problem of the uni- 
 fication of states; we have demonstrated be- 
 yond controversy that it is possible for sepa- 
 rated governments to interwork under the sup- 
 erintendence of one, and that all this is not in- 
 consistent with the expansion of the liberty of 
 the individual. So much at least we have ac- 
 
 118 
 
EMPIRE OB FEDERATION 
 
 complislied, and after a hundred and twenty-five 
 years of experience we believe that our system 
 as a whole is sound and capable of successful 
 operation in any part of the world. 
 
 Europe, of course, has obstacles to overcome 
 in the application of the American system which 
 our forefathers had not to face. The inhabi- 
 tants of the thirteen Colonies were virtually a 
 unit in race, in religion, and in their conception 
 of the relation between the state and the indi- 
 vidual. And, furthermore, a common language 
 underwarped their every-day life and pre- 
 served, despite their multifarious political and 
 commercial rivalries, all the essentials of broth- 
 erhood. And therefore the task which confronted 
 the statesmen of our Revolutionary period was 
 of a superficial nature and easy of performance 
 as compared with that which confronts Euro- 
 pean statesmen to-day. It is difficult for us in 
 America to realize the height and extent of the 
 barriers that must be overcome before the peo- 
 ple of Europe may permanently settle down to 
 the enjoyment of that order and security which 
 we who have grown up in it have come to regard 
 as a natural endowment, like space and air. 
 
 Instead of one race, Europe has at least three, 
 of such magnitude and influence in continental 
 
 119 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 affairs that no effort toward unification is in 
 the least worth while that does not meet with 
 the approval of all three. The Latin race, com- 
 posed of the Italians, the French, the Spanish 
 and the Portuguese peoples ; the Teutonic race, 
 made up of the English, the German, the Aus- 
 trian, the Dutch, the Swede, the Norwegian, and 
 the Dane; and the Slavonic race, embracing 
 chiefly the Eussian proper and the Pole, whether 
 in Eussia or in Germany or in Austria, together 
 with almost all the Balkan peoples, and many 
 others chiefly in the Austrian provinces — all 
 these must somehow be reconciled and brought 
 to a knowledge of their fundamental identity 
 and to a willingness to give and take to the end 
 that strife among them may be put away. 
 
 The difficulty inherent in the bringing together 
 of these alien elements is accentuated when we 
 remember that these three races represent on the 
 whole three distinct religions or rather three dis- 
 tinct branches of one religion. The Latin is, of 
 course, mainly Eoman Catholic, the Teuton 
 chiefly Protestant, while the Slav belongs on the 
 whole to the Orthodox or Greek Catholic Church. 
 And between these, between even the two con- 
 servative branches, the Eoman Catholic and the 
 Greek Catholic, the differences, far from being 
 
 120 
 
EMPIRE OR FEDERATION 
 
 superficial, strike deep into their essential struc- 
 ture. On the other hand, as a solid beam run- 
 ning the full length and reinforcing these three 
 pieces is the mighty secular age that is growing 
 up. Yesterday enlightened Europe was the bat- 
 tle-ground of fighting faiths. To-day even the 
 Turk, whose sword once swept the earth at the 
 call of the Prophet, is deaf to the preaching of 
 a holy war. Slowly but surely out of the wreck- 
 age of narrow sects and religions a single spa- 
 cious temple is rising to be the home of a new 
 and united humanity. 
 
 Sooner or later the nations will follow the 
 sects, though the lines of the former are la- 
 mentably slow in disappearing. So far as those 
 of the Latin stock are concerned, they seem to 
 have passed through that passion for empire 
 from which England too is just emerging into a 
 strange lassitude, and with which Germany, 
 whose youth, as we have seen, has been pro- 
 longed, is so aflame. And the Slav, solitary 
 there in the North, is just entering the period 
 of his nationality, and has had so little inter- 
 course with the other nations of Europe that off- 
 hand we should say that he would probably 
 be distrustful of any suggestions of federation. 
 And yet if we are wise we will ponder long the 
 
 121 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 character and history of this people before we 
 venture upon such an assumption. The Slav in 
 many respects, owing to his mingling with the 
 Oriental, is older and more mature than either 
 the Latin or the Teuton. And, as I have tried 
 to show elsewhere, he is instinctively more co- 
 operative and by nature more capable of broth- 
 erhood than many of his apparently more ad- 
 vanced neighbors. That this is no fancy at once 
 becomes evident when we remember that it was 
 at the initiative of the present Czar of Rus- 
 sia that there was established as a preliminary 
 step to a greater union the Hague Court which, 
 discredited though it now is, was at least a prof ^ 
 f er of brotherhood. And as a further reminder 
 to the world that is too prone to forget the 
 nobler side of Russian character, who was it that 
 exactly one hundred years before the outbreak 
 of the present war proposed to the nations of 
 Europe "a league of which the principle was to 
 be obligatory mediation, and which should aim, 
 among other objects, at framing a code of the 
 law of nations''? Alexander I, Czar of Russia. 
 With what feeling must Europe now look back 
 upon that offer ! 
 
 And, in respect of language, consider, as com- 
 pared to America of the Revolution, the babel of 
 
 122 
 
EMPIRE OE FEDERATION 
 
 tongues that cry division through Europe. We 
 in America, into whose wide and vital language 
 alien tongues disappear as streams disappear 
 into the ocean, understand virtually nothing of 
 the difficulties which are bred of these linguis- 
 tic differences. Of the problem which Austria- 
 Hungary has encountered in the face of this con- 
 fusion, we know something. And Europe is but 
 a larger Austria-Hungary. But Austria's dif- 
 ficulty, we must remember, arose from the fact 
 that she sought this blending of tongues to fur- 
 ther her own despotic domination, whereas the 
 spirit of federation is in its very nature con- 
 ciliatory. 
 
 Though marked, the differences which we 
 have enumerated are in reality much less im- 
 portant than they appear and may confidently 
 be expected to give way when once the people 
 realize that permanent peace is absolutely im- 
 possible until some greater union is brought 
 about. Certainly when they once understand 
 that it is possible to establish a United States 
 of Europe without seriously interfering with 
 these local interests, we may be sure that the 
 chief obstacle to the attainment of the great 
 union will have been removed. If they can be 
 made to see, for instance, that Italy may still be 
 
 123 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 Italy, that Russia may still go on with her na- 
 tional development, that each nation may con- 
 tinue to work out in its own way its peculiar 
 destiny, retaining even its monarch — if after the 
 present war there are such things — it is incon- 
 ceivable, when the people once fully understand 
 this, that they will allow their petty jealousies 
 of one another to prevent the coming of that 
 one which all may hail as a common savior. 
 
 The only obstacle of serious aspect that 
 stands in the way of this larger union is, of 
 course, the character of the new thing and its 
 relation to its creators. And it is upon this 
 phase of the matter that the experience of 
 America may be of infinite value in determining 
 what that character and those relations should 
 be. For in this most important respect, 
 America's problem of yesterday and Europe's 
 problem of to-day are identical. 
 
 In the first place, then, if Europe is wise 
 she will read the political history of America 
 from the first appearance of the Colonies as free 
 states and will dwell long upon that rudimen- 
 tary union which they first formed and will con- 
 sider carefully its workings between the estab- 
 lishment of peace and the adoption of the Con- 
 stitution. For it was during this period that 
 
 124 
 
EMPIRE OR FEDERATION 
 
 America solved the vital problems of union, the 
 neglect of which has again brought Europe to 
 the verge of destruction. In these pages she 
 will find among independent states the same 
 reluctance to a larger union which for centuries 
 has marked the history of Europe. A thousand 
 years hence when the World State has been 
 firmly established, the political work of the 
 Anglo-Saxon will probably stand out as his su- 
 preme contribution. And nowhere thus far has 
 his marvelous political vision led him more di- 
 rectly to the true path than it did in America in 
 that important decade between 1780 and 1790. 
 For if we omit the period of the war when for- 
 eign pressure held the thirteen states together, 
 five years of independent life were sufficient to 
 demonstrate conclusively to the people of the 
 separate states that independence was incon- 
 sistent with their highest development. And 
 they began forthwith to lay the foundations of a 
 ''more perfect union" than that under which 
 they had lived hitherto. And in looking over 
 the efforts which they made to get light upon the 
 problem of union, we are struck with the breadth 
 of knowledge which the leaders of the union 
 movement had gathered from the history and 
 experience of other peoples. Every virtue and 
 
 125 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 every flaw in the political systems of the past, 
 from the Delphic Amphictiony to the Union of 
 the Swiss Cantons, are at their tongues' ends, 
 and they are able and willing to profit by 
 the mistakes of others. Similarly, European 
 statesmen, if they are wise, will profit by the 
 mistakes of our forefathers. 
 
 One of these mistakes which became apparent 
 almost immediately after peace had been estab- 
 lished was the idea which had prevailed from 
 the very beginning of their separation from 
 England, that a loose confederation would be 
 sufficient. That Europe had not profited in this 
 regard by the experience of America is evident 
 in the faith and large expectations which she 
 placed in the Hague Court. Foolish as we now 
 see that our forefathers were and as they them- 
 selves within a few years realized, to their credit 
 it must be said that at no time even in their 
 most complete isolation were they so visionary 
 as to imagine that a mere court of arbitration 
 would serve any practical purpose. Their very 
 first efforts to bring about a closer relation be- 
 tween the states resulted in a congress with 
 power compared to which, weak as it was, was 
 immeasurably more adequate than that exer- 
 cised by the Hague Court. The Continental 
 
 126 
 
EMPIRE OE FEDEEATION 
 
 Congress was a sincere effort toward union, 
 whereas the Hague Court is something obvi- 
 ously set up for no other purpose, it would seem, 
 than to gratify the aspirations of certain well- 
 meaning idealists among the nations. Conceive 
 of the legislative and executive departments of 
 any of our large cities, especially its police sys- 
 tem, to he suddenly abolished, leaving only the 
 courts, and these exercising, not as now, power 
 to compel to come before them those charged 
 with crime, but acting as arbitrators only when 
 requested, and you have a comical picture in all 
 its dignity of the Hague Court among the na- 
 tions. Compare to this pale, do-nothing judi- 
 ciary the first Continental Congress that met 
 under the Articles of Confederation. Among 
 these Articles which marked the first serious 
 get-together movement among the new states, 
 we find the following provisions. Imagine even 
 these in force in Europe before August 1, 1914, 
 and conceive what might now be the happy con- 
 dition of the continent: 
 
 No vessels of war shall be kept in time of peace by 
 any State, except such number only as shall be deemed 
 necessary by the United States, in Congress assembled, 
 for the defense of such State or its trade ; nor shall any 
 body of forces be kept up by any State in time of 
 
 127 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 peace, except such number only as, in the judgment 
 of the United States, in Congress assembled, shall be 
 deemed requisite to garrison the forts necessary for the 
 defense of such State ; . . . 
 
 No State shall engage in any war without the con- 
 sent of the United States, in Congress assembled, un- 
 less such State be actually invaded by enemies, or shall 
 have received certain advice of a resolution being 
 formed by some nation ... to invade such State, 
 and the danger is so imminent as not to admit of a 
 delay, till the United States, in Congress assembled, 
 can be consulted; nor shall any State grant commis- 
 sions to any ships or vessels of war, nor letters of mark 
 or reprisal, except it be after a declaration of war by 
 the United States, in Congress assembled, and then only 
 against the kingdom or State, and the subjects thereof, 
 against which war has been so declared, and under 
 such regulations as shall be established by the United 
 States, in Congress assembled, . . . 
 
 The United States, in Congress assembled, shall have 
 the sole and exclusive right and power of determining 
 on peace and war, except in the cases mentioned. . . . 
 
 The United States, in Congress assembled, shall also 
 be the last resort on appeal in all disputes now subsist- 
 ing or that hereafter may arise between two or more 
 States concerning boundary, jurisdiction, or any other 
 cause whatever ; — 
 
 And for the further strengthening of the new 
 union, the aforesaid Congress was authorized 
 to appoint a committee, one delegate from each 
 state, to sit in the recess of Congress, and such 
 other committees and officers as might be neces- 
 
 128 
 
EMPIRE OR FEDERATION 
 
 sary for managing the general affairs of the 
 United States under their direction. 
 
 Here, more than a century and a quarter ago, 
 was an experiment in political union which so 
 far as any influence it has had upon efforts to- 
 ward international union, might as well never 
 have been made. Nowhere among European 
 statesmen do we find that open mind, that eager- 
 ness to get light upon the problem of the larger 
 state, which characterized the early Americans 
 in a similar condition of disunion. Time and 
 again, as we have seen, they have plunged into 
 the abyss of war, cherishing the vain hope that 
 somehow or other the bubble of empire might 
 light upon them. And when peace has returned 
 and the old question of how war may be avoided 
 for the future has again pushed to the front, 
 never has any serious suggestion led toward the 
 path of federation, but always it has seemed that 
 peace was to be found along the lines of more 
 highly developed nationalities, and then by so 
 grouping these nationalities and so balancing 
 one group against another that the least tamper- 
 ing with the foundations would inevitably bring 
 down the whole mass. In a word, the European 
 mind, despite its centuries of experience in state 
 building, has thus far shown itself incapable of 
 
 129 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 seeing beyond a loose political dualism. In the 
 face of failure after failure, they have continued 
 with childlike trust to build upon the sand of al- 
 liances. When a strong nation has been won 
 away to the other side, decades of hatred of 
 that nation have suddenly disappeared and 
 shouts have gone up over the new camp-fellow 
 as though this time the good fortune were to be 
 eternal. And this has gone on with fatuous illu- 
 sion, generation after generation. How often 
 have the capitals of Europe thrilled at the rumor 
 of a new ally ! To-day it is the czar, to-morrow 
 Italy, and the next day the Japanese. Kings 
 have become popular and statesmen famous by 
 the mere signing up of a new companion-in- 
 arms. Cabinets have fallen because this ad- 
 vantage has been lost. Indeed, the main pur- 
 pose of European statesmanship has been the 
 forging of stronger alliances. 
 
 In this respect, the ambassadors of European 
 nations lead the world. How thoroughly ac- 
 quainted they are with every vital need and 
 secret ambition of the state which they may hap- 
 pen at the time to be seeking as an ally! And 
 with what finesse and profound understanding 
 are the advantages of such an alliance pre- 
 sented! And once secured, what incalculable 
 
 130 
 
EMPIEE OR FEDERATION 
 
 sums of money are often advanced to render the 
 new ally capable of the most powerful support in 
 time of war ! 
 
 And in this respect what marvels have been 
 accomplished! Like the fleets of the Lillipu- 
 tians, nation has been pulled from nation. The 
 ends of the earth have been brought together. 
 At a stroke of the pen those *' eternal'^ racial 
 antipathies about which we have been hearing 
 so much, have completely vanished. Between 
 England and France, between the German and 
 the Turk, between the Russian and the Japanese, 
 a wonderful love appears. And all these prodi- 
 gious labors have been spent solely to bring 
 about cooperation in time of war. Toward co- 
 operation in time of peace and for peaceful pur- 
 poses, toward union, toward a United States 
 of Europe, nothing has been done. We have 
 Gladstones and Bismarcks and Cavours, but not 
 one single European statesman. As far as po- 
 litical vision is concerned Julius 'CsBsar, two 
 thousand years ago, saw as far as they. And it 
 is from these nations that the dream now goes 
 forth to rule the world ! 
 
 For anything potential of the slightest ad- 
 vantage in the time of war, the European mind 
 has been as marvelously open as was the mind 
 
 131 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 of the Greek to the beauties of art. If in the 
 remotest corner of the globe some new explosive 
 has shown itself in the test-tube of some labora- 
 tory, how quickly has the rumor of it reached 
 the cabinets of Europe, and with what per- 
 sistence and with what stealth and with what 
 corruption of men has the secret been sought 
 out! Consider the war equipment of the Eu- 
 ropean nations and see how cosmopolitan they 
 are. The brains of the world are there. In 
 dreadnought construction, in air craft, in mines 
 and torpedoes, to the smallest device of shell 
 extraction, how familiar is Europe with the 
 best that America has produced! Indeed, this 
 acquaintance with what we have done toward 
 success in war is equaled only by the ignorance 
 of what We have done to avert war. In 
 nothing is the essential martial character of 
 Europe more conspicuous than in its respect for 
 American war inventions and its contempt for 
 American peace inventions. Has a single Eu- 
 ropean statesman read the history of the for- 
 mation of the United States of America with 
 any insight into its possible application to the 
 European situation? To have read it as a book 
 is one thing. To have read it as a page of life, 
 luminous with divine guidance for the promo- 
 
 132 
 
EMPIRE OR FEDERATION 
 
 ters of a union of states, is quite a different 
 thing. Do these builders of the Hague Court 
 know, I wonder, that that first attempt of 
 America toward union, centuries ahead of the 
 Hague Court as it was in practical statesman- 
 ship — do they know that a hundred and twenty- 
 five years ago this attempt failed? And do they 
 know why it failed? And have they ever con- 
 sidered what our forefathers did to remedy 
 these defects ? 
 
 It is probably too much to expect, however, 
 that an appreciation of what America has ac- 
 complished in the science of government should 
 show itself among the confident European 
 statesmen before the conviction has struck bot- 
 tom that their own systems have failed. To an 
 outsider, with even the most general knowledge 
 of the war cycles in European history, it would 
 seem that that hour is already long overdue. 
 Yet even now, torn as that continent again is 
 with the strife of states, virtually all that we 
 hear bearing upon the to-morrow of peace has 
 to do in one way or another with the pernicious 
 old idea of empire, with the British empire or 
 the German empire or the Russian empire, and 
 with guesses at which of these will achieve the 
 ultimate dominion. Above the thunder of can- 
 
 133 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 non and the wail of the wounded, not a voice 
 from the inmost heart of any of the warring 
 peoples is heard demanding that the nation 
 cease its struggle for empire and enter with 
 others upon the path of federation. Millions go 
 singing down the road to death, clasping to their 
 bosoms the hope of empire or the determination, 
 hand in hand as allies, to hurl back the imperial 
 legions. Perhaps when the war is over the na- 
 tions of Europe will perceive the necessity of 
 something more permanent than alliances. But 
 just now, if such an aspiration exists, it lies com- 
 pletely hidden under the smoke and tumult of 
 war. 
 
 134 
 
THE FALL OR RISE OF SOCIALISM 
 
VI 
 
 THE FALL. OB RISE OP SOCIALISM 
 
 FOR a time at least the ** menace of Social- 
 ism" has been laid. That dark cloud 
 which for years has been gathering over Europe, 
 threatening the nations with revolution, has sud- 
 denly been swallowed up by a thunder-storm, 
 to avert which was one of the aims of Socialism. 
 Therefore it is a double defeat that Socialism 
 has suffered ; her dream of peace has been shat- 
 tered, and that other dream, of more substantial 
 promise — ^the rise of an international working- 
 class which, with myriads of hands interlocked 
 across boundaries and through alien tongues, 
 was to establish brotherhood and bring in the 
 new age, at least for the working-population 
 of Europe — ^this orb, too, has passed behind the 
 dark planet of war. Those elaborate plans for 
 the overthrow of capitalism, that consuming 
 passion and infectious self-sacrifice for a new 
 and better order of daily life, those mighty lead- 
 ers, and those strong lines of brave men, who, 
 
 137 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 with their feet upon the idea of nationality, were 
 holding Europe together — ^little ridges of sand 
 caught up as by a whirlwind and blown away. 
 The German is German still, la telle France is 
 mightier than Jaures, the troops that England 
 is sending to the Continent are landing not as 
 Socialists, but as soldiers. Once more it is 
 made plain that the old is stronger than the new, 
 that a passion that has had its home in the 
 human heart for a thousand years will outlast 
 the passion of yesterday. 
 
 To a large class, the world over, this check 
 and apparent collapse of Socialism is the one 
 compensation for the horrors of the present 
 war. For to a class living in affluence and se- 
 curity, breathing the air of a perpetual Sans 
 Souci, the killing and wounding of millions of 
 men, the paralyzing of business, and the wide 
 suffering spread abroad to a degree through all 
 lands — all this, seen from the window, is at least 
 to be preferred to hostile forces seriously at 
 work under the foundations of the house. And 
 it was the foundations of society, or of that 
 part of society that is peculiarly interested 
 in the preservation of the present order, that 
 Socialism was sapping. And therefore a catas- 
 trophe which diverts such forces from their sub- 
 
 138 
 
THE FALL OR RISE OF SOCIALISM 
 
 terranean attack comes to this class not without 
 a certain cause for gratification. For the pres- 
 ent war is in Europe, and its horrors are chiefly 
 confined to that continent ; whereas the menace 
 of Socialism was world-wide. And the present 
 war, too, is a thing of the present, whereas So- 
 cialism, could it have been triumphant, would 
 have perpetuated itself beyond any possibility 
 to foresee its end. And therefore the long sigh 
 of relief that the menace is past. When the 
 present war is over, society will settle down to 
 work in the good old way. Karl Marx, that 
 idol of millions, will take his place upon the shelf 
 beside Owen and Fourier in that long line of 
 dreamers of the impossible. 
 
 And something of the same feeling that the 
 great movement has suffered a severe set-back 
 is shared by many of those to whom the ad- 
 vancement of Socialism has been a life-work. 
 Everywhere there is despair of vanished hopes, 
 or at least an acute disappointment. And while 
 the conviction still lingers that the cause which 
 the now-atrophied thing represented is Just and 
 that the long and arduous work of education has 
 not been wholly in vain, it has come as a blow 
 upon the head that a surge of such strength and 
 such grandiose movement should suddenly be 
 
 139 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 arested and thrust under, while, as though no 
 effort had been made to erase them, old national 
 lines reappear. 
 
 Despite this gratification and disappointment, 
 however, it is quite possible that the surprise 
 in this respect which the present war has oc- 
 casioned may be equaled by another surprise 
 which may come when the smoke and uproar 
 have passed away. For this war is not some- 
 thing which, meteor-like, without any connection 
 with our world life, dropped upon us from the 
 skies, and which will presently go back into the 
 skies, leaving only ruined buildings and the 
 scarred earth to remind humanity that a storm 
 has passed. Slowly, through long years, it has 
 projected itself from the soul of the peoples of 
 Europe as an ear of corn is projected from its 
 stalk. And when peace has returned, the con- 
 sequences, we may be sure, will flood back into 
 the soul of man and show themselves in all the 
 activities of the future. To Socialists, there- 
 fore, as well as to those who, for one reason 
 or another, oppose Socialism, the point of vital 
 concern is how seriously the ideal of Socialism 
 has been affected by the present war ; in a word, 
 whether what we have witnessed is indeed the 
 downfall of Socialism or, as is not impossible, 
 
 140 
 
THE FALL OR RISE OF SOCL^LISM 
 
 a violent clearing away of those encumbrances 
 for the removal of which the educational process 
 was too slow. 
 
 In speaking of the erasure of Socialism by na- 
 tionalism, I have said that it is the erasure of 
 the younger by the older, a creed of yesterday 
 by a primal impulse that strikes its root far 
 back in the past. And this is the popular view, 
 that Socialism had its origin in Karl Marx, 
 whereas we come upon the ruins of nations un- 
 der the sand mounds of Egypt and Babylonia. 
 But is this true? Did Socialism appear sud- 
 denly upon the earth with the publication of 
 Das Kapital, and has it, with no previous prep- 
 aration, built that mighty structure, the collapse 
 of which — if it has collapsed — ^has been heard 
 above the thunder of cannon? Or did the pub- 
 lication of that book simply release into a new 
 channel forces which in one way or another 
 had been operative since the beginning of the 
 world? 
 
 Socialism — ^what does Socialism mean? Evi- 
 dently mass action as opposed to individual ef- 
 fort. For when we eliminate the individual ac- 
 cretions, when we boil down the thousand and 
 one definitions by which men have sought to out- 
 line and express the real meaning of this world- 
 
 141 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 troubler, this is the residue, that it is an asso- 
 ciated effort. That this effort during the last 
 half-century has been consciously directed to- 
 ward industrial ends, toward a more scientific 
 production and a more equitable distribution, 
 in no wise affects the great fact that the essence 
 of Socialism is cooperation. And anything that 
 stimulates cooperation, in whatever direction it 
 may turn the energies of men, is certain to bring 
 results that sooner or later will show themselves 
 in every part of the social structure, just as at 
 the coming of spring the awakening influence 
 of this season is seen in every living portion of 
 the landscape. 
 
 Consider from this point of view the meaning 
 of war. Here, it is evident, is the oldest So- 
 cialist movement among men, the one enterprise 
 in which in all times and in all countries men 
 have shown not only a willingness, but a passion, 
 to sacrifice themselves for what they conceived 
 to be the common good. War alone has been 
 the great corrector of the too highly developed 
 self. That demon which we see to-day strew- 
 ing the fields of Europe with the slain, he, it 
 seems, was the first, as he is still the one in- 
 spiring, instructor in the supreme glory of the 
 effacement of the individual, or more exactly, 
 
 142 
 
THE FALL OR EISE OF SOCIALISM 
 
 let us say, in the creation of a social choir in 
 which there is a happy blending and a joyous co- 
 operation of parts. 
 
 Time and again during the last eight months 
 we have heard the expression, ''the war ma- 
 chine." The term itself indicates a conscious- 
 ness on the part of men that here is a social 
 thing that is working toward a given end with 
 that perfect unity of action which characterizes 
 a piece of machinery. And not solely because 
 of the monstrous work in which it is engaged, 
 but also because of this nice adjustment of part 
 to part and the smooth movement of the whole, 
 we think of the thing as inhuman. Educated to 
 the idea that life, to be life, must be a competi- 
 tion between persons, that friction is somehow 
 necessary to individual and social efficiency and 
 well-being, we are sterile of images with 
 which to set forth in human terms the marvel- 
 ous cooperation of part with part and every 
 part with the whole which we see in the national 
 war movements in Europe, and therefore we 
 call them machines. But if we will only watch 
 the working of these machines in themselves, 
 apart from their collision with one another, we 
 shall find that there is something admirable 
 here, something which as far surpasses the or- 
 
 143 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 ganization of the peaceful work of the world as 
 harmony surpasses discord. 
 
 How comes it we have neglected the real les- 
 son of war and have clung only to the bloody 
 husk? To what flaw in man's character or to 
 what blunting of the finer faculties of the mind 
 are we to ascribe the astounding fact that the 
 machinery of death has been socialized while 
 the machinery of life has been left competitive ; 
 that when a nation goes forth to destroy there 
 flashes through the millions of that nation a 
 marvelous comradeship, and the moment the 
 purpose of the war has been accomplished and 
 the armies are disbanded to return to the ma- 
 chinery of peaceful industry, these comrades are 
 obliged to unlearn all those fine lessons in co- 
 operation for the common good and begin again 
 that competitive struggle with one another 
 which in many ways is more cruel and destruc- 
 tive both to the individual and to society than 
 the armed conflict that is going on to-day? If 
 we could withdraw ourselves from the social 
 organism into which we are born and which we 
 accept as the natural order of things, and view 
 for the first time the activities of men, we should 
 be much less surprised that men should go to 
 war from the fierce struggle of a competitive 
 
 144 
 
THE FALL OR RISE OF SOCL^LISM 
 
 system than that they should return to a com- 
 petitive system from that hand-in-hand adven- 
 ture in cooperation and brotherhood in which, 
 in these epic movements, from the first to the 
 last drum-beat they are absorbed. Only when 
 nation is attacking nation, it seems, are peoples 
 capable of swarming forth in that unity of spirit 
 to establish which as a permanent relation 
 among men has been the supreme aim of ideal- 
 ists since society began. 
 
 It has been said — and of all arguments against 
 Socialism this probably has been the most ef- 
 fective — that only by competition of man with 
 man is it possible to kindle and keep burning 
 that divine flame of enthusiasm which is essen- 
 tial to individual efficiency, and therefore that 
 anything tending to eliminate competition would 
 tend inevitably to reduce society to sluggish mo- 
 notony. Yet from one end of Europe to the 
 other, along lines of battle in which thousands 
 of men, rivals of yesterday, are drawn up shoul- 
 der to shoulder, cooperating with one another 
 with such singleness of aim as to make almost 
 sacrilegious the least suggestion of rivalry, 
 along these interminable lines runs an enthu- 
 siasm which it would be impossible to increase 
 were every soldier fighting for his private gain. 
 
 145 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 Nowhere is there a thought of self, and yet 
 everywhere there is ardor. Even that class- 
 struggle beyond which many Socialists have 
 been unable to see, the elimination of which they 
 have declared to be impossible, has here com- 
 pletely disappeared. Men eminent in the higher 
 work of the world in days of peace, men rich 
 in talent or in wealth, feel honored to serve in 
 places however obscure in the present war. If 
 competition of nation with nation in an armed 
 enterprise, socialized as we see it is to the small- 
 est detail, is sufficient to kindle so vast an en- 
 thusiasm among men, why is it we imagine that 
 a similar competition of nation with nation in 
 the peaceful industries, socialized as are the 
 present war movements, but working toward a 
 divine purpose, the peaceful and joyous devel- 
 opment of the race, would render the man apa- 
 thetic? What a monstrous indictment of the 
 moral order of the universe it would be were 
 it true that cooperation for the common good 
 is profitable only in war, but that in peace this 
 same common good requires for its advancement 
 the utmost license of man to prey upon man! 
 Under a truth like this, could the human mind 
 realize it, humanity would stagger to a despair 
 darker even than that caused by present brutal 
 
 146 
 
THE FALL OE EISE OF SOCIALISM 
 
 catastrophe. For this would clang to forever 
 the door of hope. 
 
 Strangely enough, just as we are thinking 
 these thoughts and wondering if it is indeed 
 possible to kindle and keep alive in men engaged 
 in their normal occupations of production some- 
 thing of the enthusiasm which has been aroused 
 by the present savage excitement, along comes 
 one of the foremost of American manufacturers 
 who, having caught a glimpse of the new age 
 that is dawning, has for a year had his vast 
 thousands at work upon a profit sharing basis, 
 and testifies that so marvelous has been the in- 
 crease of enthusiasm among the men to whom 
 this good fortune has come that the company 
 has found it necessary to hold them back lest 
 in their overzeal they go too far. Now if this 
 has been the result simply of a small sharing 
 of the profits, is it unreasonable to suppose that 
 even greater results of this kind would be ob- 
 tained if the interest of these workers were ex- 
 tended not only to profits, but to ownership 
 also? He is a poor student of human nature 
 who does not know that men are more interested 
 in freedom than in wages. If this manufacturer 
 or any other of our great employers is curious to 
 know the full capacity of men for efficient pro- 
 
 147 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 duction and for advancement toward a thrifty 
 and self -helpful human life, let him begin a grad- 
 ual distribution of ownership with the promise 
 to the men that the plant shall be theirs just as 
 soon as by a wise discharge of their increased 
 responsibilities they can prove that they are 
 capable of complete ownership. Then we shall 
 see whether the business of killing men is more 
 fruitful of enthusiasm than the healthful ac- 
 tivities of peace and growth and independ- 
 ence. 
 
 But not only in the unity of emotion which 
 it has engendered, but also in the practical work- 
 ing of this emotion, the present war is probably 
 the most perfect demonstration of the efiSciency 
 of Socialism that the world has ever witnessed. 
 To produce this efficient cooperation, what cen- 
 turies of training have been required! How 
 slow man has been to learn the advantage of 
 applying even in war this great lesson ! When 
 we remember that in the beginnings of society 
 armed bands, the embryos of the present armies, 
 were obliged somehow to find their own food, 
 and that among all early states down even until 
 within recent times, every soldier was expected 
 to supply his own arms and equipment, it be- 
 gins to dawn upon us that our present amazing 
 
 148 
 
THE FALL OR RISE OF SOCIALISM 
 
 efficiency in things military is due almost solely 
 to the fact that the state of war has for cen- 
 turies heen in process of socialization, that the 
 individual who yesterday was obliged to take 
 thought for his clothing, for his armor, even for 
 his own food and shelter, has to-day only to 
 do his duty as a soldier to be free of all these 
 cares. The tocsin sounds, and the clothing ap- 
 pears ; the rifle, instinct with life, it would seem, 
 leaps to his hand ; for the cavalryman the horse 
 with bridle and saddle is ready. For every man 
 his implement is at hand. Long trains are in 
 waiting, and with what unimaginable conveni- 
 ences! Kitchens with cooks capped and 
 aproned ; hospitals with doctors and nurses, cots 
 and bandages, medicine for the least blister of 
 the foot. A whole society is in motion. Com- 
 forts such as men dream of in their homes are 
 here in abundance. To the gathering millions, 
 come, many of them, from long years of galling 
 economy, it is as though some magician were 
 abroad assembling out of the air these wonders. 
 The age of childhood has returned. One has 
 only to run to the great father and be fed with 
 the most wholesome food, and clothed with the 
 most scientific clothing, and have poured out at 
 his feet such toys as the heart of a child never 
 
 149 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 dreamed of; swords and guns and cannon of 
 every description; trains and motors, subma- 
 rines and flying-sMps ; search-lights for the 
 night and wonderful telescopes for the day. 
 And in what quantities ! Usually when a play- 
 thing has been broken, there are days of depri- 
 yation. Not so here. 
 
 And once in motion, consider the care, the 
 attention, which the great father bestows upon 
 his children. Man who was yesterday an or- 
 phan is to-day a cherished offspring. And of 
 how devoted a father ! Every part of the equip- 
 ment has been arranged with a view to the great- 
 est facility and comfort of motion and repose, 
 from the tooth-brush to the shoe cut to fit the 
 exceptional foot. He has only to march and 
 rest and eat. Where axes are needed, there are 
 axes; for trenches there are spades. And on 
 the firing-line he has only to shoot. The hand is 
 there with the ammunition. And let him be 
 wounded, and instantly the great father becomes 
 the great mother. The despatch and thorough- 
 ness with which he is attended are limited only 
 by the capacity of the service. Not here neglect, 
 with idle doctors all about. Money or no 
 money, he is cared for. For once his real worth 
 as a man is appreciated. This is the most as- 
 
 150 
 
THE FALL OE EISE OF SOCIALISM 
 
 tonishing thing about the present war. It has 
 made of the miner, the mason, the factory-hand, 
 the street-car conductor an asset of such value 
 that for the first time it has become, with no 
 opposition even from the capitalist press, the 
 sacred duty of society to see not only that he 
 is well fed and well clothed, but also that at the 
 public expense he is supplied with doctors and 
 nurses. And as he lingers between life and 
 death, never a thought of who is to meet the ex- 
 penses of the burial, never the hell that per- 
 haps wife and children will starve. The great 
 father and the great mother will provide for 
 them. 
 
 Never before in the history of the world, I 
 repeat, has there been such a practical demon- 
 stration of the Socialist theory — the theory that 
 somehow or other the individual would be better 
 off and society better off if the latter would take 
 charge of that part of the business of life which 
 is necessary to the efficiency of the individual 
 whether in peace or in war. 
 
 What do those who claim that Socialism has 
 fallen understand by Socialism? Because the 
 Socialists of Germany and France and England 
 and Eussia failed to prevent the present war or, 
 further, at the first shot sprang at one another ^s 
 
 i5i 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 throat, has Socialism therefore failed? Are 
 there still intelligent people who do not know 
 that the prevention of war has nothing to do 
 with the essential aim of Socialism, but is sim- 
 ply one of those things of minor importance 
 which Socialism hopes to accomplish in its great 
 march? It would be strange indeed if the lead- 
 ers of a great modern movement that had for 
 its aim the reorganization of society did not see 
 that the real objective of any social crusade 
 worthy of the name is the socialization of the 
 days of peace. The ending of war, however de- 
 sirable, is subordinate to this, the betterment 
 of the normal life. For who does not see that 
 we do not end war when we put a stop to war 
 between nations? It is only the most superfi- 
 cial view of war that would confine its meaning 
 to a conflict between states. Any wide social 
 struggle that is attended in its natural course 
 by great suffering is war. For the essence of 
 war is a needless competition, whether between 
 states or corporations or individuals, that results 
 in wide-spread suffering. No one acquainted 
 with the social conditions among vast masses of 
 the population of ahnost every nation can fail to 
 be aware that even before August 1, 1914, some 
 great destroyer was abroad. It is unnecessary 
 
 152 
 
THE FALL OE RISE OF SOCIALISM 
 
 to dwell upon these things. We need, in pass- 
 ing, to pick out only one fact: there is no child 
 labor in war. 
 
 Imagine what it must be like to thousands 
 of those now in the armies of Europe to wake 
 in the morning with the new sensation that the 
 day's wants have been provided for, to have 
 fall into their laps, as though the heavens had 
 opened, such unfamiliar comforts as mittens and 
 overcoats. For undoubtedly there are in these 
 vast hosts countless numbers who know what 
 it is to walk shabbily clad the streets of Paris 
 and Berlin and London and Petrograd, won- 
 dering where the next meal is to come from 
 and where they are to find lodging for the night, 
 or who, falling sick, have been tormented with 
 the thought of what will become of them. There 
 are thousands of fathers, doubtless, who will hurl 
 themselves upon the bayonets of the enemy with 
 less anguish, knowing that, if they fall, their 
 families will be better taken care of than if they 
 were to die in their own beds, having been 
 brought home injured from the field or the mine 
 or the workshop. In a word, there are in these 
 vast hosts that face one another in Europe to- 
 day multitudes who will find conditions of life 
 on the march and in the trenches preferable to 
 
 153 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 those from wMch they were mustered to the 
 present war. 
 
 Was there ever such an opportunity for ef- 
 fective propaganda as that which the present 
 extraordinary circumstances have supplied? 
 Thick within the lines of march, among the 
 trenches, in the hospitals, are those who under- 
 stand and can explain why it is that the great 
 father, absent in time of peace, is present in 
 time of war. And there will be leisure between 
 battles, between charges, between the coming 
 and going of nurses, for discussion of this 
 strange anomaly. And we may be sure that 
 there will be many a hard-handed philosopher of 
 the trenches who will make clear this monstrous 
 paradox. And with what freedom of speech, 
 what security from police interference ! Mouths 
 that yesterday were muzzled are to-day un- 
 stopped. For the first time in Europe Socialism 
 is being heard. Certainly for the first time it 
 is being seen. And that is half the victory. 
 Hitherto it has been necessary for the mission- 
 aries of Socialism to present a theory. They 
 have been on the defensive for lack of a prac- 
 tical demonstration. This more than anything 
 else was the crying weakness of their cause. 
 They had nothing to which they could point as 
 
 154 
 
THE FALL OE RISE OF SOCL^LISM 
 
 proof that their theories were workable. Just 
 then, as though some high god had lifted the 
 barriers into a new age, the very state that had 
 opposed them and throttled them to the very 
 limit of its power found itself demonstrating the 
 proof of their claims. 
 
 And now, with this great experiment in actual 
 operation, it will be easy to show that our war 
 system is centuries ahead of our peace system, 
 and that the chief reason for this is that peace 
 has refused to learn anything from war, while 
 war has listened with open mind, and has util- 
 ized for its improvement every idea that peace 
 has brought forth. There has not been one dis- 
 covery or ihvention that peace has added to her 
 equipment which could possibly be of use in 
 war that has not been appropriated and, if nec- 
 essary, altered to meet the new requirements. 
 From the simplest sword clear on up to the 
 most complex dreadnought, the whole intricate 
 machinery of war had its root in some tool or 
 other which the aboriginal man used in food- 
 getting or in his early industries. War differs 
 from peace, therefore, simply in its receptive- 
 ness to ideas. Compared with modem methods 
 of producing and distributing the necessaries 
 of life, our latest methods of destroying life 
 
 155 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 are vastly more scientific. For while war has 
 absorbed all the knowledge and adopted all the 
 excellent devices of peace, that one vital thing 
 which more than any other accounts for the 
 conspicuous success of martial enterprises, the 
 harmonious interworking of the individual with 
 the common good, has thus far had no meaning 
 to humanity. With the unbuckling of the sword, 
 the great society has disappeared. 
 
 We sometimes think that the distinguishing 
 characteristic of war is the killing and maim- 
 ing of men ; but it is evident that this is not the 
 real distinction, for men are killed and maimed 
 in time of peace. The essential and the one 
 marked difference is this, that during war a 
 nation is a society, whereas in peace it is an 
 aggregate of individuals. So true is this, in- 
 deed, that if a denizen from some other world, 
 acquainted with our normal activities during 
 peace, should visit us now when we are at war, 
 he would have difficulty in recognizing in this 
 smoothly moving, harmonious unit the disorgan- 
 ized welter of yesterday. Compared with the 
 spirit that animates a society at war, the dis- 
 integration that inevitably ensues when the 
 sword is laid aside is in all practical respects 
 like the dissolution which sets in in the body 
 
 156 
 
THE FALL OR RISE OF SOCIALISM 
 
 of a man when the spirit has taken its 
 flight. 
 
 Conceive of the immeasurable bridge over 
 which, when the present war is done, the soldiers 
 of the different nations will be obliged to pass. 
 It will be like a transit from one world to an- 
 other. All those splendid ties of comradeship, 
 that extraordinary devotion to the common wel- 
 fare, the almost romantic attachment of the part 
 to the whole, will dissolve as a vapor. That 
 powerful state whose energy and watchful care 
 were everywhere fathering its millions will also 
 have come to an end. And in its place there will 
 be another state as different from the former as 
 one thing can be different from another. The 
 socialism of war will give way to the individ- 
 ualism of peace. Society will become unsocial. 
 Once the rifles are stacked, once the uniform is 
 laid aside, there is severed that intimate bond 
 between father and children. Instantly the re- 
 lation between the individual and the state 
 becomes one of cold formality. That man who 
 in the battle-line was so precious, so deserv- 
 ing of every attention, becomes a thing of 
 little concern. Henceforth his willingness to 
 serve society is not enough to guarantee him 
 even his daily bread. He is an outcast from the 
 
 157 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 great home. So long as poverty does not drive 
 him to crime, there is no limit to the misery into 
 which, so far as the state is concerned, this sol- 
 dier of peace may not wander. Orphaned, he 
 must now shift for himself. If his labor is re- 
 quired in some other part of the country than 
 that in which he finds himself, there is no free 
 transportation for him now, as he sets forth 
 with his tools in his hands, as there was yester- 
 day when he girded on his sword. And if for 
 any reason his tools become useless, he must 
 supply himself or go without. And the gen- 
 erals of production, the Frenches, the Joffres, 
 the Hindenburgs, and the grand dukes of in- 
 dustry, may exploit him to their hearts ' content, 
 may dismiss him into starvation. The great 
 father will nowhere interfere except it be to pre- 
 vent the very thing which in war he insisted 
 upon. Let it be voiced in any of the cities from 
 which the present armies have been mustered 
 that in peace, too, for the common good, private 
 property should be seized as it was seized in 
 war, and those very governments which led in 
 commandeering the machinery of peace will be 
 the first to stifle the suggestion that this tried 
 and proved policy be continued. It is only in 
 war that the state has independent action; in 
 
 158 
 
THE FALL OR RISE OF SOOIALISM 
 
 peace it is controlled by the captains of industry. 
 When the exigencies of war require the drafting 
 of boys of sixteen or eighteen years of age, so- 
 ciety becomes alarmed; but there is no alarm 
 when children much younger are drafted into 
 the ranks of life-destroying labor. It is the un- 
 usual, not the unjust, that shocks us. 
 
 Sooner or later, if the world is to stand and 
 mankind is to continue to advance, Peace will 
 have to go to school to War to learn the art 
 of caring for men. That divine altruism which 
 we see fusing in one great glow the armies in 
 Europe to-day will somehow have to be blown 
 abroad through the infinite to-morrows. The 
 millions who in the trenches to-day see on every 
 hand the manifold advantages of cooperation 
 will not forever tolerate the lack of this fine 
 thing in times of peace. Not forever will a 
 mere extension of boundaries and huge indem- 
 nities to be used by the state in the preparation 
 for further wars be accepted by men as com- 
 pensation for the bloodshed and ruin of homes. 
 Something more personal must be their reward, 
 something that will lighten the burdens of their 
 daily life and infuse through their daily labor 
 that sense of comfort and that rare spirit of 
 co-partnership which is the sustaining power of 
 
 159 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 the armies to-day. When these millions return, 
 scarred and hardened, from the great adven- 
 ture, from destinies which their own hands have 
 shaped, it will be with a stirring consciousness 
 of mighty power, of ability to grapple and over- 
 throw. Does any one imagine that this newly 
 discovered power will thereafter lie quiescent 
 under the narrowing conditions that obtained in 
 the past? 
 
 And not alone in the rank and file must this 
 inevitable transformation come about. Cap- 
 tains of industry who in the various nations 
 lead the vast armies of labor will also, sooner 
 or later, under the urge of the new spirit, find 
 themselves modeling their leadership after that 
 of the great men who to-day command the 
 armed millions of Europe. Imagine the fine 
 scorn that would flash across the face of any 
 of these men should the governments they are 
 serving offer them headquarters floored with 
 expensive rugs and hung with costly tapestries 
 and filled with every imaginable dainty of food 
 and drink such as the monarchs of Asia in the 
 long ago took with them into the field of war. 
 Imagine the indignation which such a proposi- 
 tion would arouse should it be explained, as it 
 need not be explained, that these luxuries were 
 
 160 
 
THE FALL OR RISE OF SOCLiLISM 
 
 to be provided by a cutting down of the necessi- 
 ties of the common soldiers. Enough for these 
 modem leaders to know that they are serving 
 their countries and helping on as best they can 
 the heroic work in which their nations are en- 
 gaged. This is the lesson which our leaders of 
 peace may learn from the leaders of war. It 
 is evident that half the problems of life would 
 be solved if something of this rare spirit could 
 find its way into the mills and factories of the 
 world. For call it Socialism or Christianity or 
 Christian Socialism, very clearly it is this more 
 than anything else that we need if we are to put 
 an end to the barbarism of peace. 
 
 161 
 
HAS THE CHUECH COLLAPSED? 
 
vn 
 
 HAS THE CHUECH COLLAPSED? 
 
 RECENTLY, when the Eheims cathedral 
 was bombarded, a cry went up from en- 
 lightened lands that a work of art had been de- 
 stroyed. Here, if we only realized it, was the 
 most complete indictment of the church that 
 was ever made. For what could be more pain- 
 ful to a person or an institution that had once 
 been a power in the world than to be utterly for- 
 gotten? Far better the most rabid denuncia- 
 tion. And a century ago this proof of the vi- 
 tality of the church would not have been lack- 
 ing. Indeed, a decade ago the falling of bombs 
 upon the ancient roof would have called forth 
 at least a sneer from free-thinkers the world 
 over. But to-day even this praise is denied 
 her. Amid the general indignation, even the 
 clergy seem to have forgotten that it is a house 
 of God that has suffered disaster. It has ceased 
 even to be incongruous one day to pray to Je- 
 hovah for success for the German guns and 
 the next to turn those guns upon a cathedral. 
 
 165 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 Something has severed the connection between 
 this building and the high heavens, for the sigh 
 of the world is only that a work of art has been 
 destroyed. The beauty of the nave has out- 
 lasted the religion of the altar. Apollo has tri- 
 umphed over the Christ. 
 
 And all this has come about as naturally as 
 ripe fruit falls from a bough. For no one im- 
 agines that it is the sudden shock, the excite- 
 ment of war, that has diverted attention from 
 the church. That which we have witnessed is 
 simply a unique registering of an ancient fact. 
 For, as we all know, it was during years of 
 peace that the spirit of the church was bom- 
 barded. That which fell yesterday upon the 
 heart of the world was merely the beautiful 
 stones of an old Christian temple that, though 
 we were only half aware of it, had long ago 
 taken its place with Kamak and the Parthenon. 
 It is this splendid isolation, this slow conversion 
 of a sectarian house of worship into a monu- 
 ment of art, that has made possible the world- 
 wide regret that even war should violate this 
 treasure of humanity. At last, after centuries 
 as a shrine of a narrow doctrine, the old build- 
 ing has become a thing of wide human concern. 
 Shintoist and Hindu, Mohammedan and Chris- 
 
 166 
 
HAS THE CHUECH COLLAPSED? 
 
 tian, all these may now in unison cry out as from 
 a personal wound. 
 
 While never before, probably, was such a tri- 
 bute paid to art in its general character, it is 
 the profound change which this indicates in the 
 Christian world that surprises us most, not be- 
 cause we were not aware that a profound change 
 had taken place, but because now for the first 
 time we are face to face with the thing that 
 registers infallibly the full ebb of the tide. And 
 very clearly it is not an ebb from one shore, 
 with a corresponding flow upon another, as it 
 invariably is with the movements of the ocean, 
 but an ebb complete and world-wide. And only 
 yesterday Wordsworth was lamenting the loss 
 of the classical age. Only this morning it 
 seems, the sighing of Swinburne ^s "Last Ora^- 
 cle" was in our ears: **Thou hast conquered, 
 Galilean." And here almost in one lightning 
 flash the pagan world is restored ! 
 
 It is high time to put away pretenses and 
 face realities. The world's New Year's day is 
 upon us, and if we are wise, we will set down 
 in our inventory only those things which we ac- 
 tually have on hand. If there are empty boxes 
 upon our shelves, let us mark them empty boxes. 
 For, though we seem not to realize it, it is quite 
 
 167 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 as important to know exactly wliat spiritual re- 
 sources we can count on in peace and war as 
 it is to know exactly what military equipment 
 we possess. No surprise wliicli the present war 
 has caused us in any way compares with that 
 first amazement over our spiritual unprepared- 
 ness. Ignorantly or deliberately we had been 
 deceived. Time and again we had been told by 
 those who claimed to know about such things 
 that our moral forces were amply sufficient to 
 hold back the deluge that has overwhelmed us. 
 And we shall be deceived again if we do not 
 immediately wipe off our books the padded fig- 
 ures that are responsible for this delusion. 
 
 Let us understand at the outset that it is no 
 more discreditable for an institution to die than 
 it is for a man to die. Only when death has 
 been hastened by a violation of the higher law 
 does the event become a proper subject for 
 moralists. Then there is a lesson to be learned. 
 The mistakes of yesterday become the guide- 
 posts of to-day and the wisdom of to-morrow. 
 And the to-morrow that is now dawning will 
 need all the wisdom that we can extract from 
 the past. 
 
 It is impossible to understand the undeniable 
 vitality of primitive Christianity without un- 
 
 168 
 
HAS THE CHUBCH COLLAPSED? 
 
 derstanding something of the early world into 
 which the Christian message was released. For 
 the soil, as we know, is half the harvest, and 
 unless we take this into consideration, we shall 
 be at a loss to account for the shrinkage which, 
 unless artificial helps are employed, must in- 
 evitably ensue. 
 
 It has been said that the year in which Jesus 
 of Nazareth was born was a year of world-wide 
 peace. The fact is significant simply because 
 it is an exception. For centuries on each side 
 of this little oasis stretches an interminable hu- 
 man waste. The R6man state, which ever with 
 unfailing pride traced its ancestry back to Mars, 
 the war-god, was from its very beginning a 
 military power. And by military power I mean 
 not so much that it busied itself with wars as 
 that these wars were the natural product of the 
 tree upon which they grew. And if in this par- 
 ticular year no fruit fell to the ground, and if 
 Jesus of Nazareth slipped unnoticed into the 
 quiet world, it by no means indicates that the 
 character of Rome was changing or that her 
 world-wide organization was in its decline. In- 
 deed, we may truthfully say that up to that 
 time her sword had only been sharpened, for 
 it was afterward that Rome acquired that char- 
 
 169 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 acter which has ever since been inseparably con- 
 nected with her name. 
 
 Yet to the seer capable of looking into the 
 heart of things the hollow into which the So- 
 man empire finally fell was already there. In 
 every bosom was an emptiness, in every life a 
 longing toward the horizon. It was into this 
 vacuum, a universal yearning for the lost kind- 
 ness of the world, that Jesus of Nazareth at last 
 found His way and began His work. Nature 
 has a way of restoring her equilibriums. A 
 rise and a continued high temperature in sum- 
 mer invariably brings about a reaction which 
 cools the atmosphere. Similarly in the moral 
 world a denial of all those divine-human quali- 
 ties which are summed up in the word love is 
 equally certain to bring about their affirmation. 
 It is the sure operation of this great law of 
 nature that makes it possible for men to smile 
 in the flames of martyrdom, that gives to the 
 despairing heart in the darkest of ages an ab- 
 solute assurance of an eventual dawn. Jesus 
 of Nazareth was the first faint flush upon the 
 enormous Eoman night. If millions of slaves 
 turned instinctively toward Him, it was a testi- 
 mony not only to the character of Jesus, but also 
 to the intense darkness which surrounded them. 
 
 170 
 
HAS THE CHURCH COLLAPSED? 
 
 Whether the day that then began has ever fully 
 come or whether, if it does come, it will be a 
 Christian day, are matters which for the pres- 
 ent may be deferred. What we now seek is the 
 meaning of that early message and the secret 
 of its nndonbted power. 
 
 If we understand heat, we need give little at- 
 tention to the study of cold; if we know the 
 dark, we also know the light. In like manner, 
 if we understand the character of the Eoman 
 state — shall we say also of the Roman people! 
 — this knowledge will be of incalculable help to 
 an understanding of Christianity, for the latter 
 was a reaction against the former as a rain is 
 a reaction against a drought. If we have 
 watched the effect of a drought, the withering 
 of the leaves, the dying of the grass, the lowing 
 of the herds, we may shut our eyes and ears, 
 when told that a rain has fallen, and know in- 
 stinctively what has happened. 
 
 The carpener of Nazareth was in every re- 
 spect a complete antithesis of the Caesars, and 
 that which He gave to the world is inherently 
 as opposed to that which Rome gave to the 
 world as one thing can be opposed to another. 
 And Jesus Himself recognized this when He de- 
 clared, ' * Render therefore unto Caesar the things 
 
 171 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 which are Csesar's; and unto God the things 
 that are God's." If this means anything, it 
 means that the possession of those things which 
 by nature belong to Caesar presupposes a loss 
 of those things which by nature belong to God ; 
 in other words, that Caesar is on one side and 
 that God is on the opposite side. If the church 
 has fallen upon evil days, the reason is not diffi- 
 cult to find. Throughout the ages churchmen 
 have tried to reconcile in theory and in practice 
 these irreconcilables, to bridge a chasm that in 
 its very nature is unbridgable and eternal. 
 From the very beginning the church has found 
 herself in the dilemma, Caesar or God, and she 
 has held firmly to both horns. And holding thus 
 fast to a contradiction, she has died. 
 
 The Eoman empire was an empire of solid 
 possessions, capable of being measured in 
 square miles. And the armies that went forth 
 from the golden mile-stone in the Forum had 
 as their sole aim to add to these possessions, 
 to conquer provinces, to increase the number 
 of subjects, to swell the revenues of the state. 
 And the marvelous system of laws which Eome 
 devised was wrought out for the one purpose 
 of holding these vast possessions together. In 
 a word, from her feet of clay to her head of gold, 
 
 172 
 
HAS THE CHURCH COLLAPSED? 
 
 Eome was everywliere and always a material 
 kingdom. That is why her whole spiritual life 
 was a borrowed life. "While other nations were 
 at prayer or were uttering sincere aspirations 
 in marble statues, which is much the same thing, 
 Rome, with equal fidelity to the admonitions 
 of her heart, was practising arms in the Campus 
 Martins or loosing her eagles to fly far over sea 
 and land. If the Roman ever independently 
 caught a gleam of the spiritual world, it was as 
 the flash of a searchlight across the night, seen 
 one moment, then forgotten. Coming in Roman 
 history upon an aspiring soul like Marcus Aure- 
 lius, who, though a Roman emperor, was by 
 nature a full brother of the Nazarene, is like 
 coming upon a crystal in an interminable ledge 
 of granite. From the founding of the city to 
 where she disappears under the deluge of the 
 barbarians, Rome was essentially a denial of the 
 spiritual world. 
 
 It has been said by historians that much of 
 the persecution which the early church suffered 
 at the hands of the Caesars was due to the fact 
 that the church already was active in politics and 
 was furthering a movement for the overthrow 
 of the Roman state. By which doubtless we are 
 to understand that had the church kept out of 
 
 173 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND » 
 
 politics, she would not have been persecuted. 
 We may infer from this that, in the opinion of 
 these writers, there was nothing in Christianity 
 as a religion to incur the enmity of the Caesars. 
 Here again is that confusion of which I have 
 spoken, that failure to perceive that not only 
 in their outer activities, but in their essences, 
 Christianity and Eomanism are opposites. And 
 I use the word opposites here not at all in the 
 loose sense in which it is sometimes employed 
 when, for instance, it is said that a gas is the 
 opposite of a solid. Under certain conditions 
 a gas may become a solid, but it is evident to 
 any one who knows anything at all of the na- 
 ture of Christianity and Eomanism that in no 
 circumstances can the one possibly become the 
 other. The essence of the Eoman power was 
 outer authority; that of the Christian is inner 
 perception. And these two can no more exist 
 together than you can force a man to do a thing 
 and persuade him to do it at the same time. 
 Jesus of Nazareth came to restore the lost kind- 
 ness of the world, and to do this He was obliged 
 to proceed in a fashion diametrically opposite 
 to that in which the Caesars proceeded. The 
 Caesars, as we know, surrounded themselves 
 with all the paraphernalia of distinction, pal- 
 
 174 
 
HAS THE CHURCH COLLAPSED? 
 
 aces, guards, the purple, servile men ; for these, 
 as is well known the world over, are indispensa- 
 ble to marterial power. To compete with CsBsar 
 in any of these things or, for that matter, to 
 express the opinion that there were or ever 
 had been poets or musicians greater than Caesar, 
 was to put one's life in peril. And always the 
 people were encouraged to deify their monarch, 
 to look upon Caesar as God. And the more 
 cruel, the more bestial he became, the more he 
 was exalted to heaven. 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth, on the other hand, not 
 only set Himself resolutely against all this, but 
 in the very nature of things He could not have 
 done otherwise. For the sole purpose of all 
 this is to beget fear, and fear is the opposite of 
 love. And therefore He consistently put be- 
 hind Him every temptation to distinguish Him- 
 self in any way from the common man. For 
 to encourage servility or to allow it would, as 
 He knew, weaken His message by transferring 
 its base to the outer world. So instead of es- 
 tablishing Himself in a capital. He preferred to 
 be a wanderer; instead of a palace, He chose 
 rather to have not even a cottage; instead of 
 guards. He would not allow even one sword to 
 defend Him; instead of intercourse with the 
 
 175 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 miglity of earth, He associated with fishermen 
 and with outcasts, to show doubtless that they 
 were outcasts not from God, but from Caesar, 
 and that there is absolutely nothing in outward 
 poverty inconsistent with inner riches. 
 
 Even in that thing in which He was ad- 
 mittedly superior to those about Him, His good- 
 ness, even in this He would permit no compari- 
 son that would elevate Him. ''Why callest 
 thou me good? There is none good but one, 
 that is, God." And always when He speaks 
 of Himself, it is as the son of man. Never does 
 He arrogate to Himself that which He denies in 
 quality to other men. The claim which the 
 church has made and the emphasis which she 
 has since laid upon the claim that Jesus is the 
 son of God in a way wholly different from that 
 in which an elder brother is, along with his 
 younger brothers, a son of the same father, is 
 Romanism pure and simple, and was undoubt- 
 edly invented and has since been adroitly in- 
 sisted upon for the same purpose as that for 
 which a similar claim was made for the Cae- 
 sars, to overawe and thus lay the foundation 
 for outer authority. 
 
 How degraded a thing humanity was in the 
 ancient world is nowhere so pathetically exhib- 
 
 176 
 
HAS THE CHURCH COLLAPSED? 
 
 ited as in the attitude which Rome took toward 
 the Christ. No point of contact that could pos- 
 sibly be removed has been left between men 
 and this teacher of men. All those splendid 
 superstitions with which they had surrounded 
 the birth of Romulus are draped round the crib 
 of the man of Nazareth. As in the former case, 
 the human father is gotten rid of to make room 
 for Mars; in the latter the same thing is done 
 to make room for Jehovah. That a human be- 
 ing could be divine was to the Roman inconceiv- 
 able. And in the Roman we can understand it. 
 It is only the persistence of the idea to the pres- 
 ent day that surprises us. Or, rather, it would 
 surprise us were it not clear that almost from 
 the first century the objective of the church also 
 has been empire. 
 
 The first span, then, in the bridge which ever 
 since the church has been building between 
 Christ and Caesar, is this denial of the humanity 
 of Jesus. 
 
 Among spiritual men, John, the beloved dis- 
 ciple, has been generally recognized as the most 
 perfect reflection of the Master. And his ob- 
 scuration by Peter is, if we except only the cruci- 
 fixion of Jesus, unquestionably the greatest 
 tragedy of the early church. That a man of 
 
 177 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 such marked spiritual endowraents as tlie au- 
 thor of the fourth gospel should have been rele- 
 gated to Patmos while the building of the 
 church, which was supposed to be a spiritual in- 
 stitution, was committed to a man like Peter, 
 is one of those incongruities of which the world 
 is full and with which the human mind wrestles 
 in vain. The giving of the keys to Peter is such 
 a reflection upon the insight of Jesus that we 
 are inclined to regard the whole story as a for- 
 gery, like that other proved forgery, the Dona- 
 tion of Constantine, on the basis of which the 
 church laid claim to the throne of the empire. 
 The imagination naturally pictures Peter in the 
 Crusades. "With what fervor would he have ha- 
 rangued the Council of Clermont! With what 
 zeal would he have gone forth with Godfrey and 
 Tancred! But Jesus of Nazareth would not 
 have been at home in these violent movements. 
 Nor can we conceive of John as anything but 
 pained by this general drawing of the sword in 
 the name of the Master. But Peter, as we know, 
 well intentioned though he doutbless was, even 
 in the Master's presence, instinctively lays his 
 hand upon his hip. And it is of Peter, too, that 
 the story is told how, forgetful of a similar 
 weakness in his own nature and of Christ's gen- 
 
 178 
 
HAS THE CHURCH COLLAPSED? 
 
 tleness toward this failing, he struck Ananias 
 and Sapphira dead for lying. That Peter 
 should finally have gone to Rome, as tradition 
 tells us he did, is not at all surprising. For by 
 temperament he belongs there, just as Marcus 
 Aurelius belongs among the disciples. And if 
 the church was to be what it became, an organi- 
 zation with world-wide ambitions such as kin- 
 dled the brains of the Caesars, no one of the 
 Apostles was so fitted to be its founder as was 
 he. 
 
 In the character of Peter we have the second 
 span of the great bridge between the living word 
 of Jesus and the pageantry of the Eternal City. 
 Henceforth the spiritual kingdom was to be es- 
 tablished upon material pillars; inner percep- 
 tion was to give way to outer authority. 
 
 If any one familiar with Roman history and 
 the Roman character can read the New Testa- 
 ment and not see that it would be utterly impos- 
 sible for Christianity to conquer Rome, there is 
 something seriously wrong with his psychology. 
 And if any one thinks that Christianity ever 
 did conquer Rome, he had better lay side by 
 side the Sermon on the Mount and the history 
 of the Dark Ages. "When the statement is made, 
 as it is frequently made by historians, that 
 
 179 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 Christianity succeeded to the throne of the Cae- 
 sars, it is obvious that the author is using the 
 word Christianity not at all in the sense of a 
 spiritual kingdom, but rather to express those 
 outer characteristics which, owing to the trans- 
 forming influence of the Roman organization, 
 have since become known as Christianity. To 
 mistake the church which rose on the ruins of the 
 Roman empire for the church which the man of 
 Nazareth established is proof positive of ethical 
 and spiritual blindness. And to maintain, as 
 some do who readily perceive the fallacy of this 
 claim, that it is not possible to enter the spirit- 
 ual kingdom except through a material organi- 
 zation, indicates a myopia different from the 
 former only in degree. 
 
 But the time had now come when it was nec- 
 essary to explain the new gospel to the wise, 
 and for this purpose the conversion of Saul of 
 Tarsus was most opportune, for Saul of Tarsus 
 was a philosopher. He was more than that. 
 By birth a Hebrew, by adoption a Roman, by 
 education a lover of the Greeks, he was admira- 
 bly equipped to translate into cosmopolitan 
 terms the provincial gospel of the Nazarene. 
 There are churchmen to-day who regard the 
 apostle Paul as the father of modern Christian- 
 
 180 
 
HAS THE CHURCH COLLAPSED? 
 
 ity, and if we remember that it is for ''mod- 
 ern" Christianity the claim is made, it must 
 be conceded that their claim is not altogether un- 
 founded. For who does not see that modem 
 Christianity is a philosophy, that that thing 
 which in the hands of Jesus was a religion, a 
 thing to be lived, became in the hands of Paul 
 a thing to be believed, a creed? Henceforth, in- 
 stead of the clear perception of the spirit, there 
 was to be substituted ratiocination; instead 
 of conscience, there was to be intellect; instead 
 of love and the unity of love, there was to be 
 disputation and a calling of names. By intel- 
 lectualizing primitive Christianity, by making 
 abstruse and difficult of comprehension that sim- 
 ple thing which the most childlike can under- 
 stand, Paul opened the gates of controversy and 
 casuistry. The church had now only to go 
 straight on to come upon the sword that was 
 waiting for her, and to enter upon that cam- 
 paign against heresy which was to complete the 
 monstrous perversion. 
 
 What I say here of Paul and what I said be- 
 fore of Peter is said with no intention of re- 
 flecting upon the integrity of these men. The 
 sacrifices which they underwent are sufficient to 
 dispose of any doubt upon this point. Yet, as 
 
 181 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 we all know, if good intentions were all that are 
 necessary, the world would be a very different 
 place from what it is. Could the apostle Paul 
 have foreseen the harvest of scholasticism, the 
 dissensions, the confusion of what is fundamen- 
 tal with what is adventitious, that were to spring 
 up from his labored disquisitions, he would 
 probably have gone about his work in another 
 way. If we will only remember that philosophy 
 is speculative and that religion is practical, it 
 will become at once apparent how easy it is for 
 religion to lose its vitality by being confounded 
 with philosophy. When once this fog has set- 
 tled down, it is then possible for churchmen to 
 discuss such questions as baptism, transubstan- 
 tiation, and the nature of God without perceiv- 
 ing that they long ago left religion behind. 
 
 How essential to the work begun by Peter was 
 the work accomplished by Paul becomes clear 
 when we consider the nature of authority. 
 While truth remains cosmic, and its power over 
 the individual is the result of inner perception, 
 it is impossible to establish a central authority 
 or even to diffuse this authority in an organiza- 
 tion. For men who have truth in their own 
 hearts or who realize that the perception of 
 truth is a matter of spiritual unfolding, will 
 
 182 
 
HAS THE CHUBCH COLLAPSED? 
 
 never obey either a man or an organization. 
 But once this cosmic character of tmth is ob- 
 scured, once people are persuaded that the 
 truth of religion can be arrived at only by rea- 
 son, from that moment the training of the in- 
 tellect becomes all important, and men are 
 looked up to in proportion to their educational 
 equipment. From this time on, especially to 
 scholars, it becomes absurd that carpenters like 
 Jesus and lens-grinders like Spinoza and shoe- 
 makers like Jacob Boehme should know any- 
 thing of the higher laws. 
 
 With the impetus toward philosophy which 
 Christianity received from the apostle Paul, the 
 way was opened for the control of one man by 
 another, of multitudes by a few. Church coun- 
 cils became the order of the day. The ethical 
 content of Christianity was scooped out. Doc- 
 trine became more important than life. Not 
 righteousness, but heresy, was henceforth the 
 chief concern of the church. From this time 
 on one has only to believe and to obey those 
 who formulate the belief. The spiritual king- 
 dom becomes identified with the church, and to 
 enter into the one, a man has only to become a 
 member of the other. 
 
 Here is a Christianity, if by any stretch of 
 183 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 the imagination we may call it so, that the Ro- 
 man will accept, for this is something he can 
 use. Here is fresh blood for the decrepit limbs 
 of the state, youthful energy with which to re- 
 fill the exhausted channels of empire. Once 
 more her legions may go forth, and the barbar- 
 ians of the North, who for centuries have hurled 
 their might against the empire of the Caesars 
 until it is falling in fragments, will admit this 
 new power into their hearts, though it is virtu- 
 ally identical with that which they have driven 
 from their fields. And thus Csesarism, which 
 had gone down, will rise again and go forth in 
 triumph not only to the Rhine and to the border 
 of Scotland, but west and north to the ends of 
 the earth. And for century on century the new 
 empire will stand, established as it henceforth 
 is in the human mind. 
 
 This, then, is the third span in the great bridge 
 between Christ and Caesar. 
 
 But a fourth was to be built before the end. 
 It was never quite enough for Caesar to be the 
 head of the Roman organization and the giver 
 of Roman law; he must surround himself with 
 all those extravagances which only monarchs 
 can afford and which seem to be essential to 
 the control of millions of people. For the mil- 
 
 184 
 
HAS THE CHURCH COLLAPSED! 
 
 lions judge of power by the show it makes, and 
 their obedience is lavish or scant as this out- 
 ward display is prodigal or meager. And 
 therefore it is a matter of prime importance for 
 Caesar to establish himself in palaces, to wear 
 robes of purple and gold, to environ himself 
 with all those splendors that to the millions 
 spell power. And upon entering into her Ro- 
 man inheritance the church was not long in per- 
 ceiving this. And forthwith she set zealously 
 to work to supply this deficiency which the Naza- 
 rene had overlooked, and stone by stone there 
 began to rise that fourth and last span between 
 Christ and Caesar. With an organization fash- 
 ioned after the model of the Roman state, and 
 a creed capable of serving all the purposes of 
 the Roman law, she had now only to put on the 
 robes of magnificence to complete the transfor- 
 mation. 
 
 There are those who still think that the art 
 movement of the Renaissance was a Christian 
 movement; and as proof of this they point to 
 the fact that virtually the whole of the vast 
 energy of this movement was spent in carving 
 chalices, in painting madonnas, in building ca- 
 thedrals. This position is of course untenable. 
 The Renaissance was, as we know, a classical 
 
 185 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 revival, a spirit kindled at the ancient altars of 
 Greece and Rome. And though the fire thus 
 kindled was put at the service of the dignitaries 
 of the church, the latter fact proves nothing as 
 to the origin of the inspiration of the old mas- 
 ters. With equal justice we might claim that 
 modern art is a capitalistic movement because 
 architects and painters are to-day frequently 
 employed by the beneficiaries of capitalism. 
 Michelangelo would probably have been as de- 
 lighted to work for Pericles as he was to work 
 for the pope. 
 
 He who thinks that wine or bread or cups or 
 altars or buildings are Christianity or any part 
 of Christianity is, without knowing it, inside a 
 . cathedral, and his ideas of Christianity are de- 
 rived from the paraphernalia which he sees 
 about him, and his conception of the man of 
 Nazareth from the dead figure which hangs in 
 the window. Art has a place of its own, and has 
 nothing to gain from being confounded with re- 
 ligion. On the other hand, religion has much 
 to lose from being confounded with art. The 
 purpose of art is to refine and ennoble the sen- 
 timents, the purpose of religion to refine and 
 ennoble conduct. Any confusion of these aims 
 has a tendency to make religion theoretical; to 
 
 186 
 
HAS THE CHURCH COLLAPSED? 
 
 make unnecessary the transmutation of noble 
 sentiments into deeds. 
 
 With the rise of the Protestant Reformation, 
 which was the expression of the Renaissance in 
 the North, the world for the first time awakened 
 to the fact that the church had undergone a 
 radical transformation, and that the purpose of 
 withholding the Bible from the people, as it had 
 been withheld for centuries, was to prevent the 
 change from becoming known. More and more 
 clearly it was being seen that the church was 
 in reality the Roman empire resurrected and 
 wielding its authority not now solely from the 
 Seven Hills, but also from the throne of the 
 hereafter. The assault which then began under 
 the leadership of Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, Cal- 
 vin, and others, while carried on with a fervor 
 worthy of the ancient prophets, had as its aim 
 not the complete divorcement of Christianity 
 and Caesarism, but the overthrow of the Roman 
 organization, with its centralized, imperial au- 
 thority. That organization itself, even without 
 this centralized authority, was no part of Chris- 
 tianity seems not to have been perceived, for on 
 the ruins of the Roman church in the North rose 
 organizations not utterly dissimilar. For cen- 
 turies still the idea was to prevail that the spirit- 
 
 187 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 ual kingdom is not wholly spiritual, that inner 
 perception must somehow be squared with outer 
 authority. Naturally, therefore, the creed had 
 to he maintained or the church as a material or- 
 ganization would disappear. For it would then 
 be possible for a man to become a Christian by 
 practising the Sermon on the Mount, and not 
 as now by accepting the Thirty-nine Articles or 
 those other matters of profession which virtu- 
 ally all the churches still insist are of divine 
 origin. 
 
 Is it any wonder that the tide has gone out 
 and left the church utterly powerless ; that the 
 whole vesture of Csesarism with which she over- 
 awed the millions has been stripped off piece by 
 piece ; that art has become art, still capable of 
 arousing men to its defense; that philosophy 
 has become philosophy, honorably installed in 
 our educational system; that organization is 
 still active in politics and industry; and that 
 the church is nothing? Is it not a comment 
 upon the hollowness of her pretensions that as 
 civilization has advanced the church had re- 
 ceded and that annually her remaining millions 
 ooze away and are lost in secular affairs ? 
 
 All this would be of little moment and would 
 merit the unconcern with which it is popularly 
 
 188 
 
HAS THE CHURCH COLLAPSED? 
 
 regarded were there not a tremendously serious 
 side to the matter. For nineteen centuries so- 
 ciety has left in the hands of the church the di- 
 rection of the moral forces of the world. And 
 now, after all these centuries, we find ourselves 
 falling into the same moral vacuum into which 
 the Roman empire fell. After eighteen hundred 
 years it is as easy for men to thrust bayonets 
 into one another as it was in the heathen world. 
 Is it not apparent that the church has collapsed? 
 
 189 
 
THE COSMIC MEANING OF WOMAN 
 
VIII 
 
 THE COSMIC MEANING OF WOMAN 
 
 WHATEVER may have been hitherto our 
 idea of '* woman's place," never again, 
 or at least not until the present war has 
 been forgotten, will it be possible seriously to 
 state to a serious audience that the participa- 
 tion of woman in the affairs of the world would 
 work harm to society. Other arguments may 
 survive, other fears may be played upon, but 
 this one has received its death-blow. The in- 
 jury which society was to receive at the hands 
 of woman has been anticipated by the hands 
 of man. Hereafter, when the probable loss to 
 the world from the feminization of society is 
 under debate, man at least will have noth- 
 ing to say. And among women, those who in 
 the past have suffered from this fear and have 
 purposely shared their anxiety with others, will, 
 if they are wise, devote that energy which they 
 have heretofore expended in protecting society 
 from woman, to protecting woman from society. 
 
 193 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 For hencefortH assuredly it is society, not 
 woman, that is the menace. In one night our 
 solicitude has faced about. "What was it in 
 woman that we feared? Was it the softening 
 of our civilization ? Upon this score at least the 
 war has reassured us. 
 
 If ever there were reasons why woman should 
 remain aloof from the world and develop in her 
 own sphere what is called her "higher nature," 
 to-day those reasons are multiplied by ten. 
 And undoubtedly they will be seized upon. For 
 the future, we may depend upon it, more than 
 ever will the home be glorified. With vastly 
 more weight than heretofore it will be urged 
 that the refined nature of woman has no place 
 in a world given over to savagery, that she has 
 everything to lose and nothing to gain ; for what 
 has such a society to give! Why, it will be 
 asked, should woman bring her purity and vir- 
 gin emotion to a world that has no appreciation 
 of these things? Life that has suddenly be- 
 come infinitely complex, the opponents of the 
 world woman will meet more determinedly than 
 ever before by a retreat from its responsibili- 
 ties, by the plea that for woman the higher re- 
 sponsibilities lie more than ever in the home. 
 
 On the other hand, to millions of women who 
 194 
 
THE COSMIC MEANING OF WOMAN 
 
 heretofore have shown no interest either in 
 feminism or in the franchise, but who have been 
 content about their households, the present war 
 has already come as the cry of a drowning man 
 piercing the darkness of the night. As never 
 before, the doorways of the world are filled with 
 women, perplexed, silent, suffering, horrified, 
 now looking toward Belgium and Poland and 
 now barkening back in their rooms to the voices 
 of children at play. Will it ever be possible 
 again in any part of the world for a woman to 
 bring forth a child and not question if her pains 
 are worth while ? Never since the beginning of 
 time has life's appalling contradiction so torn 
 the heart of woman as it is tearing it to-day. 
 To these undoubtedly it has become a serious 
 problem, where the "higher responsibility" lies. 
 And to this problem nothing less than life can 
 give answer. Trained to harken the need of 
 the home, what will she do now that the world is 
 calling? Yesterday it was easy to think of the 
 home and the world as distinct; easy for a 
 woman to quiet her conscience with the thought 
 of household duties well performed. To-day of 
 how little consequence is it that the linen is clean 
 and the rooms in order ! To-day the home and 
 the world are one, caught up by the same storm 
 
 195 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 and blown together toward the same fate. 
 Whatever may happen hereafter, never again 
 will it be possible to think of man and woman 
 as other than human beings meeting the comedy 
 and tragedy of life hand in hand as one. 
 
 And yet when we consider it less profoundly, 
 when we allow only our eyes to rove over the 
 event, when before was the threshold so con- 
 spicuously the dividing line between man's 
 world and woman's world? Suddenly over Eu- 
 rope, as over a vast field with millions of hu- 
 man beings at work and at play in the conscious- 
 ness of a common humanity, a great Hand has 
 come down upon the nations and separated the 
 sexes, moving the male to the borders and leav- 
 ing the female in the interiors. On one side of 
 a chasm, rifted as by an earthquake and unfath- 
 omable almost as life itself, are fathers and hus- 
 bands and brothers ; on the other, mothers and 
 wives and sisters. And but yesterday in the 
 streets of the cities, in the fields of labor, in the 
 places of merriment, man and woman were be- 
 coming one. Their occupations were blending, 
 their lives were coalescing and eliciting more 
 and more respect and understanding. To-day, 
 as at the stroke of a sword, they are two, cos- 
 mically two, with vast seas between them. The 
 
 196 
 
THE COSMIC MEANING OF Y/OMAN 
 
 gradual knitting together of the ages is torn 
 asunder. Like an old scar the sex line has re- 
 appeared, and there is no sanctuary even in the 
 home. From a being clothed yesterday with 
 chivalry and touching woman's hand with rever- 
 ence, man has suddenly dropped back into the 
 jungle and is abroad about his ancient business 
 of killing ; while, as in the early days of the race, 
 woman is flying from the ravager, or is about 
 the house tending her orphans, or in the fields 
 wondering why, watching the horizon, anxious 
 how the battle is going, or kneeling in the wake 
 of the storm, binding up her wounded lord. 
 
 It is particularly important just now when 
 the mighty organism of life is being torn apart, 
 to consider the respective natures of man and 
 woman and the parts which obviously they were 
 intended to play in the building of the world. 
 For very clearly a mistake has been made. 
 Very clearly, as in the days of Babel, something 
 has happened that has brought inexplicable con- 
 fusion upon the builders, and in the medley and 
 the conflict centuries are falling down upon us. 
 And in our search for the cause of this mistake 
 we shall do well not hastily to dismiss, as some- 
 thing that has no connection with the catas- 
 trophe, the relation of man and woman. For 
 
 197 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 possibly it is here, covered up under the familiar 
 common-places of life, and not, as we have im- 
 agined, in the relation of Austria and Serbia or 
 of Germany and England, that the real trouble 
 lies. 
 
 And apart from the gnawing hunger to know 
 how it has come about that we plant only to 
 burn, and build only to destroy, and bring forth 
 only to put to the bayonet, no one with a bent for 
 prophecy or with a natural human curiosity for 
 what in the way of social changes to-morrow 
 may have in store for us, can afford on the eve 
 of such changes to give to woman a dismissing 
 glance. For, dissected and weighed, carded and 
 catalogued as she has been by the masters of 
 science, and discussed, one would say, from 
 every angle of the circle, woman remains, as her 
 recent coming out into the world remains, the 
 most potential phenomenon of the present time. 
 What the white man, landing upon the shores of 
 the New World, was to the Indian, that to the 
 present age is woman. What is she, why is she 
 crossing her ancient boundary, and what is her 
 significance in the thick darkness that has come 
 over us? These are questions to which no hu- 
 man being, alive to the portentous events that 
 storm about us, dare shut his ears. 
 
 198 
 
THE COSMIC MEANING OF WOMAN 
 
 The sex question, as one phase of the woman 
 problem is sometimes called, I shall reserve for 
 a subsequent chapter. In this one it is the femi- 
 nine quality alone that concerns us, the spiritual 
 difference — if there be such a difference — ^be- 
 tween the male and the female, and the conclu- 
 sions likely to affect the structure of future so- 
 ciety that may fairly be drawn therefrom. 
 That social revolutions of deep significance are 
 upon us, there can be no question ; what they will 
 be and what changes they will bring about de- 
 pends very largely upon what in her deeper na- 
 ture woman really is. 
 
 There is a story far back in the annals of 
 early Rome that I wish to take out of the dust 
 that has gathered over it and lay upon this page, 
 not only because of the light which, better than 
 any other story I know of in history, it throws 
 upon the real nature of man and woman, but 
 also because of its application to the present 
 crisis and beyond the present crisis to the social 
 life of to-morrow. It is the well-known story of 
 the Sabine women. For the benefit of those 
 who have forgotten it, I relate it again. 
 
 Shortly after the founding of Rome a festival 
 was held to which the peoples of the neighbor- 
 ing villages were invited. Toward the close of 
 
 199 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 this gala occasion tlie men of Rome, among 
 whom there was a shortage of women, seized 
 and made off with the daughters of the visiting 
 peoples. As was to be expected, strife shortly 
 afterwards ensued between the outraged vil- 
 lagers and the new city upon the Tiber. In this 
 warfare, the Sabines at first took no part. 
 Later, however, they too attacked Rome. While 
 the fortune of this later assault hung in the 
 balance, the Romans at first being driven back 
 and then the Sabines, the daughters of the lat- 
 ter, who had now become the wives of the 
 Romans, rushed in between the opposing forces 
 and begged their fathers and brothers on the one 
 hand and their husbands on the other to desist. 
 Unable to withstand so touching an appeal, the 
 warring peoples put aside their hatred and made 
 peace. More than this, the Sabines and the 
 Romans united and became one, their kings, 
 Titus Tatius and Romulus, thereafter sharing 
 equally in the government. 
 
 Let us rid ourselves if we can of our famili- 
 arity with those things with which we have 
 grown up and if possible look at them with an 
 eye, let us say, of a being that has just alighted 
 upon the grass of this earth from the slopes of 
 some neighboring planet. And going back in 
 
 200 
 
THE COSMIC MEANING OF WOMAN 
 
 time, let us take our stand on the top of the 
 Capitoline Hill when the event we have just re- 
 lated was taking place. 
 
 The first thing that catches our attention is of 
 course the conflict that is going on between 
 groups of persons who are so alike in structure 
 and appearance as to be indistinguishable. 
 Presently we notice, hurrying out from the 
 homes of the city and making their way in be- 
 tween the combatants, another group of beings 
 somewhat different from the others. Their ap- 
 pearance is different and for some reason they 
 are not in the conflict. And these outward dif- 
 ferences, as we see when the new arrivals come 
 between the warring factions, are matched by 
 other differences equally conspicuous. For 
 though they are now in the thick of the fray, 
 they do not fight, but with voices and uplifted 
 hands seek to put an end to the strife. 
 
 Strange that beings of such marked resem- 
 blance as those that fight and these that plead 
 should seek their ends in such strikingly dissimi- 
 lar fashion. And this strange phenomenon be- 
 comes even stranger when we learn, as we do 
 from the discussion which follows, that it is the 
 long-haired ones, who have taken no part in the 
 battle, that are the injured ones, the violation of 
 
 201 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 whose rights has brought on the fury and the 
 bloodshed. And yet, see them how, forgetful of 
 themselves, they take the hands or cling about 
 the necks of those who are still reluctant to 
 yield. Clearly these are beings of a different 
 sort, for the one is weak and the other is strong, 
 and yet the weaker is stronger than the strong. 
 For with a power born neither of arms nor of 
 arguments, the newcomer from the homes of the 
 city has turned war into peace and enmity into 
 friendship. 
 
 From what we have seen it is evident that the 
 difference between these two beings goes deeper 
 than dress, deeper than laws, deeper even than 
 form. And we need not go far from Eome, we 
 need but walk out into the fields about the city, 
 where the herds and flocks are grazing or, fur- 
 ther, into the wilderness where the taming hand 
 of man has never been, to perceive that the dif- 
 ference is a cosmic difference, that the same 
 bellicose quality which we saw in the groups 
 fighting upon the hillside is characteristic of the 
 protector in every species whether human, beast, 
 or bird, and that the gentler quality of the home- 
 maker is likewise manifested upon every plane 
 of nature. 
 
 Into the causes of this difference it is not 
 202 
 
THE COSMIC MEANING OF WOMAN 
 
 necessary here to enter, for it is with the signifi- 
 cance of the fact that we have here chiefly to do. 
 Enough to know that whether we consider him 
 far back in the cosmic light or in the fields of 
 his more recent evolution, man is the representa- 
 tive of what, for want of a better term, we may 
 call the outer world. And woman, traveling a 
 circle horizontally, shall we say, smaller than 
 man's, is equally the representative of what we 
 may call the inner world. 
 
 Or looking at them from another angle, we 
 see that from the very beginning man has been 
 the conqueror. It was man that met the wild 
 beast, chose to meet the wild beast, for the exer- 
 cise of those qualities which for centuries had 
 been developed in protecting the mother when 
 helpless with her young. Here for a moment 
 the two planets touch with a small one between 
 them, then swing on round — the one, we may 
 say, to the right ; the other, to the left : the one 
 toward conquest for food, the other toward a 
 gentler, less strenuous life, centering in her 
 child. And traveling these two circles, through 
 the ages, the one a conqueror, the other a con- 
 server, the one a slayer or an enslaver of wild 
 beasts and wild men and later of the forces of 
 nature; the other, ministering always' to her 
 
 203 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 helpless infant and working intermittently witli 
 those things the mastery of which required at 
 her hands no bloodshed — clay for vessels and 
 reeds for baskets and fibers or the skins of man- 
 slain beasts for clothing — these two beings with 
 the passing of the centuries grew naturally, in- 
 evitably into what we have just seen them on the 
 Capitoline Hill, into what essentially they re- 
 main to-day. 
 
 In a word, as far back as we can trace it, Life 
 is manifesting itself more and more in two forms 
 and is carefully gathering about these two 
 forms such activities and occupations as will de- 
 velop to the best advantage those qualities 
 which she is persistently seeking to develop : in 
 the male, power; in the female, love. 
 
 Whatever conclusion with regard to the na- 
 ture of man and woman science may have come 
 to that darkens the splendor of this great truth, 
 is as sure of oblivion to-morrow as mists are 
 sure to be dissipated at the rising of the sun. 
 Beside the so-called **facts" of science which 
 too often are but side excursions in support of 
 some preconceived notion of social policy rather 
 than an extension of the main path toward 
 truth, I lay the mighty fact of experience. Is 
 there a man living, is there even a boy, who does 
 
 204 
 
THE COSMIC MEANING OF WOMAN 
 
 not know from what he has already learned of 
 life, from what he has seen in his own home, 
 that in this story of the Sabines, now more than 
 twenty-five hundred years old, is revealed as 
 through a magic glass the real nature of man 
 and the real nature of woman? Is there any- 
 where in the world a home in which the situation 
 presented in this story has not at some time or 
 other been duplicated; the males quarreling 
 and the females intervening for peace? Or 
 looking out of the window, or passing along the 
 street of town or city, who has not come upon 
 further proofs that man is primarily the em- 
 bodiment of power and woman of love ? 
 
 Here, then, we have issuing straight out of 
 the cosmos an ultimate word upon the subject 
 of the relation of man and woman in the world, 
 a voice that goes through the woman question 
 like a clearing wind. Have we heeded this 
 voice ? Or in the building of civilization are we 
 at work beyond the cosmos, and may therefore 
 cosmic pronouncements be disregarded? That 
 we have disregarded them and barkened rather 
 to biology, concerned solely with the develop- 
 ment of physical form, and to economics which 
 has run between these mates the artificial line 
 of loaf-winner and loaf-kneader, there can be 
 
 205 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 no doubt. **Let woman keep silence in the 
 churclies," the order of the apostle to the Gen- 
 tiles, has been adopted as a rule throughout so- 
 ciety. And what has been the result? 
 
 Not one thinker, probably not one man or 
 woman of intelligence the world over, can be 
 found who would not say offhand that the world 
 needs something. The diiference of opinion 
 among them is simply with regard to what that 
 something is. Statesmen everywhere are look- 
 ing into the loose places of the law. Teachers 
 are considering what alterations should be made 
 in the educational system. Even masters of in- 
 dustry, who undoubtedly would profit most from 
 the continuation of the existing order, are will- 
 ing to meet half way the world clamor for a 
 radical overhauling of the relations between 
 Capital and Labor. From pole to pole, from 
 the very springs of life, the agonizing cry goes 
 up that civilization has failed, that humanity 
 has lost its way. The deep realization of this 
 that has been thrust into our hearts on the 
 points of bayonets is the one clear gleam amid 
 the universal darkness that has fallen. At last 
 after centuries of word discussion and sword 
 discussion, there has come over conflicting races 
 and classes a divine unanimity. Henceforth we 
 
 206 
 
THE COSMIC MEANING OF WOMAN 
 
 are relieved of the necessity of debating the 
 question whether there is really a need of any- 
 thing and may hereafter concentrate our 
 thoughts upon ascertaining what that something 
 is. 
 
 Probably the whole world would agree to this 
 also, that if civilization has failed, it has failed 
 because it has become inhuman ; the sanctity of 
 life has disappeared. There are those who 
 have known this for years, though apparently to 
 the mass of men or rather, let us say, to the 
 blind leaders of men, it has taken a world 
 butchery to disclose it. In the present war we 
 have on a universal scale a display of that slow 
 but sure vengeance which we sometimes see 
 working out in the case of a hard landlord who 
 does not understand why he should provide fire- 
 escapes for his tenants until one day he hears 
 that fire has broken out and that his own family 
 has perished. Within the past few months a 
 look of horror has come over the faces of the 
 powerful leaders of men as though what is hap- 
 pening were something wholly unexpected, a re- 
 versal of the enginery of civilization. Instead, 
 as any one who has read even the newspapers 
 during the past decade or so should be able at 
 once to see, this universal butchery of men was 
 
 207 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 the inevitable next station on the main line 
 exactly as the stockyards in Chicago, that 
 slaughter house of the nation, is the culmination 
 of the animal killing that was formerly diffused 
 throughout the country. 
 
 Let those who are appalled at this sudden con- 
 centration of the business of murder look over 
 the statistics of the unnecessary loss of life on 
 the railroads and in the mines and workshops of 
 the world. Let those whose hearts sink when 
 they read of the thousands of families turned 
 out of their homes by war, compare in this re- 
 spect the record of the days of peace. In New 
 York City alone every year that passes thou- 
 sands of families are dispossessed by landlords, 
 turned out under the elements to sit upon the 
 sidewalk with the fragments of broken homes 
 while the city unconcerned goes on about its 
 daily business. And let those who find it diffi- 
 cult to sleep at night because of visions of men, 
 women, and children in destitution flying to- 
 ward the cities of England from this sudden 
 storm of savagery, let these good people read 
 the story, the understory of the working classes 
 of England itself during the prosperous years of 
 peace that have suddenly come to an end and 
 vomited their growing distress upon the world. 
 
 208 
 
THE COSMIC MEANING OF WOMAN 
 
 That which was hidden has been revealed. The 
 disease that has been raging unattended in the 
 vitals has all at once broken out upon the skin. 
 Consequently, if we are shocked, it is not at the 
 crimes but at the war-paint of humanity. 
 
 Has it not become clear that the fundamental 
 trouble with society is the separation of power 
 from love, our willingness to give to power the 
 utmost freedom in the building and control of 
 industries and empires, and our refusal to allow 
 the love-nature of woman any social expression? 
 
 Follow it out into every branch of life and see 
 if the metallic leaves of civilization are not what 
 they are because they have withered for want of 
 something that is more life-giving than power. 
 On the one hand we see the world dehumanized 
 for purposes of production, and man everywhere 
 subordinated to things until it has become pos- 
 sible for great cities in the course of their nor- 
 mal life annually to turn thousands of their 
 helpless men, women and children out upon the 
 streets for no other cause than that for one 
 reason or another they have not fitted into the 
 iron machinery of production. On the other 
 hand we see woman, the bringer forth of the 
 child and therefore the representative of the hu- 
 man quality and of the humanizing quality, if not 
 
 209 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 at present shut up within the home, at least shut 
 out from the larger institutions of the world. 
 Nothing in human psychology, in its social mani- 
 festations, so fills one with astonishment as to 
 see humanity, conscious of its lost condition, 
 crying up the skies for love while with equal 
 fervor the heart of woman is yearning for the 
 world. Will mankind never perceive the rela- 
 tion between these simultaneous aspirations'? 
 It is as though the race were suffering from 
 thirst and at the same time was doing every- 
 thing in its power to keep all the oxygen on one 
 side of the heavens and all the hydrogen on the 
 other side. In things physical, however, no 
 such blunder would be possible. 
 
 Imagine woman in the dispossessing business ! 
 Picture her, if you can, walking through her fac- 
 tory where pale children are at work, and seeing 
 only the machinery ! That Herr Krupp should 
 manufacture cannon creates no feeling of unfit- 
 ness. But when Herr Krupp suddenly dies and 
 his business falls into the lap of his daughter 
 Bertha, the incongruity is too great to be toler- 
 ated. Immediately, not for business reasons 
 but for moral reasons, a husband must be found 
 to relieve the monstrous situation. 
 
 Beyond any doubt that which is happening in 
 210 
 
THE COSMIC MEANING OF WOMAN 
 
 Europe to-day does indeed strike deeper tlian 
 the relations of Austria and Serbia, deeper even 
 tlian the dream of the early Czar for a port upon 
 the open sea. It is nothing less than a cosmic 
 struggle, a demonstration by the savagery of a 
 war unequaled in history, of the incompetency 
 of power alone and unaided to build anything 
 that will endure. 
 
 And where, during all these intervening years 
 while in peace and in countless wars fathers and 
 brothers have been grappling husbands and sons 
 in mortal combat; where, during all these cen- 
 turies, have been the Sabine women? Where 
 are they now when the sum of all these conflicts 
 is raging? And where, when the present strife 
 is over and the remnants of the armies return to 
 build out of the ruins of the past new institu- 
 tions for the future, where then will woman 
 be? 
 
 I have said that this struggle is a cosmic 
 struggle, a demonstration by Nature of the utter 
 futility of the separation of power and love in 
 the building of the world. Then perhaps Na- 
 ture can answer these questions. Perhaps she 
 is already answering them. Perhaps it is be- 
 cause we are so intent upon the destroyer that 
 we have overlooked the quiet work of the ulti- 
 
 211 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 mate conqueror, the restorer. It is well that we 
 should pause and consider this. For if, caught 
 by the clamor and the confusion, we contemplate 
 simply what is happening along the borders and 
 fail to see or dismiss as of slight importance 
 what has already happened in the interiors of 
 the warring nations, we shall be skipping a 
 chapter in the evolution of humanity without 
 which it is useless to go on. For when the war 
 is over, does any one imagine that the bound- 
 aries of the nations alone will be changed and 
 not also the boundaries between the sexes ? The 
 journals of the world are filled with the expan- 
 sion of man, his sudden rushing from fields and 
 factories to the new occupation of arms. Little 
 is said of the expansion of woman, her sudden 
 outpouring from the home to fill up the places 
 left vacant by man. And yet of the two, who 
 shall say that the effect of the latter will not be 
 the farther reaching and the more enduring? 
 Or will woman, having possessed herself of the 
 enlarged areas of man's activities, and awake 
 now as probably never before, willingly sur- 
 render them on the return of her partner and be 
 content thereafter in the narrower, quieter 
 sphere of ''woman's place"? 
 
 We may get some light upon the probable 
 212 
 
THE COSMIC MEANING OF WOMAN 
 
 effect upon woman of the present war by a 
 glance at what happened to man after a period 
 of similar disturbance. Did man, for instance, 
 after his expansion during the Crusades, when 
 he discovered a new, vast world of thought and 
 action, did he upon his return to Europe shrink 
 back into the contracted boundaries of his pre- 
 vious life? On the contrary, under the inspira- 
 tion of that great adventure, despite the long 
 and desperate repressive efforts of church and 
 state, we all know how the spirit of man broke 
 through the Dark Ages and burst into the tre- 
 mendous bloom of the Renaissance. 
 
 It may be said that the Crusades were them- 
 selves the result of the quickening of the spirit 
 of man, whereas the present change is not of 
 woman's seeking, and that therefore we need 
 not expect a corresponding forward movement 
 of the female. And there is doubtless some- 
 thing to be said for this. On the other hand, 
 had the crusaders been thrust toward Asia by 
 forces beyond their control, it is inconceivable 
 that the vision of a wider world which then 
 dawned upon them would not have been followed 
 by the opening of new life-channels and a con- 
 sequent alteration of existing institutions. 
 Furthermore, we must remember that it was left 
 
 213 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 to man's choice, after his return from Asia, 
 whether he should go on along new paths that 
 had opened up, whereas in the present case of 
 woman the same necessity that forced her into 
 the new domains will in all probability keep her 
 there. For when the broken ranks of the male 
 return to take up again the tools of labor, who 
 but woman will fill those wide gaps? And fill- 
 ing those wide gaps, bending her back beneath 
 the crushing burden which the war will have 
 laid upon her, will she not ask the question how 
 it came there? And will she be satisfied with 
 the answer and turn humbly to her labors ? 
 
 What will happen in Europe to-morrow, so 
 far as it bears upon the place of woman in the 
 reconstruction that will surely follow, can per- 
 haps be even more clearly foreshadowed if we 
 will turn to a calamity, in its destructiveness at 
 least comparable to the present war, that fell 
 upon England in the latter part of the four- 
 teenth century. I refer to the Black Death. 
 Probably nothing in the whole history of the Is- 
 land Kingdom contributed more to the break-up 
 of serfdom than did this plague which so deci- 
 mated the ranks of labor that those formerly 
 bound to the soil either availed themselves of 
 the calamity to flee to freedom elsewhere or, re- 
 
 214 
 
THE COSMIC MEANING OF WOMAN 
 
 maining upon the demesne, were out of sheer 
 necessity relieved by the lord of the burden they 
 had borne. 
 
 Does any one imagine that a similar slaugh- 
 ter can take place to-day and similar conse- 
 quences not follow? For years Europe has 
 seethed with the political, economic and marital 
 unrest of woman. And now that Death is 
 abroad opening thousands upon thousands of 
 domestic doors and thrusting woman toward the 
 outer world and freedom, is there any one who 
 does not perceive that the end of another and 
 far wider serfdom is at hand? There comes to 
 mind more than one instance in the past how the 
 common people, forbidden the sword by the 
 upper classes, were gradually called upon by 
 these upper classes in times of need, and how, 
 having the responsibility of warfare laid upon 
 them, they demanded and finally secured for 
 themselves the full rights of citizenship. Now 
 that the tool, the powerful weapon of the pres- 
 ent, is passing in Europe into the hands of 
 woman, long denied it, will not the right and 
 privileges, a coequal control of the world, in- 
 evitably follow? 
 
 We get but half the meaning of the conflict if 
 we do not see that the fall of every soldier upon 
 
 215 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 the borders drafts a woman into a man's place 
 in the interior. Read the lists of the fallen as 
 they lengthen out day by day into the millions, 
 as they shadow forth into an unknown future, 
 and high above the surges of steel in the fore- 
 ground stands out the astounding fact that 
 woman who hitherto has been master not even 
 of her own home will presently find herself in 
 possession of a continent. 
 
 What an unlooked-for ally to the feminist ad- 
 vance I It is as though, almost at the beginning 
 of an attack upon the outworks of the state, the 
 gates of the whole vast social structure were 
 suddenly swung wide open. Nature has come 
 upon man from behind, and while his attention 
 is fixed upon superficial questions of victory and 
 sovereignty, the substantial things of life are 
 being appropriated in the rear. To-day, as al- 
 ways, it is behind the show of power, in the quiet 
 places of peaceful production that the ultimate 
 issues are being determined. The great ques- 
 tion of the present conflict is not what, when the 
 war is over, the Allies will do with Germany or 
 Germany with the Allies, but what woman will 
 do with her opportunity. Thus far, of course, 
 her overflow has been simply into the channels 
 of labor, and there, willing or unwilling, as we 
 
 216 
 
THE COSMIC MEANING OF WOMAN 
 
 have seen, she will doubtless remain. But what 
 then ? Will her unrest be allayed? Will she be 
 content with her new tools, and settle down satis- 
 fied with her new freedom? Or will she realize 
 that the end is not yet, that to remain here is 
 still to be a serf, that her opportunity for world 
 service lies not so much in labor as in those 
 higher spheres of control? WiU she under- 
 stand that to give peace and justice to the world 
 love must sit side by side with power, not only 
 willing but able to intervene? Or in the inevi- 
 table struggle to reach this high place, will she 
 forget her great cosmic mission, to release into 
 the world the waters of love, and hardened by 
 the conflict become a second male, another unit 
 of power to continue the ravages of the first? 
 Will this homemaker of centuries lose her vision 
 and forget that the divine purpose of her com- 
 ing is to make of the world a home ? 
 
 217 
 
POETOGAMY 
 
IX 
 
 POE.TOGAMY 
 
 WHETHER the now famous prophesy, 
 published broadcast some three years 
 ago and ascribed to Count Tolstoy, did really 
 emanate from the great Eussian, that part of 
 it which touches the altered relations of the 
 sexes after the great war, which even then he 
 saw beyond the horizon, is so in keeping with 
 lines already visible and moving in that direc- 
 tion that it is worth while considering what was 
 meant by the word poetogamy there used to 
 define the new relation. In what respect is this 
 new relation to be different from that which 
 obtains to-day and which we have grown to 
 think is final? Is monogamy, that institution 
 around which the centuries have flowed so ca- 
 ressingly, to disappear? And is something 
 that is neither polygamy nor polyandry to take 
 its place ? And what is this strange thing whicH 
 is somehow to come forth out of the war-torn 
 fields of Europe, stimulated into vigorous life 
 
 221 
 
THE WORLD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 possibly by tlie tremendous out-thrust of woman 
 into the ranks of the world? And when it ap- 
 pears, how will it nestle into the life we now 
 know? Will the home that is being broken up 
 rise again? What is poetogamy? What are 
 the forces that are crowding it into the fore- 
 ground? And most of all, what does it mean 
 in the evolution of humanity? 
 
 There is nothing with which mankind high 
 and low, rich and poor, intelligent and non-in- 
 telligent, is so familiar, and nothing which it 
 understands less, than the relation of man and 
 woman. Here is something that preceded by 
 interminable stretches of time the birth of the 
 sciences and the arts, and yet how little do we 
 know of that as compared to these. We have 
 weighed the heavens, we have mapped the earth, 
 we have dissected and given names to every 
 part, almost every cell of the human body, yet 
 not one man or woman can tell the real mean- 
 ing of the difference between these two bodies. 
 They are different, that is all; and we pass on 
 as from something trivial to something impor- 
 tant. We build sciences", we explore history, we 
 light the lamps of philosophy in the temple of 
 the soul, but no lamp is hung above the relation 
 of the sexes. From childhood, from the begin- 
 
 222 
 
POETOGAMT 
 
 ning of time, we have pried and listened about 
 that dark chamber, curious to know and under- 
 stand, and throughout the centuries we have 
 been waved away. We have been told that 
 "sometime we shall know," and the to-morrows 
 have passed into ages and still the generations 
 come to linger about the unlifted veil as impene- 
 trable as it was thousands of years ago. Mean- 
 while, with what vast expenditure of thought 
 and energy we have cleared away the debris 
 of the past in order that a new world might 
 rise! Old arts are changed and new arts are 
 born. Even the gods of our fathers come down. 
 In every hall and room and closet there is reno- 
 vation and an enlargement of life — save in one. 
 Sex is still the attic of the soul where the dust 
 of ages accumulates and where the spiders 
 weave and prey. 
 
 Strange that society is afraid of light upon 
 this subject and yet is not afraid to leave it in 
 darkness. Is it not astonishing, would it not 
 be astonishing even if we were less intelligent 
 than we are, that a matter which touches so 
 deeply the happiness and welfare of every hu- 
 man being should all these centuries have lain 
 neglected while the corners of the earth have 
 been ransacked for some new element the dis- 
 
 223 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 covery of which is sure to be hailed as a mar- 
 velous achievement? It is as though a tribe of 
 savages, numbers of which were every day 
 breaking their limbs and losing their lives be- 
 cause of their ignorance of the law of gravita- 
 tion, should hail as a mighty man and a human 
 benefactor the discoverer of some new star. 
 The law of sex attraction is the law of spiritual 
 gravitation, the nature and operations of which 
 we no more understand than moths understand 
 the nature and working of a flame. 
 
 Conceive of a society that is governed by a 
 perfect state, with men and women working as 
 perfect comrades in a perfect industrial sytem ; 
 add to this a perfect church — so far as such a 
 church could be perfect — filling to perfection the 
 sphere which through the ages the church has set 
 itself to fill. "We have left, still unprovided-for, 
 to organize itself as best it may, the great realm 
 of the cosmic relations between man and woman, 
 a realm which means far more to them than the 
 state in which they live. "What to the average 
 man are the laws of legislatures compared to the 
 mighty law here operative? Most of us pass 
 from the cradle to the grave without realizing, 
 so far as they affect our real lives, that such 
 things as statutes exist. And yet to what pains 
 
 224 
 
POETOGAMY 
 
 have we not been by these enactments to inform 
 the individual of his proper relation to his fel- 
 lows. But this other, that runs through life like 
 a live wire, from which thousands recoil with 
 grief and tragedy, have we not, with almost 
 equal pains, covered it up 1 In none of the rela- 
 tions of life is the effort to get information met 
 with such suspicion. And to suspicion is only 
 too often added denunciation, even persecution. 
 That life is clean and in the light of knowledge 
 would remain so, seems never to have occurred 
 to us. We would make it clean by ignorance. 
 
 In this chapter I am going to try, in the light 
 of history, to find out the reason for this hu- 
 man perversity, this religious devotion to the 
 petty facts of life and this obstinate neglect of 
 the great matter of sex. And I shall try to 
 show at what point this intimate thing between 
 man and woman touches society and therefore 
 justifies the stepping in of the state, and where 
 it concerns solely the two whose lives have some- 
 how by the cosmic urge been tossed into con- 
 tact. 
 
 Eemembering then that we are dealing with 
 something that goes into the very heart of life, 
 something that is coarse or refined, physical 
 or spiritual, as the mind that is considering it 
 
 225 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 is coarse or refined, physical or spiritual, let 
 us see if we cannot find out how it has come 
 about that in an age of knowledge, when light 
 is spreading into every corner of life, the an- 
 cient darkness still hangs over the great king- 
 dom of the sexes, while every day thousands 
 of men and women find themselves hopelessly 
 caught and their happiness oozing away between 
 the church, the director of the conscience, on 
 the one side, and the state, the guardian of the 
 outer welfare of society, on the other, or in 
 the web of critical public opinion that through 
 the centuries has grown up between these two. 
 Here then are the factors of the mighty prob- 
 lem. Or let us put it in another way. The in- 
 dividual is the prisoner at the bar, church and 
 state are the prosecutors, and public opinion 
 is the judge. And in every land under the sun 
 not an hour passes day or night, yes, not even 
 an hour in the night, that this heart-breaking 
 trial is not going on. And those who appear 
 and are forced to bare their lives and plead 
 for release or for mercy are of every rank and 
 condition of society. And into what tens of 
 thousands do they run annually, these mismated 
 or unmated men and women, in cities and towns, 
 in every land, groping about in the fog, a con- 
 
 226 
 
POETOGAMY 
 
 slant stream of them coming of their own voli- 
 tion or haled by the agents of society into the 
 great court of human relations. And of what 
 vaster throng are those others, proud or sen- 
 sitive, who, feeling they cannot bear this sort 
 of thing, humbly accept the crumbs of life and 
 through years secretly nurse what they con- 
 ceive to be an incurable grief because in their 
 opinion the remedy is worse than the disease. 
 And little wonder. For who is not familiar 
 with the enforced vulgarity of the divorce court 
 where men and women cannot part in friendship 
 but where in order to correct a mistake, often 
 of immaturity, one must prove the other a crim- 
 inal. Add to these that other multitude, restive, 
 defiant, and portentously increasing day by 
 day, who scorn to accept marriage upon any 
 such degrading conditions and who are equally 
 unwilling to bow to the dictates of society in 
 what they conceive to be a purely personal mat- 
 ter ; who hold that provided there be no child it 
 is no more the business of society to interfere in 
 the relations of men and women, freely entered 
 into, than it is its business to interfere in their 
 choice of occupation or the clothes they wear. It 
 is of course with this last class that we have es- 
 pecially to do, the defiant ones who are neither 
 
 227 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 divorcees nor Magdalenes, but men and women 
 who have taken their stand upon this matter 
 as upon a great principle. For to these will 
 openly rally, the very moment it is seen that 
 their stand has become tenable, all those who, 
 whether in marriage or out of marriage, have 
 suffered from present laws or conventions, just 
 as it always happens in revolutions when pub- 
 lic sentiment shows the least sign of turning. 
 And we may safely challenge any man who is 
 in touch with life to-day to say that the heart 
 of the world, especially the heart of woman, is 
 not in suppressed rebellion under the paternal- 
 ism of laws and conventions which have grown 
 up about the sex relationship. From every 
 quarter of the globe the demand is becoming 
 insistent that the rights of the individual and 
 of the state in this matter be redefined. 
 
 There are few in this age of diffused knowl- 
 edge who do not know that among every early 
 people, no matter how high they may since have 
 climbed toward a more tolerant and refined 
 view of life, slavery was once an institution 
 cherished and safe-guarded not only by the laws 
 but also by the religion of the country. Pris- 
 oners captured in war, unoffending people 
 picked up as spoil by brigands in their pillaging 
 
 228 
 
POETOGAMY 
 
 expeditions, men whose misfortune it was to 
 fall into debt to the wealthy classes, all these 
 in those early ages flowed down into the slave 
 pens of the world. And so far was this mon- 
 strous interference with the rights of men from 
 being considered tyrannical or wrong that it 
 was never considered at all. It was part of 
 the natural function of society, like the build- 
 ing of houses or the eating of food. And the 
 least sign of revolt or of serious discontent on 
 the part of this wretched class was put down 
 not simply as something that should not be tol- 
 erated but as something preposterous, as 
 though the hand should rise in rebellion against 
 the head. In the opinion of its then guardians, 
 society could not exist without this moral or- 
 der, this Grod-appointed arrangement. Natu- 
 rally, therefore, it was not slavery but the con- 
 demnation of slavery that was opposed to or- 
 der, and every suggestion of change, if it showed 
 the least likelihood of weakening this salutary 
 bond of society, was put down by public opinion 
 with rebuke or ostracism, by the state with the 
 hard hand of the law, by the church with a con- 
 tinuation of the punishment in the hereafter. 
 Such among every people was the fate of those 
 who dared to stand for the right of individuals 
 
 229 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 to do as they pleased in the matter of their 
 labor. 
 
 Passing now to a second institution which, 
 upon the collapse in Europe of the main struc- 
 ture of slavery, was able, like another cancer, 
 to perpetuate itself through the centuries — ^I re- 
 fer to the institution of orthodoxy — ^we have 
 another wide field of operation over which in the 
 general darkness then prevailing — the inevita- 
 ble shadow of this institution — rolled another 
 battle for human freedom. Here the contest 
 is removed from the physical to the mental, for 
 a new age has now come in which man is to be 
 put to a second test that involves his finding his 
 way out of another darkness. The issue is now 
 the emancipation of the mind, the question 
 whether man shall have the right to face life 
 for himself and to work out his own personal 
 problem in his own way or slavishly to obey 
 a controlling paternalism. Upon the issue of 
 that contest, as we now see it, depended that 
 prime spiritual possession, the right to think 
 in freedom, to experiment with life and to accept 
 at the hands of life its corrections. Does any 
 one doubt that the powerful forces then arrayed 
 against the new freedom of thought were the 
 same forces that had stood so obstinately and 
 
 230 
 
POETOGAMY 
 
 struck out so fiercely before against tlie free- 
 dom of labor? Is there one intelligent man or 
 woman wbo, because the wheel of power has 
 now turned round and the churchman has suc- 
 ceeded the statesman, and the missionaries of 
 the Eoman faith have displaced on the battle 
 line the soldiers of the Roman law, does not see 
 that the power which at this time, to stamp out 
 freedom of thought, filled Europe with every 
 instrument of torture which himaan ingenuity 
 could devise, is identically the same as that 
 which centuries before set up at one time in 
 the island of Sicily alone twenty thousand 
 crosses upon which were nailed twenty thousand 
 slaves who had dared to question the right of 
 the established order to do as it pleased with 
 the labor of men? 
 
 The enforcement of orthodoxy was the su- 
 preme crime of the church, as the enforcement 
 of slavery was the supreme crime of the state. 
 And in the perpetuation of these vicious tyran- 
 nies each could always count upon the support 
 of the other and, strange to say, upon the sup- 
 port of society whose education they had taken 
 care all the while to keep firmly in hand. Even 
 after a few bold spirits had awakened and, ap- 
 pealing to the higher instincts of men, were 
 
 231 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 seeking to compel these institutions to keep 
 hands off the budding mind of humanity, the 
 vast majority of the people of those Dark Ages, 
 as we truly call them, were arrayed against 
 their own freedom, denouncing as heretics and 
 either burning or tearing to pieces or applaud- 
 ing these monstrous crimes against the pioneers 
 of the new freedom* 
 
 With the abolition of slavery and orthodoxy 
 has humanity completed its emancipation? We 
 have seen how through the centuries the forces 
 of a static world have gradually been driven 
 from their control, first of man's body and then 
 of his mind. Is there a third realm farther in 
 toward the depths of the spirit, a seat of power 
 in the unexplored shadows of life which man, 
 if he would be free indeed, must discover and 
 make his own? Is there another responsibility 
 which as an individual he must take upon him- 
 self as he marches on toward his goal? Un- 
 doubtedly. There is no such thing as ultimate 
 freedom. The progress of the individual will 
 always encounter the resistance of the mass 
 which will always regard his pushing forward 
 as destructive. Finally, as the number of these 
 forward-pushing individuals increases, there 
 will come a time when, to those who have still 
 
 232 
 
POETOGAMY 
 
 not caught the new vision, society will seem to be 
 breaking up. Then if humanity is wise it will 
 insist upon a free and full discussion of that 
 which is causing the unrest, in order that so- 
 ciety may not, in its misunderstanding of the 
 phenomenon, obstruct the march of humanity 
 into a larger life. 
 
 Centuries hence when mankind looks back 
 upon the present age as we look back upon the 
 ages that lie behind us, it will be seen that 
 society at the close of the nineteenth and the 
 opening of the twentieth century was in the 
 throes of a third struggle for freedom in every 
 respect as important to the forward movement 
 of humanity as the two we have just considered 
 which culminated in the establishment of free 
 labor and free thought. 
 
 The coming of woman into the outer life of the 
 world which the last half century has witnessed 
 is comparable as a social phenomenon to the 
 birth of science in the Dark Ages. It would 
 be easy to parallel the appearance of these two, 
 to identify their transforming influences, and to 
 show how in both cases the reaction of society 
 was the same. There has been the same sus- 
 picion, the same alarm, and the same sort of 
 activity among institutionalists, the same op- 
 
 23a 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 position to the entrance of woman into the af- 
 fairs of the world as there was centuries ago to 
 the coming of science. Already along the short 
 path over which woman has thus far traveled 
 toward freedom, there is the same martyrdom, 
 softened, I started to say, by the humanities of 
 the age, but nevertheless the same as that which 
 from Eoger Bacon to Francisco Ferrer has 
 marked the long road of science. 
 
 And yet while the Social reaction has been the 
 same, the revolution which science wrought is 
 as different from that which woman has set in 
 motion as the knowledge of radium is different 
 from Madame Curie. Science is a cold white 
 light; woman is a human being. Science is 
 chiefly concerned with the fact; woman, with 
 experience. Science may advance though the 
 scientist keeps to his cloister, whereas to widen 
 experience it is necessary for woman to come 
 out into the world and into contact with other 
 persons. It is evident, therefore, that the 
 present revolution which is gathering in the 
 wake of woman is to usher in not so much 
 new systems of thought as new arrangements of 
 life, a renaissance of human relations. In 
 other words, the field which the pioneers of the 
 present world-wide but as yet loosely organized 
 
 234 
 
POETOGAMY 
 
 movement have earnestly set themselves to pos- 
 sess and clear, is generally the whole field of 
 ethics and particularly that neglected section 
 of it which through the centuries has become 
 known as sex morality. 
 
 We can get some idea of the magnitude of the 
 task they have undertaken if we will only re- 
 member that as yet we are not able even to de- 
 fine sex morality. We are in practically the 
 same position with regard to the work which 
 we have to do as were the people of the twelfth 
 century with regard to that which confronted 
 them. There is even the same reluctance to go 
 forward, the same fear of what may come, the 
 same obstacles thrown in the way of investiga- 
 tion as our forefathers encountered eight cen- 
 turies ago in the first steps toward the scientific 
 age. And therefore while intellectually we are 
 grown up, in our knowledge of sex morality we 
 are but little ahead of the shaggy, slant-browed 
 creature who fled from his cave at the coming 
 of the glacier. Stop the average man upon the 
 street and ask him to tell you something of 
 electricity and he will astonish you. Then ask 
 him to tell you something of sex morality and 
 he will astonish you again — ^by his ignorance. 
 Or ask him to define for you the relation of the 
 
 235 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 individual to society in the matter of property, 
 how far the individual may go in using or dis- 
 posing of his private possessions, under what 
 circumstances the state may interfere and the 
 justification for such interference, and in ninety- 
 nine cases out of a hundred he will show an in- 
 timate understanding of these things. But 
 touch upon the matter of sex relations ; ask him 
 under what circumstances the state is justified 
 in interfering in the relation of man and woman 
 — ^justified, I mean, not legally hut morally — 
 and he will he unahle to answer you or his 
 answers, if you care to compare them, will he 
 found to be essentially the same as those made 
 centuries ago when the question concerned the 
 right of a person to think his own way through 
 life. When I say, therefore, that in respect of 
 our understanding of sex morality we are still 
 in the Dark Ages, I mean exactly what I say. 
 The mind of the average man is as incapable 
 of dealing intelligently with this subject as was 
 that of the average man of centuries ago with 
 the sciences then coming to light. Then, as we 
 know, the subject of free thought was taboo as 
 heretical and dangerous, was suppressed by 
 both church and state for the *'good of society." 
 So to-day for precisely the same reason, pre- 
 
 236 
 
POETOGAMY 
 
 cisely the same attitude is taken toward the 
 discussion of sex morality. We have allowed 
 the prurient and the vulgar-mindedj who them- 
 selves are never controlled by these considera- 
 tions, to prevent the spread of light over one 
 of the most vital spiritual problems that can 
 touch a human being, one which goes far deeper 
 into his nature and there exercises an influence 
 far more elevating or degrading than any matter 
 of industry or politics can possibly exercise, one 
 which takes hands upon the highest planes of 
 life with religion. And in the midst of this 
 lamentable confusion as to the right relation 
 of the sexes, woman has burst upon the world ! 
 If there was ever since the beginning of time 
 an age so unprepared as the present for the 
 coming of a new and mighty factor, I do not 
 know when it was. It is almost as though the 
 wheat of the world should push up through 
 frozen ground and come to harvest when the 
 fields were full of snow. From centuries of 
 secluded association with father and brother, al- 
 most in a day and with no increase of knowl- 
 edge, woman has been tossed out upon the paths 
 of men. If we had not been engrossed with 
 other things the resultant intoxication might 
 have been foreseen, and the inevitable straining 
 
 237 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 of the conventions provided for. But with not 
 even a consciousness, it would seem, of the sig- 
 nificance of this change, the very natures of 
 man and woman have come into electrical con- 
 tact, woman the seeker after experience, and 
 man the protector of institutions. And not 
 woman but man is at a loss to know what to do. 
 Trained to expect woman to fill a place, he sees 
 her flowing out into all places. Educated to 
 regard her as a possession, he finds her becom- 
 ing conscious of something beyond, likely to be- 
 come the possession of others. From centuries 
 as a wife, familiar as the commonest thing of 
 the house, she has suddenly put on the garment 
 of uncertainty, a companion to-day, a stranger 
 to-morrow. Cling as we may to the pleasing 
 fancy t)f a static relationship between man and 
 woman, as in the long ago we clung to the simi- 
 lar illusion of a static labor and a static thought, 
 the very days tell us it cannot be. And yet de- 
 spite the testimony even of our eyes and ears, 
 we persist in our efforts to arrest and bring to 
 a pause the inevitable change. We even shut 
 our eyes in order to convince ourselves that 
 our procedure is rational. Meanwhile, a being 
 whose interest through the ages has been almost 
 wholly a sex interest is pouring out into a 
 
 238 
 
POETOGAMY 
 
 world that knows nothing of sex, a world which 
 man has laid out for the game of life in which 
 there is nothing between him and the stake he 
 desires. And in the grind of this astounding 
 maladjustment, while we unconcernedly look 
 on, thousands of lives annually are going to 
 pieces. 
 
 From the standpoint merely of social econ- 
 omy and the elimination of human suffering, 
 it is exceedingly unfortunate that science was 
 not long ago encouraged to turn its attention 
 to the study of man and woman and their cosmic 
 relations, in order that we might have some- 
 thing of the fundamental knowledge upon this 
 subject which we have upon other subjects that 
 science has touched. For the situation in which 
 we now find ourselves is one that may well 
 arouse social concern. As a makeshift to patch 
 up the wreck of our neglect we have allowed a 
 matter which should have been handled solely 
 by education to slip by us into the courts. For 
 want of teachers we have turned to policemen. 
 Because we do not understand, we punish ; and 
 heedless of the example of our forefathers 
 whom we now honor for their liberation of the 
 human mind, instead of insisting that sex moral- 
 ity too belongs in the field of education, we sit 
 
 239 
 
THE "WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 by and allow the misalliances of men and women 
 to be thrust into the category of crime. Knowl- 
 edge is denied, and yet it is a penal offense 
 to make a mistake. If the mistake has re- 
 sulted in marriage, it can be corrected only by 
 confessing a crime or by proving a crime. If 
 it has not resulted in marriage, it is even worse. 
 And when the courts have delivered their pro- 
 nouncements, those who have come and those 
 who have been brought are thereafter wiser 
 only as to the provisions of the statutes. Mean- 
 while other generations come on, stumbling in 
 the same ancient darkness, and the farce goes 
 on forever. 
 
 Is there no way by which this criminal pro- 
 cedure may be stopped and this whole matter 
 be brought back to the basis of education? 
 Have we so long accustomed ourselves to rely- 
 ing upon the state to correct our blunders that 
 we have forgotten that the spiritual forces prop- 
 erly directed are themselves adequate, in fact 
 that they alone are adequate to produce a 
 poised, self-controlled human being? Have we 
 forgotten, furthermore, that we have no more 
 right to interfere with the free choice of a man 
 and a woman in the matter of conduct, where 
 this conduct does not actually interfere with 
 
 240 
 
POETOGAMY 
 
 the rights of others, than we have to interfere 
 with the thoughts that two persons may choose 
 to think f And this interference, let us remem- 
 ber, must be actual, not imaginary; must be of 
 a more tangible character than those subtle con- 
 siderations which we call sensibilities. For if 
 we admit as a principle of action that the con- 
 duct of one person must square with the sensi- 
 bilities of another person, we shall soon find 
 ourselves falling into the same unreasonable in- 
 tolerance as our forefathers showed centuries 
 ago toward freedom of thought. It was because 
 this freedom of thought shocked their sensibili- 
 ties, not because it interfered with their rights, 
 that they objected. Have we fought through 
 two great battles for human freedom, and yet 
 have no vision for the third? 
 
 In the matter of labor, since man emerged 
 from slavery, it has been a principle of law 
 that two responsible persons may enter into a 
 contract and such contract is everywhere rec- 
 ognized as legal provided it does not interfere 
 with the right of other persons to make a simi- 
 lar contract. And later, if the parties to this 
 contract in which no third party is involved, de- 
 sire at any time to terminate their agreement, 
 society has come to recognize it as a sacred obli- 
 
 241 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 gation that this privilege be respected. The fact 
 that other persons who have made similar con- 
 tracts have no such desire has no bearing what- 
 ever on the case. Furthermore, to enquire into 
 the cause of this change of mind in the con- 
 tracting parties is beyond the jurisdiction of 
 the court. Compare this respectful and ra- 
 tional attitude, in a matter which concerns 
 merely dollars and cents, with the prying, offi- 
 cious, vulgar curiosity when two persons who 
 have entered into a marriage contract appear 
 and ask to have the contract ended. If our 
 fathers could return, ''Here," they would say, 
 "is the Inquisition again." And undoubtedly 
 in essential features there is a striking resem- 
 blance. Compare again our rational procedure 
 in business relations where we consider our ob- 
 ligation fully discharged when we have provided 
 opportunities for contract, and regard the fail- 
 ure of persons to avail themselves of these op- 
 portunities as something that concerns only 
 themselves — compare with this our attitude to- 
 ward those who do not come under the shelter of 
 contract in the sex relations. In both cases, we 
 have provided protection, but how vastly differ- 
 ent our views of the relation of the individual to 
 this protection. In the former case, it is op- 
 
 242 
 
POETOGAMY 
 
 tional ; in the latter, compulsory. In the one we 
 seem to understand that we are dealing with 
 men and women; in the other we proceed as 
 though these same men and women had returned 
 to the nursery. Therefore in business we have 
 democracy ; in the sex relations, paternalism. 
 
 For the child, we say, the helpless child. 
 Here, certainly, we come upon solid ground, the 
 only solid ground we have met. Beyond any 
 question the child should be protected in some 
 way; through the state if necessary. Society 
 should see to it that the child is provided for. 
 But what do we mean by providing for the child? 
 Suppose the parents have not been married. 
 What should the world do with this little crea- 
 ture? What should be his relation to the other 
 children of the world, the respectably born? In 
 nothing has the Christian world come further 
 from understanding Christianity than in its an- 
 swers to these questions. Against every prin- 
 ciple of Christianity it has branded and made 
 outcasts of thousands of children. And 
 through all these centuries it has sought to 
 escape the just condemnation of its inhuman 
 attitude by shifting the blame upon the parents. 
 The child ought never to have been born under 
 the circumstances. The fact that it has been 
 
 243 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 so bom, that it was so bom yesterday and will 
 be so bom to-morrow, is never quite faced by 
 the Christian world. It is of deeper concern, 
 it would seem, and more in furtherance of re- 
 ligion, to enforce conformity to the conventions 
 on the part of the parents than to see to it that 
 through a broad charity and right education a 
 human place is made in the world for the child. 
 It is often a source of profound astonishment to 
 hear people, who in other respects show no par- 
 ticular interest in the child, who ''when disci- 
 pline demands it" have no hesitation in inflict- 
 ing brutal punishment upon their own children, 
 express themselves with fervor upon the right of 
 the child to be ''properly born." To such peo- 
 ple this phrase has but one meaning, that the 
 parents have been legally married. A healthful 
 environment, sufficiency of food, and opportu- 
 nities for education, these are not embraced in 
 the term. A bit of Phariseeism more genuine 
 than this it would be hard to find. If the child 
 suffers from being born outside of marriage, who 
 does not see it is society that is to blame for it? 
 Just as in an age, happily now past, society was 
 responsible for the somewhat similar disad- 
 vantages which the child suffered from having 
 
 244 
 
POETOGAMY 
 
 parents who were free-thinkers. Then, too, we 
 remember, the blame was laid upon the parents. 
 
 As regards both labor and thought, man has 
 outgrown the nursery of institutional interfer- 
 ence. He has earned and now maintains the 
 right to make a mistake and to learn not from 
 punishment laid upon him from outside but from 
 the reaction of the mistake upon his own life. 
 In these matters we have come to perceive that 
 it is best both for the individual and for so- 
 ciety to allow personal experience with its cer- 
 tain rewards and its equally certain punish- 
 ments the widest possible latitude. And in in- 
 dustry and opinion we ease off the rougher re- 
 actions which the stumbling man or woman may 
 encounter not by arrests and imprisonments but 
 by the saner way of kindling in the mind by edu- 
 cation of a truer knowledge of life. 
 
 The abolition of slavery did not mean that 
 thereafter a man was to have no right to en- 
 gage himself to another man upon whatsoever 
 terms and conditions he saw fit, for a lifetime 
 if he so desired. It simply meant that he was 
 not thereafter to be compelled to do so. The 
 abolition of orthodoxy did not mean that there- 
 after a man was to be forbidden to cling to his 
 
 245 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 creed if lie so desired, but simply that lie was 
 not to be forced to do so against his desire. 
 
 What then is poetogamy, this new institution 
 touching the relation of man and woman which 
 Tolstoy foresaw rising beyond the great war? 
 Obviously the third step in human freedom, a 
 widening of the privileges and the responsibili- 
 ties of the individual. Does it involve the pass- 
 ing of monogamy? Certainly not. Will it 
 stamp out polygamy and polyandry? Again, 
 certainly not. Poetogamy is simply respect for 
 the right of others to do as they please in the 
 matter of sex relations, the opening of the gate 
 for law to step out and for education to step 
 into this realm, precisely as we have seen, for 
 a similar purpose, two other gates open in the 
 past. The struggles for free labor and free 
 thought were won by man. Is it too much to 
 hope that the glory of the third victory will fall 
 to woman? 
 
 246 
 
THE CULTUEAL OBSESSION 
 
THE CTJLTUKAIj OBSESSION" 
 
 THE historian of the future who dips back 
 into the files of present-day newspapers 
 seeking material for an adequate account of 
 the Great War will find within the field that he 
 must cover an element which the historian of 
 no other war has had seriously to consider. 
 Heretofore it has been sufficient to set forth the 
 causes, progress, and consequences of a conflict 
 as they worked themselves out along lines cen- 
 tering in and branching out from three leading 
 characters: the statesman who, with his eyes 
 upon the boundaries and the fate of states, holds 
 in his hand the tangled threads of diplomacy; 
 the financier, or master of essentials shall we 
 call him, who embodies in himself the difficult 
 problem of immediate supplies and the future 
 economic welfare of his country; and the gen- 
 eral commanding the armies in the field. But 
 already in the present conflict, owing to a new 
 factor which for some time has slowly been 
 edging its way toward world control, a fourth 
 
 249 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 figure has emerged and already has taken his 
 place with the other three. And the task as- 
 signed to this new-comer, if we may judge from 
 the attention he has received, is quite as im- 
 portant as those presided over by any of his 
 colleagues. For since the conquest of human- 
 ity by the newspapers and the consequent tap- 
 ping of the sources of public opinion, a high 
 judiciary has come into existence before which, 
 willing or unwilling, nations are tried. And 
 this public opinion, slowly educated to peace, 
 has become such an avowed enemy to war that 
 armed nations have found it necessary to create 
 and maintain what amounts to a new branch of 
 the military service which, for want of a better 
 name, we may call the Corps of National Apolo- 
 gists. Even nations engaged in defensive war- 
 fare have been obliged to adopt this new type 
 of military assistant whose duty it is to guard 
 the moral commissariat of the armies or, to 
 put it in another way, to stand between the 
 world's conscience and the horrors of the battle- 
 field, and, when the scales tip with an over- 
 weight of what seems wanton carnage, to throw 
 into the other side powerful phrases of justice 
 and of right. Therefore the battle of brains 
 that goes on from the peaceful interiors of the 
 
 250 
 
THE CULTURAL OBSESSION 
 
 warring nations, the charge and counter-charge 
 of professors and litterateurs who at the first 
 tap of the drum seem also to have been sum- 
 moned to the colors and who, night and day, as 
 though the fate of their countries depended upon 
 them, hurry with their briefs into the great 
 court of neutral opinion. 
 
 It is strange when the nations engaged have 
 been so little regardful of the world's opinion 
 that such strenuous efforts should be made to 
 capture the world's sympathy. Great works of 
 literature are being left in tragic incomplete- 
 ness, the advance of science is being halted, and 
 in philosophy who knows what masterpieces are 
 being lost, in order that the belligerent nations 
 may not lack skilled advocates to justify the 
 course they have adopted and forcibly to present 
 to a public, too apt to overlook them, those other 
 considerations which are of more importance 
 than human life. There is not a loophole, not a 
 crevice anywhere in the wall of the world's opin- 
 ion, that offers the least opening to a wedge but 
 some famous writer of fiction, some renowned 
 psychologist or some essayist of reputation, is 
 not there pleading for a chance to be heard. 
 Even ancient friendships are dug up from the 
 forgotten past and are made occasions of 
 
 251 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 lengthy epistles, obviously intended for a wider 
 public, to show what an irreparable loss the 
 world would suffer should the ''barbarian" win. 
 It was not unforeseen by those who have 
 watched with any understanding the develop- 
 ment of Europe that in the event of a war be- 
 tween the leading nations of that continent the 
 word that would probably be most often requisi- 
 tioned to designate the foe would be the word 
 "barbarian." For always there is some word 
 which, by a sort of subtle agreement, is ac- 
 cepted among the nations as expressive of su- 
 preme contempt. For centuries the word em- 
 ployed for this purpose was the word "heathen" 
 or "infidel." But since the decline of Chris- 
 tianity and the falling away of millions from the 
 church these words long ago ceased to rankle 
 and have therefore of their own weight fallen 
 into disuse. But with the rise of the school, 
 an essentially pagan institution, to the position 
 of supreme influence, a new ideal has arisen 
 which has necessitated the finding of a new 
 word, one as expressive of the utter lack of 
 the essentials of the true civilization as was the 
 former of the essentials of the true religion. 
 If the school were an institution that had come 
 into existence within recent times, like the press, 
 
 252 
 
THE CULTURAL OBSESSION 
 
 if culture were a magical growth of last night, 
 it would have been much more difficult to find 
 the precise word. But the school, like the 
 church, is ancient of days and has a vocabulary 
 mellow and adequate to the needs both of in- 
 dividuals and of nations, and therefore almost 
 instinctively there has leaped into the mouths 
 of the Frenchman, the Englishman, and the Ger- 
 man a word which has lain unused since the 
 eclipse of Greece. Now that Europe has become 
 pagan or, let us say, classical, after two thou- 
 sand years of dormancy the word ''barbarian" 
 wakes again into life and once more with terri- 
 ble disdain is hurled now across the Ehine, now 
 over into Russia, and now this way and that 
 across the Channel. 
 
 This, then, is the new element, this tumult in 
 the interiors of the warring nations, the attack 
 of one culture upon another, each claiming su- 
 periority, that the future historian will have to 
 deal with if he expects to hand on to after ages 
 an adequate account of the Great "War. For 
 beside columns devoted to field operations, to 
 the killing and wounding of millions of men, to 
 the devastation of lands and the pauperization 
 of peoples, he will come upon other columns in 
 which, like a battle in the clouds, for the benefit 
 
 253 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 of neutral nations this strange debate goes on 
 over the relative merits of their respective cul- 
 tures. 
 
 It is a good thing that the war has again 
 brought up this question of culture. Never was 
 there a time more appropriate than the pres- 
 ent to assess once for all its value and to as- 
 certain what service it is rendering in the high 
 place which it occupies. 
 
 Few things that have come down to us out 
 of the past need so much as does culture to be 
 reexamined in the light of our new democracy. 
 For ages it has played about the horizon of 
 humanity, evoking wonder and reverence, at in- 
 tervals during certain golden years becoming 
 an almost tangible thing, then disappearing to 
 play again about the horizon. And always that 
 awe which it has inspired, like that which the 
 pomp of the popes inspired in the hearts of the 
 early Goths, fresh out of the wilderness, has won 
 for those who professed it considerations which 
 the mass of humanity has not enjoyed. The 
 slave who could recite Euripides was, we re- 
 member, set free, while his companions, in 
 whose minds the divine fire had never kindled, 
 were sent to the quarries. Other institutions 
 have suffered the shocks of life, have even gone 
 
 254 
 
THE CULTURAL OBSESSION 
 
 down under the rising flood of democracy, but 
 with no abatement of influence the aristocracy of 
 culture has persisted through the ages. In re- 
 spect of reverence which they have commanded 
 the professors of culture have been more fortu- 
 nate even than the professors of religion. In 
 irreligious ages priests have been persecuted 
 like ordinary men, whereas in dark ages the man 
 of learning has retained his halo, brighter if 
 anything for the darkness about him. And with 
 the advancement of civilization his influence has 
 increased. He has even fallen heir to preroga- 
 tives formerly exercised exclusively by the man 
 of God, so that to-day it is the man of culture, 
 not as yesterday the man of religion, who is 
 summoned by governments in times of great 
 crisis to make plain to the outraged conscience 
 of humanity those other considerations which 
 are of more importance than human life. The 
 scholar has become the father confessor of the 
 nations. 
 
 In the long ago a war was righteous or abhor- 
 rent as it advanced or retarded the spread of 
 so-caUed Christianity. Then, too, there were 
 considerations of more importance than human 
 life. Though the church, as I tried to show 
 in a previous chapter, from her very establish- 
 
 255 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 ment upon the Tiber, turned lier face toward 
 conquest, it was probably from Islam that 
 Christianity received its ultimate impulse to 
 take up the sword for the conversion of unbe- 
 lievers; and to the sword the builders of the 
 church soon added the faggot. Divergent in 
 many points of faith and practice as these two 
 creeds were, the Christian came finally to agree 
 with the Mohammedan in this, that war was jus- 
 tifiable, was even a high duty, provided its pur- 
 pose was to carry to the benighted the saving 
 grace of the true religion. The one essential 
 difference between them was that there was 
 more strife to protect the true faith from the 
 heresy of free minds within Christendom than 
 there was in the Mohammedan world. 
 
 The culturist therefore had a precedent for 
 adopting the professional attitude toward war. 
 Though there are people to-day who are doubt- 
 less irritated by his aloofness from the human 
 cry in the present war, in this, too, we must 
 remember, he is following an ancient precedent. 
 Culture has succeeded religion, but professional- 
 ism has remained. War to-day is righteous or 
 abhorrent as it seems likely to advance or re- 
 tard culture, not all culture but the true cul- 
 ture. Religionists and culturists, so wide apart 
 
 256 
 
THE CULTURAL OBSESSION 
 
 in many things, are alike in this, that they have 
 both suffered from the fatal tendency to exag- 
 gerate the importance of their place in the 
 economy of life. Withdrawn from the world of 
 active affairs into a world of contemplation, 
 and surrounded with the ancient illusion that 
 they alone live in imperishable realities, they 
 have induced a state of mind that sees in all 
 the other manifestations of life both cosmic and 
 social, roots and leaves the sole purpose of 
 which from the foundation of the world has 
 been to gather food for these particular blooms. 
 And tending these blooms, they have uncon- 
 sciously developed that professionalism which 
 imagines that humanity was made for these 
 things and not these things for humanity. 
 
 What is this thing, then, to consider, which the 
 neutral nations are asked to take their eyes 
 from battle-fields where thousands of men are 
 dying? Obviously it is something which the 
 mass of mankind do not understand and of 
 which dictionaries give no adequate definition. 
 We are asked to accept it on faith. We are 
 asked to quiet our compunctions and to believe 
 that if only the cause of true culture is pro- 
 moted, all is well. And if, still troubled, we 
 persist in our determination to find out what 
 
 257 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 this thing is, and search the records of 
 Greece where it is supposed to have originated, 
 still we are disappointed. The past throws 
 no light upon why it is that culture has a 
 place in the scales against human suffering. 
 We are even more confused, less able to under- 
 stand it than before. For while in Greece, too, 
 culture was considered a thing of so divine a 
 character as to justify the enslavement of one 
 part of the population by the other, it was not 
 until the leadership of Greece fell into the hands 
 of the semi-barbarian Philip that designs for 
 world conquest became rife. Never before this 
 did it occur to the sane Greek to take up the 
 sword in order to bring civilization to the 
 barbarian. The Athenian mind, superior as 
 it unquestionably was to its neighbors, was 
 never soil to the strange idea of teaching the 
 world. The Greek was too busy teaching him- 
 self. And always in Greece when the need 
 arose the guardians of culture were to be found 
 in the ranks of the armies. At Marathon, we 
 remember, the great -^schylus bared his im- 
 mortal breast to the Persian spear. And Soc- 
 rates fought shoulder to shoulder with ordi- 
 nary men in the Macedonian wars. And 
 Demosthenes, that terrible foe of the barbarian, 
 
 258 
 
THE CULTURAL OBSESSION 
 
 went fortli against this barbarian, sword in 
 hand. Evidently modern culture is more 
 precious than ancient culture or more likely to 
 perish should its guardians fall. 
 
 "We are asked to accept it on faith. "We are 
 asked to believe that above the head of the 
 average man there is something for which 
 nevertheless the average man should be willing 
 to die. Even by eminent rationalists, in the 
 grasp of whose terrible logic the pillars of the 
 church have come down because it was claimed 
 they supported a transcendental kingdom, we 
 are asked in our investigations into the respon- 
 sibility for the present war to throw into the 
 scales this thing which very clearly belongs 
 in the same class of unseen values. That I 
 call an unseen value the existence of which a 
 man accepts from the mouth of another man 
 without knowing in his own soul that it is true. 
 Upon the pillars of the church which the cul- 
 turists have brought down they have erected 
 another kingdom for the scattering of whose 
 blessings it is their bounden duty as in the days 
 of Islam to assault with fire and sword and 
 bring into subjection peoples into whose lives 
 this wonderful light has never come. Culture 
 is the new religion possessing all the sanctions 
 
 259 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 and employing for its spread all the instru- 
 ments employed by the church in the Dark 
 Ages — even to the crosses. 
 
 Is it possible that Germany does not see 
 what every nation can easily see if it will only 
 take the trouble to look into its own depths, 
 that not only in neighboring nations but in Ger- 
 many also, despite her leadership in education, 
 there are vast masses of people to whom this 
 thing which her elite call culture is an unseen, 
 certainly an unshared value! For no one 
 would resent more quickly or with more fer- 
 vor than the German professor the idea that 
 culture is reading and writing and the ability 
 to figure wages. 
 
 Is the average German soldier, who has 
 grown up in a country in which it is claimed the 
 new culture has for years had its home, so dif- 
 ferent from the soldiers of the opposing armies 
 that he knows what is meant by this won- 
 derful light beyond the pale of which men are 
 "barbarians"! Do these men whose fore- 
 fathers marched forth to the ends of the earth 
 and fell by thousands about the Holy Sepulcher 
 understand what for it is they have gone forth? 
 Of old, as we see it now, those waves after long 
 waves that rolled toward Asia from the fields 
 
 260 
 
THE CULTURAL OBSESSION 
 
 and towns of Europe were blown by the winds 
 of fanaticism. Of the peasants and artisans 
 who made up the bulk of those great armies, 
 though inconspicuous under the banners of the 
 Godfreys and the Barbarossas, not one in his 
 normal condition could have given any reason 
 for his ardor. Even churchmen to-day are 
 ashamed of those militant outbursts of the true 
 faith and would fain erase them from the pages 
 of history. 
 
 Since the last crusader returned beaten from 
 Asia, what a change has come over the world! 
 Since time began no other six centuries span a 
 gulf so immeasurable. It is as though, with all 
 the intervening lands dropped out, a bridge 
 should have grown up between China and Ger- 
 many. Despite the wars and the clash of baron 
 with baron, how still that ancient world, how 
 far off from the world of to-day thundering with 
 engines and aflame and boiling with democracy. 
 And yet when we consider it closely the trans- 
 formation seems to be chiefly an outer one. 
 Wide as the chasm is, the man on this side is 
 not so very different from the man on the other 
 side. For while it is true that the farther end 
 of the bridge is engulfed in darkness, in the 
 march of man over into the present Age of En- 
 
 261 
 
THE WORLD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 lightenment, as we call it, tlie great forces of the 
 Dark Ages have not fallen behind. Names 
 have changed, possibly motives also, but that 
 which is deeper than either of these, the ca- 
 pacity of man for illusions and his readiness to 
 march in vast masses into incalculable suffering 
 and death for something which he does not un- 
 derstand — this has remained the same. Fun- 
 damentally therefore, despite the marvelous ex- 
 pansion of education, we are evidently still in 
 the Dark Ages. For what is the Dark Ages 
 if not a lack of understanding, a widespread 
 darkness instead of a widespread light? 
 
 And over this bridge into a changed but not a 
 new world has come also the builder of illusions. 
 Changed as the times are changed, but with 
 power still to set millions in motion toward the 
 horizon beyond which they seem to think some 
 paradise awaits them, the user of magical 
 words is still among us. As on the other side 
 of the bridge humanity was told and unques- 
 tioningly believed that there was something 
 which, though they could not understand it, was 
 vastly more important than work or rewards of 
 work, for which it was their duty, their glory 
 to give up all they were attached to, even their 
 lives, so to-day. Though the soldiers of the 
 
 262 
 
THE CULTURAL OBSESSION 
 
 true culture understand as little of what is 
 meant by this phrase as the soldiers of the true 
 faith knew what was meant by that expression, 
 it is under the same enchantment and with the 
 same shout that they go forth to die. 
 
 As out of the Dark Ages, we hear of the 
 **duty to make war,'* not the duty to defend 
 oneself but the duty to conquer others. And 
 when the world asks why, the culturists tell us 
 it is for the spread of the true culture. 
 
 Christendom, as I have said, probably 
 learned this strange gospel from the wild fol- 
 lowers of the Prophet who, in their assault 
 upon Europe, curving up now in the West and 
 now in the East like the horns of the crescent, 
 sought to convert with the sword the followers 
 of the cross. For though even before Islam 
 the Roman legions had swept Westward, never 
 from Rome this mystical justification of war. 
 The Romans were a practical people whose im- 
 agination, though it might play with the ends of 
 the earth, was never kindled into the white heat 
 of frenzy. Tyrants often were the Caesars, but 
 never fanatics. If they went forth sword in 
 hand, it was with something in the other hand 
 which, after almost two thousand years, man- 
 kind concedes was of inestimable value. In the 
 
 263 
 
THE WORLD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 wake of the Roman armies followed the Roman 
 peace, in those days of fierce tribal warfare a 
 compensation shared alike by serf and noble, 
 and understandable even by barbarians. And 
 therefore it is not difficult to see why the con- 
 quered peoples of the north soon enlisted in the 
 Roman armies, for whether in Gaul or in Brit- 
 ain the lowest man, challenged to explain his 
 strange face-about to the Caesars, could point 
 to order where disorder had reigned, to splen- 
 did roads, to growing trade, to a tangible bet- 
 terment of life under the Roman peace. But 
 behind the zealous followers of the Prophet 
 what sediment remained? Looking out over 
 the vast lands which they conquered, we see 
 far less substantial contributions to the com- 
 mon good than those which the practical Rom- 
 ans invariably left in subjugated lands. Even 
 more true is this of the followers of the cross 
 who in turn carried the tide of conquest over 
 Asia. The Christians were in no sense the 
 vanguards of a higher order of life. Indeed, 
 of neither the Mohammedan nor the Christian 
 was it the purpose or the hope to bring such 
 benefits to conquered lands. Theirs was the 
 mission to offer in return for indescribable suf- 
 fering in this life an indefinable paradise in the 
 
 264 
 
THE CULTURAL OBSESSION 
 
 next. It is impossible to conceive of the 
 Eoman as ever aflElicted with any such obsession, 
 for the Roman, even the man in the ranks, al- 
 ways somehow knew what he was about, and 
 there was no intelligence however low to which 
 he could not have explained himself. But of 
 the other two, those militant faiths with their 
 imagined superiority and their duty to teach 
 the world, what other word so well expresses 
 as the word obsession that utter loss of reason, 
 that wild egomania, that passion to die if only 
 the true faith might live, which drenched first 
 Europe and then Asia with blood? 
 
 When we contemplate Europe to-day, we do 
 not see that wide difference between Germany 
 and her neighbors which distinguished Rome 
 from Gaul and early Britain. In the case of 
 Rome, acquainted as she was with cities, with 
 commerce, and with the arts, one could easily 
 have foreseen that vast benefits would flow to 
 the conquered northern peoples who knew noth- 
 ing of these things. But in the case of Ger- 
 many, it is not clear why the other civilizations 
 of Europe should be obliged to take character 
 after hers. Nothing is so alluring about 
 Europe as its diversity of races working out 
 their diversity of ideals. At the price of this, 
 
 265 
 
THE WORLD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 which we find in no other continent, even Ger- 
 man culture, though it were all the Germans 
 themselves claim for it, would come high. Yet 
 there are those who would see in the dissemina- 
 tion of this culture over the whole continent an 
 ample return even for the ruin of the present 
 war. Just so the followers of Gebel al Tarik 
 and later the followers of the Lion Heart. 
 
 It is incomprehensible that culture should 
 ever have gone to religion for its sanctions. 
 For culture, especially German culture, has 
 never in other respects shown a disposition to 
 follow the lead of Christianity either medieval 
 or ancient. Indeed, in nothing has the aggres- 
 sive Teutonic spirit shown itself more clearly or 
 more admirably a pioneer in those things which 
 concern the freedom of the human mind than in 
 the bold way in which it has dissected this 
 ancient faith and divested it of its superstitions. 
 Nowhere, as I have said, have imaginary values 
 come down with such a noise as they have in 
 Germany. For German culturists to have 
 adopted the thesis of Islam and of medieval 
 Christianity that war is justifiable provided its 
 purpose be to introduce among the peoples 
 whom it has outraged a vision of some far up- 
 lands of the spirit that have been revealed to 
 
 266 
 
THE CULTURAL OBSESSION 
 
 them alone, seems to those who have fed upon 
 the world-thoughts of Goethe and Schiller to be 
 a blighting of the fine flower of the German 
 mind and strangely out of keeping with that 
 character which should rule the world. If the 
 world is to be ruled by one race it should be by 
 that race which is the most capable of appreci- 
 ating what the other races have accomplished. 
 Life should move toward the broader, not the 
 narrower; toward the cosmopolitan, not the pro- 
 vincial. 
 
 It is surprising that the keen German psy- 
 chologist who, it has always been supposed, 
 understands better than his confreres of other 
 countries the workings of the human mind, has 
 not perceived the incongruity of a cultural cru- 
 sade in an age of democracy. Here is a failure 
 more astonishing even than the failure of Ger- 
 man diplomacy. For any one with the slightest 
 knowledge of human nature and with only a 
 newspaper acquaintance with modern Germany 
 could have picked out for the leaders of the Ger- 
 man Foreign Campaign Committee a dozen 
 claims far more likely to win the world's sym- 
 pathy than this claim of cultural superiority. 
 Instinctively he would have said: "Here is 
 your need of land for your growing population, 
 
 267 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 and the care you take, more than any other na- 
 tion in Europe, of your people. These will ap- 
 peal to humanity everywhere, especially in 
 America." For unfortunately we are so made 
 that our hearts go out to human need and human 
 attention but shut themselves up at the least sign 
 of domineering. It is exceedingly strange that 
 a truth, obvious to the man in the street, should 
 have escaped the German professor — even be- 
 fore the present war. And now, after months 
 of opportunity to observe effects in neutral 
 lands, it is incomprehensible that it is still not 
 seen. In the experimental sciences particularly 
 Germany has won fame. In her laboratories 
 theories have met facts and have been subjected 
 to the test of facts. And yet after this long pro- 
 tracted discussion and appeal to the neutral na- 
 tions one has but to turn any day to the corre- 
 spondence columns of the newspapers to dis- 
 cover under German names boldly put down 
 such expressions as would have gratified 
 beyond words the heart of Treitschke, who 
 quotes so approvingly: 
 
 "Some day through the German nation, 
 All the world will find salvation." 
 
 Signed letters more amazing to the common 
 
 268 
 
THE CULTUEAL OBSESSION 
 
 man and of more interest to tlie student of hu- 
 man nature have never appeared in print. 
 Evidently it is still not apparent to the Ger- 
 man people that egomania is not only out of 
 date, but what is more to the point in their cam- 
 paign for the world's good opinion, that it has 
 failed utterly to produce results. If instead of 
 being a human problem, a matter upon which 
 may hang consequences of the most vital charac- 
 ter, it had been a problem in chemistry having 
 seriously to do with the perfecting of a dye or a 
 drug, it is inconceivable that the German mind 
 would not long ago have perceived what was the 
 matter. 
 
 If Germany has failed both in her diplomacy 
 and in her more general understanding of hu- 
 man nature it is solely for the reason that, 
 despite her marvelous progress along other 
 lines, she has still not emancipated herself from 
 the medievalism of her universities in which, as 
 always, human values are of secondary impor- 
 tance and in which the idea seems still to persist 
 that humanity is interested not in freedom but 
 in culture. 
 
 269 
 
JHE MOEAL FAILUEE OF 
 *' EFFICIENCY" 
 
XI 
 
 THE MORAL FAILUEE OF "eFFICIEKCY" 
 
 IF the present war is making some men brutal, 
 it is also making most men humble. We had 
 become sure of ourselves — sure that at least our 
 foundation was sound. "We had only to en- 
 large our rooms and here and there to alter 
 their arrangement for the growing needs of our 
 spreading democracy to make of the world the 
 comfortable place our hearts had desired. And 
 therefore, while we were willing to change our 
 institutions, we saw no need to change ourselves. 
 Now, as though something had been thrust right 
 up against our faces, we see that it is not so 
 much a new government or a new church or 
 a new industrial system that is needed, as a new 
 and fervent idealism that will warm and shine 
 through all these. Given new builders, and 
 whatever changes are needed in our institutions 
 will take care of themselves ; but new builders we 
 must have. And more light, vastly more light ! 
 Never was the spiritual sun so far off, never 
 
 273 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 were we so lost to the meaning of life. For in 
 as many months, as many centuries have fallen 
 out. Yesterday between ourselves and the 
 Dark Ages lay the bright fields of the Renais- 
 sance; to-day we shake hands with Peter the 
 Hermit and Walter the Penniless. Incalculable 
 as has been our loss of property and business, 
 this cuts nothing like so deeply as our loss of 
 pride. With what terrible mockery it comes 
 back upon us now that only yesterday we were 
 sending missionaries to the heathen. If we 
 could only forget that! If only we could shut 
 from our minds the memory of the complacency 
 with which we surveyed history and laid out age 
 on age the march of man. From the fifth to the 
 eleventh century a. d. was the Dark Ages ; from 
 the eleventh to the sixteenth was the Renais- 
 sance; the present was the Age of Enlighten- 
 ment. Ah, the bitterness of it all ! 
 
 This is the right spirit in which to face the 
 future, the only spirit that can justify a hope of 
 something better. No one is so difficult to teach 
 as the teacher no one so hard to draw onward as 
 the one who thinks he is there. If the present 
 war has seemed to set us back, it is chiefly be- 
 cause of the immense vistas it has opened up. 
 It is as though all our lives we had had our eyes 
 
 274 
 
MORAL FAILURE OF ''EFFICIENCY" 
 
 upon tlie eartli, and had suddenly looked up at 
 the stars. For centuries we had compared our- 
 selves with our fathers, to our vast advantage. 
 Then there was a shock, and we found ourselves 
 facing the future. What we had done was sud- 
 denly thrown up against not what our fathers 
 had done, but what we had not done, and we 
 were overwhelmed. We are small, we are igno- 
 rant, we are barbarous. We were exalted, and 
 we are cast down. ' ' Except ye . . . become as 
 little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the 
 kingdom of heaven." War has made us chil- 
 dren. Now we are ready to go forward. Or 
 at least we are ready to look around us in 
 humility and with open minds. And looking 
 about us, we see, amid the utter wreck of all that 
 we have and are, that our sole hope lies in the 
 fuller unfoldment of humanity — unfoldment, 
 education. For how without this shall we find 
 our way out of the morass into which we have 
 wandered? 
 
 What is the supreme failure which we have 
 made in this thing to which, nevertheless, we 
 still look for the solution of the mighty problems 
 that confront us? Undoubtedly this, that we 
 have mistaken literacy for education. We have 
 been satisfied if the people — I mean the great 
 
 275 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 mass of people — have learned to read and write. 
 We have led them through the alphabet, then 
 to make room for those crowding behind, we 
 have shunted them out into trades and occupa- 
 tions. And we have deceived ourselves into be- 
 lieving that we were educating the people. If 
 any one doubts that the least possible education 
 consistent with national vanity has been the so- 
 cial goal toward which, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, we have been drifting, let him stop 
 and recall how much he has read in public prints 
 and how much he hafe heard from public 
 speakers of the reduction of illiteracy, and with 
 what pride statistics have been quoted showing 
 this happy '* spread of intelligence" among the 
 people. And the naivete with which we accepted 
 this as proof of the enlightenment of our age, 
 and the reliance which we placed upon it not 
 only to advance society, but to preserve peace — 
 only within the past few months have we come 
 to realize what children we were. State has 
 vied with state and nation with nation for a high 
 place upon this honor-roll. In their eagerness 
 to get their populations out of ignorance they 
 have resembled shepherds who have only to get 
 their flocks into the fold to go home and sleep 
 securely for the night. Once they have brought 
 
 276 
 
MORAL FAILURE OF ''EFFICIENCY" 
 
 their peoples safely into the corral of literacy, 
 they have felt free to turn their attention else- 
 where. The completion of the education of a 
 state or a nation is its graduation from igno- 
 rance to literacy. 
 
 When society has conducted a man across this 
 line we are confident that thereafter he can find 
 his way alone. For he is now mature, a shaper 
 of opinions, a free and sovereign part of the so- 
 cial intelligence. Thereafter, if he is oppressed 
 industrially, if he is misled by his rulers into 
 imagining that it is to his interest to lay down 
 his tools and take up the sword, he has only him- 
 self to blame for it. It would be an unheard-of 
 extravagance to pay further attention to a man 
 who can read and write and do problems in 
 arithmetic. We have discharged our high re- 
 sponsibility when we have connected him with 
 the newspapers. Ignorant, he was a menace to 
 society; but educated to read the newspapers, 
 he is a safe and dependable citizen, or, what is 
 more to the point, an equipped and dependable 
 workman. Literacy is the sop which our com- 
 fortable society throws to democracy. And 
 with this supplied, generously as the modem 
 world has supplied it, we were safe from a re- 
 crudescence of barbarism. 
 
 277 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 Nothing in the record of modern times will so 
 excite the smile among peoples of centuries to 
 come as the serious attention which we have 
 paid to this rudiment of education and the little 
 after-concern we have shown for anything be- 
 yond it. They will be filled with wonder that 
 this age, the most marvelous in many ways that 
 has ever passed over the planet, among the first 
 if not the very first in the richness of objective 
 life, should ever have confounded with educa- 
 tion, which means unfoldment, a makeshift, 
 hurry-them-through process that contributes to 
 nothing of the sort, and is indeed the very oppo- 
 site of unfoldment. The astonishment which 
 they will feel that minds capable of producing 
 such masterpieces of science and mechanics as 
 our age has produced could be capable of such 
 blindness as we have shown in education will be 
 similar to that which w^e now feel when we recall 
 amid what sort of crude, religious concepts the 
 old masters flourished. Despite the fact that 
 the age in which they lived was honeycombed 
 with churches, not to that age, we now see, was 
 it given to look behind the trinkets of ritual. 
 Similarly, despite our multiplicity of schools, 
 turn where we will, there are evidences that 
 we are mistaking the outer for the inner, 
 
 278 
 
MORAL FAILURE OF ''EFFICIENCY^' 
 
 the facts for the living forces of life. Reading 
 and writing, a little mathematics, a little history, 
 a little Kterature, ability to trace a few rivers 
 and locate a few capitals, to distinguish between 
 the veto and the pocket veto, to know a robin 
 from a bluebird — we do not seem to be aware 
 that this is the outer shell of education as ritual 
 is the outer shell of religion. 
 
 Within a few years, if our present zeal and 
 the outpouring of public and private wealth con- 
 tinue, the last illiterate will have crossed the 
 line into safety. Will our work then be simply 
 to see that there is no relapse? Will we then 
 have accomplished our task? 
 
 As we draw near this goal, there are signs 
 that, with ignorance abolished, with the mental 
 man put in order, we shall be at a loss to know 
 what to do. Already we are growing restless 
 lest with these educational necessities provided, 
 the raison d'etre of our school system will have 
 vanished. And we are turning hither and 
 thither in exceeding perplexity to discover to 
 what other uses this expensive system may be 
 put. And while discussion goes on as to the ad- 
 visability of adopting this or that innovation, 
 there is one which we have already adopted : we 
 have resolved to educate the hand. 
 
 279 
 
THE WOELD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 There are evidences, I say, that out of a sheer 
 we don't know what else to do with them, our 
 schools are to be turned into workshops. Either 
 because we do not see or because we are inca- 
 pable of entering the mighty field of the moral- 
 ities, where the finer urgings and the powerful 
 restraints of life are bred, from one end of the 
 world to the other we are shepherding the rising 
 generation toward tools. And, as always, 
 weighty reasons are at hand. Why should we 
 teach our young solely to read and write, and 
 neglect the mighty matter of work? Work, not 
 reading and writing, is the normal function of 
 the human being. All else is abnormal. Work 
 is the language of humanity. Why not teach 
 the child to speak that? It is by work that they 
 will have to live. Why not prepare them to 
 live? Therefore, sewing and cooking; there- 
 fore, the making of boxes and the molding of 
 bricks. We have lighted the candle of literacy ; 
 now we are going to set it upon the bench in 
 order that the workman may be an intelligent 
 workman. At last our educators have found 
 not, as in literacy a means to an end, but the end 
 itself. 
 
 It needs no seer to perceive that the goal to- 
 ward which we are aiming is the goal of the 
 
 280 
 
MORAL FAILURE OF '' EFFICIENCY '^ 
 
 modern world, efficiency. To be capable of co- 
 ordinating brain and band in tbe production of 
 a piece of work, tbat and that alone is to be the 
 new education. Literacy, despite our strenu- 
 ous efforts to keep it alive, would seem to be the 
 dying out of an ancient ideal for an intellectual 
 humanity, the diffusion of a light, once concen- 
 trated in a few suns and stars, over the be- 
 nighted masses of men. Whether we may not 
 eventually dispense with it altogether as a lux- 
 ury remains to be seen. For work has come 
 — ^work, the herald of a new age. And educa- 
 tion, the purpose of which among the ancients 
 was to connect man with the cosmos, to give him 
 an understanding of the laws and purposes of 
 life, is becoming ancillary to this physical giant 
 that has come among us. More and more the 
 value of the training which is offered in our 
 schools is being estimated by how much it con- 
 tributes to the new practical science of making 
 good, of meeting one's fellow-man or fellow- 
 woman in the factory and proving the better, 
 whether at the bench or in the office. And this 
 is accepted as quite the proper thing except by 
 those who are still not convinced that the world 
 is a factory or man solely a workman. 
 "What is the larger meaning of the new age 
 281 
 
THE WOBLD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 tliat for years has been dawning, and into wliat 
 sort of world, if we submit ourselves placidly to 
 its guidance, will it at last usher us ? 
 
 Undoubtedly it is a revolt against the past, 
 the sacrifice of everything to the present. This 
 is the key-note of the new age ; that, regardless 
 of to-morrow, the day that is passing must be 
 freighted to its full capacity. Therefore the 
 newspaper, the voice of the present, has suc- 
 ceeded the book; therefore the job has crowded 
 out the integrities of life. No single idea — or 
 shall we say unconscious conviction? — ^has be- 
 come so conspicuously the fetish of the modern 
 man as the idea that the present is to be seized 
 at all costs. The relations of things and of 
 people, of the man himself to the past and to the 
 future, all these are of less concern than the 
 particular thing upon which the eye is fixed. 
 That he is completing something or, rather, 
 adding to something upon which humanity has 
 been working since the very appearance of 
 humanity upon the planet has either become a 
 myth or, despite his education, has never so 
 much as entered his mind. Such a conception 
 is not involved in the meaning of literacy, 
 is not necessary to manual efficiency. To be 
 literate, one need not see his place upon the 
 
 282 
 
MOEAL FAILURE OF ''EFFICIENCY" 
 
 great reef of being, but only bis relation to 
 the passing moment. As for tbe future, wbat 
 is tbe future 1 We neitber know nor care. Tbe 
 consumption of children in our industries is tbe 
 index of tbe age. If only we can keep up steam, 
 — wbitber we are plunging we do not care, — it 
 matters notbing if we bum masts and cabins. 
 Tbe past and tbe future are follies tbat tbe 
 modern man bas outgrown. 
 
 It is bigb time we were considering wbat is 
 meant by efficiency, and just wbat tbe pursuit of 
 it involves. It is only witbin recent years tbat 
 tbe word bas become tbe common possession of 
 men ; but tbis very fact tbat it bas tbus suddenly 
 leaped into wide currency is itself proof tbat 
 even before its coming we were already in full 
 motion toward tbat wbich it signifies. Indeed, 
 few words fit so intimately into our every-day 
 life or express so precisely tbe spirit of tbe pres- 
 ent age. To be efficient in tbe sense in wbicb 
 tbe word is used to-day requires tbe concentra- 
 tion upon some particular tbing or task in life 
 until one's mastery of it is supreme. Is effi- 
 ciency education? It all depends upon wbat we 
 mean by education. If education is unf oldment, 
 tben efficiency is not education. Education is 
 inclusive, wbereas efficiency is exclusive. Effi- 
 
 283 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 ciency has to do with a part of the universe; 
 education with the whole. Efficiency produces 
 a workman ; education, a human being. Educa- 
 tion is illuminating; efficiency is the darkening 
 of the chamber of life in order to develop a 
 fihn. 
 
 Does it make any difference, so far as its effect 
 upon the person in the dark room is concerned, 
 whether the picture to be developed is the pic- 
 ture of a perfect mason able to lay a score more 
 bricks than his fellows or a scholar who through 
 years of application has added Assyrian to his 
 list? Is not the whole question of the value of 
 such efficiency both to the individual and to so- 
 ciety the question how much of what lies outside 
 the dark room has been forgotten by the person 
 at work on the inside? Or is it of no conse- 
 quence that stars are forgotten, that the open 
 fields disappear, that parenthood becomes a 
 name? Is an increase in such skill or such 
 knowledge of such importance that we may 
 safely purchase it at the price of the eternal 
 verities ? That is a question which our leaders 
 of education would do well to take with them 
 into their studies. For to-morrow, as never be- 
 fore, the world is going to put the question. As 
 never before we are going to set ourselves to 
 
 284 
 
MOEAL FAILUEE OF ''EFFICIENCY" 
 
 finding out why it is that in an age of general 
 education human life has no meaning. 
 
 We are fortunate in having a single nation to 
 which we may turn and find an example of what 
 modem education, when carried to its logical 
 conclusion, will accomplish. Germany alone 
 has had the courage to build its last story, to be 
 loyal to it unto death. To be supremely effi- 
 cient both as an individual and as a nation, if 
 there is one idea which more than any other de- 
 serves the label ''Made in Germany," it is this. 
 No other nation has ever rallied with such fervor 
 about a word as Germany has rallied to the word 
 Kultur, efficiency. Other faiths and philoso- 
 phies have been thrust aside to make room for 
 this. Kultur is the spiritual kaiser of the Ger- 
 man nation. 
 
 The world is under obligations to Germany 
 for this energizing idea, which, in its place as 
 the servant of life, has undoubtedly been fruit- 
 ful of vast good. But as the goal of effort, as 
 the master of life, into what moral confusion, 
 into what unspeakable crime, has it not led us ! 
 For centuries mankind will be clothed with 
 shame, and the European, whether in the 
 councils of state or traveling among the nations, 
 will grow red and stammer his apologies. And 
 .285 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 the German people, led on througli the years to 
 this terrible chasm, when at last they have awak- 
 ened, with what hearts will they face their mas- 
 ters of education? How, hereafter, will they 
 read over the amazing creed which to-day they 
 so fervently approve and which through years 
 has been wrought out of the basest utterances 
 of their nobler men and the least noble utter- 
 ances of their basest. **War is a business, di- 
 vine in itself, and as needful and necessary to 
 the world as eating and drinking, ' ' said Luther. 
 "Let your labor be fighting. . . . The weak and 
 the blotched must perish from the earth," de- 
 clared Nietzsche. ''War is elevating. . . . 
 What a perversion of morality to wish to abolish 
 heroism among men!" said Treitschke. ''The 
 inevitableness, the idealism, and the blessing of 
 war, as an indispensable and stimulating law of 
 development, must be repeatedly emphasized," 
 said Bernhardi. Here, certainly, is the dark 
 room. We hear of the failure of the German 
 this and of the German that, but it is becoming 
 clearer every day that it is the German mind 
 that has failed. That is the supreme, the sad- 
 dest tragedy of the present war. "We wanted 
 it," says the great Berlin editor, Maxmillian 
 Harden. And there is no doubt that he is right. 
 
 286 
 
MORAL FAILURE OF ''EFFICIENCY" 
 
 And only yesterday we were all at school to 
 Germany. Our leaders of industry, our educa- 
 tors, even our doctors of divinity, were going 
 abroad to get the German point of view. Ger- 
 many was the modem world; Berlin, the gate 
 to the future. To be unacquainted with German 
 thought was almost to be medieval. We did not 
 question the relation between mind and morals. 
 If the one had advanced, how could the other 
 have lagged behind? How could a people so far 
 ahead in theory be behind in practice ? We were 
 ready to look askance at the kaiser ; but the Ger- 
 man people — ^their sociability was one of the at- 
 tractions of Europe. Their love of children had 
 gone throughout the world with their toys. We 
 were not aware that this sociability was subtly 
 being fed to conquest, that these toy-makers 
 were being converted into gun-makers. We did 
 not realize the power of education utterly to 
 transform a people. 
 
 It needs no Treitschke now to tell us that ''the 
 German army constitutes a peculiar and neces- 
 sary continuation of the scholastic system." 
 Assuredly it is. What the mind conceives the 
 hand will execute. Given the German training, 
 the present war was as inevitable as that a stone 
 which had dropped four feet will drop the fifth, 
 
 287 
 
THE WOELD STOEM AND BEYOND 
 
 if there be a fifth. It was just as certain as 
 that the stars swing round that sooner or later 
 Germany would seek to complete her natural 
 orbit. Whether Germany counseled the Aus- 
 trian stroke that was the technical cause of the 
 present war is beside the point. The great fact 
 which sooner or later will emerge from the pres- 
 ent confusion, which indeed has already 
 emerged, is that what is happening in Europe 
 to-day is the logical outcome of a partial, and 
 therefore false, view of life, the inevitable con- 
 sequence of the worship of efficiency. With 
 the finest educational system of its kind in the 
 world, with a system that in its way has made 
 good as no other system has made good, Ger- 
 many is less able to get along with her neighbors 
 than any other nation in the world. 
 
 Turn now from German militarism, the final 
 step in German education, to industrialism in 
 almost any of the leading nations. 
 
 I have said that the world has become a fac- 
 tory. Consider life in any quarter of the globe, 
 and mark in what direction it is moving. For 
 the vast web of injustice and poverty that we 
 are weaving, our mighty energies are flowing 
 into the factory as to an ultimate heart. And 
 this heart is the active center of the modern 
 
 288 
 
MOEAL FAILURE OF ''EFFICIENCY" 
 
 world, as the school, in the higher meaning of 
 that term, was the center of the Hellenic world, 
 as the church was the center of the medieval 
 world. And just as these former ages took 
 color and character from their central institu- 
 tions, so the present age takes color and char- 
 acter from the factory. The statesman is the 
 voice of the factory in government. The edu- 
 cator never forgets for what it is his work is 
 a preparation, that the final examinations are 
 held in the factory. Even religion makes terms 
 with the factory, softens its admonitions to the 
 powerful presence in the pews. As the Greek 
 was kindled with culture and the Christian with 
 faith, so to much the same fervor the present 
 age is bitten with the passion for making things. 
 We consume ourselves in order to produce 
 something. We cannot ripen, because it is a 
 waste of time hanging upon the bough. 
 
 The consequences are inevitable. The mo- 
 ment a man becomes merely a workman, whether 
 a miner or an engineer, a teacher or a lawyer, 
 that moment he becomes less than a human be- 
 ing. For no man can give himself mind and 
 soul to a part without sooner or later becoming 
 a part. He will fail to realize the difference be- 
 tween a whole made up of wholes like society, in 
 
 289 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 which it is necessary for the individual to realize 
 what he is, and a whole made up of parts like a 
 piece of mechanism. In this respect the work- 
 man and the soldier are alike. Each is a unit of 
 labor, and it needs no transformation of mind to 
 convert the one into the other. That is why it 
 is so easy to fill armies with workmen. Both 
 have forgotten or, though they may have gone 
 through our schools, have never yet learned that 
 they are human beings. Unless a mighty cor- 
 rective is applied, a corrective which has not 
 yet appeared in the modern world, the three 
 hundred men who combine their labor and in- 
 telligence to the making of a watch will forget 
 that they themselves are not parts of a larger 
 watch to be wound up by some outside hand and 
 to be carried in the pocket of some kaiser. And 
 once this oblivion has come over them, there is 
 no limit to their loyalty, no sacrifice that they 
 will not make to remain parts. 
 
 To such a degree has this system, which we 
 may fairly call the German system, become the 
 European system and the American system, and 
 is threatening to become the Turkish system and 
 the Chinese system, that the integrities of life 
 are on the point of disappearing. That free- 
 dom of life, that space in which to wander, to 
 
 290 
 
MORAL FAILURE OF ''EFFICIENCY" 
 
 run, if one so desires or to lie down, that leisure 
 to absorb the meaning of the whole, which is the 
 divine heritage and joy of a cosmic being, is tot- 
 tering under the transformation of the human 
 being himself. The richness of color and of 
 mood which we think of as the glory of the an- 
 cient world is fading into the drab of efficiency. 
 Gradually we are becoming units of labor. 
 
 This, then, is the debris of an educational sys- 
 tem that has utterly failed — failed to give sanity 
 to life, failed even to protect life. For already 
 it has become evident that if onr superstructure 
 has collapsed, the ultimate cause lies down here 
 in the foundation which, more from a hope of 
 what it shaU be, we call education. The tower- 
 ing structure which we reared, and which has 
 now toppled over, was both in height and 
 weight whoUy out of proportion to the labor ex- 
 pended underneath it. That, we may safely 
 say, will be the judgment of posterity upon the 
 present age ; that it had height without depth, a 
 marvelous mounting of the visible without the 
 granite of the invisible to sustain it. Indeed, 
 that is already our own judgment. 
 
 Right here, if we only knew it, is the crossing 
 of the two roads, from a far journey along one 
 of which we now reel back stricken, bereft, horri- 
 
 291 
 
THE WORLD STOBM AND BEYOND 
 
 fied. Where have we been? Into what night- 
 mare have we wandered? It is almost as 
 though the body of humanity lay torn and bleed- 
 ing at our feet, crying out in agony at the blood 
 upon our hands. I have tried elsewhere to 
 show that we have not leaped a sudden-yawning 
 chasm into the present war, but that it was the 
 natural development of our present system of 
 life as truly as a fruit is the natural develop- 
 ment of a blossom. Militarism is the militant 
 factory. The factory — ^by factory I mean of 
 course our whole industrial system — is our edu- 
 cational system at work. These are the three 
 cars in the train of the modem world. All are 
 coupled together, rushing on together at the 
 same speed, with militarism in front, the factory 
 in the middle, and our educational system as the 
 engine pushing them on from behind. Is there 
 one intelligent person who does not see that the 
 present catastrophe is the wreck not of the first 
 car only, but of the whole train? To-day we 
 sicken at the trenches and would fain forget the 
 work of our hands. To-morrow we will dis- 
 cover the second wreck, and the next day the 
 third. Then possibly, in the light of this tre- 
 mendous syllogism which spells out the utter 
 failure of our civilization, we shall come upon 
 
 292 
 
MORAL FAILURE OF "EFFICIENCY'* 
 
 the cause of it all, that for the sake of speed and 
 more speed and still more speed we have thrown 
 into the furnace not only the coal of life, but the 
 landscape, even the engineer. For that is pre- 
 cisely what we have done, and the present war 
 is only the horrible message spelled out in 
 blood: for efficiency we have neglected charac- 
 ter, for the almighty dollar we are destroying 
 man. 
 
 What, then, is oar duty in the light of these 
 facts? First, to quash the indictment against 
 the kaiser and against Germany (and, if our 
 German brothers say so, against England and 
 Russia) and against militarism and against our 
 ** barbarous industrial system," and accept 
 service on ourselves as the builders of an educa- 
 tional system that is a splendid success if the 
 world is a factory, but a monstrous failure if it 
 should happen to be more than that. Then, hav- 
 ing taken this step, without which no progress is 
 possible, we are back at the cross-roads whence 
 the second path leads up over the mountains. 
 We are facing away from industry toward life, 
 and are ready to march on from literacy to edu- 
 cation, from information to unfoldment. Our 
 eyes are open to the place of work and to the 
 place of the moralities. We are ready to ad- 
 
 293 
 
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND 
 
 mit that to get along with people is an essential 
 part of education, that to know what is right is 
 quite as important as to know what is true. "We 
 are ready to supplement manual training with 
 man training, willing to add to efficiency of pro- 
 duction efficiency of understanding. When we 
 have found us teachers capable of making these 
 things clear, we shall have gone far toward mak- 
 ing war impossible and peace worth while. 
 
 294 
 
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 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxid 
 
 Treatment Date: j^^Y 2001 
 
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