~A ,0 V c ' ^ •s. o ■y^o/ .^ „*© * £ ;- "-w '' - : *Jlll' : ft : *l§§|- - ■ A *><*.. > o V i"* ^/ ve> o c> *W \ .0' 5S TOMORROW BOOKS BY HUGO MUNSTERBERG Psychology and Life pp. 28b, Boston, 1899 Grundziige der Psychologie pp. jbj, Leipzig, 1900 American Traits PP. 2JSt Boston, iqo2 Die Amerikaner PP. 302 and 349, Berlin, 1904 (Rev. 191 2) Principles of Art Education PP. 118, New York, 190s The Eternal Life pp. 72, Boston, 1905 Science and Idealism pp. 71, Boston, 190b Philosophic der Werte pp. 4.8b, Leipzig, 1907 On the Witness Stand Pp. 269, New York, 1908 Aus Deutsch-Amerika Pp. 245, Berlin, 1909 The Eternal Values pp. 43b, Boston, 1909 Psychotherapy PP. 401, New York, 1909 Psychology and the Teacher PP. 330, New York, iqio American Problems pp. 220, New York, 1910 Psychologie und Wirtschaftsleben pp. 192, Leipzig, 1912 Vocation and Learning pp. 289, St Louis, 1912 Psychology and Industrial Efficiency pp. 321, Boston, 191 3 American Patriotism pp. 262, New York, 1913 Grundzuge der Psychotechnik pp. 767, Leipzig, 1914 Psychology and Social Sanity pp. 320, New York, 1914 Psychology, General and Applied pp. 488, New York, 1914 The War and America //. 210, New York, 1 91 4 The Peace and America Pp. 276, New York, 19/ j The Photoplay PP. 333, New York, 19/6 Tomorrow //. 279, New York, 191b TOMORROW LETTERS TO A FRIEND IN GERMANY BY HUGO MUNSTERBERG D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 1916 -Mis CoPVBIQHT, 1916, BT D. APPLETON AND COMPANY CoPTBIGHT, 1916, BT THE ILLINOIS PUBLISHING Compaq OCT 30 1916 Printed in the United States of America. 9CI.A446176 CONTENTS I. The Contrasts of the Future II. The New Nationalism . III. Nationalism in America IV. Nationalism and the German-Ameri cans ..... V. The New Idealism VI. Idealism in America . VII. The New Pacifism VIII. The New Internationalism . IX. The Reconstruction X. Postscript .... PAGE 1 22 50 74 110 138 169 213 243 270 TOMORROW THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE My dear Friend: This morning your good letter came with its Berlin news. Of course, the word news is relative. The letter was more than ninety days under way and a good deal of history has been made between your writing and my reading it. Yet it was an unusual pleasure to hold your letter in my hand with its big label "Opened by the Censor." In those old, almost forgotten days of peace it seemed to me a matter of course that three times a week a large pile of European correspondence should come to my breakfast table. The mail from the fatherland did not awake more ex- citement than the daily newspaper. Now everything is changed. Nine-tenths of the letters addressed to me do not arrive at all; they are thrown overboard. And so the few 1 TOMORROW which do slip through bring a pleasure never before attached to such frail sheets. More- over, in earlier times the German mail took six days from port to port. If your letter had arrived with such undue haste, it would have found me in a mood in which I should hardly have cared to spend my time in lengthy answers. But now the thought of war between America and Germany has for- tunately faded away, and, freed from that nightmare, I can really think of all those suggestive questions which your letter raises. Yet your queries are, after all, merely varia- tions of one fundamental question : "What will the future bring us ? You turn to me because one whose lifework is psychology may best foresee the days which wait for us, and one who lives in a neutral country may look with clearer eyes toward the tomorrow than those in belligerent lands. I accept your challenge. But if you really want to hear from me what I think of the times to come and about the role which America will play, I am afraid I shall need many a sheet. Yet it is vacation time and here at the beautiful seashore of the New England coast I love to write to my German THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE friends while I look over the blue ocean which ought to bind and not to divide Amer- ica and Europe. You will not mind if I write in English. I do not trust the British censor to read my small German script. He would condemn my letters to execution, not because I love German politics too much, but because he loves German grammar too little. I shall write to you week after week, and if you think it wise to allow the newspaper readers in Berlin to look over your shoulder I surely have no objection. The wireless brings to the German papers excellent extracts from the story of American events ; everybody on the continent knows the essential news. But in politics the unessential is just the most important and the superfluous becomes nec- essary for the real understanding of the time. The rigorous blockade of the last half year has cut off the frills which scores of writers supplied to the German press until last Christmas. Nor have you since then any American papers or magazines. Hence my commentaries may be welcome to those who want to look ahead. But if these letters fare no better and are thrown overboard, too, I shall seek comfort in the proverb of the S TOMORROW Orient: "Do good and cast it into the sea; if the fish do not see it, the Lord will." But let me say this from the start : Your letter always speaks of the old world and the new world, and means by that Europe and America. Let us bury such phrases of yes- terday. The America of today has become part of that old, old world, with the same emotions and the same aspirations and the same prejudices which have made history for untold centuries. The really new world has not come, but we feel it coming; the really new world will be with us after the war, and America and Europe will then be one, equally old, equally young, equally frightened by the memory of the world calamity, equally hope- ful for the new age after the war. The to- morrow compared with the yesterday will be a,like for all the great nations. Do not misjudge me; do not fancy that I foresee a colorless melting together, a cosmopolitan oneness after the exhausting strife. On the contrary! Of all that will be common to the nations of tomorrow, noth- ing will be more marked than their feeling of independence, of selfhood, of uniqueness. They had lived too much after one pattern. 4 THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE The storm has shaken them and has brought back to every people the belief in its own solemn mission. Nationalism will grow in the new world after the war with a vigor which that faint-hearted world of the past did not know. But it will be a new nationalism with loftier aims and purer purposes. Jus- tice will reign instead of jealousy. Yet the new nationalism cannot be imag- ined without a new internationalism. No lesson of the war has been more impressive than that of the interdependence of all civil- ized nations. In the clash and the roar of the cultural universe they grasped for the first time the fundamental truth that they are, after all, the united states of the world. Will this new internationalism bring us peace! I know it will surely bring us the will for peace. The pacificism of the old world will disappear, but a new pacificism will grow among us, virile, just, and inspiring. I hope it will not speak in the threatening lan- guage of force: to enforce peace means to endanger peace. But it will be powerful through the idealistic spirit which will be the deepest trait of the new time. Life has gained a new meaning. Out of suffering and 5 TOMORROW woe the cry for a nobler life will not be in vain. The new idealism will be the salvation of the century. I do not know, and my psy- chology cannot help me to predict, in which month or year the bells of peace will ring. But I do know that this new nationalism and new idealism and new pacificism and new in- ternationalism will grow wonderfully out of the ruins of the war, and that in the spell of this richer fulfillment there will be no victors and no vanquished. . . . But while such hopes and beliefs may glow in our hearts and make our darkness toler- able, they cannot be the answers to your questions, as long as they are nothing but beliefs and hopes. The psychologist, to be sure, will not forget that the wishes of the soul are the deepest formative energies not only in the single individual but also in the nation and in the concert of nations. The better future will never be with us if a de- spondent pessimism once takes hold of the civilized world, and if the leading minds yield to the fear that the cataclysm of this war must destroy European culture just as Eome once broke down and the night of me- dievalism followed. In this turmoil of bat- 6 THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE ties it would be the most disastrous defeat if hope and belief and optimistic conviction were crushed by the panic of our emotions. If victory, not in the war, but after the war, is really to come, not to regiments but to mankind, it will be only because we think early of our preparedness — preparedness of the world's heart and spirit, preparedness by hope and faith and mutual understand- ing. But however much such faith may re- move the mountains of the political world, to move them we must first know where the mountains stand. What are the stubborn facts? What have those to report who have been in the trenches and in the headquarters, with the crowds and with the leaders in the belligerent lands and who have moved among the neutrals, if neu- trals there be? What are the general ten- dencies which they have observed? Yet is this question fair? The will to observe is always hampered by hidden # prejudices. Everybody hears what he expects or likes to hear. The Americans, who are strongly suggestible, are especially inclined to inter- weave impressions from without and feelings from within. No wonder that in reports 7 TOMORROW which we receive here from earnest men curi- ous contradictions prevail. Still less wonder that the day is carried by those who tell us that the one great change which the war will bring will be the triumph of liberalism, of progressivism, yes, of radicalism and social- ism. We hear the prophets who come back from their pilgrimages in many a land and who tell us : "In Europe's populace a restless spirit is setting in. Not articulate as yet. It has not bubbled up to the surface. But deep down the fires are boiling; the brew is sim- mering. . . . All this spells a popular reac- tion when peace is finally ratified. There is the likelihood that uprisings will blaze out against the wealthy in Europe's chief cities." It is only natural when men with strong socialistic trend single out the firebrands of England and France and Germany and Eus- sia for heart-to-heart talks that they should soon see Europe's future burning red. No- body can blame them for hurrying home with a cry of alarm: "The deep passion sweep- ing over Europe will make itself felt in America." But even the sober ones must acknowledge that the socialists in Europe will stand on firmer ground after the war 8 THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE than before. The classes have learned to un- derstand one another. Those who have in- termingled in the dugouts can never again look on one another as if they were creatures of different kind and of different value. It may be still more true that a progressive liberalism will raise its head in regions where it was little seen, and that its views will be heard with respect and sympathy where it was too often treated as mere opposition. The willingness with which all parts of the peoples made their sacrifices can never be forgotten. The service which liberal thought and progressive science, middle-class senti- ment and enthusiasm have rendered in every field will count against reaction everywhere. The new spirit will sweep away every dust- covered tradition ; and I trust that very soon when you cast your vote for representatives in the Prussian Diet you may at last do it in accordance with a more progressive elec- tion scheme; similar to that of the German Reichstag, the most democratic in Europe. Even the Anglo-Russian alliance will bring no czarism across the Channel and quite a little democratic spirit to the Duma. Yet who can deny that the forces which 9 TOMORROW push in the opposite direction are just as active and powerful? No people submits for years to a dictatorial regime without a men- tal remolding, and dictators have reigned throughout the belligerent lands, at the front and behind it, in city and village, in the pub- lic press and private homes. There was never a war without worship for the military hero, and never was a nation in peril without instinctively strengthening its centralizing energies. Victorious and disastrous wars alike have reenforced the conservative ele- ments of a nation, and reaction has always lurked in the barracks. If there was one bureaucracy in Western Europe which was always denounced as stubbornly conserva- tive, it was the German one. Can we really expect that its power will shrink after the strongest test has been made and has proved even to the most incredulous that miracles are still possible? How shallow today sound all those flippant jottings of the American papers in the early war times, dealing with the junkers and princes of Germany! Even the ignorant have learned that princes and peasants' sons stood and fell together in the trenches, and that the decried policies of re- 10 THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE gardless warfare and the harsh peace condi- tions were demanded not by the emperor and his chancellor, but by the speakers of the in- dustrial centers and many a liberal politician. Within Germany and without many preju- dices against the conservatives have melted away. I remember well how you yourself denounced their policies on account of their apparently selfish agrarian tactics which raised the cost of living for the working- men. Can you deny that without those ego- istic agrarians the bread would have disap- peared from your own table during the war, and that Germany might really have come near to starving misery? It is easy to praise one side and to denounce the other, but the psychologist who simply tries to understand the working energies must frankly admit that the war has pruned the liberal and the con- servative trees alike, and that abundant fruit may be expected from both. The tension be- tween those opposing energies in the world of politics may be decreased, but I do not see any symptoms which indicate that one will overcome the other. Needless to say that the contrast which Americans especially like to bolster up into 11 TOMORROW a world problem, that of republic and mon- archy, will in the same way remain unchanged after the war. It may be that a few more little kingdoms will be created; it may be that a number of republics will grow, but there will be no landslides. One of the most influential men in America assured me in that sinister autumn of 1914 that only one result of this war would be certain : "Whoever won, there would be no longer any Hohenzollern or Hapsburg on the throne. It sounds like antediluvian news. The oratory against the German Emperor and against his starting of the war has lost its audience even in the back- woods of politics. When peace is with us the world will feel more distinctly than ever before that the form of a state is the out- growth of historic conditions and cannot be settled by logical reasoning, that one is in itself not better than another, and that a president would fit into Petrograd as badly as a czar in Washington. Even as to the methods of government, enlightened public opinion will hardly be swayed into new di- rections. You are not the only university professor who wrote to me in the first year of the war about the great changes which would 12 THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE have to come in the direction of more demo- cratic control. The time of diplomatic in- trigues and of secret treaties must come to an end. The civilization of Europe must not again be the plaything of mediocre pseudo- statesmen. Clear thinking Englishmen have told us that we should never have had war if the British people had known all the time what clandestine agreements had been made for them. And so it went all around. Aston- ishment and indignation followed everywhere when archives were opened, and -the educated classes of every nation seemed to find their political comfort only in the discovery that the rival diplomats were still more incompe- tent. Yet have the masses, north and south and east and west, really shown surer judgment, safer instinct, clearer insight and fairer de- cision? Must we not rather acknowledge that on both sides of the ocean those actors played best during the war who did not play for the applause of the audience? Every- where it seems the public was more often wrong than the cabinets ; the emissaries, with all their glorified business experience, proved less able even in practical affairs than the 13 TOMORROW exclusive diplomats. I doubt whether I should still have a chance to write even this letter if you and some seventy million other Germans had voted on the U-boat question when the American note reached Germany. The most important factors in such a decision can be known only to a few, simply because they stop being important and being worth knowing as soon as more than a few know them. We all shall go on clamoring for dem- ocratic control, and profiting from the lack of it. It strikes me that it will be similar with most other disputed tendencies of the past. Some tell us that the time after the war will be the age of the women. The mothers and girls have fought this war ; they have shown themselves companions and comrades in the men's work as never before, and their quiet aid behind the lines was more admirable than any heroism. They have shown their fitness for numberless callings which they did not dream of entering before. The pathos of their fate has rewritten the statutes for men and women in Europe. All this is true; and yet it is no less true that millions of men have suffered and died for women and chil- 14 THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE dren. Physical force will be valued far more than in our peaceful yesterday. In a pe- riod of worship for the virile victories, fem- inine virtues will appear elements of weak- ness. Women may get the suffrage every- where, and yet may everywhere be disfran- chised, as the spirit of the after-war-time will force them to use their womanly vote in the service of one-sided manly ideals. The same play of psychological forces and counterforces will shape the work of arts and sciences. It is a pity to see how many fine men in all the belligerent lands indulge to- day in an almost brutal contempt for the charm of art. It cannot be otherwise. Every muscle and every thought is bent toward he- roic tasks; the hard reality demands char- acter and strength and life blood. That brings men back to the fundamentals of pure existence and suddenly the aestheticism of our leisurely hours appears artificial, unhealthy, fatal. The demands of the day are better met by the ruddy farmer and workingman than by the impressionist and the futurist. They who have seen the terrors of the battlefield shrink from the over-refinement of a per- fumed culture and feel choked in the atmos- 15 TOMORROW phere of mere art. All stage setting appears to them deceitful. The world of the scholar does not fare better. It seems as if the thun- der of the cannon had suddenly awakened the somnambulist. The truth of life is simple, and the war has brought us back to it; the complex truth of the scholarly books stares at us with ghastly, empty eyes. Theories are merely a fancy of the mind ; the struggle for existence does not need words but deeds. Art and science alike may bloom in days in which we can forget the radical facts of life, but they become frivolous when the ground is reddened by blood. Yet the opposite is no less certain. This war is first of all a war of technique and that means of science. The laboratory has equipped the armies and has triumphed on land, in the sea, in the air, and even in the ether which carries the wireless. But it was and is not only the war of physics and chem- istry; the problems of economics and geog- raphy, of hygiene and medicine and — if we take it with a grain of salt — of international law, that have called the scholars into the fore- ground. National efficiency can never again be severed from scientific thoroughness and 16 THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE it will be a dogma of the future that educa- tion, scholarship and theory are the most essential conditions of practical success in the rivalry of the peoples. Yes, the world has learned once more that even philosophies can win and lose battles. But with the sci- ences the arts ought to flourish. History has shown over and over again that the strife of the races gives wonderful impulse to poetry and drama, to architecture and fine arts. A slow pulse favors many a sober work; but only when the heart of the world beats in excitement, and the emotions of joy or sorrow, of hope or fear, of triumph or grief, penetrate into every home, will the life of beauty become abundant. It is significant that the Berlin theaters of this year of war are crowded with new plays, new, serious, ambitious dramas and operas, and Paris glo- ries in her new paintings. Will it be different with commerce and in- dustry? We hear the sinister voices of those who feel sure that Europe will be devastated and exhausted, unable to recuperate its eco- nomic energies for a generation. On both sides the demands of the victor are pro- claimed, but on neither side is the word in- 17 TOMORROW demnity any longer spoken. It would sound too absurd when the purses are empty and when war debts in every land stagger finan- cial imagination. The workers of the fac- tories are killed or maimed; commerce and industry are paralyzed. And yet commerce and industry never had such tremendous chances to replenish the world and, even in these days of crippled exchange, we know that every land is preparing for a gigantic after-war rivalry in the markets of the world. Never was business ambition so stirred as it will be when the soldiers return to the work- shops and the seven seas are free again. The debt of the battles cannot blight it. I remem- ber how in my boyhood days my native town of Danzig still had to pay interest for the debts of the Napoleonic wars of our great- grandfathers, but all the time the beautiful seaport enjoyed its splendid commercial suc- cess, and did not care about the slowly dis- appearing debit figures in its budget from long-forgotten, horrible war times. All Eu- rope will have to pay for generations, but will be able to pay with open hands. Even the question of peace forces the an- swers yes and no to the lips of the psycholo- 18 THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE gist. Yes, as soon as this war of all wars is at last concluded, every thought will center around the hope that such millionfold mis- ery will never visit the world again. Can we venture to build up and to build up anew if we must tremble in the fear that an explo- sion will shake the globe again and shatter all to pieces? Generations will be stunned by the appalling woe ; the longing for unbroken peace must become for a century the deepest instinct of the social mind. But there is an- other psychological law which no will can banish ; the social mind is molded by habits. If thoughts and impulses of one type have been often repeated, the inner resistance to them breaks down, the dislike turns into in- difference, habit is triumphant. Not with- out punishment does the world become accus- tomed to the noise of the battle. In times of long peace any thought of war is held in check by the emotional habits, but when the memory of war is alive the check is removed. It seems so much easier to rush once more to arms. An earthquake seldom brings only one shock. One war leads to another. The psy- chological outlook shows both future peace and war. 19 TOMORROW When liberal and conservative, progres- sive and reactionary, virile and feminine, cultural and anticultural, economic and anti- economic, militaristic and pacificists tenden- cies of the mind have equal chances after the world war, it would be hazardous to prophesy whether the special nations will be pushed into one or another direction. External con- ditions, the influences of great leaders, sys- tematic agitations and propaganda, material factors, the terms of the peace treaties, sun- shine and rain, will decide whether this or that tendency will be the stronger in the par- ticular land. But there is one great trend which will be common to every nation: na- tionalism will become paramount. The pose of the prophet is not needed for such a mes- sage. It is obvious: our tomorrow will be nationalistic to the core. Let this be the cue for my first three or four letters: I want to speak of the new nationalism, both in Europe and America. Only after a full discussion of this central problem shall I turn to the new idealism, to the new pacificism and finally to the new in- ternationalism of the time to come. This yes and no letter of today is only to tell you that 20 THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE I accept your psychological summons. From now on you will hear me saying yes; that alone is what our pregnant time is needing. But I must delay my real answer until the next mail. However thin the paper which I have chosen, the letter has already swollen to suspicious thickness: Kirkwall is wide awake. I have just room to add my cordial regards to your wife and daughter, about whose admirable Red Cross work I have heard enthusiastic reports. Faithfully yours, H. M. II THE NEW NATIONALISM My dear Colleague: It is among the many perversions which the war has forced on us that correspondence over the ocean has become a one-sided enter- prise. I do not know whether my first letter with its outlook into the future will ever reach you, and if I were to wait for an answer from you I should miss the humor of the British censorship. I shall simply go on as if I wrote for the mere discharge of my soul; and yet all my feelings go out to you, and it is as if I sat down at your side under the arbor in your beautiful garden with the tall, clipped rosebushes which are unknown here in Amer- ica. How I should like really to spend the summer days with you! Above all, I shall never overcome my regret that I did not see the great emotion of the Germans at the be- ginning of the war with my own eyes. You 22 THE NEW NATIONALISM know it was only by accident that I had changed my traveling plans, returned my steamer tickets and thus happened not to be in Berlin when the war broke out and the whole country suddenly knew that it had to defend its homes against a fivefold superior enemy. Oh, how I wish I might have lived through that glorious, solemn exaltation of the fatherland! That was the hour when German nationalism came to its maturity; and nationalism is, after all, the greatest gift of our time. I do not want to suggest that nationalism is a pure virtue. Some of the ugliest acts of the war were clearly the consequences of the newly awaking enthusiastic nationalism in the world. In the almost forgotten first act of the war Japan seized Kiau Chau. "With an abundance of love Germany had built up and protected this eastern jewel of its col- onies. German or anti-German, everybody with a sense of fairness must feel it painfully that Japan grasped it at a moment when a third of the civilized globe was fighting against Germany. I point to it only as a symp- tom of the tremendous nationalistic outbreak. Japan had no ill feeling against Germany, 23 TOMORROW but the nationalistic passion had shaken the mind of the people: Asia for Asiatics, was the new policy, and Japan's mission was to be Asia's leader. From that day the new spirit in Japan has grown by leaps and bounds; the new treaty with Eussia leaves little doubt that the fall of Tsing Tau was only the beginning. I know you blame the Italians still more. Their faithlessness in the hour of danger after profiting for thirty years from the alliance with Germany and Austria has embittered you and every Ger- man. But was it not again a nationalism which from a thousand sources had grown to a stream of such violence that the dam of alliance treaties could not possibly hold it back? The world had simply ignored the rapid swelling of Italian nationalism. The glorious memories of old Rome, the proud traditions of Italy, the Roman Empire and the Italian Renaissance, had fascinated the youth of the country, and the D'Annunzio spirit was everywhere alive: the tempting hour which promised the fulfillment of every dream forced nationalism to an overwhelm- ing power which hurled war into the land of its allies. 24 THE NEW NATIONALISM We probably would agree that this new nationalism is first of all the triumph of the idea of the state. The political state with all its legal abstractness has proved stronger than any other bond which holds human groups together. How forcibly did the unity of the state supersede the diversity of lan- guage ! German, French and Italian Switzer- land were swayed by one mighty stubborn, resentful nationalism. They sympathized in Zurich with the Germans and in Geneva with the French, but they were one in their faith in the Swiss republic. What a conglomerate the languages in the Austrian Empire, and yet what an accord in the hour of national trial ! Above all, the state has proved itself stronger than the race. We have heard so often and with so much assurance the story of the omnipotence of race in human his- tory. The true psychologist always knew that it was a legend, and the war has demon- strated it again. Surely no one can disre- gard the tremendous influence of racial traits and no melting pot can make them disap- pear. To explain history from the angle of race is the last word of natural science and as such perfectly correct. But to explain the 25 TOMORROW progress of social events is not the only way to understand it. We live in a world of pur- poses which must be interpreted and not ex- plained. Their meaning and aim count and not their naturalistic origin. The pose of the scientific account is a sin against the true spirit of history. The belief in the eternal unity of the nation, the common law, the common tradition, the common cultural treas- ures and the common aspirations have throughout the war overcome the biological affinities of the races. The Slavic Bulgars turned against the Russians, Anglo-Saxon against Teutonic cousins. Great Britain and Austria show to the world this magnificent power amidst racial chaos. Let us be frank to admit that the adhesion of the British Empire came to many of us as a surprise. We knew what India has had to suffer, we remembered what the Boers had to go through, and yet when the king called the wave of enthusiasm swept over the British lands of five continents. But the firmness of the Austrian Empire was perhaps a still greater revelation. Seven- teen races, and yet one national soul I We had so often heard that the land must fall £6 THE NEW NATIONALISM asunder and that the reign of Vienna was an artificial superfluity. The jubilant pa- triotism of the Austrian Empire best proved that there is an inner historic reason for the constitutional union of this apparent chaos of states. The balance of Europe could never have been upheld without the weight of that great Austrian power to keep it stable. The exceptions only confirm the rule. Where, as in Ireland, in Poland, in Ukrania, in Finland, distinct traditions of national unity had been kept alive, the hope of break- ing the present constitutional bond inflamed the imagination of the masses, but not be- cause the nationalistic idea was too weak, but because the memory of old nationalism arose against the new. Yet even in Russia, where the absorption of subjugated peoples has re- mained more external than in any other land, the nationalistic sentiment overcame tre- mendous obstacles, and even the German ele- ments in the Russian bureaucracy proved Russian to the core. The fact that the Prus- sian Poles in the east and the Alsatians in the west were found by this test to be loyal Germans was, of course, what we all ex- pected. 27 TOMORROW The secret fear in many a land had been much more that the jealousy of the parties would hinder the work of the state and that the internationalism of the socialists would prove dangerous. Nations and races are con- cepts which move in different dimensions, but nations and parties belong together. The race is a biological idea, but the parties and nations both belong in the world of historical ideas. If nationalism becomes faint-hearted, party spirit and international sympathies can easily deprive it of all influence. But at the bugle call the parties in every land outdid one another in their readiness to make sacrifices for the national idea. At that historic moment when the German so- cialists voted the war credit and when the German emperor solemnly declared that he no longer knew parties but only Germans, the spirit of nationalism won its most dif- ficult victory. Might it not be said that since the beginning of the war it has not suffered a single defeat in all Europe? The party spirit will come back, as no national life would be healthy without a vigorous opposi- tion of tendencies within the national frame. But the nationalistic energy which remains 28 THE NEW NATIONALISM supreme over all party conflicts will surely last when all the battle smoke has cleared away. What is the real significance of this new nationalistic creed? What psychological elements enter into its dominion? Is it really nothing but crude egotism projected on the world map with its gigantic scale? Is it merely a scramble for possessions, in order that each citizen may profit from his share? Is nationalism really bound up with jealousy and envy and suspicion, with insincere di- plomacy, with aggressive militarism, with disregard for justice and humanity? To formulate the question means to deny it. Only the nationalism of an enemy shows such a repulsive face. The true nationalism of today looks very different from such a caricature which prejudice and superficiality suggest. National selfishness may sometimes be an injurious by-product of the nationalistic spirit, but it is never the essence. The na- tionalism which gives meaning to our time and which will spread in the near days of peace as never before is belief and is faith- ful service. The starting point, it seems to me, is a 29 TOMORROW firm conviction that one's nation as it has grown and unfolded possesses valuable char- acteristic traits. It is a belief in the unique- ness and worthiness of the nation's soul. No metaphysical speculations about the oversoul are involved there. Surely we do not know a soul of the nation independent from the souls of its members. The stream does not flow outside of its myriads of drops. But in every nation we grasp a oneness of tradi- tions and memories, of language and customs, of laws and literature, of arts and sciences, of commerce and politics, of morals and re- ligion. They hold together and work to- gether like the ideas and thoughts and feel- ings and emotions and impulses in the soul of an individual personality. And just as this personal soul is bound to a body with all its inherited energies, the national soul too belongs to a national body, to a land with all the treasures in its soil, with its fields and woods, its streams and mountains, its ham- lets and towns. Whatever the national soul creates is the outcome of all these mental and physical possessions. All its historical ex- periences are reflected in its deeds; all its popular emotions shape its original work and 30 THE NEW NATIONALISM make it characteristically different from that of any other people. It may not he better and it may not he worse than that of the rest of the world, hut nationalism loves the flavor of this difference. Nationalism clings with all its loyalty to this individuality. It is natural that such love and loyalty should turn into a devoted overestimation. It may even lead to boastful pride. But the screaming catchword of the holiday orator cannot deprive this nationalistic belief of its deeper and better meaning. Surely there are periods in which this love and loyalty to the specific content of the national soul are only faintly heard and almost forgotten. These are the times of imitation, when emo- tion is silent and mere understanding and rational thought pick out the best in what- ever corner of the world it can be found. Glorious times they are when the noblest and maturest works from foreign lands are carried over the boundaries and the home is radiant with the wisdom and beauty and in- spiration of the cultural universe. But the heart of the nationalist will find more joy in the humble flower grown in the soil of his fathers. He will not disregard the achieve- 31 TOMORROW ments of the world, but he will welcome them from abroad only to fertilize the native growth. There had been too much shallow imitation in the world, too much disregard for the genius of the spiritual traditions, too great enjoyment of the latest comfort and the cleverest saying from wherever it came and too little affection for the simpler cus- toms and franker speech and rime of one's own beloved land. Everybody wore the same frocks, and every shopwindow was a bazaar of four continents. Slowly the new turn had set in everywhere. The more the market was filled with the standardized wares and the more easily every word was spread by wire and wireless, the more men longed to overcome the monotony of the colorless ma- chine age by new sympathy with all that bears the stamp of their own people. Earnest minds began to understand again that the most lasting products of art and science, of law and social morality, are those which are cast in the form of national tradition and that any true development must come from within. The national spirit is no longer any- thing accidental; it could not be replaced by a careful selection of the choicest gifts 32 THE NEW NATIONALISM from here and there. To gain the best from everywhere means to lose the only gift which has eternal value. From this conviction that the nation's in- dividuality and character have lasting value in themselves it is only one step to the be- lief in the national message. It is not enough that we love the treasures of our mental and moral traditions; we ought to be ready to defend them against foes from within and without, to strain every fiber to make them effective in the world and to secure respect for them among strangers. No true nation- alism is at work as long as the feeling of the heart has not led to this decision of the will. It is a task and not a sentimental lux- ury to love one's national culture and prin- ciples. It is a solemn service which must be performed with all the means of intellect and character in times of peace. The aim is to foster whatever encourages the national energies and to subdue whatever hinders their free unfolding. But the final aim is still higher. If the national characteristic traits are to be made effective, all the scat- tered energies must be forged together and peoples of similar national traditions and 33 TOMORROW similar longings must be brought into pro- ductive contact. Fanatic minds will be read- ily inclined to mold such hopes in a political cast and to threaten the realistic world by idealistic dreams of Pan-Slavism or Pan- Eomanism or Pan-Germanism. But the more immediate tasks are not determined by such adventurous programs, which can be realized only by disturbing the nationalistic circles of neighbors. The real duty is con- fined to defense, but this defense must be carried through with all the powerful means which secure protection for national mind and body, and the individual must be ready for sacrifice. Military preparedness then be- comes the moral duty of a healthy nation and the statesmen help to prepare by alli- ances which look into the future in order to secure the boundaries and the freedom of the beloved nation. But even alliances are only makeshifts. The nationalistic spirit craves that safety which comes from perfect independence. The national body ought to stand firm on its own feet. The land ought to be able to sup- port itself from its own resources. Nothing less can secure the lasting protection of the 34 THE NEW NATIONALISM national soul. Such an instinctive demand may not seldom stimulate the hope for ex- pansion. Wherever artificial boundaries have been set or where the growing enter- prise of the population is choked by the nar- row limits of a poorer past, new chances will be passionately sought. Colonies will be grasped, seaports will be sought, and areas with untapped mines will be coveted ; and yet it would be historically untrue to stamp even such aspirations as selfish aggressiveness and as immoral lust of the conqueror. This is after all the fundamental difference : Selfish- ness in individuals or nations seeks pleasure, advantage, enjoyment, happiness, but nation- alistic ambition serves an idea, is loyalty and faithfulness in the fulfillment of a mission which is received from history. Nor is such an idealistic devotion to the demands of the national soul antagonistic to the belief in humanity. Humanity and nationalism alike are the foes of mere selfishness. This was the spirit which slowly grew and grew in the last twenty years and which had taken firm hold of many a nation before the war broke out and without which the war would not have come to such world-wide ex- 35 TOMORROW pansion. No wonder that the war itself re- enforced this sentiment everywhere. Nothing can unite a nation more firmly than the com- mon danger, the common sacrifice. And there were dangers and sacrifices not only for the belligerents ; everyone of the neutral lands too suddenly saw its special risk and its special task. There was no nation on earth to which in these hours of the Euro- pean crisis the uniqueness of its character did not appear in sharper relief than before. The large nations and the small ones, the old and the young, those who fought with the sword and those who fought with diplomacy, were all touched by the wing of histoiy and heard the call of the nationalistic message. A world period which begins with such an enthusiastic pledge of nationalistic loyalty will not soon lose its impulse. Whatever ful- fillments or disappointments the world peace may bring, it will leave the nations all over the globe in the tension of heightened nation- alism for many a year to come. Only if we have drawn such a sharp de- marcation line between national loyalty and national selfishness can we do justice to those who with excited words appeal to the court 36 THE NEW NATIONALISM of public opinion. Just here in America not a few of the most earnest spectators speak half in disgust and half in despair about the discussions which leaders of thought have started in these troubled times. They can- not harmonize the harsh onesidedness of French and German, English, Austrian and Russian scholars with their lifework, which ought to be devoted to the truth and nothing but the truth. I think it is a low view of scholarly truth and a lower view of patriot- ism which misleads so many to such a crit- icism. They fancy that truth is only a kind of photographic copy of an outer reality. They are not aware that every so-called truth is a remolding of life impressions, a recon- struction of experience, a free creation of the intellect, which can never be severed from the purposes of the creating mind. Hence the scholar who, uplifted by a healthy pa- triotism, proclaims historic and political facts as they appear from the angle of his hopes and as he sees them shaped by his na- tionalism is not disloyal to the spirit of scholarship. Any mathematics and chem- istry of political actions is unthinkable. To be a Frenchman means to affirm with thought 37 TOMORROW and will the purposes and ideals of the French nation; and nobody is a German but he who realizes through his will the values and aims of the German national soul. If Bergson and Eucken stand up with different claims about the war, they do not deny the highmindedness of the philosopher; they are loyal to the ideas of the truthseeker just be- cause they affirm the values and ideals in which they believe. Either serves the truth as long as all the judgments of his mind are in agreement with one another: truth is ulti- mately belief. But while our beliefs may clash, no hatred ought to darken our vision. The mutual hatred of nations lowers the nationalistic solemnity. It may be true that in the first heat of the war the readiness for the needed sacrifice can be stirred up most forcefully by the injection of hatred. This may also be added: Even the feeling of hate is more fit for the strife of the nations than the spirit of sport which many spectators here would like to substitute. If anything can excuse the calamity of the European war, it is the undeniable fact that everybody has entered into it with a nationalistic conviction that 38 THE NEW NATIONALISM reaches the core of his personality. An al- most sacred emotion of duty has consecrated the national sword. It would be desecrated if instead of it the lover of sport were to carry the day and if the victory were to ap- pear not as a decision on ideal values of life but as a mere record on the battlefield. The pure nationalist, however, knows neither hatred nor sport. His aim is neither to destroy nor simply to measure himself with the opposing forces. His real goal is the positive upbuilding of the national ener- gies. He wants to create a lasting good which never excludes the growth of foreign values. Hence he will respect the opponent who is loyal to his own historic convictions and who courageously affirms cultural faith by the sacrifice of his life. His own loyalty, stronger than death, will not interfere with luminous justice. It seems that the hatred in the belligerent countries has slowly burned itself out and even here beyond the sea it will not linger much longer. There is a land where hatred expires, a land of many patriotisms. The editorial ships of London and Berlin have reached its shore. Finally even the captains 39 TOMORROW of the New York press will steer toward it too. Even the gay yachts of the London Punch and the Munich Jugend now lie in the harbor of that land ; it may be that the New York Life will reach it too. But while the hatred disappears, the cruel misjudgment of hostile nationalism is still at work, and es- pecially German aspirations are still depicted among earnest observers as if nationalism were nothing but selfishness and the con- queror's lust. Germany appears as a dis- turber of the world's equilibrium, a possible danger even to the American continents, if it cannot be crushed in the European strug- gle. The social psychologist feels sure that the makeup of the German mind discredits such historic misinterpretations- Germany presents mentally a threefold contrast to other leading countries of Eu- rope. The German psychological setting is marked off from that of the Latin peoples. The south of Europe has had through thou- sands of years a distinct mental physiog- nomy: the Italians, the Spanish, the French, have fundamental traits in common with the Greeks and Romans of old. Their thinking is simple and clear and their joy goes out 40 THE NEW NATIONALISM to the elementary appealing impressions. Other men grow up under the northern sky. German thought is complex and German joy greets those things which are interwoven with abstract reflections. Imperialistic con- quest is a thoroughly Latin desire : An Alex- ander or a Cassar, a Louis XIV or a Napoleon would be out of harmony with German emo- tions. The lust of conquest is an instinctive desire for the elementary joy in power; it compares with the policies of the German leaders throughout German history as Italian music and its love for the sensuous melody compares with German music and its joy in counterpoint. Germany's nationalism is never Napoleonic, never Latin imperialism. But Germany's feelings also contrast in many points with those of the Anglo-Saxon world. Only one point is important here. The British Empire is filled with belief in strength; that is developed through England's geographic position. Her self- conscious strength has overpowered the world. Its mental spring is the idea of quan- tity. It is only natural that the Anglo-Saxon adores sport with its conception of record — record is always quantity. But the Ger- 41 TOMORROW man mind is strangely indifferent to the glory of quantity; in contrast to it the German loves quality. This trend has made the Teuton the loser when the world was parti- tioned, and too often it has tempted him to spend his time with small administrative de- tails instead of with the big political move- ments. But surely the imperialistic frame of mind is natural to those peoples who think in arguments of quantity, but entirely for- eign to those whose thought treads in the path of qualitative ideas. German national- ism is never British imperialism. The contrast with Russia is no less sharp. The marvelous growth of the Russian Em- pire has been due to the persistent energy with which it subjugated surrounding peo- ples from the Baltic to the Pacific. It was favored in this by geographic conditions. No natural obstacles stood in the way. Peoples of any race, of any language, of any religion, of any tradition, are forced together under one ruthless regime. The Russian unity is therefore external and mechanical; the Ger- man unity is thoroughly internal and organic — it is developed from the community of his- tory. Russia would be perfectly consistent 42 THE NEW NATIONALISM if it continued to conquer any neighboring land. Even if it were to absorb all Germany, Austria, Italy and France, it would only con- tinue the policy which it has followed in the last three centuries. But Germany would be disloyal to its own high past if it were to overpower foreign peoples with different languages and traditions. German nation- alism is never Russian imperialism. Latin, Anglo-Saxon and Slavic empires may van- quish the world — the Germans never had and never will have imperialistic ambitions. They believe in their mission, and their mis- sion is not to subdue the globe with the sword. What are the true German aspirations? I know we all have met some imaginative Ger- mans who like to talk the imperialistic slang. I suppose I have seen in my Boston home even more of them than you ever saw in Ber- lin, because I have always been overrun by the German globe-trotters. When they travel around the world their fancy is likely to be inflamed by the British power. At the after dinner coffee they like to girdle the seas with German Gibraltars. But surely no respon- sible German politician and no earnest Ger- 43 TOMORROW man thinker indulges in such un-German Germanism. The nationalism of the father- land is confined to the firm demand for the protection and development of the German people with its characteristic German civili- zation and for an influence in the world which corresponds to the inner value of its achieve- ments. Such a claim does not injure or threaten anyone, but it gives impulse and strength to the nation and secures its healthy- future. This self -protection must be both economic and political. I think we are too little aware how much the history of Prussia and of Ger- many throughout the last three hundred years has stood under the pressure of eco- nomic needs and especially of the need for commerce over the sea. Was not even the alliance with Austria and Italy guided by the instinctive longing for harbors, when the ac- cess to the North Sea was no longer sufficient? The hopes of today turn to the new economic path from Berlin to Constantinople and be- yond. The peaceful conquest by German in- dustries depends upon the roads to the world through friendly lands. But the longing for protection by economic independence cannot 44 THE NEW NATIONALISM be satisfied without expansive, and for a while probably expensive, colonies. We all talk about Germany as if it stood in line with England, France and Russia, and we forget how small its territorial possessions are com- pared with the three others. Large unde- veloped areas in Africa and western Asia still demand the effort of the Europeans in order to yield an economic harvest. Germany hopes for a larger share in this common task. Its population is steadily growing; the over- flow streamed too long into lands where it was lost for the German nation and its work. From the nationalistic standpoint it was a waste and loss. As soon as new colonies offer homesteads to the emigrant, the hu- man material is saved for German civiliza- tion. But at the same time the colonies can be fields of production for the raw material which German home industry needs and fields of consumption for the finished prod- ucts which German factories offer. Truly the increase of colonial possessions for eco- nomic protection of the nation cannot disap- pear again from the nationalistic program. Yet commerce and industry cannot be sep- arated today from the political hopes and 45 TOMORROW cares. The colonies are not safe without a strong fleet. Above all, the boundaries of the home land must be protected against inva- sion if the fires of the factories are never to burn out. Germany is convinced that the war was planfully forced on it by the alliance of its neighbors. It is true that the German vic- tories east and west have made the neutral world forget how confidently the Russian and French armies hoped to meet at the Branden- burg Gate in Berlin. By a natural illusion the victorious army appears the aggressor. But every German felt that the strongest military coalition which the world has seen threatened every hearth and home on Ger- man soil, and the spirit of German nation- alism will never rest until it is made sure that this menace is averted from the chil- dren's children of the soldiers of today. But the physical devastation of German prov- inces is not the only danger against which the people firmly demands protection. It suffered too long from the checking of Ger- man enterprise by the diplomatic alliance of its adversaries under English control. The European war, after all, began not at Sera- 46 THE NEW NATIONALISM jevo but at Algeciras. England ruled the waves, England ruled the colonies, England ruled the canals, England ruled the cables, and finally it ruled the neighbors of Ger- many. The German nation feels such pressure in- tolerable. Its nationalistic resolution is not only to protect Germany against the mili- tarism of Russia, which is eager to expand, but against the diplomatism of England, which is eager to prevent everybody else from ex- panding. Yet tariffs and custom unions, ma- chine guns and cruisers, laboratories and or- ganizations will not be sufficient to secure such national safety. Not only the economic and political, but most of all the cultural and moral preparedness will be needed. A stub- born belief is essential, a belief in the unique human value of German traits, achievements and ideals. The new nationalist feels that the Germans have too much admired everything foreign, and imitated the cultural fashion from everywhere. This is the inheritance of long ages of German political infirmity. Germany has grown strong and the German must at last learn to have the courage of his own convictions. Only this faith in the na- 47 TOMORROW tive character, only this education to national pride, can prepare the country for an age of safety and honor. But moral uniqueness is not egotistic con- ceit, and joyful belief in national values is not a blindness to the noble traits of other na- tions nor a narrow prejudice against their mission. No German fancies that English or French, Italian or Russian civilization can be crushed, and no German plays with the wish that such a misfortune befall man- kind. More than that, with open eyes he foresees that the nationalism in all the other European states will increase powerfully too. Victory or defeat will not change this outcome: from Finland to Spain the be- lief in the native soil, in the native traits, in the native traditions and in the native mis- sion, will grow and flourish, for the roots of European nationalism have been drenched with the blood of millions of heroes. And America ? But America is too big for a mere post- script. Whoever writes down America must take a large new letter sheet. Hence I shall leave the United States of America for my next epistle — a Swedish steamer goes in three 48 THE NEW NATIONALISM days, but the Danish ship today may still carry, besides all this political wisdom, most cordial greetings from my family to yours. Faithfully yours, H. M. m NATIONALISM IN AMERICA My dear Friend: I do not remember: did I ever tell you about my queer experience at the Interna- tional Peace Conference in Carnegie Hall in New York nine years ago? It impressed it- self on my mind, as I think it was the only occasion when I ever was scolded like a little schoolboy before a large jubilant audience. Mr. Carnegie presided. After some effer- vescent peace speeches I was to present the German standpoint, and my address was a sincere effort to interpret Germany's deep desire for peace, and yet to characterize the threatening realities around her. I insisted, above all, that clear understanding is neces- sary, and that nobody understands the Ger- man nation who fancies, as some speakers had done, that Germany feels her army as an intolerable burden. The truth is, I said, that 50 NATIONALISM IN AMERICA the German people loves its army and con- siders it a splendid school of training and discipline and is convinced that only a thor- ough preparedness can save the country from the European menace. Then Mr. Car- negie arose, and forgetting that he was the chairman entered into a most formidable speech of reply. He was too old, he said, still to learn from a professor. He knew bet- ter ; he knew that the German army and this so-called state of preparedness is the misery and the ruin of the country, and every Ger- man has no wish but to escape from such military servitude. America is not the place, he shouted, with the frantic applause of the galleries, to proclaim such medieval ideas. Military preparedness is everywhere in the world only the cover for a spirit of aggres- siveness. America is the land of peace, and is the good friend of every nation on earth. The louder he shouted the more jubilant the balconies became, and the more I was ex- pected to sink through the floor from shame. I do not blame the dear old man in the least. He wrote me a beautiful letter the next day and gave me a few weeks later half a million marks for a research institute in 51 TOMORROW Berlin. But that hour in Carnegie Hall has often flitted through my mind in the last few months when I heard oratory against peace at any price, or stood on the sidewalk for hours to see the preparedness parades pass by and finally in New York and Boston to see the regiments march out to fight in Mex- ico. Yet this doubleness of soul was not a surprise to me. I always felt this contradic- tion in the mind of the American public. Twelve years ago in my first effort to ana- lyze American life from a psychological point of view I wrote in my book "The Ameri- cans": "In the attitude of the Americans toward foreign affairs the love of peace and the delight in war combine to make a contrast which has rarely been seen. Doubtless there is an apparent contradiction here, but this contradiction is the historic mark of the na- tional American temperament and it is not to be supposed that the contradiction is solved by ascribing these diverse opinions to diverse elements in the population, by saying that one group of citizens is more warlike, another more peaceful. The most character- istic feature is that just those who show the love for war most energetically are never- 52 NATIONALISM IN AMERICA theless concerned and most earnestly so for the advance of peace." At that early date I continued: "President Eoosevelt is the most striking example of the profound com- bination of these opposing tendencies in one human breast." In the same spirit I said: "Everything works together under the pro- tection of the American constitution to pro- duce a splendid home in the new world for peace. America is the one world power which makes for peace and it will only de- pend on the future growth of this nation, which has been ordained to become such an example, whether the idea of peace will fin- ally prevail throughout the world, over the immoral settlement of disputes by mere force of arms. All this is not merely the pro- gram of a party, but the confession of faith of every American. It has impressed itself so fully on the consciousness of the American people that it gives to the whole nation a feeling of moral superiority. And this conviction is so admirable that it has always been contagious, and all Europe has become quite accustomed to considering the republic across the water as the firmest par- tisan of peace. The republic has in fact been 53 TOMORROW this, is now and always will be so, while the riddle is — how it can be such a friend of peace when it was conceived in war, has settled its most serious problems by war, has gone to war again and again, has almost played with declarations of war, is at war today and pre- sumably will be at war many times again." But while the lion-like and the lamb-like tendencies have always been together in the American mind, there are periods in which the one prevails and periods in which the other triumphs. No doubt the martial spirit has again today taken hold of the American people; and yet the military training and preparing and fighting are this time only a part of a greater movement. The turn of the nation against actual, possible or imagi- nary enemies is only an expression of the re- markable growth of a new nationalism. The uprising of the people in arms was no less, perhaps even more powerful, in 1898. The liberation of Cuba stirred more enthusiasm than the cleaning up of Mexico ; but the mili- tary movement of those days was isolated; it was a political task which had to be per- formed. The uprising against Spain was not a part of a larger movement. This time army 54 NATIONALISM IN AMERICA and navy, party politics and government are all subordinated to a much greater issue than the disorder on the southern boundaries. The true issue is Americanism, and that means exactly the type of nationalism which has grown in Europe in the last decade, which led to the European war and which will swell as never before when the war is over. No doubt the movement came over the ocean. American nationalism had been sub- dued in the last ten years. The beginning of the century had been a period of struggle for social improvement, a time of muckraking and industrial readjustments, a time of progressive political thought and most of all a time of luxury and enjoyment. In periods of such a type the voice of nationalism is little heard. But suddenly all this has changed. The sympathies with the belligerent countries threatened to separate the racial elements in the United States; the issue of true Americanism became unavoidable. Moreover the uproar in Europe forced the idea of a possible clash on the excited imag- ination of the people and the reaction was a terrorized feeling of unpreparedness. But it is hardly necessary to seek one or another 55 TOMORROW special cause. We all know this world war was from the beginning really a war of the world. No country remained unshaken, no country could remain unstirred by the trum- pet call of nationalism with which the genius of history awoke mankind to an age of new inspirations. No doubt American nation- alism has and always will have its character- istic features, just as the nationalism of Rus- sia is not that of France and that of Germany not that of England. But fundamentally it remains the same; and even when public opinion in America endeavors to emphasize that its nationalistic aims are better than those of other lands, it simply speaks the language which is heard in every country and proves by it that this difference is an illusion. To be sure we hear that America's prepar- ation is not militaristic, because the country would never enter into an aggressive war, but would fight only in self-defense. But no Eu- ropean country has ever pretended to have an army for any other purpose. The whole phraseology remains the same. When South America tried to bring about arbitration be- tween the United States and Mexico, the Washington government declined emphati- 56 NATIONALISM IN AMERICA cally because the honor of America was in- volved and therefore no arbitration was pos- sible. The honor of the country was involved : that was the battle cry in Austria and then in Eussia, and so on. Ten years ago every Amer- ican felt sure that the true honor of the coun- try demanded first of all to avoid the use of the elastic word honor in any conflict with an- other power. Today every American feels just as sure that the true honor of the coun- try demands : to look on every conflict with a foreign power first of all from the stand- point of national honor. The one was right and the other is right; the one was felt in full sincerity, and the other controlled by mo- tives no less high. The times have simply changed. The new nationalism has swept from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It was most natural that the nationalistic awakening led first of all to the nation-wide cry for military preparedness. As you have visited America repeatedly, you know how the public loves exaggeration and how every new campaign is likely to show hysteric fea- tures. The press and the film and the orators have been outdoing one another and as — fortunately for American unity, unfortu- 57 TOMORROW nately for American soberness — nobody- dares or nobody cares to resist the fashion of the day, the much despised old world arma- ment has suddenly been made the prescrip- tion of every class and of every party. When the preparedness parades were organized they came too late to convince anybody. No on-looker was left who did not beforehand agree with the paraders. To be sure, it was not difficult to demonstrate the actual un- preparedness, and when it came to the first expedition to Mexico the lack of equipment was still more alarming than had been sup- posed. The Bull Moose party platform went furthest: " Preparedness in arms requires a navy restored to at least second rank in bat- tle efficiency, a regular army of two hundred and fifty thousand men fully armed and trained as the first line land defense, and sys- tematic military training adequate to organ- ize with promptness a citizen soldiery sup- plied, armed and controlled by the national government. In our democracy every male citizen is charged with the duty of defending his country." The call of the two old par- ties sounded a little fainter, and yet a thor- ough and complete national defense, ready 58 NATIONALISM IN AMERICA for any emergency, appeared equally impor- tant at the St. Louis and at the Chicago con- vention. Psychologically it was especially interest- ing to watch how the need, as soon as it was practically felt, was bolstered up with re- publican arguments. In the early days of the European war the German armies had been denounced vehemently as the instru- ment of dynastic interests and the German nation was pitied for being forced into the army service by brutal autocrats. Of course, it seemed fitting that such tyrannical conscription should yoke the empire of the czar too; but no western country could look on such army service otherwise than as a menace to freedom and democracy. Public opinion almost forgot that democratic France had prepared still more eagerly than Ger- many, demanding three years of service from everybody where Germany demands one or two years only. It was forgotten too that in poor Germany, where the true people is said to hate this army service, no less than two million volunteers insisted on being enlisted in addition to the gigantic army of regulars and reservists. Those who knew the spirit 59 TOMORROW of Germany protested at that time and as- sured the American world that the German army is a most democratic institution. To- day the whole American nation harps on this string. Indeed what can be more democratic than that each man, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, be expected to offer his mind and body for the defense of his country? But those who knew added that the Ger- mans considered their army service not only a technical means of defense, but as the best school for efficient manhood and self-disci- pline. American public opinion has finally come around to this argument too. The last number of the Army and Navy Journal speaks frankly of "the fact that we need in the United States some force more powerful than our present educational system to serve as a corrective of the appalling disregard of law and of life's amenities." In fact General Wood said only the other day in the course of a public address that "military training would probably have a good effect toward lowering the excessively high murder rate in this country. . . . Officers on recruiting duty are getting to be more and more of the opin- ion that the freedom of contact for growing 60 NATIONALISM IN AMERICA lads afforded by large cities must be checked in some way, and look toward compulsory military service as a corrective, disciplining force of no mean ability as a power for good. ' ' ' ' Compulsory military service may as yet be distasteful to many Americans, but there is a slowly growing belief in its power as a cor- rective of general public conduct, at least, that may soon crystallize into a definite ac- tion for its introduction into this country. The fact that New York State has now made it a law to a certain degree is one of the most signal evidences of the growth of this idea that has yet come to pass." The demand for preparedness with its democratic arguments is not the only symptom of the new American nationalism, which will make the so-called democratic rebukes of autocratic Germany appear superficial and prejudiced. Even the detestable and despised European barbarism of gas bombs was taken as a matter of course as soon as the papers announced the Amer- ican gas bomb experiments when the troops marched against Mexico. Surely, however little America may be actually ready for warfare, it has shown that it is ready for war. 61 TOMORROW I know not a few in Germany believed that the American Government was playing a game of blufr when it threatened Germany with war. It was the good luck of the Ger- man nation that its responsible leaders made moderation triumphant. Not Lansing but Bethmann-Hollweg secured the peace be- tween Germany and America. And do not forget that America would have gone into this war with perfect knowledge that no Ger- man had the slightest feeling of hostility against America and that every one of those belligerent German acts about which Amer- ica had reason to complain were regretted by the Germans too, as far as the harm to non-belligerents was concerned. Moreover it was at an hour at which the first indigna- tion had long since died out and the issues had become abstract and technical ones, the Americans insisting that the submarines must behave in accordance with the interna- tional prescriptions agreed upon long before submarines existed, and the Germans claim- ing that here, as in every field, the new tech- nique must lead to new international rules. You remember that at one stage of the great contest a compromise seemed almost reached 62 NATIONALISM IN AMERICA — it was when Lansing proposed that the sub- marines might treat the armed merchant ships as warships. Indeed the psychological issue must not be confused by bringing in the American regret over the lost lives. A few months after the Lusitania the Eastland sank in the harbor of Chicago. It was tor- pedoed by carelessness and negligence. Ten times more Americans lost their lives there, and yet within a short time the Eastland and the drowned victims were forgotten. Re- cently the railways posted a placard saying that in the foregoing year five thousand two hundred and forty-seven Americans lost their lives trespassing on railroad property. This could be easily avoided, but who cares! Ten times more die from the neglect of the sim- plest hygienic measures in factories and mines. No; it was not the question of the lost lives; it was strictly a question of the abstract principle of right. But Germany too certainly believed itself in the right. It took the stand that when millions fight against millions and a country like Germany has to defend itself against a fivefold su- periority it has no moral right to surren- der its most effective weapon because unin- 63 TOMORROW tended harm, in spite of the hest will, may- befall a neutral. That standpoint may be wrong. It is again an abstract legal ques- tion. If two great nations differ with re- gard to rights, it is exactly the condition un- der which arbitration would have appeared the only justified solution to the Americans of a few years ago. But the newspapers stood behind the President when he insisted on using force instead of peaceful means. For it is force when war is threatened against a people whom its enemies are trying to starve by a blockade and to crush by the armies of nine nations. Yet the President could not think otherwise and the papers could not take another stand, because the wave of nationalism had swept away the "old-fashioned" ideas. But here, as in Europe, the clamor of the new nationalism is not only for military and political, but for economic and cultural pre- paredness as well. Of course, throughout the last century the plea for the protective tariff has made the most of the argument that home industries ought to be strength- ened. The Republican planks have always been in this sense nationalistic, while the 64 NATIONALISM IN AMERICA Democrats replied with humanistic argu- ments. But this traditional support of do- mestic industries was demanded only in the interest of high wages and higher dividends. The cheap importations were to be kept from the shores. The years of war have added an entirely different motive, which has naturally intensified the economic nationalism and has given to it a much deeper meaning. Only through the war has the American nation discovered that its material freedom depends upon unhampered exchange with other na- tions, and that means upon the goodwill of the world. This time only a fraction, only central Europe, was cut off; and yet it was sufficient to remind the large merchant and the small housekeeper ever so often that their routine supply comes from everywhere. The doctors missed their drugs, the manu- facturers their dyestuffs, the publishers their paper, and so on. The nationalistic plea for expansion of the home industries now meant a demand for the undisturbed comfort of the nation in time of danger. But war opened other economic perspec- tives too. Peace will come and with it the greatest industrial strife which history has 65 TOMORROW seen. Europe will be poor, but economically not crippled. On the contrary, the factories which have been kept busy with ammunition for war will turn with full power to the sup- plies for peace, and the men who return from the trenches will be ready to work for small wages. America will have the gold which has flowed from Europe during the war; Europe will have an unheard-of abundance of wares for export. The market is always neutral; buyers and sellers do not want to make political capital, but money. Will America be powerful enough to withstand the storm 1 ? Will peace in Europe mean in- dustrial war for the United States? Only a farsighted legislative policy can promise sta- bility: a truly scientific treatment of the tariff question, not the amateurish one by lobby-ridden committees, can help. Too long have the selfish interests of influential indus- trial groups controlled the market policy of the land; the interest of the nation as such must become the new call. The man in the mill too defends his country and a real na- tionalism must become decisive in the world where the dollar rules. New labor laws, new corporation statutes and a new policy which 66 NATIONALISM IN AMERICA favors a strong merchant marine cannot be delayed any longer. The problems have become the more urgent as the American is quite aware that in these unhappy days a wall has arisen between English and Latin America. The feelings of South and Central America were on the side of mangled Mexico. Their latent instincts against the patronizing attitude of the United States have been reenforced by the punitive expedition. Why? Simply because Latin America is also a part, and a big part of this one political economic universe which has been swept by the nationalistic tornado. North Americans know that the hoped-for expansion of trade and of concessions in Latin America will be for a long while hindered as a result of the Villa-Car ranza mischief. Nor does China look promising since Japan and Russia have joined hands. America must find its economic strength in itself. This will toward nationalism has affected even the inner life ; it could not be otherwise. To be sure, the great words about American leadership, which gave impulse to the na- tionalistic platform discussions of state 67 TOMORROW rights and industries, could not well be ap- plied in the sphere of spiritual achievements. The educated American knows and regrets that the national work in art, literature and music, in science and scholarship, in social, moral and religious constructive thought has not as yet fulfilled the earnest hopes of the world. He feels that it does not lack merit, but it does lack distinction and true signifi- cance. French paintings, German music and English poems have, after all, been dominant in America. Many remedies have been pre- scribed. It can be clearly foreseen that the prescription of tomorrow will be a moral pro- tective tariff against cultural importation. Let us go back to our own classics of the golden Boston age instead of yielding to the lure of European decadence. Let us suppress the university which has en- croached on us from the continent and let us put our emphasis again on the old American college. Even the scenario contests for the film demand no foreign plots and settings: let us be thoroughly American. ''Our sons and daughters should be educated here and not abroad." Nationalism has won the day west of the Atlantic ocean as well as east. 68 NATIONALISM IN AMERICA Yet, my old friend, you have studied Amer- ica so carefully on your various visits that you probably feel that something must be wrong with this equation. To say American nationalism equals European makes the cal- culation decidedly too simple. The Amer- ican nationalism of the 1916 type involves a certain inner difficulty with which the whole nation is wrestling more or less subcon- sciously. The difficulty lies in the very idea of Americanism. Each of the European peo- ples wants to protect with body and soul a nationality which is made sacred to them by the common historical tradition. Now even here in Massachusetts, where I am writing to you, a state which is prouder of its fruit- ful past than any other in the Union; even here two-thirds of the inhabitants were either born in foreign lands or born from foreign parents. Americans are not held to- gether by a common past in the way of the European peoples. In a historic sense they all are immigrants — it makes no difference whether they arrived yesterday or the day before yesterday, and whether they came from English-speaking lands or not. The essential point is that however early their 69 TOMORROW forefathers arrived, they all are still con- scious of their particular European ancestry. Nor is it the soil to which American pa- triotism is attached; it lacks that fervor which the European feels as a result of two thousand years and more of history. The mi- gration in America is still more characteristic than the immigration. Plenty of exceptions exist, but the average American is only loosely connected with the soil on which he was born. Americanism is not that love for the past and not that race affection for the natives of a special soil in the European sense: Americanism is — and the best men of the country feel it with their whole heart — an idea, a principle, a task which is to be fulfilled by work in common. Who can doubt that this gives a wonder- ful meaning to American nationalism, worthy of the enthusiasm of sturdy men who are ready to live and to die for it ! But it lacks certain elements familiar in the French or Italian, German, Russian or British nation- alism. It puts the emphasis on the outer framework of the national life. The Ameri- can patriot aims toward the outer protection and prosperity of all who have joined in the 70 NATIONALISM IN AMERICA common task, and takes care that the laws and the technique of the common life give to everybody equal opportunity and rights. But such American nationalism, confined to a principle, can be only little concerned with the unfolding of an inherited national soul. Those faint efforts for cultural Americanism have therefore always had more the char- acter of caprice than of creation ; they stirred the dilettant more than the genius. It was quite consistent when nationalists tried to develop really American music from the old melodies of the Indians, but it was some- what embarrassing for all acquainted with the fate of these only Americans who did not feel themselves immigrants. If Ameri- canism is essentially the realization of a principle through certain outer forms of gov- ernment, law, organization and physical pro- tection, then surely it ought not to be opposed to the loving care for the inner traits and inherited cultural gifts of the various racial elements, however diverse they may be. But more important is another element of the complex situation. The new nationalism demonstrates itself as such by its readiness to fight for the national good. This good is 71 TOMORROW a system of principles; but these principles demand that America shall not fight, but work in peace toward justice. The princi- ples which have inspired America are indi- vidualistic and humanistic; to make war for them or even to emphasize the nationalistic character of those who defend them means to crush the individualism and to deny the humanism. The new Americanism is there- fore not like all those new nationalisms in Europe, simply a new underscoring of the old nationalistic feeling, but it is essentially the opposite of the best in the old Ameri- canism. It is not by chance that the new preparedness leaders try to make the most out of the wornout argument that armament secures peace. The old Americanism spoke quite differently, and its echo is by no means unheard today. Preparedness tempts to hasty declarations of war. "Under the clever catch-cry of national honor a vast movement toward an utterly undemocratic imperialism is daily gaining strength. Democracy and the 'big stick' can never live long side by side." This is the language of another time. If the country had wished to test these two state philosophies in a battle NATIONALISM IN AMERICA of votes, it would have nominated Roosevelt and Bryan as the two opposing candidates. They are the real leaders for and against the new nationalism. That a Bryan was impos- sible and that a Roosevelt was therefore not necessary as the opponent, is a symptom of the undeniable victory of the new nationalism in American life. But I have not yet spoken of the strangest feature — the pathetic outbreak against the Americans of German descent. I know it will be a short episode and the tragedy of unfair- ness will soon appear as a comedy of errors. But you asked me for social psychology: by no means let us overlook the pogrom of the hyphen. I am afraid, as the British censor has kept the American papers away from you, that you may not even understand what a hyphen has to do with politics. Well, you must put the hyphen between quotation marks, and if you put after it three exclama- tion marks and a question mark you have the whole stoiy of our political punctuation. I shall explain it all to you in my next letter, and remain today, with unhyphenated feel- ings, Sincerely yours, H. M. 73 IV NATIONALISM AND THE GERMAN- AMERICANS My dear Friend : Only yesterday I wrote to you a long let- ter to go on this morning's steamer about the new nationalistic movement in America, and as the next Swedish ship will not leave before next week I had not planned to write again until some days had passed. But a torrent of rain keeps me in the house, dark clouds hang low over the ocean, thunder rolls in the distance — a gray sky over a gray sea ! The day is hopeless for the sailing trip which I had planned, but it is just the day to stay at my desk and to write to you the promised story about the German- Americans — a gray sky over a gray sea. Yes, my dear friend, it is a story of pa- thetic suffering. You, over in Germany, from morning to night send your thoughts 74 NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS and your sympathy to those millions who stand in the trenches. You are not aware that there may be trenches and curtains of fire and poisonous gases in peaceful lands, and that the suffering there and the pain may be worse than in the heat of the battle. The recent ill-tempered outbreak against the Americans of German descent is one of the saddest chapters of American history. You know I personally am not touched by it; hence I can speak about it with the objec- tivity of an outside observer and truly as a psychologist. I am not an American and have never intended to become one; I am politically a German and nothing else. It is true in the last two years I have been at- tacked publicly again and again for remain- ing a German. I cannot help it. I did not come here because I liked Germany less ; and I did not come here at my own desire. You remember I was a young professor in South Germany when America called me to develop interest in scientific psychology. William James wrote to me in the name of Harvard that they needed me. I came from a sense of duty, but the readiness to help in the scien- tific work could not possibly have been a 75 TOMORROW reason to change my nationality ; and it was a matter of course that I made the condition that I remain a German citizen. After coming here my interest in the land grew steadily. A new life task became coupled with my scientific work; I tried to interpret German ideals to America and American ideals to Germany, and to work toward friendly relations between the two countries, both of which I had learned to see with the eyes of love. Whenever I was asked to accept academic places in Europe, my American colleagues who insisted on my staying here were successful, because I felt that this task of cultural intermediation de- manded my remaining in America. But surely all this would have been spoiled if I had simply thrown overboard my native citi- zenship and had become a full-fledged Ameri- can. My activity during the war has nat- urally followed from the past; after trying for twenty years to fight the prejudices of the European continent against America, I had to combat the American prejudices against Germany when the war broke out and American public opinion became subservient to Germany's enemies. But whatever I did 76 NATIONALISM AND GERM AN- AMERICANS was frankly done as a German. The rebuke to the Americans of German descent has therefore not even any reference to me per- sonally, and I can see the German- American struggles from the spectator's seat. I do not know whether the German readers have had a chance to study the platforms which the convention month brought to American politics, and the declarations of the various leaders. But if the cutting of the cables has abolished this kind of news in the fatherland the loss was not great, as Repub- licans and Democrats, and, as long as they existed, Progressives, had all essentially the same intentions: they preached the new na- tionalism in three hardly different dialects. Especially with regard to the German- Americans, however much the word itself was avoided, the attitude of all three parties and their leaders was fundamentally the same. "We condemn as subversive of this nation's unity and integrity and as destruc- tive of its welfare the activities and designs of every group or organization, political or otherwise, that has for its object the ad- vancement of the interest of a foreign power, whether such object is promoted by intimi- 77 TOMORROW dating the government, a political party or representatives of the people, or which is cal- culated and tends to divide our people into antagonistic groups and thus to destroy the complete agreement and solidarity of the people and that unity of sentiment and na- tional purpose so essential to the perpetuity of the nation and its free institutions." President Wilson wrote this sentence, the Democratic convention indorsed it; but with more Anglo-Saxon words Roosevelt might have written it and the Progressives might have enthusiastically accepted it. Their plank about the "unified spirit of this cosmo- politan people and deep loyalty and undi- vided allegiance to America" has just the same meaning. And Mr. Hughes in his first declaration of principles says: "I stand for an Americanism that knows no ulterior pur- pose, for a patriotism that is single and com- plete. Whether native or naturalized, of whatever race or creed, we have but one country and we do not for an instant toler- ate any division of allegiance." If the real intention is filtered out of the three creeds, it comes to the simple formula: Let us haze the German- Americans. 78 NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS To be sure, wise vote-seekers do not utter such stinging words without adding at once : ' ' Present company excepted ! ' ' They will as- sure the well behaved Americans of German descent that the indignation is really turned only against those few whose hearts are di- vided. Indeed everybody sympathizes with those shining examples of German-born men who have signed the ''Declaration of the Five Hundred" imploring America to help the Allies against the barbaric Germans. But while the men of this type are excepted, the rebuke is after all hurled not against this or that culprit but practically against the German-American masses. The German- American Alliance alone, against which the sharpest arrows have been shot, has three million members. Its sentiment is still more widespread. Surely ten million people be- tween the Atlantic and the Pacific share that German-American emotion which the Hot- spurs of Anglo-Americanism are deriding and denouncing. But does that mean that the rebuke is deserved? Does it mean that true Americanism is threatened by the de- scendants of those who came from German shores? 79 TOMORROW The discussion about the German-Ameri- cans has been so passionate that even the most patent differences have been lost from sight. You would expect that at least one demarcation line would be kept clearly in view: the political question ought to be sharply separated from the cultural one. Let me disentangle the issues on both sides of this line, and let me speak first of the strictly political problem. Have the Amer- icans of German extraction misbehaved in a political sense and has their public activity during these two years of war justified the convulsive upheaval ? You know I have been in pretty intimate contact with the German- American work and I know all its classes and layers, its organizations and its leaders, its papers and its literature. As I am speaking here, friend to friend, I should not hesitate to blame them where blame is deserved, and indeed I have said publicly that the register of mistakes which the German-Americans have made in the last twenty-five years is long. But with the same frankness I can as- sure you that since the beginning of the war they must be entirely acquitted of the one crime which alone is here in the center ; they 80 NATIONALISM AND GERMAN- AMERICANS have never been anything but loyal Ameri- cans and every accusation to the contrary is a fundamental misunderstanding and a cruel injustice. I should not be sincere if I were not to acknowledge from the start that there are many German-Americans who ought never to have become American citizens and who do feel today that they have made a mistake in asking for naturalization papers. They joined a nation nearly a third of which has some German blood in its veins, in which millions keep German social traditions alive and which in its long history of bloody con- flicts has had not a single war with Ger- many. It never entered their minds that an hour might possibly come in which the land of their birth and the land of their lifework might force on them an inner struggle of conflicting feelings and duties. They be- lieved that they became citizens of a nation which had nothing but respect and friendship for Germany ; not a few feel almost as if the new homestead had been offered to them un- der false pretenses. Thousands seem re- solved to leave the country when the war is over — an exodus like that of the Huguenots 81 TOMORROW from France. Yet as long as the war lasts this class of naturalized German-Americans keeps quiet. They suffer without open com- plaint; they do not partake in any propa- ganda. Above all, it is a cruel falsehood when even serious papers repeat the silly claim that men of this type actually hold double citizen- ship. You know the new German laws allow a German in a foreign land, under excep- tional circumstances, to get permission of the government to keep his native citizenship in spite of his naturalization. But this refers only to less developed countries where the visitor intends to stay a short time, but is obliged to acquire the new citizenship for the pursuit of his affairs. This permission is never granted where the naturalization in- volves a formal repudiation of the home gov- ernment ; hence it is never given to Germans in America. No German-American holds German citizenship — and yet I know even this tale will not die out. It is much to be hoped that in the future our German fellow- countrymen will show the same thoughtful- ness and national pride in this question which the Englishmen and the Americans NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS themselves possess. Thousands upon thou- sands of Americans live the greater part of their lives in Europe, but in Paris and Lon- don, in Berlin and Rome, they remain as a matter of course American citizens. The Englishmen in America generally stay sub- jects of the king. The famous novelist, Basil King, explained only recently in the New York Times why he never became naturalized in spite of living in the United States "off and on" ever since his childhood. The Ger- mans become assimilated too easily. But as their excuse it must be added that American nationalistic intolerance almost forces them to give up their inherited birthright. When Henry James became a British subject after living in England for forty years the Ameri- cans showed a nervous dislike of such dis- loyalty; but when a German resides in Amer- ica he is expected to change color at once and he becomes a target for suspicion if he shows no such inclination. Yet those Germans who since the outbreak of the war regret having become naturalized Americans certainly are the exception. An overwhelming majority of the Americans of German descent, born over there or here, are 83 TOMORROW proud of their citizenship. They love Amer- ica and American life and feel sure that they are among the most worthy elements of the community. And yet they have been hazed and maltreated, have lost their friends, have not seldom been economically ruined, have been dismissed from their positions, have been deprived of their professional clients, have been shaken off from the political par- ties, have been degraded as second-class citi- zens, have been abused as traitors to the land. What has happened? What was their crime 1 ? Have they really put the interests of Germany above those of the country to which they have sworn allegiance"? The jury of history will acquit them and will declare unanimously that they were not guilty of the wrong of which the man on the street and the man on the platform and, alas, the man in the presidential chair has accused them. It will be a somber chapter in the book of Ameri- can public life, and yet it offers no difficul- ties to psychological explanation. No, the events did not even bring any psychological surprises to those who understood the power of the press, the setting of the war and the temper of the Anglo-Saxons. 84 NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS The millions of German-Americans who form the membership of the German societies all over the country have at no moment stopped being faithful American citizens. But they were unanimous in one demand of their heart : America must remain neutral in the European war, and must not support the English side against the Germans. Such na- tional impartiality was thinkable. It would not have excluded personal sympathies for the one or the other side ; but public opinion would have watched the terrific fight with sin- cere respect for both groups of nations, both of which sacrifice their lif eblood for their his- toric destiny. It happened otherwise. By a masterstroke of British politics America was deprived of direct news from Germany ; every bit of cable information and commentary from Europe was shaped and molded by the British mind. It was so easy in that first period of excitement to force on the world of printers ' ink news and views of the war which depicted Germany as a moral culprit and the Allies as flag-bearers of humanity. Those first weeks of heightened suggestibility were naturally decisive. As soon as the first fundamental anti-German turn of public 85 TOMORROW opinion was secured the British influence could easily grow from its own momentum. Indeed no individual editorial writer is to be blamed — no one in his place could have the strength to resist this country-wide power — no editorial reader is to be blamed for suc- cumbing to his paper, and no politician is to be blamed for serving those newspaper read- ers. Social imitation and financial interest did the rest to forge the British ring around the country. The Germans in the land, con- nected by millions of family ties with the fatherland and protected against distortions for political effect by thorough acquaintance with the German character, protested indig- nantly against that ruthless partiality. The tragic conflict was unavoidable : the German- Americans rejected the anti-German one- sidedness and as this onesidedness had be- come the creed and the passion of America, the German-Americans suddenly appeared anti-American. This is the psychological core. They had become "kaiserists"; they served Germany instead of their own country — a crushing accusation; and yet no act and no word can be offered as evidence. I saw the largest demonstration which the 86 NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS German-Americans arranged. It was in Madison Square Garden when Bryan spoke. He had just resigned from the Cabinet and made his first speech before twenty thousand German-Americans. He denounced bitterly those who insisted on crossing the ocean on belligerent munition-carrying steamers; he shouted that it is their recklessness which endangers the peace between America and Germany. The applause was frantic. I had hardly believed that German-Americans could become so jubilant and so passionate. It was a storm of overwhelming enthusiasm. Twenty thousand flags were wildly waved; and yet every flag bore the stars and stripes — not a single man or woman showed a Ger- man flag. It was a demonstration of true American citizens ; they displayed their flags not in disloyalty to America, but as an appeal for a saner, safer and fairer America. Not a single German-American proposed at any time that America join the Central Powers. There would have been no lack of pretexts for such an appeal ; the common fight for the freedom of the sea would have been more in the spirit of American history than many a catchword with which the pro- Allies 87 TOMORROW filled the air. But the German-Americans did not try to stir up American fighting spirit against England ; they resented only that the others aimed to force America into the actual fight against Germany. "The Declaration of the Five Hundred," who, in burning words of hatred, tried to hunt the soul of the Ameri- can nation into a war for the interests of England, really did serve foreign countries more than the United States — and yet the German-Americans, who only served the peace of the land, were denounced as traitors. Thousands upon thousands of Americans en- listed in the Canadian brigade, swearing: "I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to his Majesty King George V"; already there are sixteen thousand American citizens ac- tually fighting at the front "in duty bound honestly and faithfully to defend his Maj- esty" — and yet the German- Americans are the faithless sinners with a "double alle- giance." It is true the German-Americans worked against the export of munitions, and it can- not be denied that if they had succeeded in their aim it would have helped the Germans somewhat and might have curtailed the divi- 88 NATIONALISM AND GERMAN- AMERICANS dends of some Americans. But surely the pacificists of many shades have taken the same ground; they were not anti- American when they appealed to America's sense of humanity. They were quite aware that the export was legally not forbidden and that those who sought the tremendous profits for American factories or who wanted to help the Allies by the sale of munitions were tech- nically on the safe side. But they knew that every country in Europe which really tried to be neutral had at once declared an em- bargo. They wanted their country to do what Spain and Holland, Switzerland and Sweden had done. Moreover they felt that the inter- national right to sell arms is meant to refer to the regular agencies of supply, but that it is not meant to welcome the remolding of the whole industrial life of a nation until war is fed from its every workshop. They feared that such an artificial change of the industrial system would later drive the country into superfluous wars, as the influence of the cap- ital engaged would work for the permanence of the ammunition demand. But most of all they saw with alarm that the European mas- sacre came no nearer to an end because Amer- 89 TOMORROW ica supplied the means for continuous slaugh- ter. They felt the fatal contrast between America's traditional peace professions and its sudden war trade. I know many German- Americans who would have protested no less against this bloodstained sale if the shells could have been shipped to both parties. Ought they to have protested less because only their own brothers and cousins were to be maimed and killed by it? The accusation that the German- Americans serve Germany more than America was the more unjust as it became daily more evident that their pro-German interpretation of the war was more important for their own po- sition in the country than for Germany's success in Europe. You know the German- Americans were the ridiculed "Dutchies" in the middle of the last century. Then came the Bismarck time and the German Empire and Germany's new strength in the world gave an entirely new position to the Ameri- can citizens of German descent. The immi- gration surged on; millions arrived. The German-American population became pros- perous, respected and welcome ; the low place of their past was filled by new large influxes 90 NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS from southern and eastern Europe. But with the European war the moral credit of the German Empire was dwindling ; the malicious misinterpretation, spread with the technique of the modern press, lowered Germany and Austria in the estimation of the masses and this undermined the foundation on which the German-Americans had stood for a genera- tion. If the moral hatred against Germany remained unbridled, the honor of the Ger- man-Americans themselves would be sullied and tarnished. To prove to the world that the German race is not a barbaric stock meant to fight for the rank and good name of the Americans of German descent. Can patriotism forbid them to prove that they are worthy citizens of the nation? Or would they have shown them- selves worthier Americans if in coward fear they had succumbed to the slander and had tried to escape the consequences by besmirch- ing the land of their own birth or of their fathers 1 Not a trace of unpatriotic behavior can be found in that German- American pro- test movement, as long as it is not decreed that American nationalism is the same as British interest. No doubt, this Tory view 91 TOMORROW has benumbed and blunted many honest minds; and they believed sincerely that to be anti-British in this war meant to be anti- American. The charge of double allegiance against the German-Americans was there- fore most passionate wherever the British traditions are most forceful. Do you remem- ber from your schooldays the Hartford Con- vention of 1812! The New England States at that time sent their delegates to Hartford to work against the country's anti-British policy. It is claimed that not a few would have preferred to secede from the Union rather than to quarrel with England. A cen- tury later New England has again become the chief camping ground of the pro-Britishers, and Tremont Temple in Boston has been the national center of hatred for England's en- emies. Nowhere have the Americans of German descent been harassed as about the Charles River. It was only a poor comfort to them that the same circles treated the abolitionists in exactly the same way. A reaction to pro-British agitation and nothing else was that literature for the day which was mostly labeled German propa- ganda. Much of it was superficial and much 92 NATIONALISM AND GERMAN- AMERICANS was overheated, not a little was tasteless; but it was thoroughly honest and written throughout with more knowledge of facts than was shown in the attacks against which it was directed. On the whole it was de- cidedly effective ; hundreds of thousands cor- rected their unneutral views, and it was merely a well-known trick when the anti- Germans steadily assured the pro-German writers that they did damage to their own cause. It is a fact that much of the pro- German writing gained more ground than the pro-British literature; yet America is not a land in which books and pamphlets can win over the newspapers and magazines. But whatever the effect may have been, it is clear that such efforts did not violate the duties of citizenship. Every German-Amer- ican felt convinced that a further abuse of the German race would lead to internal con- flicts and that a war with Germany would be a horrible misfortune for America's inner peace and for its outer position. Was it not then his highest patriotic duty to utter his warning with the greatest possible vigor? Nobody considered it unpatriotic when men proclaimed, even passionately, their views 93 TOMORROW against war with Mexico ; those who warned against war with Germany surely served as well as they knew how the highest interests of honor and harmony in the American na- tion. They would have sinned against Amer- ican nationalism if they had kept silent from fear of the pro-Ally resentment. The indictment which the nationalists draw up against the pro-German propagandists contains, however, one more charge. It is claimed that Germany not only profits from the activity of these Americans, but controls and directs them. Of course, in excited times there is no limit to the absurdities which are honestly believed. Whenever some promi- nent Anglo-American made a venomous speech against the Germans, I received from well-meaning pro-German cranks in the coun- try letters of assurance that the speaker was suffering from senile atrophy if he was above seventy, and that he was bought with English money if he was below seventy years of age. In a similar way anti-German cranks are certain that Berlin pays for the propaganda of the German- Americans. But serious peo- ple ought not to take such gossip seriously. Those who are really familiar with the his- 94 NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS tory of the efforts of Germany to come into contact with the public opinion of America know that they took systematic form about 1898. The German ambassadors visited the American universities, the scholars from Germany attended American congresses, the Emperor's brother came to Washington, pro- fessorial exchanges were established, the Amerika-Institut in Berlin was organized, the chambers of commerce on both sides of the water did their share ; but in every move Berlin took care not to involve the German- Americans, so as not to suggest that a politi- cal double allegiance was possible for them. The war has not changed this policy of discretion. I do not want to tire you with de- tails of German-American politics, but it would be easy to show that not infrequently the interests of Germany have not even co- incided with the interests of the German- Americans and that the latter with natural instinct sought their own advantage without waiting for Germany to suggest another di- rection. For instance, when the national con- ventions were near, German- American ora- tory almost automatically turned against Wilson and Roosevelt, both of whom in bit- 95 TOMORROW ter words had denounced the so-called hy- phenated Americans. Their pride, yes, their self-respect, was hurt by the unfair aspersions on their loyalty as American citi- zens. Yet I cannot imagine that a Ger- man chancellor would have endorsed these harsh attacks on the President. He would have been less concerned with the rehabili- tation of the German-Americans than with the difficulties of the German Empire, and he would therefore first of all have counted with the fact that the President would under any circumstances still be in office for nearly a year. Hence he would probably have wished to avoid anything which would irritate the responsible leader of American politics dur- ing the decisive year of the war. Only through carelessness have German interests and German-American interests always been thrown together. A little more analysis would often have shown that the accusation of German- American dependence upon Ber- lin was not only unjust but illogical and absurd. Finally the confusion is aggravated when German- American policies are burdened with the debit account of those few German citi- 96 NATIONALISM AND GERMAN- AMERICANS zens who violated the laws of the country. Unable to hurry home for the defense of their fatherland, they were carried away by their fanatic patriotism until they neglected their nearest duties. It is difficult to say how many of these charges are backed by facts. The great trial against Tauscher, about whom we had heard the worst in the papers, ended with a perfect acquittal. But whatever may really have been attempted by a few German reservists, their errors should not be charged against the German-American masses. The political record of the American citizens of German extraction is perfectly clean; in every phase of this turbulent wartime they have sincerely served that which appeared to them the highest interest of their country. The nationalistic demand that America be first in the political thought of every Amer- ican citizen has been thoroughly realized in every act and word of theirs. When they acted together, they did not separate them- selves as a party or as a group which tries to influence American political life in favor of Germany; but, just like any other group of citizens with common interests, convictions and ideals, they entered into the midst of 97 TOMORROW the arena for a loyal patriotic fight in favor of eqnal rights for themselves, and, more than that, in favor of an American foreign policy of true independence. Does this clear the German-American in the eyes of the American nationalist? Surely not. The political actions of the "hyphen- ate" may not be treacherous; but his thoughts and feelings, his language and cus- toms, his attitude toward private and social problems, his tastes and interests, his whole cultural atmosphere, are claimed to be so dif- ferent that no merely political denial can whitewash him. He stands convicted of anti- national separatism, which may not start with a political program, but must end with political evil. What is the true situa- tion in this cultural, social and spiritual sphere? The arguments of the assailants are well known. You citizens of German de- scent, they proclaim, are welcome among us as long as you show your willingness to ac- cept our characteristic ideals and principles and to submit your German ideals and insti- tutions to those of your new home. You or your fathers left the old home because you liked the German ideals and institutions less 98 NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS than ours ; as you are now profiting from the better things for which you longed, you must show your gratitude by uprooting every re- minder of your German beliefs. Otherwise you remain an alien in our borders in spite of your citizenship, and if all were acting in this way the nation would be torn in pieces. If at heart you even feel more sympathy with your fellow German-Americans than with the other citizens, you are a traitor to America, This country would soon be "a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intri- cate knot of German- Americans, Irish- Amer- icans, Anglo-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans and Italian-Ameri- cans, each preserving its separate national- ity.* ' It would be the most certain way of preventing America from continuing as a na- tion at all. "The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country." The familiar tune of this Roosevelt march was whistled and harped and drummed and trumpeted through the land. The German- Americans, however, do not intend to parade in accord with its rhythm ; and yet their tune 99 TOMORROW is not at all the " Watch on the Rhine,' ' but "Columbia." They feel themselves just as good patriots as their detractors. This is their creed. Certainly, they say, every Ger- man-American must uphold the American idea. But Americanism is not the life philos- ophy of the New Englanders brought over from the British Islands and not the 18th century state philosophy brought over from France. Americanism centers in the demo- cratic faith that this great nation, unham- pered by the ideas of the past, will work out and develop its ideas and principles best through the free cooperation of all its citi- zens. This has been its vitalizing energy throughout its history, and this is the only security for its future as a true nation. Men and women of all European states and races have entered into the republic for common work. If one racial element were to claim that its tradition ought to be forced on the other parts of the population for historic reasons, true Americanism would be be- trayed. The saving thought of this land, which cannot be insisted on too often or too strongly, is that not England but all Eu- rope is America's mother country. 100 NATIONALISM AND GERMAN- AMERICANS But this gives to every racial part of the nation not only the right to contribute its own emotions and ideas and beliefs to the common life, but it puts on each a solemn duty and responsibility. Every element, from what- ever part of Europe it arrived, is morally obliged to enrich the nation with the very best and purest and most characteristic traits which it brought over the ocean. It would be a sin against the deepest spirit of Ameri- canism if anyone immigrated with the inten- tion to receive only, that is to imitate what he finds instead of giving with his full heart what he inherited and learned in his native land. But to contribute ideas and feelings to the community means to make them effec- tive by keeping them alive. Truly no greater duty falls to the Americans of German or Italian or English or Swedish descent than to supply the noblest and most ideal elements of the culture of Germany or Italy or Eng- land or Sweden to the nation which is to be spiritually enlarged day by day through this abundance of racial contributions. The com- mon land, the common law, the common po- litical organization and the common language give to the nation its outer framework and 101 TOMORROW outer unity ; the wonderful diversity of racial traits and talents and endeavors, all serving in balanced rivalry the common good, gives to it the unique American content. We men of German descent will not be found neglect- ful of this solemn historic obligation ; we shall keep the best features of German culture liv- ing in our souls, in our homes, in our chil- dren, in our fellow German- Americans, so as to do our share in the service to real Ameri- can nationalism. Those who profess such a creed and act under such an impulse surely correct one di- rect misstatement of their opponents. It is simply a fiction when it is claimed that the millions of German immigrants left their homes because they disliked German ideals and institutions. The little groups which came when Carl Schurz came did leave Germany in scorn. But with the founding of the German Empire this political dissatis- faction of the Germans ceased; their visions had come true. Then nobody had to leave in order to seek freedom; and yet the real flood of German immigrants came after 1871. Certainly some cowards came to escape ob- ligatory military service ; they probably will 102 NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS now soon have to secure their safety again by emigrating, perhaps to China. But the real bulk of the German immigration was made up of those who came for economic rea- sons. Political dissatisfaction was felt in Germany only by the socialists; and they would surely not have sought America as a socialistic paradise, since Germany's indus- trial organization is so much nearer to the socialists' ideal than America's unbridled reign of capitalistic influence. The most cer- tain proof, however, of the unpolitical char- acter of the German exodus lies in the fact that it ceased when Germany had passed through the great change from an agrarian to an industrial state. This change, which offered ample support to the rapidly growing population, was completed in the nineties, and since that time German emigration to America has dwindled and the immigration to Germany has become larger than its emi- gration. Hence in general it can be laid down as a historic fact that the Germans did not come to this country from any dissatisfaction with the culture and institutions of their home land. They sought better wages or larger 103 TOMORROW farms, but they did not cross the ocean to find better state forms or larger ideals. Of course they knew what their pledge of alle- giance demanded, and they gladly adjusted themselves to the particular forms of the American government, the more as they well understood that an earnest belief in the need of republican government for America is not in the least a contradiction to an enthusiastic belief in imperial government for the Ger- man nation. Nor had they any reason to tear their inherited ideals from their soul out of mere gratitude; they knew that how- ever much they received they brought their brain and brawn, their education and their skill, and all was a loss to the country which had given it to them and a gain to the land which had received it. Most of them — who will deny it? — did not contemplate much, but simply did their daily work. Yet in the sub- conscious mind of everyone lingered the con- viction that he fulfilled his oath of allegiance best if he did not throw away his native treasures and did not waste the ideals of his first home, but made them helpful and in- fluential in the new home which he had learned to love and to admire. 104 NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS These instincts of the unthinking coincide with the impartial views of the scientific so- ciologist. He cannot help seeing that the de- mand for a uniformity of thought and emo- tions in this recent mixture of races would involve a psychological impossibility. It would force on the individual an artificial in- hibition of natural tendencies, and where such suppression could be secured it would neces- sarily result in breaking the real spring of the personality. The outcome would be a shallow monotony in which the outer acts are uniform because no one has a right to unfold his own soul. All seeds of progress would then be dried up. It has been America's great good luck that no such misconstruction of nationalism interfered with the healthy development of the nation in its decisive cen- tury. Its wonderful progress was possible just because the American national mind could freely grow into a synthesis of many European characteristics. But this process is still at its beginning. He is an ill adviser of his nation who protests against this trend. The Puritans did not like and disapproved of music; they brought no talent for it to these shores. Would it have 105 TOMORROW been better for America if those who came after them had insisted that the American soul remain unmusical and that the love for music and the talent which the Germans, Austrians, French and Italians brought to the land be suppressed in order not to inter- fere with the national character? But it is not a question of the life of music; it is a question of the whole music of life. Who will disentangle today what in the American mind has come from this or from that racial source? Surely it was not England which filled the American temperament with its op- timism, with its joy in color, with its love for nature, with its exhilarating freshness or with its exuberant enthusiasm, and what not. The message of every European people has reached the heart of the American na- tion and has left its trace in the mental layer below consciousness. The realism and the idealism, the humanism and the individ- ualism, the spirit of joy and the spirit of service, the impulse to action and the love of thought, the trading mood and the fight- ing mood, were all equally needed to make the nation that unique power for good in the world. 106 NATIONALISM AND GERMAN- AMERICANS But every phase of history brings new ele- ments into the foreground; features of the national spirit and character which were sec- ondary at one period are paramount in an- other, until they are pushed backward again by other predominant traits. This makes it necessary that the contribution of one racial factor be more important at one time, those of another factor at another time. The trend of today and tomorrow, that is of the war time and still more of the time when at last peace comes, is, as we all must agree, the trend toward nationalism. Nationalism means the overcoming of mere individual- ism and of colorless humanism; nationalism means the emphasis on the characteristic features of the whole nation as such and the service of the individual to this unique na- tional work. But the belief in this devotion of the individual to the state, the subordina- tion of the person to the overpersonal na- tional genius, is exactly the central offering of the German- Americans. That is the ideal- istic creed which they learned in their nur- sery at the border of the Rhine, of the Elbe or of the Vistula, and they cannot have for- gotten it when they crossed the ocean. If 107 TOMORROW nationalism is really the stamp of the new America, the German- American contribution will be for the present the most significant and the most pregnant one. Not in the rear guard of the national army, but in the front rank is then their place, and their unpardon- able sin against Americanism would be if they were hiding their German soul instead of making it felt throughout the land. Yes, the years to come will be stirred by nationalism the world over, in America ex- actly as much as in every part of Europe; but the American nationalism can gain full strength only if the thoughts and emotions which the German-Americans brought over the sea become the foremost energy in Amer- ica's composite structure. The old English individualism must for the moment retreat in the American mind if nationalism with all its political, economic and cultural prepared- ness is to prevail. It must yield for today and tomorrow to the German idealism. Far from being the traitors, the men who are loyal to their best German traditions are really the most faithful servants of nationalistic Amer- ica. But the prognosis that nationalism will take the idealistic trend cannot be confined to 108 NATIONALISM AND GERMAN- AMERICANS America. It will be true of the whole world, as it is to shape itself after the war. It is only another aspect of the same fundamental fact if we acknowledge that next to the ener- getic nationalism which will arise every- where, a new idealism will come. My heart is so filled with the remembrance of all the bitter wrong - my German- American friends have had to go through during these dark days of war that I remained unaware of the changes around me while I was writing this long letter. I see that the gray sky over the gray sea has yielded to the sun, the clouds have disappeared and blue sky is joyfully re- flected in the ocean; I may still start on my sail. I know the somber clouds of life will also be vanquished by a radiant sun. May it come soon ; we long for it. In hearty friend- ship, Yours, H. M. THE NEW IDEALISM My dear Friend: You remember Bismarck once said, when a caller left him, that the man had spoken to him as if he were a mass-meeting. I am afraid that my letters to you may stir you to a similar comment. Yet you know that you yourself proposed the topics for my episto- lary sermons. If you had asked me, as in days of old, about my reading and writing, about my friends, about my travel, I should have chattered in an easy-going way and should have sent you my latest kodak pic- tures. But, as you asked about the great changes to come, the world-wide powers of reconstruction as they appear from the psychologist's viewpoint, the storm of the great time carries me away and I think less of the one to whom I write than of the many whom I should like 110 THE NEW IDEALISM to convince. But today I must go soberly to work; I want to speak of the new idealism, which surely will come to the belligerent lands and to the neutral ones, to Europe and to America; and the mere word idealism sug- gests the temptation to become enthusiastic and rhapsodic. But nowhere is there a greater danger of the eulogy missing its point. In praising idealism we too readily forget that there are many kinds of idealism in the world and that our ecstasy is meaning- less unless we define pretty carefully what type of idealism we have in mind. It always struck me as rather superficial that when authors begin to speculate about the changes in future civilization, their fancy regularly moves in the paths of physical sci- ence. They give us the super-telephone and the thirtieth-century airship, and they ignore the fact that the real changes in the history of civilization have not come so much from inventions as from new principles of life. The idea of brotherly love, the idea of the value of knowledge, the idea of the worthi- ness of labor, the idea of social justice, the idea of self-government, the idea of the abo- lition of slavery, and many other large and 111 TOMORROW small revolutions of the mind have created the real history of mankind. The French Revolution really changed the world. I be- lieve firmly that the war of today will change the world no less. But the change will again be an internal one ; a new idealistic faith will arise and will be victorious, whatever the vic- tories or defeats at the battlefront of the war-makers or at the round table of the dip- lomatic peacemakers may be. This faith will be one which has found its clearest, self-con- scious expression in German life, and in this sense, whatever the cannons may say, the war will end with the spiritual triumph of the German nation. You can imagine what a protest — no, what a storm of indignation such a creed would unchain, if I were to utter it in the empire of the American printing press. ' ' Those bar- barians may crush weak peoples by their brute force, but there is nothing spiritual in them which would win the day" — that is their slogan and will remain their comfort until some day that new faith wins in these print- ers' trenches too. But even you may easily misinterpret my prophecy ; you may class me among those whose German patriotism gives 112 THE NEW IDEALISM them a distorted perspective of the European nations. I know there is very little hate in Germany since the first outburst of patriotic passion has passed, but not a few think that they owe it to the loftiness of the German cause to depreciate the qualities of the hostile countries. Nothing is further from my mind. August, 1914, has not changed my admiration for the great history-making virtues of Eng- land, of France, of Italy, of Russia; and in not a few ways my respect for them has grown. Moreover, I sincerely expect and hope that in this social regeneration of the world Germany, too, will learn much from her rivals. In the relation both to foreign countries and to its colonies Germany will surely add many a virtue of its western neighbors to its inborn traits. But when the German idealism exerts its influence in other lands, it will be more than an additional touch or a mere imitative supplement; it will be truly the spread of a new principle which takes a firm hold of the inmost soul of the nations. I know you will read these lines with a skeptical smile because you as a historian do not believe much in the abstract general prin- 113 TOMORROW ciples by which the philosopher tries to ex- press the essence of a people. You prefer carefully to gather the thousand single fea- tures and actions which have been registered. They give an actual account of the real hap- penings, while all those vague formulae are merely superadded by the observer. I think, on the contrary, that if you understand the formula of an individual or of a nation, of a period or of a whole age, you grasp more than any catalogue of events can give you. It is the same difference as between a painted portrait of a man and a series of moving pic- tures taken of him. To be sure those photo- graphs on the film show every gesture and every expression: nothing is left out. And yet you know much more about the true per- sonality and character of the man if the brush of the painter has rendered it on the canvas. The painter gives one position only, but his intuition has grasped the one expression in which the man's whole individuality is held forever. What is the characteristic feature in the physiognomy of modern Germany? The usual answer is : Efficiency through organiza- tion. The Germans' talent and instinct for 114 THE NEW IDEALISM organization are held responsible for their successes before the war and in the war. I do not think that this hits the center of the target at all. Might we not even confess that this freely spent praise of the Germans' in- stinct for organization is to a certain degree unmerited 1 ? A misunderstanding is involved there. I find that Germans left to themselves have rather little talent and inclination to organize themselves for common action. Their mental habits at once lead into differ- ences of opinion; each one has his own plan. In case of an emergency among Germans there is a great chance that in spite of the best intentions much energy will be spent at cross-purposes and the organization will be at first clumsy. I have often observed that the Americans, for instance, in case of an ac- cident, have a much stronger and safer or- ganizing instinct. Such misplaced popular appreciation of mental traits in other nations is frequent. Almost every German visitor puts emphasis on the one great talent of the Americans, to make the most of their time. They are the most time-saving people. If he looked more deeply, he would discover that the American nation wastes nothing 115 TOMORROW more than time, as only a very rich nation can afford to do. If Germany's characteristic virtue were really nothing but organization, we surely could not speak of a great new principle and least of all could we bring it into connection with idealism. Organization is, after all, merely a technical method. The factory sys- tem shows it in a perfected form, and cer- tainly in England and not in Germany the team work of the mills was generated. But what is then the real moving energy behind that world of German organization, efficiency and "Kultur," to use a word which can with- stand the sneer of those who do not under- stand it? It seems to me not an ability and not a method, but a certain belief. I should say first: it is a belief in " absolute" values. I know you call such terms philosophic cant, but after all they point the way most quickly. Belief in absolute values means simply that the deed is valued independent from the pleasure it brings. Whatever is valuable only in so far as it yields pleasure to some- one is a relative value; but if we are filled with the belief that an action has value with- out any reference to pleasure or pain, then 116 THE NEW IDEALISM we credit it with absolute value. To be guided in life by such a belief is idealism. Most of our actions are controlled by our wish for pleasure or by our fear of pain; many men do not know any other motive at all for action. But whoever performs an act because its goal appears to him one of abso- lute value does an idealistic deed. If I try to make a discovery because I should have an advantage from it, it would be indifferent from the standpoint of idealism. If I per- form the same work because I believe in the absolute value of scientific truth, I am stirred by an idealistic motive. There may be no less glory in a realistic civilization, but surely the deepest energy of the German develop- ment has been the idealistic conviction. Yet this is only half of the story. Abso- lute value may be accredited to different aims. Truth may be such a value, but so may beauty or justice or progress or char- acter development or religion. Devotion to one by no means excludes devotion to others ; but the trends of various times or the char- acters of various peoples emphasize different values. A certain nation may have deep idealistic traits, but its idealism may be cen- 117 TOMORROW tered in the formation and growth of the in- dividual soul: its ideal is the value of the personality. The German faith is not of this individualistic type; it is fixed on those values which do not belong to this or that special individual, but which can be realized only in the community. The aims of the single person are then submerged in the aims of the whole embracing group. The true German is guided neither by the realistic hope for his pleasures and advantages nor by the idealistic belief in the development of his own soul, but by his feeling of duty to- ward the common aims and ideals. His life is a contribution to fulfillments which lie be- yond himself. Let me spin on this contemplation for some further letter pages so as to protect it against misunderstanding. The word ideal- ism is likely to suggest that only spiritual achievements like science and art, justice and statecraft are in view, and not material in- terests like commerce and industry. This is surely not the idea. The progress of eco- nomic life has in itself the full dignity of a real value. Whoever builds up an industrial plant only to gain his profit from it, stands 118 THE NEW IDEALISM outside of the idealistic sphere; but if he devotes himself to the task inspired by en- thusiastic interest in the technical advance of mankind, he serves a. true value and there- fore acts from an idealistic motive. But you will be more surprised when I add that the German idealism is by no means bound up with the state. I know this sounds iconoclastic. At home and abroad in every discussion it has been taken as an axiom: German Kultur is a function of the state. I think this puts the emphasis in the wrong place. The often heard claim that the state does not exist for the individuals but the in- dividuals for the state is perfectly correct from the standpoint of German idealism, but exactly the same is true of any other group which is held together by a united will and by aims and goals of its own. The city too is not for the citizens, but the citizens for the city. And even the factory is not for the workmen, but the workmen for the factory. This means that from the standpoint of the idealist the workman ought to look on the mill not as the mere source of wages for him and his fellow-workers, but as a wheel in the machinery of civilization, a wheel which he 119 TOMORROW helps to keep moving, because its motion is in itself a valuable end; then only does he serve an ideal purpose and his unselfish aim ennobles his humble work. But the real importance of this point lies in the fact that not only groups narrower than the state can bind the will of the per- sonality but also that groups wider than the state can and must secure the same effect. It is utterly wrong to think that German idealism must be indifferent to communities larger than the nation and that it can have no concern with international aims. Surely the superficial type of cosmopolitanism has no claim on idealistic respect. But as soon as groups of states are combined in an or- ganized unity by which a common will can be formed and expressed, they demand loy- alty like a single state. How could it be otherwise? The German idealism makes the Prussian live in the aims of Prussia and the Saxon in the aims of Saxony; but that does not exclude either from devoting him- self to the purposes of the whole German nation. If Germany and Austria were firmly organized into one internal unit with one definite aim, each citizen would subordinate 120 THE NEW IDEALISM his endeavor to the will of this state group ; and if the states of Europe or of the whole globe were united, the will of this widest organization would become efficient by be- coming the will of every single member. The essential condition is not the national state but the stability of the organization by which the combined individuals may become clearly conscious of their unified will. Hence Ger- man Kultur-idealism is unfairly denounced when it is blamed for a narrow adoration of the state by which the interests of the other states are neglected in an egotistic way. On the contrary, the devotion to the state by no means excludes the most faithful devotion to the will of mankind, as soon as it is inter- nationally organized. Of course, it is not by chance that the idealistic idea stuck first of all to the state, as its members are naturally and from the start controlled by uniform thoughts and emotions; their common past and future bind them together, and a community will is generated in which each individual rec- ognizes his own highest longing. Moreover Germany, or especially the Prussian state, was more than others predestined to develop 121 TOMORROW this idealistic creed in connection with the state. At the time when the principles of idealism had been proclaimed by Kant and Fichte, the citizens of Prussia were welded together with iron firmness by the Napole- onic pressure. Yet the resulting unity of feeling would have been inefficient if Prus- sian history had not created a remarkable tradition of a faithful civil service. A well- trained bureaucratic staff was the essential condition for a true fulfillment of the or- ganized will of the state. For a century the preparedness of this civil service organiza- tion has grown steadily; and no smaller and no larger group than the German state can offer to the German a form of organization which has comparable firmness or which can provide for similar means of efficient far- sighted preparation and adjusted action. The state has therefore remained central in his idealistic ideas of organized efficiency. But the idealistic principle itself is as much meant for the widest group as for the small- est, for the family as well as for the concert of the nations of the world, as soon as it really is a concert. This idealistic principle, which has given 122 THE NEW IDEALISM meaning to the striving and the strife of Germany, this faith in the absolute value of group achievements will spread over the world together with the principle of nation- alism. The other nations, while in the most terrific struggle the world has seen, have at the same time grasped, tried and wel- comed the life idea of their enemies. From the battlefields it spread over all the lands, and from the belligerent to the neutral coun- tries; the belief in the new idealism will be the central idea of the globe after the war. At the threshold of the century Mr. Stead wrote a brilliant book which he rightly called "The Americanization of the World." In this sense the war, whatever the future map may tell, will truly end with the Gernianiza- tion of the world. It is a Germanization in which every true German will rejoice more than in any world dominion by conquest, which is a low un-German idea imputed to the nation only by those who have no inkling of the German ideals. This new idealism will be as powerful a molding energy in the world as were the ideals which the French Revo- lution made predominant. The conversion came because the war with 123 TOMORROW its supreme demands suddenly stopped all the leisurely dilettantism, all the go-as-you- please methods which are so comfortable for those who use them and so winning for those who look on, but which are ultimately so in- efficient. Men of all countries felt that, as Mr. Hearst said, " aside from the mili- tarism the Germans have made the most im- portant contributions of all the European peoples to Christian civilization during the last forty years. They have led the world in scientific achievements; they have led the world in their cooperative effort toward ef- ficiency; they have led the world in the amelioration of the condition of the working men and the poor; they have led the world in the development of the best use of the soil ; they have led the world in the develop- ment of universal education as the basis of national strength, service and happiness. Their commercial and industrial develop- ment has been greater in the last forty years than that of any other people on earth." Yet those who studied it felt at the same time that no external scheme, no mechanical ad- ministration, but true idealism had secured these marvels. The Reverend L. M. Powers, 124 THE NEW IDEALISM returning here from the European battle- fields, writes about Germany: "The indi- vidual is as nothing, the nation everything. This, it seems to me, is what above all things makes Germany strong. There is a spiritual unity and elevation and strength here not to be found elsewhere. If I felt that Ger- many's success was due merely to her big guns, her military training, her foresight in planning and preparing for war, I should hate Germany as badly as her worst enemy hates her. From mere force nothing good can come. It is my firm conviction that Ger- many is greater in peace than in war and that the foundation of her greatness, as is the foundation of every people that is really great, is • spiritual power. ' ' The problems which have tortured and torn other peoples have been harmoniously solved in socialized Germany. The contrast of the German nation with the other great countries of Europe was so strong that even such Americans as later be- came entirely victims of the passionate pro- British agitation were deeply impressed by it, until the war broke out. Even a man like Owen Wister, who is today surpassed by few 125 TOMORROW in unfairness to Germany, wrote this about his impressions a few weeks before the war : "Nothing can efface my impression of Ger- many — the fair aspect and order of the coun- try and of the cities, the well-being of the people, their contented faces, their grave adequacy, their kindliness and, crowning all material prosperity, the feeling for beauty as shown by their gardens and, better and more important still, the reverend value for their great native poets and musicians. Such was the splendor of this empire as it unrolled before me through May and June of 1914 that by contrast the state of its two great neighbors, France and England, seemed distressing and unenviable. Paris was shabby and incoherent, London full of unrest. Instead of Germany's order confu- sion prevailed in England; and in both France and England incompetency was the chief note. The French face was too often a face of worried sadness or revolt ; men spoke of political scandals and dissensions, petty and unpatriotic in spirit, and a political trial revealing depths of every sort of baseness and dishonor filled the newspapers ; while in England, besides discord of suffrage and dis- 126 THE NEW IDEALISM cord of labor, civil war seemed so imminent that no one would have been surprised to hear of it any day. So that I thought : Suppose a soul arrived on earth from another world without any mortal ties whatever were given its choice, after a survey of the nations, which it should be born in and belong to. In May, June and July, 1914, my choice would have been not France, not England, not America, but Germany." It is a leading American who has crystal- lized here in these few sentences the essence of Europe. It is part of the pentecost of calamity which overcame public opinion in America that even a man like Owen Wister can sincerely believe that all this was true before the first of August and the opposite true after the first of August. The sociol- ogist must ignore the distorted picture which his passion designed, but can trust the more his record of better days. It sketches what every observer felt. England, France and Italy were losing cultural ground and Ger- many was advancing. Every city, every street, every face told the story; and slowly it dawned on all Europe that the German spirit of subordination and sacrifice to the 127 TOMORROW will of the organized group, that is German idealism, was responsible for the daily in- creasing distance. The first year of the war quickly made that which the wisdom of the few had recognized patent to everybody. Past were the days of individualism with their disregard of the expert, with their belief in free rivalry which merely opens the way to selfishness, with the indulgence in enjoyable privileges where stern duty is calling, with their trust in humanistic sympathy where firm organization ought to eradicate the source of suffering. The two years of allied warfare behind the front have been two years of forcing Kultur- efficiency of the Ger- man type on millions upon millions who had not known it and instinctively disliked it. H. G. Wells, whose epithets are boldly di- rected against Germany, but whose argu- ments fight strenuously for German ideals, characterizes the contrasts well in his last volume "What is Coming?": "For every- one there are two diametrically different ways of thinking about life; there is indi- vidualism, the way that comes as naturally as the grunt from a pig, thinking outwardly from one's self as the centre of the universe, 128 THE NEW IDEALISM and there is the way of thought every re- ligion is trying in some form to teach, think- ing back to one's self from greater standards and realities." "Germany will, I think, be so far defeated in the contest of endurance which is now in progress that she will have to give up every scrap of territorial advan- tage she has gained ; she may lose most of her colonial empire — but she will have at least the satisfaction of producing far profounder changes in the chief of her antagonists than those she herself will undergo." "So we pass from the fact that individualism is hopeless muddle to the fact that the indi- vidualist idea is one of limitless venality. Who can buy may control. The western na- tions have taken a peculiar pride in having a free Press, that is a Press that may be bought by anyone. " " The breakdown of in- dividualism has been so complete in Great Britain that we are confronted with the spec- tacle of this great and ancient kingdom re- constructing itself perforce while it wages the greatest war in history." There is no doubt that older spirit was more likable. That is the reason why the German nation of the last two decades has 129 TOMORROW never been liked as much as others among its neighbors. That jolly-good-fellow spirit flourishes most in a leisurely atmosphere where everybody lets himself go and hap- hazard moods abound. Wherever rigid rules prevail and everybody is tense for the signal call of duty, a certain stiffness and formality can hardly be suppressed. Relaxation is de- lightful, but supreme achievement demands tension. The tension of the spirit has come over Europe. Organization for cooperative efficiency has become the appeal of the hour. The hated word compulsion sounded through the unaccustomed world and threatened the individualists, until they began to understand that German idealism does not rely upon compulsion but on obligation. Not fear but belief and feeling of duty bound free men in the industrial, technical, cultural and mili- tary service. In every workshop the rhythm of the hammer beat grew faster; scientific theory and practical labor were yoked more firmly than ever before. The disorganized actions of the seven allied nations, which had led to Antwerp and Warsaw, to Gal- lipoli and Kut-el-Amara, were replaced by a steadfast organization with united will. 130 THE NEW IDEALISM Europe learned discipline; and for the next generation Europe will not unlearn it and will not give up the spirit of sacrifice and subordination. Peace will come and those to whom life meant their personal pleasure and success will feel hereafter that life is not worth living if it is not fundamentally ser- vice. What will be removed, what will be re- placed by the idealistic striving of the new time? The opposing force which will be prostrated first of all is the spirit of selfish enjoyment. Man's nature is a network of desires: the wish to satisfy them needs no encouragement and no training. The fulfill- ment of these wishes is neither good nor bad, as long as it does not interfere with greater interests. But the more selfish desires grow, the greater are the chances that other de- mands of the soul, will-impulses toward last- ing values, will be hindered and choked by them. Material civilization, technical ad- vance and general prosperity naturally feed the desires and make them grow rankly. The last half century with its unparalleled in- dustrial expansion multiplied the desires and created in response to them a luxury and 131 TOMORROW ostentatiousness and feeding of the senses such as the world had not seen since the days of decaying Rome. Do not think for a mo- ment that I exempt the Germany of the ante- war days from this accusation. I think when I saw you last in Berlin I spoke to you about the alarm which I felt at the thousand signs of unsound epicurism and self-gratification. Rococo traits had pervaded Germany as well as the rest of Europe. Yet I knew that a stern idealism was growing in Germany still faster than the voluptuousness of modern life and would win the day in a crisis. The crisis came, and hereafter the frivolity of life will be silent on every road of Europe on which soldiers have marched. The carnival was too gay; and yet the day to come will not be clouded by an Ash Wednesday mood. Of course, human nature remains human nature, and there will be self- ishness and vanity and sensuality and lazi- ness in the world at every time and in every nation. It has always been so and will re- main so. But the great swing and the over- whelming trend have often changed in the his- tory of mankind ; and they are changing now from the craving for pleasure to the readi- 132 THE NEW IDEALISM ness for duty. The life of devotion is not less abundant, and surely it ought never to be devoid of beauty. The puritanic error was always to believe that the joy in beauty is a selfish pleasure. The new idealism will not be tainted by such an esthetic sin. True beauty is as much an ideal value as truth and morality and religion. He has not under- stood the meaning of art who compares it with the mere selfish pleasure of gratifying the personal desires. Esthetic joy is over- personal and the future, filled with idealistic belief, will uproot the shallow luxury of our time, but will surely never fail to intertwine the gifts of beauty with the achievements of the will toward duty. Nor does this turn toward the life of sacri- fice over-emphasize the bodily aspect which the war to a certain degree suggests. There physical courage seems the paramount duty. Yet in spite of skeptical prophecies, the psychologist can never have doubted that the instinct for physical bravery, born from the natural aggressiveness of man, would die out last. The war has proved this. There is far too much lack of mental and moral courage, but in every nation the mere physical cour- 133 TOMORROW age abounded in the suggestive surround- ings ; and as everyone has it, it will be some- what discounted after this universal test. Loyalty to ideals, loyalty to the will of the group, loyalty which effaces all selfish de- sires, will be the vehicle of the future until the great-grandchildren of the trench fighters of today may see the pendulum again swing in the opposite direction. If duty for its own sake and not pleasure or work for future pleasure's sake becomes the signature of the time, not only selfishness will be vanquished but many altruistic and humanistic offerings will disappear. On the surface the opposite might be expected. Is not sympathy with suffering fully in the spirit of an idealistic age? Is it not a goal worthy of the noblest community will to spread pleasure among fellowmen? Yes and no. In so far as altruistic emotion and gen- erosity are elements of personal character development, of man's inner training and self-development, they have indeed distinctly an idealistic value; but the goal is then a strictly individual growth of one's own per- sonality. But as far as the intended effect of spreading pleasure is concerned, the ideal- 134 THE NEW IDEALISM ist would look on it with indifference. From his standpoint mere pleasure as such does not belong to the values. The millionfold pleasure is therefore just as indifferent as his own or his neighbor's pleasure. Life is not made more valuable by multiplying the sources of comfort, but by making it better and richer in service. Hence the mere emo- tion of sympathy in this light appears more like thoughtless sentimentality; and it must be repressed by a conscious effort to improve social conditions, not to disseminate pleasure, but to make the life of the community worthier and to put it on a higher plane. Benefactions and charities then appear symptoms of a poorly organized social age; and they must be repressed by less ego- centric efforts to build up a community in which everybody has a chance for fullest self- development and amplest service to the eter- nal values. But the hardest struggle which the new idealism will have to pass through will not be with selfishness or with sentimentality but with individualistic idealism, because the new idealism is clearly not individualistic. Surely it is a praiseworthy life which is de- 135 TOMORROW voted to purposes of self -improvement and self -development, but the time for which we hope is tuned to higher ideas. Above all, the social idealism leaves ample room for loyalty to individualistic values. We can serve the organized group, the organized state, the or- ganized body of mankind ; and yet can, nay, ought to aim toward the highest perfection of our own soul. But a life which is con- trolled merely by faith in individual values is hardly touched by the over-personal will. To the convinced individualist every over- personal demand appears a fantastic, vague, intangible illusion. To him the state is never anything but a combination of individuals. Truth, beauty, morality, have meaning for him only as help and satisfaction to indi- viduals. He does not grasp that their truest value is annihilated when they are used sim- ply to satisfy individuals. Individualistic idealism, of course, stands high above mere selfishness, and there have been ages in which the greatest service to mankind came through its agency, and such ages may come again. But individualism is unfit for the greatest achievement of the group. Its rivalry can never secure what organized order can ac- 136 THE NEW IDEALISM complish. Where individualism prevails, subordination is unwelcome ; and that means that dilettantism flourishes and the expert is powerless. The dilettant is now ruled out and the triumph of the expert secured all over the world for the days to come ; organi- zation replaces haphazard performance; the self-conscious will of the group suppresses the individual whim. To have attained this is the most important victory of the German nation. If the war brought nothing else this alone may make us feel that those who died on both sides did not give their lives in vain. And they died for America too; the new idealism has come to the new world and is wrestling with the spirit of yesterday. The next steamer may bring you a full report about this new American idealism. Faithfully yours, H.M. VI IDEALISM IN AMERICA My dear Friend: If I remember rightly, the closing words of my last letter spoke about the new Amer- ican idealism which has grown up. At pres- ent those sheets are still in mid-ocean. But when this letter of today reaches you, the last one will have been in your hands for a week. I can well imagine what will have happened in that interval. Whenever a good friend sits down in your study and you begin to talk about the war, you will take my letter from the file on your desk and say: "I must read to you the end of a letter which I just re- ceived — it is the best joke I have read for a long while — 'American idealism'!" — and then he will chuckle with you — and you will outdo each other in deriding America's self- ishness. He will say that the Americans alone prolonged the war when the cause of 138 IDEALISM IN AMERICA the Allies began to collapse and secured the further maiming and killing of hundreds of thousands in order to gain billions from the ammunition sale. And you will add that they submitted to every humiliating British viola- tion of their American rights in order to profit from war loans. He will go on — Oh, the list is long! And you both will repeat again and again with contempt the words which strike you so humorously: "American idealism!" And yet, my friend, I beg you to read patiently this second installment of my optimistic report. It would not be worth while for you and me to exchange letters in such a serious style, if we did not try to look deeper than the man on the street. Where does he stand! The German simply sticks to his story of the billion sale of American shells to the Allies, while none went to the Germans, and of the American silent help in the effort to starve the German women and children. The American repeats his tale of German barbarism and treacherous atroci- ties. Both are sure that the other nation has acted contrary to the laws of humanity and that no true idealism can be in the soul of the other people. But is such smoking-car 139 TOMORROW wisdom and stump-speech rhetoric really a text for you and me? Let us shake off the delusions and above all let us look to the es- sentials which alone make history, and you will no longer smile if I tell you with earn- est conviction: Yes, the Americans of today are truly idealists. But I add at once: They did not become idealists today or yesterday. The nation was born and grew up under the star of idealism and nobody ever understood the working of the American mind who did not recognize in it the element of idealistic faith. I remember well what a revelation it was for me when I arrived on these shores for the first time. I was filled with the prejudices with which every European of the educated classes is stuffed: The Americans are ma- terialists and dollar hunting is their only pastime. It is the usual calamity; nations do not know one another and judge from outer symptoms which they interpret by mo- tives of their own invention. When I tried to grasp the real energies of the life which surged around me, I saw that the political life of the Americans was guided by an intense spirit of self-direction. Indeed, who- 140 IDEALISM IN AMERICA ever wishes to understand the baffling tur- moil, the inner mechanism behind all the po- litical forces, must set out from this point. In his private life the American is very ready- to conform to the will of another, but in the sphere of public life the individual feels that he must guide his activities to the last detail, if they are to have any significance whatever to him. He will allow no outside motive to be substituted, not even the recognition that a material advantage would accrue or that some desirable end would be more readily achieved if the control and responsibility were to be vested in someone else. But this is exactly the criterion of idealism; the deed is performed not because the end brings ad- vantage, but because the principle of the act is valuable in itself. Self-direction appears to the American an ideal value in which he trusts. But the eco- nomic world shows the same grouping around one center. Just as the political life of America can be traced back to the instinct for self-direction, so it can be found that it is the instinct for free self -initiative which has set in motion the tremendous economic flywheel. The desire to be up and doing has 141 TOMORROW opened the new world, has tilled the fields, created industries and developed the material resources until the nation has become an eco- nomic world power. Not the greed for gold but the belief in the value of productive ef- fort in itself is the soul of this commerce and industry; the money is longed for as the proof of the successful effort. The social character of American life is no less con- trolled by one underlying trait : the spirit of self-assertion. Here is the root of the new world equality: an ideal belief in equal dig- nity and worth in spite of all outer differ- ences controls the social relations from man to man. This spirit educates to politeness, helpfulness and fairness. Finally the intel- lectual life is molded by the spirit of self- perfection. The old puritanic belief that ex- istence finds its meaning only in ethical en- deavor and that self-perfection is the great duty which takes precedence of all others re- mains the informing energy of the nation. From New England, which for more than two centuries kept the cultural leadership, it spread over all the land and worked for edu- cation and moral purity. Hence in every one of the four great spheres of national life, the 142 IDEALISM IN AMERICA political, the economic, the social and the cul- tural, a strong idealistic faith is the determin- ing power, a belief in something which is valuable in itself without regard to the pleas- ure which it furnishes. This is not an after- thought of today. I have my evidence in print. At the threshold of the century I wrote two large volumes, "The Americans," grouping my material around these four idealistic tendencies. But this is clear : If these four traits make up American idealism, it is throughout self- centered and individualistic. The ultimate value lies in the personal soul, not in the creation of independent values. The indi- vidual with his rights, his efforts and his purity is all; the ideal state, the ideal com- munity, the growth of art, science and na- tional efficiency as such are unimportant compared with the growth of the individual personalities. But while all this was prob- ably the correct interpretation of American life at the opening of the century, new ener- gies began to be felt soon afterward. When shortly before the war my publishers re- printed "The Americans" in a popular edi- tion, I wrote in the preface as follows: 143 TOMORROW "Some years have passed since the book started on its pilgrimage. It was a time when the suffragists and the automobiles and the socialists and the cabarets and the law- abiding trusts were still rare, and the Pacific was separated by land from the Atlantic and the sexual problem separated by decency from the public discussion. The changes have broken in rapidly. New physical and new moral canals have been built. The poli- ticians have rushed into Progressivism and out of it ; the newspapers into anti-Japanism and out of it; the lawyers into Shermanism and out of it; the educators into electivism and out of it; the magazines into muckrak- ing and out of it. Indeed with us too much of the excitement of the noon fades before sunset ; and yet nobody can doubt that really great changes have come over the American nation in its political, its economic, its in- tellectual, its cultural and its social behavior. The position of capital has gone through dis- tinct development. Wealth has surely not decreased, but the belief in the privileges of wealth and in its leadership has been shaken. The social conscience has been awakened and a certain socialistic feeling has penetrated 144 IDEALISM IN AMERICA the whole community. Democracy has sought to emphasize its consequences. The old-fashioned faith in the system of checks and balances to the influence of the masses has lost its hold. The high tariff had to be lowered, the high income had to be tapped and the high legislators had to be brought down. The workingman has learned his strength and the merger-man his weakness. At the same time puritanism, from which the most characteristic elements of Ameri- can civilization had grown up, receded with unexpected suddenness. The new wealth and the new freedom, the rapid expansion of technical comfort, the gigantic immigration from southern and eastern Europe with its warmer sensuality, all worked together to bring us an America of excessive worldliness, an America which craves for amusement at any price. The kino, the auto and the tango are symbols of the day. But in spite of all the feministic foam and the libertinistic pose, the anti-puritanic period has brought a true arising of deeper esthetic values. A desire for beauty and harmony fills our life more than ever before. The drama has come to its own. And above all, while the old leader- 145 TOMORROW ship of wealth and of puritanic restraint is disappearing, a new cultural leadership is slowly developing its strength. The nation feels instinctively that whatever clamor pol- itics may make, the inner civilization cannot rely on the censorship of the masses, which follow any fashion and hysteric outcry. We cannot have a cultural referendum and a spiritual recall. The longing for the true scholarly expert and for the most highly edu- cated leader has become definite. The vulgar disrespect for pure intellectual work has ceased and the nation has begun to discrimi- nate between those who do not make money because they have not the power to do so and those who do not make money because they have more important things to do. Through all this America moves more and more into the same groove in which Euro- pean culture is moving forward.' ' This was written in the beginning of the momentous year 1914. Then came the war, and the movement away from individualism grew rapidly. Over-personal idealism has today taken such strong hold of the nation that not much prophetic art but merely some psychology is needed to foresee that the 146 IDEALISM IN AMERICA much derided German Kultur will be the American ideal of tomorow. One fact il- lumines the national situation. The Progres- sive party has ceased to exist. Did it disap- pear because its tendencies were unwelcome to the people ? Certainly not. It had to give up because it had become superfluous ; and it was superfluous because the two leading tra- ditional parties have practically accepted the Progressive program. In other words, not a group but the whole nation has now fol- lowed the Progressive lead; and American Progressivism is fundamentally the over- personal idealism which has built up mod- ern Germany. The New York World and other papers wanted to denounce the Koose- velt movement when they angrily called it an adaptation of German ideas to American life; but whether it is observed in scorn or in sympathy, surely the affinity cannot be overlooked. The social economic problems, however, bring this German element to still sharper relief than the strictly political ones. The most powerful preacher of the new Americanism knows quite well that he really teaches Germanism. Hence I do not feel up- set by the mockery of your letter in which 147 TOMORROW you comment on my sympathy with Roose- velt, the Deutschenfresser. I discriminate between the infuriated tirades for effect in inner politics, phrases sterile in the real world of affairs, and well considered expres- sions of matured conviction. The true Roosevelt has this to say, even in December, 1915 : i ' Germany has been far in advance of us in securing industrial assurance, old age pensions and homes, and reasonably fair di- vision of profits between employer and em- ployed, and the like. But she has also been far ahead of us in requiring from the man who toils with his hands just as much as from the man who employs him loyalty to the nation. . . . There is absolute need of a larger nationalism if we are to make this country as efficient as Germany is efficient, and if at the same time we are to secure justice for our people. Germany has out- distanced us in our industrial efficiency. . . . Germany has taken care of her working classes at the same time that she has taken care of her business interests. Her pro- gram has been constructive and not de- structive. . . . Men who do not understand how Germany 's industrial system has worked 148 IDEALISM IN AMERICA speak as if it were all done only by super- vision and interference on the part of the government and in consequence by the de- struction of all individual initiative. This is not the fact. Unlimited private competition in business may result in the elimination of private initiative just exactly as under a sys- tem of private competition in politics unreg- ulated by law the usual result is a despot with all the power and nobody else with any power. The countries that are free politi- cally are the countries in which the political activity of the individual is regulated. The same is true industrially. In Germany the government does not interfere in the private affairs of a business except where it abso- lutely must ; but it makes the men responsible for managing that business take hold in con- junction with their employees and in con- junction with the government authorities to see that justice is done." The nation-wide movement for military preparedness is only another expression of this progressive spirit. All moves toward the same end: not the single individuals and their pleasure and not even their idealistic purity and self-develop- ment and self-initiative is the highest goal, 149 TOMORROW but the group, the community, the state, and their over-personal honor and justice and cultural growth. It is not surprising that the reaction has set in, as the full consequences of the old individualism became more and more danger- ous. In the easy times of a simpler past the shortcomings of American individualism were little felt because the resources of the land were hardly tapped and international competition was entirely in the background. Today the country stands in the midst of po- litical and economic and cultural world riv- alry, and its own internal life conditions have grown more difficult. It can no longer afford the luxury of individualism; it has to pay too dearly for it. The social mistakes and deficiencies of the country result first of all from the high-strung individualism of the nation with its disregard for the independent will of the embracing group and with its an- tipathy to personal subordination. Indeed it is not a question of the shortcomings which result from ill-will and criminal intent. Anti- social defectives are born in every country. The point is rather that the nation has suf- fered too much from the defects of its vir- 150 IDEALISM IN AMERICA tues, from the wrongs which come through its accredited principles. One fundamental fault of the individualist has been especially influential. He follows the path of his personal interest, of his lik- ing, of his instinct. The result is that he not only abhors compulsion for himself, but objects to the idea of disciplinary force for others. Hence he believes in education which is adjusted to the liking of the child. Only the material which attracts the involuntary attention of the boy and girl is fit for their instruction. But the youth of the country educated after this pattern may learn a thou- sand things, but never learn to learn. The children, coddled by the mere appeal of liking, spoiled by methods of free election, enter life without any power to control their at- tention and to bind their will. They know only the paths of least resistance ; they never have benefited from a training which teaches them to perform unwelcome duty. Their minds are naturally swayed by everything which tempts their attention by its loudness and glare. They are adjusted to the sensa- tions of the hour and to the headlines of the minute. They lack resistance to the super- 151 TOMORROW ficial glamour and still more the power to uphold persistently anything which does not strike their individual liking. It is only another form of their lack of discipline when such an individualistic com- munity ignores the expert. Everyone is his own master, everyone feels himself com- petent for every place, everyone has a right to offer to everyone his advice. A public life built up on expert advice must demand from everyone constant subordination. It is only a counterpart of the lack of respect for the trained specialist if the youth shows lack of respect for the public authorities. The effect of individualistic arbitrariness is felt no less in economic life. It must lead to the waste of public resources, to a ruthless destruction of the national treasures for pri- vate gain and exhaustion of the soil and of the forests, everyone reaping for himself without regard for the country as a whole and for the generations to come. But not only is the conservation of national resources neglected; the human resources are wasted with the same heedlessness. Life becomes unsafe, accidents abound, the whole technique of the national activities becomes unreliable. 15% IDEALISM IN AMERICA The public conscience and the feeling of re- sponsibility for the public welfare remains rudimentary where individualism narrows the horizon. Corruption in city politics, lob- byism in the halls of the legislators, pork barrel statecraft, a spirit of trifling with momentous public interests, sap the national life. Where all this goes on, the power and strength and efficiency of a nation must finally suffer, however high the average of personal purity may be ; and that this is the case has forcefully come to the consciousness of the American people. The cry for the conservation of the na- tional resources, for the protection of the forests and mines and rivers, has awakened the public conscience. Movements for voca- tional guidance and vocational education have spread over the land. The muckraking propaganda has helped to uproot number- less misuses which grew from the debauch of individualism. Socialistic tendencies have crept into every statehouse; the central power of the federal government has been reenforced against the peripheral energies of the states with their provincial indi- vidualism. The scientific expert is more and 15,3 TOMORROW more often called into the service of public affairs. The creative and esthetic ambition of the nation has been stimulated as never before, and the new bugle call for military preparedness stirs up the comfortable indi- vidualism of the last half century. This is clear: preparedness cannot begin in Platts- burg camps ; preparedness must begin in the nursery. Without discipline in the home and in the early school days armies cannot be victorious in the modern battle of nations, and at the first test the aeroplanes would not fly and the submarines would not come up from the bottom. The whole country has now learned this great lesson : loyalty to the state as such, loyalty to the over-personal will, is the supreme demand to which every individualistic creed must become adjusted. Over-personal idealism does not suppress the individualistic idealism of the past, but makes it serviceable to a higher good. Every newspaper page of today bears witness to this reorganization throughout the land. May I confess to you, my friend, that I watch this tremendous change with a queer mixture of feelings ? The changes which have set in are exactly those for which I have 154 IDEALISM IN AMERICA pleaded ever since I came to America. My first little volume of marginal notes to American education and politics, social life and scholarship, which I sent out into the world under the title "American Traits" was such a psychological warning against the dangers of exaggerated individualism from the standpoint of a German idealist. You know I did not forget to tell Germans how much they might learn from American in- dividualistic virtues; but I felt sure that the American disregard for non-individual values must lead to disaster, and as I be- lieved that a new spirit must begin with the education of the youth, I felt that I should not fulfill my duty if I did not interpret my task as educator widely enough to include a frank expression of my German-made con- victions. Hence I ought to be delighted with the change which has come to the nation. It lies directly in the line of my hopes ; and yet I cannot deny that I feel this change as a loss, as just that America dwindles away which fascinated me by its difference from the old world tendencies to which I was ac- customed. There is an undeniable charm and comfort and joyfulness in a national life 155 TOMORROW which is swayed by individualism and when I came under its spell I loved it as millions of immigrants have loved it before. I felt that it was unsound and unfit for the days of growing international complexity and of in- creasing demands for social justice and civic reorganization, but I felt it as attractive and bewitching. The lack of discipline makes life so easy. The optimism and the good- fellowship remove all the resistance which so often makes continental life difficult. There is a certain rigid harshness in every community in which children have learned obedience and in which men have never for- gotten it. When even the outsider feels the loss of the old unfettered community life with such regret, it is only natural that many who were born into it deplore the coming of the new time. Some are simply afraid that inner discipline and subordination to the authori- ties means aggressive militarism — the Prus- sianism of the cheap caricature. They are not aware that the individual German has surely no less freedom in the higher sense of the word than the American. Of mere license there is less for him, but the oppor- 156 IDEALISM IN AMERICA tunity to develop himself in accordance with his own desires and ideals is in many ways greater for the German than for the Amer- ican, as he is less chained by fashion and public prejudices. The Germans differ from one another much more than the Americans ; and this is true of their opinions and inter- ests, of their tastes and enjoyments, as well as of their hats and collars. Their unwill- ingness to be classed in two great political parties seems to me typical. The German would feel his freedom impaired if he had to decide between only two patterns of po- litical thought, which means in too many American elections the choice between two evils. The free German demands a whole scale of parties with all the half-tones be- tween. Others try to put on the brakes because they are afraid that the new idealism, for which they prefer quite different names, might destroy much of the work of their fathers. They see with increasing alarm the widespread tendency to render easier the changes in the constitution ; the conservative system which the founders of the republic created and which has given protection to 157 TOMORROW many an undeserved privilege seems to them in danger of being overridden by radical legislation. No doubt, such a progressive tendency exists; it is the natural condition for a true organization of the national will, which hardly came to its own as long as all was left to individualistic rivalry. The fathers of the country were satisfied with equal laws for all, but in the new time it has been discovered that the mere impartiality of laws is entirely insufficient for the social justice which the new idealism proclaims. Not only equal laws are needed, but laws which aim toward a certain equalization. Wealth is not a product of individuals but of the community; the will of the equalizing community, and not the mere enterprise and the unbridled strength of the individuals, must be authoritative for the distribution of this community product. These ideas, which have become a matter of course for the new Germany with its social legislation, are ad- vancing rapidly in America and the spirit of the past is indeed threatened by them. Warning voices are raised against this un- deniable crisis in constitutionalism. Even a national association for constitu- 158 IDEALISM IN AMERICA tional government has been founded to save whatever can still be saved. David Jayne Hill is its spokesman. At the time when he was ambassador to Germany and I served as exchange professor in Berlin, you met him at my dinner table, and you remember the beautiful speech he made that night about the German ideals of social justice. He un- derstood them perfectly and appreciated them on the German background, but since they have taken hold of the American re- public he fears the defeat of the old Ameri- can spirit. ''It is not to the advantage of the individual to make him dependent, to abridge his powers of self help or to take away his liberty of action so long as he does not injure others. Let us help him, certainly, if he needs help, but not delude him with the error that more is rightly coming to him than he has ever earned. For sympathy, charity, good example and unselfish public service there will always be room, but for the suppression of native powers, for abso- lute dictation based on arbitrary rules, for the assumption that society is more impor- tant than those who compose it, there is no place in a free republic. " It is too late ! It 159 TOMORROW is defense of the good old times spoken in a voice which leaves little doubt that the new times with their new ideas have taken firm possession of the land. It is no longer an 11 as sumption' ' of one or another that "so- ciety is more important than those who com- pose it," but it is the new light, which illumi- nates and warms the new American genera- tion. The belief in over-personal values can no longer be uprooted and the political cen- tralization, the legislative socialization, the military preparation, the cultural organiza- tion, cannot be delayed. The regeneration of the individual must follow — not his rights, but his loyalty, his service, his subordination to the community and its symbols, will be the center of his life. A characteristic sign of the advance of this new idealism is the constellation in the political sky. Three men only are today prominent: Wilson, Hughes and Eoosevelt. They differ widely but all three are new- fashioned idealists. In the German news- papers of today — I hope that they will reach me in not much more than three or four months — the portraits of the three men are probably not painted in the colors of 160 IDEALISM IN AMERICA idealism; they know Hughes too little, and Wilson and Roosevelt — too much! Nor would they learn better from the American papers; the time of a presidential campaign is not made to discover the noble traits of a public man. What the party friends say is silently discounted, as it is made up for ef- fect on the voters, and what the opponents say is exaggerated and ungenerous. We all know that it is possible to supply low mo- tives for any action. History seen from the worm perspective is not inspiring; every public deed appears as a selfish or even mercenary trick. The President may make war in Mexico or keep peace; whatever he does will be interpreted by such minds as a self-seeking maneuver for reelection. Owen Wister, the great anti-German patriot, sings of the President — his President: "You've wormed yourself beyond descrip- tion 's reach— Truth if she touched you would become untrue." For that type of mind the European monarchs are in the war for dy- nastic interests and Germany went into the war at the prompting of self-seeking junkers. You surely ignore such silly slander when it refers to the European persons, as you know 161 TOMORROW better — why can you not neglect it when it refers to America? The three political lead- ers of. today are not the egotists of the car- toons but sincere and loyal idealists. It would be poor psychology if I were to deny that a vivid self-consciousness forms their mental background; without it nobody can become influential in American politics. They show three characteristically different types of self-conseiousness : that of Wilson is lyric, that of Roosevelt dramatic, that of Hughes epic. Wilson is always contemplat- ing; he settles the problems for himself by finding a well-balanced formulation; he re- flects on his own feelings; he likes to speak about his mental pains, his joys, his moods. His aim is social peace, international peace, harmony, and that is beauty. Roosevelt aims toward quick and surprising action ; his thought is potential energy; his life element is the conflict with beasts or with men, with parties or with nations. Hughes aims to- ward the earnest fulfillment of tasks per- sistently carried through against difficulties. Neither the feelings nor the impulses to ac- tion are paramount in him, but the deliberate decisions of the mind. 162 IDEALISM IN AMERICA This difference of lyric, dramatic and epic tendency shows itself no less in their stand toward the public. Wilson wants to be seen and heard; it is not chance that he was the first for a century to deliver the presidential message to Congress in person. It is the wish for the esthetic attitude. He reaches his greatest strength when he feels himself on the stage with the public in his spell. When politicians in Germany asked me whether Wilson as international peacemaker would not be a partial arbiter, swayed by his natural sympathy for the land of his British ancestors, I wrote to them at once that his deepest trait, the desire for esthetic unity, ought to exclude such a fear : he would enter so fully into the role of world arbiter that all personal prejudices would be entirely in- hibited. The lyric mind sinks completely into the role to be played : no mind dominated by will and none dominated by thought could make such an ideal world mediator as one controlled by esthetic feeling. The usual im- pression, of course, is that not Wilson but Roosevelt is the man who seeks the lime- light; but in reality Roosevelt's attitude is quite different. He is not the actor whose 163 TOMORROW mind needs the stimulus of being seen, of being the center of tense observation ; his ex- altation comes from feeling himself the leader. He too needs the masses, but in order to push them forward by his dramatic tem- perament. He is always the colonel who charges the hill, conscious that the cowboys follow. His joy has nothing to do with the impression he makes but all with the im- pulse which he stirs up in others. Both Wil- son and Roosevelt long for the public, as both must be in the center in order to give their best. But the chief irradiation is cen- tripetal in Wilson's case and centrifugal in Roosevelt's case. The strength of Hughes lies in his conscious independence of the audience. Every true epic hero stands alone. A lyric mind needs the admiring approval of its followers ; a dramatic mind needs the pow- erful effect on them ; the epic mind distrusts both the praise and the hypnotic faith and prefers the coolness of a sober routine rela- tion. Real opposition makes the lyric tem- perament nervous, the dramatic angry, but the epic strong. Yet, however different the self-consciousness of the three leaders, all three stand high above the trivial campaign 164 IDEALISM IN AMERICA accusations and all three are sincere and loyal believers in the new idealism. The time which is to come speaks forcefully through each of them. America does not lack impressive defend- ers for the ideals of the past generation. Charles W. Eliot is their leader; but just as his educational freedom, the free election of studies, has been abandoned and is rejected today by every single college in the land, so his political and economic freedom is repudi- ated by the spirit of the new time. The real public spokesmen of the nation, Republican, Democratic, and Progressive, acknowledge only a freedom which involves duty, a rivalry which is restrained by over-personal ideals of social justice, a government which is not the servant of individual interests but the representative of the whole nation as such, of its honor and strength and social progress. No individual initiative will be curbed, but the central thought of the new America is loyalty, obligation, service. The flag has be- come the symbol of a state which is more than the mere sum of the individuals who pay taxes. The new idealism has its char- acteristic American features, but it is the 165 TOMORROW same new idealism which brought Germany- its recent development and which has now taken hold of all Europe : it is the new world view of that new world which will arise from the war. But here too, as in Europe, service to the will of the organized community is not bound up with the single nation. The idea of sub- ordination to the will of the unified group must remain in force when the organized community grows beyond the state and be- comes an alliance of nations. Hence the new idealism, however much it was originally connected with nationalism and military pre- paredness, that is, with the rivalry and strug- gle of nations, is no less in harmony with the ideal of international friendship and or- ganization. The new idealism could be turned the more earnestly toward its highest goals if the will which demands service were not only that of the isolated nation but also that of civilized mankind. The new idealism may have started from the growing nation- alism, but it presses toward internationalism and through it toward peace. The old senti- mental pacificism is probably discarded for the near future, but the new sober pacificism, 166 IDEALISM IN AMERICA rooted in idealism and international organi- zation, will surely be as much the symbol of tomorrow as the radiant nationalism. Per- haps it was unfair when I spoke only of Wil- son, Hughes, and Roosevelt as the political leaders of America today; I ought to have added Bryan, the fanatic of pacificism based on treaties. The newspapers never believe in Bryan's unselfishness and when in St. Louis he turned enthusiastically to Wilson's support, they asked indiscreetly for what position he hoped in case of Wilson's victory, as he must know that he could not again be Secretary of State. I think the position which he would wish to fill is that of ambassador to Ger- many, where he would feel sure of a hearty welcome on account of his courageous rad- ically neutral stand during the war. He might possibly be the funniest ambassador but at the same time probably one of the most effective. Social Berlin would be in convulsions over the cultural teetotaler, and at every dinner table they would tell near- true amusing stories about his naivete; but Berlin would discover in him a faith in peace and a power for good which might stir 167 TOMORROW Europe like a revelation — the " guileless fool" in Klingsor's magic garden. He would truly be a representative of the American nation, because the new pacificism will be an organic part of the new America. Will it be a part of the new Europe too? It sounds almost frivolous to speak of organized peace in Europe while the headlines report today that the greatest battle of the world's his- tory, truly the battle of Europe, is at its height; and yet, in time of war prepare for peace. Indeed, I should not fulfill the task which you have set before me if I were not to speak of the new movements toward last- ing peace. Let it be the topic of my next letter ; but I confess I should like much more to hear from you what you think about the present prospect of peace. It is so difficult to remember how it felt to live in the time before the war — how long will the unbear- able last! Yours ever, H.M. VII THE NEW PACIFISM My dear Friend: Have you ever noticed that the Bible con- tains a saying which in the two most famous translations, the Luther version and the King James version, has a directly opposite mean- ing? In the fortieth psalm we Germans read the beautiful words: "Und wenn es kostlich gewesen, so ist es Miihe und Arbeit ge- wesen;' , the English-speaking world reads: "And if by reason of strength they be four- score years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow." The meaning of the English trans- lation is : Even at its best life is filled with labor and sorrow and therefore filled with that which we should like to avoid. The meaning of the German translation is: Life is truly beautiful only if it is filled with labor and toil. The two translators have given to the words of the psalmist quite different 169 TOMORROW meaning : The one sees in labor the crown of life, the other sees in it the thorn of life. The history of mankind is also a gigantic psalm and may be differently translated. This psalm speaks of human wars, and the one translates it to read: Every nation's life is glorious if it is filled with wars; the other translates it: Every nation's life is filled with wars and therefore lamentable. The trans- lations have disagreed for thousands of years. Again and again one sees in war the thorn of national life and the other the crown of national life. Will it ever be settled which translation is right? In any case the vehe- ment discussions of recent days — mostly car- ried on with the naive belief that the pacifistic movements of today are an original contri- bution of our century — have done little to overcome the contradictions of old. Wars are evil, are destructive, are im- moral, are ruinous, are always avoidable — wars are heroic, are inspiring, are progres- sive, are necessary. We have not moved much beyond this old antithesis. It is true we carry on the discussions of today with quite new-fashioned biological conceptions, but they too serve both sides. In war the 170 THE NEW PACIFISM strong men go to the battle and are killed, while the weak stay at home and survive. Hence the biological argument speaks against war. But the opposite is true, if the whole battling tribes or nations are considered. The weak, the degenerate and the decaying social groups are destroyed in the fight and the strong and healthy ones enlarge their power and their traits survive. Hence war is the means of the biological regeneration of mankind. Nowadays, moreover, the Ameri- can pacifists use their biology to tell us that the war spirit is a remnant of the aggressive instinct in animals. The other side answers, of course, that dislike of war starts from the animal instinct of hiding; pacifism, we hear, is self-abasement. In reality no light is thrown on the value of either side by show- ing that a type of action can be traced back to animal instincts; nothing is great in our life which has not its counterpart in low be- ginnings. We ought rather to measure our social functions by the scale of ideal values ; and yet even this does not bring us nearer to a decision. The mind which seeks peace and avoids conflict loyally serves the ideal of harmony and unity, a distinctly esthetic 171 TOMORROW ideal : the mind which is ready to make sacri- fices for the maintaining of its rights in con- flict serves no less loyally the ideal of justice, an ethical ideal. A slightly modern turn is also brought into the discussion by the claim that wars are stirred up by the selfish interests of diplomats or of great capitalists or of munition manu- facturers, all of whom seek advantage, glory, profit for themselves, without regard for the interests of the masses. But it is surely no less adapted to the modern world when the other side insists that in our period of the newspaper and the wire every movement is a movement of the nation as a whole and that modern wars can be conducted only if the whole people stands behind the leaders. The masses are more excitable than the men in re- sponsible places; in the days of the million- fold circulation of the news carriers, war has become the most democratic institution. On economic ground at least we now know with certainty that war never pays, as a whole lit- erature has told us with ample statistics; and at the same time that a victorious war always pays, as no less bulky statistics have proved. Culturally the legions of war trample 172 THE NEW PACIFISM down the harvest of intellectual and artistic and social seed. But must not the historian add that all the great periods of truly flour- ishing national culture, those which have in- spired the world forever, have always fol- lowed the triumphs of war. Even in the in- dividual minds the effects of war may show this contrast. Hatred, cruelty, brutality, calumny, may devastate the hearts ; and yet it is a time in which the spirit of self-sacrifice, of heroism, of abstinence, of energy, of pa- triotism, overwhelms every selfish and vicious and luxurious impulse. The historians do not even seem to agree as to the actual result, when the increase of power for the victor is estimated. Empires have been built by conquest as glorious wit- nesses of the success of war; but no empire in the world has really lasted, and their decay always began with the dissatisfaction of con- quered lands, an evidence of the failure of war. Even when this world war began, the opponents of pacifism were quick in claiming that the futility of all peace movements had now been definitely proved, as never before had such a well-prepared framework for peace been built up as The Hague conferences 173 TOMORROW and The Hague tribunal; and yet they were immediately followed by the most bloody con- flict of all times. But it is surely no less true that the outbreak of this war can be con- strued as a most gigantic proof of the neces- sity of pacifism and as a demonstration of the complete failure of the old system which relied on rivalry in armament. While theory and speculation do not lead us further, allowing on every level arguments for either side, it seems interesting to turn to the concrete facts of historiometric science. Woods and Baltzley recently published here a brilliant little book "Is War Diminishing?" a study of the prevalence of war in Europe from medieval times to the present date. They measured exactly the length of time which each European nation has spent in warfare in the various historic periods. Take the figures for England. From the year 1100 to 1900 the sixteen half-centuries showed the following numbers of war years : 38, 16, 19, 17, 39.5, 25.5, 38, 19, 16, 38.5, 17.5, 26, 29, 26.5, 26, 27.5 ; all together between 1100 and 1500, 212 war years, and between 1500 and 1900, 207 war years. For France the same figures are: 26.5, 10, 31.5, 17.5, 18, 25, 174 THE NEW PACIFISM 35.5, 17, 29.5, 31, 24, 22.5, 25, 25.5, 18, 17; al- together for the first four centuries 181 and for the second four centuries 192.5 war years : "Is war diminishing?" We are indeed hardly aware that in the reign of Queen Vic- toria alone England had 29 different wars. In Eussia the sixteenth century showed 78.5 war years, the seventeenth 57.5, the eighteenth 49.5, the nineteenth 53. Only in the small states like Denmark, Holland and Sweden are the war periods distinctly growing shorter and shorter ; and the same is true of Prussia, for which the table shows that in the seven- teenth centuiy it had 58.5 years of war, in the eighteenth 31, in the nineteenth only 13. The broad result of the book is that when the five strong powers, England, France, Prussia, Russia and Austria, are separated from the five lesser powers, Turkey, Spain, Holland, Denmark and Sweden, it becomes evident that the stronger nations since 1700 have devoted the most time to war. But the lesser nations were once the great powers; Spain, Turkey, Holland and Sweden were active in warfare at the same period that they were politically great. Truly such neglected figures ought to make 175 TOMORROW us distrustful when well-meaning people rec- ommend some new prescription by which war will be abolished from the next first of July at four o'clock in the afternoon. Neverthe- less we pacifists ought not to feel discour- aged, because it cannot be denied that certain elements of our time are new and do change the standing of peace and war. The inter- dependence of the nations has been most deeply influenced by the economic develop- ment of the last half-century. It is this change in the material conditions first of all which suggests that serious efforts toward world peace may be in the future more suc- cessful than the record of history alone would allow us to expect. But to make such efforts really effective, we ought at least to learn the lessons of this war and ought not to indulge again in illusions which the last two years should have dispelled. When the war is over the militarists of all nations will write whole libraries about the lessons of the war, analyzing every success and every failure of the armies and navies. But we men of peace have still greater interest in looking on the war as an inexhaustible source of information. We need not wait 176 THE NEW PACIFISM until it all has passed into history. For the first lesson I should pick out at least ten pretty clear facts which even the elementary pupil ought not to forget. Other lessons, with some scores of similar facts, will sug- gest themselves later. But these are the ten with which I should start. First: There is no peace loving nation which has not some subconscious love for war too. Since the beginning of the century the will toward unbroken peace in the world had expressed itself so loudly in these United States that it could not fail highly to raise our hopes. While Europe went on with its jealousies and its war preparations we saw here at least one great nation on earth which seemed resolved to use peaceful means in any possible case of friction. How bitter was the irony used against the antiquated navalism and militarism of decrepit Europe! In one night the weather has changed all over the land. Suddenly no sarcasm of the comic papers, no abuse in the editorials, was so sharp as that which turned against the man of peace at any price. Whether the enemy was to be Germany or Mexico or Japan, the makers of public opinion behaved as if the 177 TOMORROW peace sermons of the last decade had been only rhetorical exercises to fill the time until the troops should march to some border. A regular war hysteria came over the suggest- ible parts of the community, and in the Car- negie camps the tents were folded and packed away. To stand for peace at any price ap- peared the meanest mental behavior ; and yet what else was demanded from us in all those homilies of the past against bellicose Europe? Every nation of the Old World was certainly ready to pay some price and even a very high price to keep peace. If anything different had been intended by America, it would indeed have meant not to be ready only for a high price but for any price short of self-destruc- tion. After this year of America's rattling the saber, no hope is left that we pacifists could rely on the temperament of any single large nation. We might still put our hope on China, but her case does not seem inspiring. It is true the Chinese would avoid war if they possibly could, not because they love peace better, but because the traditions re- sulting from the poverty of the land have led to such individual egotism that few want to exert themselves for the good of the commu- 178 THE NEW PACIFISM nity. That will not help us ; after the Ameri- can outbreak we must be resigned to the con- viction that in the heart of every nation one ventricle beats for peace, but the other for the "wretchedness" of old-fashioned war. Second: There are no really effective safety appliances invented as yet. We have heard so much about all the factors which even in a war craze would make actual war impossible. The existence of the pacifistic societies and their like was, after all, only one thread in the tapestry of our hopes. Did we not know that the Socialists of Europe would simply prohibit war? The interna- tionalism of organized labor would prove stronger than the recklessness of govern- ments. They would have had the power, but they lacked the will; they proved patriots above everything else. How often had we read the boast that the internationalism of high finance would stop any onrush to war! Those great bankers are famous prophets; they must have foreseen that fifty billion dol- lars would be needed to feed the Moloch. Of course, the most highly praised safety de- vice was the armament itself; Europe was armed to the teeth. When the hour of danger 179 TOMORROW approached the efficiency of the armor did not delay but hastened the clash. If the military preparation had been less perfect on all sides some further days might have been allowed to diplomacy. But each nation knew that with the superarmament of today twelve hours more time for the secret mobilization of the enemy might have the value of whole army corps. Some had put their pacifistic hope on the women. In no land are the women more influential than in America. It is a sad chapter: If America keeps out of war, it is surely not the merit of the weaker sex. The pacifists, the Socialists, the women and even the priests have failed to serve as brakes on the downhill road. Third: There is no treaty among nations which is binding under all circumstances. Some recent statistics showed that during this war sixty definite treaties have been broken, but only the more important cases were registered in their columns. Not one of the fourteen belligerent nations had missed its opportunities. Of course, this was no sur- prise to the student of history; it has been so at all times and in every corner of the globe. It is surely not lawlessness. The po- 180 THE NEW PACIFISM litical conditions of' the world are shifting all the time and the treaty of today may con- flict tomorrow with a higher obligation which has grown up in the meantime. Here in America the Supreme Court of the United States has clearly acknowledged this right of the nations to break their own treaties when political necessities demand it. The Supreme Court proclaimed "that circumstances may arise which would not only justify the gov- ernment in disregard of their obligations but demand in the interests of the country that it should do so. Unexpected events may call for a change in the policy of the country." It stamps it as the American idea of inter- national law ' ' that whilst it would always be a matter of the utmost gravity and delicacy to refuse to execute a treaty, the power to do so was the prerogative of which no nation could be deprived without deeply affecting its independence." But while treaty breaking may be forced on a nation by a change of cir- cumstances, no Supreme Court would justify a neutral nation in protesting violently against such breaches by one belligerent na- tion and condoning the breaches by the other. Fourth: There is no debatable question 181 TOMORROW among nations which cannot be transformed into a matter of honor. You remember in our student days we had always with us that type of blusterer who went around looking for pretexts for student duels. He kept find- ing people who had violated his honor. Of course for him it was simply a part of the sport. Newspaper discussions about honor in times of tension may sink to this level at any time. Purely technical points of dis- agreement are bolstered up into disputes involving the honor of the country. When America and Germany disagreed as to the permissible armament of a merchantman, every long metropolitan editorial intertwined the number of inches allowed to the guns for defense with the highest honor of the United States. As soon as the national honor is struck, the chance for arbitration is lost. What loyal citizen could allow others to de- cide where his country's honor is at stake! It is that unreasonable kind of national rea- soning which deprives the best planned arbi- tration schemes of their value at the decisive moment. Fifth: There is no event which cannot be looked on from opposing standpoints and 182 THE NEW PACIFISM which may not appear accordingly in an en- tirely different light to equally honest and sincere observers. The most harmless affairs were swollen up by the one and made to shrink by the other, sympathies and antipa- thies played havoc with the facts, and where decisions were to be made the partisan wishes molded every happening. Even the same story can have a happy ending today and a sad close tomorrow, if it conflicts with na- tional prejudices. When America took the stand that a German submarine cannot tor- pedo an armed merchantman because inter- national law prescribes visit and search, Ger- many protested. Germany claimed that there was no international law for submarines as yet and that the old rules which were made for ships of entirely different type could not hold for these fragile vessels which could be destroyed by one shot from the enemy. At once the anti-German press here howled down the German idea. Surely the old rules of the game must hold for the new type of ship. A little later Germany sent here an unarmed merchant submarine, expecting that the en- emy would have to treat it like a merchant ship and could not destroy it without visit and 183 TOMORROW search. Forthwith the same papers shouted against the German pretensions. Surely the old rules of the game could not hold if an entirely new form of ship is invented; the Allies must have the right to fire at the sub- marine as soon as they sight it. Our whole headline misery has been caused by this con- stant double play. After all, there is light and shade everywhere. If you insist on see- ing only the one and ignoring the other, you can undo any honest endeavors. It is, of course, the way in which politics is carried on everywhere. At Carrizal the Mexicans killed Americans, but under pressure re- turned the prisoners. If you want to have peace with Mexico, you never mention the dead, but make fine editorials about the re- turned captives : if you prefer to push toward war, forget the prisoners and shout yourself hoarse about those who have fallen. All this may be right and necessary ; only we for- get it too easily. The last two years have shown it to us three times a day so glar- ingly that we shall remember it better when we plan the peace of the future. Sixth: There is no historic grouping of nations which may not be regrouped at the 184 THE NEW PACIFISM next turn. How bitter had been the enmity between Russia and Japan, and today they are the most intimate friends. Russia and Bulgaria were most cordial allies, and are today the keenest opponents. Italy has de- serted its allies of thirty years, Turkey has joined Austria, England has clasped hands with its arch-enemy Russia, the Boers have proved that they are now entirely in harmony with England. Neither race nor language nor religion nor form of government can make the ties binding when the interests push in different directions, or can hinder alliances when they promise advantages on the way to the nearest goal. Later, when peace comes, I shall send you my collection of New England writings with their republican enthusiasm for the government of the czar and their enlight- ened admiration for the civilization of Rus- sia as against the pseudo-culture of savage Germany. In internal politics we knew that always, and in every land, elections make strange bedfellows, but now we must surely keep in mind what queer combinations and separations may develop in world war times. Seventh: There are no single-minded re- lations between two peoples. The statesmen 185 TOMORROW and the editors and the gossipers all alike have always been satisfied with too simple a psychology. I do not mean that serious poli- ticians overlooked the fact that there are dif- ferent parties and different groups in every nation and that while one party may seek friendship with a neighbor another party may plead for the opposite policy. Specula- tions about such favorable and unfavorable groups have always been the chief part of the game. But what they did neglect is the complexity of motives in the midst of every group and of every individual. They were satisfied with the kind of psychology which we know from most photoplays of the mov- ing picture theaters. These film dramas show us only men who say yes or no. The routine politician, to be sure, is sometimes suspicious and takes it for granted, espe- cially if he deals with diplomats, that the other man may think yes and say no or think no and say yes. But far more important is a yes and a no which intertwine in the mind. Like and dislike, approval and disapproval, friendship and enmity, are consciously and subconsciously mixed. Friends may be loyal friends and yet a certain suspicion may linger 186 THE NEW PACIFISM in their souls; statesmen may have the best will toward each other, and nevertheless be internally prepared for a break; govern- ments may be quite frank in their mutual pro- fessions of cordiality and at the same time foresee that the next turn of the road may make them opponents ; whole nations may be sincere allies and no less sincere rivals, full of distrust and yet full of sympathy. Minds of men and of peoples are never pulled by one wire only. If the official and unofficial diplomats of the world had psychologized a little more they would have experienced fewer surprises and fewer disappointments. Even the question at the threshold as to who wanted the war would not have brought for- ward such an abundance of rage and excite- ment. Everybody hoped most earnestly to avoid the horrible carnage, and yet every- body felt that the rivalry and ill will in Europe had reached a danger point at which an explosion would be necessary and that only force could end the intolerable oppres- sion that choked the world. The govern- ments did not want war and yet subcon- sciously wanted it. Eighth: There is no state form, no gov- 187 TOMORROW eminent, no constitution, which tends more toward the prevention of war than any other. In democratic England the secret agree- ments of Viscount Grey, of which even most other members of the Cabinet were unaware, had more autocratic stamp than the policies of Russia. The republic of Portugal had less power of resistance when England called than the kingdom of Greece. The monarch of Italy was forced to yield at once to the fan- atic pan-Roman wing of his people : the king of Roumania succeeded in checking the war hysteria for two years. The governments of republican France and of imperial Germany proved equally the expression of the national will. The only surprise for many Germans was evidently that the autocratic power of the American president in questions of war is so much greater than that of the German emperor. They had read neither the great book on America which history wrote nor the humble book on America which your obedient servant wrote. But I assure you that many Americans did not know more about it. The last year has probably taught them that America's war or peace may de- pend upon the president's meditation in soli- 188 THE NEW PACIFISM tude. At any moment he may shape such policies that the part of Congress cannot be more than a mere formality. Ninth: There are no longer any romantic wars. The general and his white horse on the hill with the adjutants galloping hither and thither have been replaced by the commander in the study with the telephone central sta- tion in his anteroom. Lying for weeks in muddy ditches, being killed by exploding mines or by machine guns, rushing against entanglements of barbed wire, righting un- seen foes amidst poisonous gases and liquid fire : it is simply appalling and horrible. The fliers and submarines may kindle the imagi- nation ; and yet the real war is a work of the organizing staff and of the engineers. Even the genuine war correspondent has nearly disappeared, and instead of his sprightliness, we have the dreariness of the "military expert." We have not even the comfort of the thought that with the unromantic scien- tific management of warfare at least the per- sonal suffering of the participants is de- creased. The belligerent considers it his aim to make the enemy unable to fight, but not to make him suffer. Yet in spite of the Red 189 TOMORROW Cross, no war in man's memory has brought such manifold pain and misery and tor- ment. Tenth: There is no war which does not enrich many people. Few lessons of the last two years are so worthy of being kept well in memory; not because the fact is so in- spiring, but because it explains so much and may help to direct the searchlight to many dark regions where selfish war agitation is busy. Holland's and Sweden's profits from the war have been enormous; America's bad times after the downward revision of the tariff were turned by the European carnage into an abundant prosperity; Roumania's profitable shrewdness seems to have sur- prised all. But still more unpleasant is the stream of gold to single corporations and in- dividuals in all the belligerent lands. It seems unavoidable that everywhere while a hundred fellow-countrymen bleed the hun- dred and first gathers riches. And worst of all such a war is the high time of graft and corruption in neutral lands. Believe me, I have looked into abysses which made me shudder. It can hardly be otherwise : where such gigantic interests are at stake, the dis- 190 THE NEW PACIFISM honest, who is nowhere absent, must find in- comparable chances for blackmail. I do not care to enumerate today the elev- enth and twelfth and hundredth and thou- sandth fact which the war has taught us. But surely when we ask what the future will do in the interest of the new world-wide longing for lasting peace, we may take it for granted that the teaching of the last two years will dominate all coming plans and projects. The chief tendency which these schemes and sug- gestions will show after the war can be traced, I think, even now. The world around you, my friend, is naturally so filled with the cares of the war itself that project mak- ing for the future is today in the background. But here on so-called neutral ground the plans tumble over one another. Let me be- gin with an impossible one. It is hardly a plan. It is a dream: the idea of complete disarmament of the world. I do not mean to say that such a stage of the world would be impossible for all times. Mankind has learned to live without slavery, which surely seemed necessary everywhere in earlier times. Why may not the future learn to live without soldiery? Even those may be right 191 TOMORROW who prophesy that the technical overdevelop- ment of the means of armament will finally lead to war's self -destruction. When science makes it possible to annihilate not only mil- lions as today, but hundreds of millions, the civilized world would commit suicide if it con- tinued the martial sport. But our question is not what may be prob- able after hundreds of years; we think of tomorrow. And even if the leading nations were to agree whole-heartedly that their ad- vance would be safer if every thought and every means of forcible attack on one another were abolished, the gun factories could not close their doors, as the unarmed nations of highest culture would be the easy prey of the semicivilized peoples. The power which broke the old Roman Empire was the un- civilized tribes of the northern forests. Man- kind still possesses many reservoirs of fresh and untried energy. Armament of the na- tions for physical protection will be neces- sary tomorrow as it was yesterday. It may even be seriously doubted whether the much- favored idea of partial disarmament can ever be realized. If the great nations arm at all for purposes of war among one another, it is 192 THE NEW PACIFISM illogical to demand from them not to put into their preparation all their available energies. As long as fighting is going on at all, nobody can be expected to fight with half steam only. If all is to be gained or all is to be lost, each nation will demand the freedom to make nse of all its resources. Yes, it must be acknowledged that as long as the principle of preparedness for war is accepted only those draw its really logical conclusion who think the more the better. The nation best protected by all the means of physical and chemical technic, by the training of armies, by the development of miltary sci- ence in the staff and military spirit in the people, will be most sure not to be attacked. In short, we have before us the old plan : the true means to keep peace is to secure the strongest possible defensive armament. Yet the world has lost confidence in this classic advice. We heard it a little too often just before the greatest of all wars in history broke out. Of course, each nation may justly say that if it had been less prepared the enemy would today stand at the gate of its capital. And if Germany is accused of hav- ing done its share with the greatest thorough- 193 TOMORROW ness, the Germans can answer that their mili- tary preparedness secured peace for them through forty-four years in which every other great European nation went to war. Yet Germany had to learn that even the greatest preparedness of a single nation will not pro- tect it against hostile machinations which lead to war if a powerful combination of enemies can be formed. Moreover the tre- mendous complexity of the armament brings the danger nearer, as it makes a delay in the first attack more dangerous. Finally the luxury of all such insurance against war had become from year to year more costly. Armies and navies were sapping the savings of Europe. Can this mad race of armaments be continued at the billion rate after a war the debts for which will have to be paid by two deplenished generations? The initial problem is, then, how to fight the armament fever, as long as the principle of armament remains in force. One important plan is certainly worth discussing. It is the taking over of all manufacture of munitions by the governments. This would abolish at least that unsound incitement to overarma- ment which results from the chance for pri- 194 THE NEW PACIFISM vate profit. Yet this would demand legisla- tion all over the world; legislation is under the influence of press and lobby; press and lobby in at least two-thirds of all nations are accessible to golden arguments, and the steel manufacturers and munition makers can pro- duce a thousand times more of this particu- lar kind of argument than all the poor peace apostlesi together. Moreover, the opponents of the plan have at least one sound and rea- sonable plea. If the state manufactures the munitions for its own use, in times of peace it will adjust its factories to the modest needs. If war comes, they cannot suddenly be en- larged to the vast dimensions which the emergency demands. Private enterprises, on the other hand, the Krupps, the Creuzots and their kin, can keep the biggest furnaces burn- ing all the time because some countries, how- ever far away, will always be in need of their supplies. A little compromise between the factories and the voters will probably be cooked up, but a great reform in the arma- ment situation will hardly be secured. The true advance will have to come from within. The policies of men will have to be changed. Their beliefs and emotions, their aims and 195 TOMORROW their institutions, must be reformed in order to make their armaments more and more superfluous. Many put their confidence in the most direct method of reaching this goal : we must educate the world toward a pacifistic view of international relations. It is not necessary to think only of Chautauqua meet- ings and women's clubs and peace-dove pa- rades. The approach to the minds of the na- tions may be a much broader one. It may be started in the schools. Can we deny that in all lands in which the youth learns history at all the one great teaching is that wars and battles have been the most important events in the world and the men on horseback the leaders of mankind 1 We can tell the story of three thousand years with entirely different high lights. Instead of tracing it from Achilles to Hindenburg, we may go from Moses to Edison and Richard Strauss. But the approach may be not only broader ; it may be deeper. With all the means of science and economics, of statistics and his- tory, of biology and sociology and hygiene, we ought to underline the arguments against war. Theoretically, no doubt, each pacifistic reason can be answered, but if our emotional 196 THE NEW PACIFISM personality feels powerfully drawn to the side of peace we ought to make those anti- war arguments so resounding that they at last stir the popular imagination. Then it is not a question of objective truth but of social religion. If we are faithful believers we are not obliged to work as missionaries for the truth of the opposing religion. Let them continue to say that war is necessary. We know in the depths of our hearts that the world needs peace ; let us therefore preach from every pulpit and from every housetop that the advantages of war are illusions, that war only breaks down and never builds up, that war hinders progress, that war has be- come superfluous, that people who believe in justice will never again have wars. Such a religion, however, demands its churches and its priests, and it cannot be denied that its organization so far has been pitiful. We have a few scattered two-room bureaus in Switzerland, in Holland, in Amer- ica, and a few amateur speakers, some minia- ture funds for scattering anemic pamphlets, and the only trophy is a couple of Nobel peace medals. Wells rightly says: "The world is a supersaturated solution of the 197 TOMORROW will-for-peace and there is nothing for it to crystallize upon. There are many more peo- ple and there is much more intelligence con- centrated upon the manufacture of cigarettes or hairpins than there is on the establishment of a permanent world peace." This will be changed after the war. The appeal is so strong that the service of the peace idea may become a real calling and profession like teaching and preaching and curing. If a large part of the population were sincerely to believe that war is murder, the guns would rust. Some have also proposed to undermine the war idea by removing the fundamental cause for war, which is claimed to be the desire for foreign territory. "The desire for acquir- ing new territory may become manifest only when occasion offers to gratify it, but it is ever present in each and every nation. At times it asserted itself even in such a peace- loving people as our own; think only of Mexico and Texas, of Alaska, Hawaii, Porto Rico, Philippines." If an American speaks thus, with how much more truth a Euro- pean could link the wars of the past with the wishes for enlarged territory! Wars will 198 THE NEW PACIFISM disappear as soon as it is agreed that in fu- ture no territory can come under the control of a new possessor. The plan is typical of the idle fantasies which abound in the paci- fistic paradise. Plenty of other reasons led to war even where territory was coveted ; the desire was often only the accompaniment of deeper emotions which really caused the war. But a gTeater obstacle is that such an agree- ment would not be guaranteed; it would be broken after the usual pattern of war-makers. On the other hand, if a world government could be formed which would make sure that the agreement was kept, no such special ban on territorial changes would be needed: such a government would itself be sufficient to enforce peace. But finally the medicine would be as bad as the disease. It would mean that the distribution of lands at this chance moment of history would be artifi- cially maintained for all time. The stream with all its waves would suddenly be frozen ; nothing could move on. The development of history would stop; aspiring nations would be unable to grow, decaying nations would be left in their abundance. For six thousand years we can follow the growth and fall of 199 TOMORROW ever new nations; and tomorrow we are to decree that for the next six thousand years this natural process is to stop and every square foot is to be left to the heirs of those who inhabit it today. Such an age would be not only peaceful but stagnant. As long as the nations have a right to land as national property, the right to enlarge the posses- sions is needed. I have pointed out before that the only true remedy would be the aboli- tion of territorial property in the way in which the socialists want to abolish capital. But while the attractiveness of such radical reforms may be doubtful, their present im- possibility is sure. What else? It has been proposed to further the cause of peace through the application of the insur- ance idea to international affairs. Certainly the principle of insurance has been found fruitful and powerful and unifying in the social structure of individual men; why not make it serviceable to nations I Mutual inter- national insurance would protect the partici- pants against the destructive calamities due to war. But only the losses of those nations are to be reimbursed which are attacked; the nation which begins the war loses the 200 THE NEW PACIFISM right to compensation. Not political govern- ments but trustees would have control of the distribution. The plan was hatched in the midst of this war; and yet this war is the most convincing argument against it. To begin with, would any insurance arranged ten years ago have provided for the enor- mous sums which alone could pay the dam- ages for this disaster? What nation would have been willing to pay the premium for it, as it would have meant to double the taxes? Instead, each nation would have preferred to insure itself or would have hoped to find indemnity through a victory which dictates the conditions to the enemy. Moreover, has this war not impressively shown that the thought of mere material losses is every- where the least decisive factor? Each of the fourteen nations in the struggle has proved its readiness to sacrifice all earthly goods for the spiritual values — how can financial insur- ance influence history? And is it to pay for the five million dead and the ten million crippled? But the central error of the plan lies in the idea that he who starts the war is to be punished by losing the indemnity. Has this 201 TOMORROW war not sufficiently taught the world that it is entirely arbitrary ever to decide who has made the first move in the war game ! There is no reason to believe that future genera- tions will know anything about the beginning of the present war which would substantially change the evidence of today. Sympathy and antipathy will shade the events of 1905 to 1915 after centuries as much as today, just as for instance the lifework of Luther and the whole history of the Reformation are even today characterized by Protestant and Catholic historians with opposite epithets. Whether King Edward VII with his encir- cling policy or Emperor Franz Josef with his ultimatum to Servia or Czar Nicholas with his rapid mobilization or Emperor William with his ultimatum to Russia started the war is not a question of fact but of interpreta- tion. If Carrizal had led to war, would America or Mexico have started it? It is always the same story; and this most sub- jective element is proposed as the one ob- jective pivot on which all hinges. But let us not think of such amateurish patchwork. The masters of the craft have built better: the hope of the maturest paci- 202 THE NEW PACIFISM fism rests on the prevention of war by courts of arbitration, by treaties for retardation, by enforcement of delay. I know you are a great believer in these new-fashioned entan- glements for the bellicose. I share this belief but faint-heartedly. I do not believe that they are real historic solutions, and therefore I have no confidence that they will be power- ful factors in the future. Certainly the ma- chinery for arbitration will be steadily im- proved by the political engineers. The beau- tiful palace in The Hague will again open its gate of hammered iron about which the spiders now spin their webs; international rules will be agreed to in new Hague con- ferences; new declarations of London, of Paris, of Berlin will replace the old ones which the war has riddled. Yet no force stands behind the Hague decisions. Will the nations really be satisfied with an arbitra- tion court when vital questions are involved? Routine conflicts, of course, have often been settled without war ; the judges then simply continue the work of the diplomats. But when momentous questions of national fate demand a conclusion, will the great nations put their honor and existence into the hands 203 TOMORROW of judges? I fear the time is still far dis- tant. They know too well that every inter- national agreement allows many interpreta- tions. When the officers of the German Mo ewe brought the English steamer Appam into the American harbor, they relied on the old Prussian-American treaty which seemed so perfectly clear ; and yet the lawyers found a way to interpret the agreement so that the Allies could take the prize ship away from the German captors. The analogy of inter- national courts with national ones fails not only because there is no superior force to back the decision, but also because there is smaller chance of finding really impartial judges free from national prejudices. Yet the historic shortcoming of the inter- national court has deeper reasons. There have been few wars in modern times in which right was on one side and wrong on the other. Only in histories rewritten for boys and girls are right and wrong fighting. It would be easy to suppress war in the world if simply the just and the unjust stood opposed to one another. In reality, the typical case which leads to war is one in which a good right suffers from the contest with another good 204 THE NEW PACIFISM right. In almost every struggle of nations both sides are right and both would be un- worthy of their heritage if they did not stand for their good cause. In other words — I do not say in nicer words, but in those which the pacifists have forced on us — the real cause in almost every modern war was not justiciable. Real international wrongs have mostly been hushed up and have seldom led to bloody conflicts; unjust intentions have usually won by bribery. No international tribunals are needed for the culprits; they work with subtler means than war. But when the clouds of war are massing above the horizon and when a true struggle of peoples is near, good rights stand against good rights, rights inherited, rights won through honest work, rights acquired by custom. No judge knows means of justice by which he can decide between two equally good rights when they are unfit for compromise, and the best meaning council cannot bring help. If a final decision is secured by power and pas- sion, it is not that might intrudes upon right, but that might steps in because, where equal right is on both sides, the judge is helpless. But, then, at least, we ought to rule out 205 TOMORROW the passion; nobody ought to take up arms until a year has passed, a year in which com- missions have gathered and examined and recorded the facts and made the complex issues simple, or — which usually is still more quieting for passions — made the simple issues confused. But will the hysteria of a yellow press yield to the zeal of chairmen and re- cording secretaries until twelve months have passed over the injury to the nation? Only one way seems open — a might must be estab- lished which is stronger than the right of self-defense. We must be able to compel the unruly nation by militant power to wait a year at the gates of the arena. This is the program of the League to Enforce Peace, with the "Enforce" printed red in the title. Will it really bring us salvation? At the threshold we must not forget that the year of enforced waiting would protect any wrongdoer. If a wrong can be continued in any case for a whole year, the injury may have become irreparable; to take away the weapons of protection for a year may mean to make the victim helpless and to settle the issue against the innocent. A nation may violate the sea rights of another, may destroy 206 THE NEW PACIFISM its mail, blacklist its commerce, and yet it may be entirely safe in doing so for a year because no threatening ultimatum is per- mitted. But worse than that, instead of cool- ing the war temper, the year of delay might simply become a year of wild preparation which would raise the passion to fever heat. If the nations of Europe had foreseen the war of today and had known the date of its beginning a year before, each would have known how to use the available time. Kussia would have hastily completed its railway system; France and England would have strengthened their war industry; and, above all, Germany would have prepared by provi- sioning itself for years like a fortress. She could have done it easily ; her lack of prepa- ration was her only misfortune; it would have been avoided if the German govern- ment had known a year, or at least a month, before that the break would come. Moreover, the year of preparation would not only include guns and shells, flour and canned goods, but alliances ; the year would become a year for the expansion of the crisis. More and more nations would take the one or the other side, and the provincial struggle 207 TOMORROW would swell during the year into a conti- nental warfare. But worst of all: a strong people, unwilling to give the opponents all the chances for a year's sinister preparation, would send its ultimatum before that date; and the result, according to the plans, would be that all the nations of the league would be obliged to enter into the struggle. Every local fight would thus have a tendency to grow into a world war; truly such a League to Enforce Peace would be a league to endan- ger peace. Some imagine that such a gen- eral disaster would be averted because no nation would dare to face a whole world in arms. Yet the Germans have had to fight against fivefold superiority, and after two years practically no enemy stands on German soil. Above all, such a fight of the world against one is a fiction which would never be realized. A nation in the league might be bound by the obligation to turn against the power which declared war. But this might conflict with its other duty, to defend a friend or a neighboring people whose welfare might be intertwined with its own free existence. In the real setting of the historic nations not one can be crushed without weakening 208 THE NEW PACIFISM certain others, and these certainly have no right to sacrifice their own future. Auto- matically they would join the friend, and the outcome would be one alliance against an- other alliance, a battle front of many thou- sand miles where without the league a few short contests might have settled a provincial quarrel. The League to Enforce Peace is like the league for the use of Esperanto. This, too, was invented in order to harmonize the na- tions of the globe. Their common mistake is to fancy that in the world of history an artificial, abstract construction can replace that which has grown organically. The lin- guistic forms of a nation's expression and the emotional forms of its friendly or hostile behavior cannot be created in a philological or juristic laboratory; they have to grow in free historical development. The mere ab- stract formula for international war obliga- tions, treating each case after the same log- ical pattern, must remain a failure. It will always be brought to nothing by the organic alliances which are held together by the self- conscious will and the historic interests of great nations. All the proposed means to 209 TOMORROW enforce peace are still so doubtful and so open to discussion that these plans surely ought not to be mixed up with the peace con- ference at the end of the present war. The peace agreements which we need today in order to stop the carnage have nothing to do with the plans for the future prevention of war. The one would disastrously inter- fere with the other. Let us have peace first and then when good will on earth has re- turned, let us consider what the world can do to further the chances for its continuation. We must have at first the old peace again before we can establish the new pacifism. But have I really enumerated all the essen- tial plans for the strengthening of future peace? Preparatory armament or partial disarmament, prohibition of private muni- tion sales, propaganda for pacifistic theories and establishment of pacifistic bureaus, agreements forbidding the transfer of terri- tory, war insurance, economic isolation of the peace disturbing nation, arbitration courts, international councils, commission investiga- tion and leagues of nations to enforce peace by war : are they the most important weapons against future wars? I have my psycholog- 210 THE NEW PACIFISM ical doubts. Through all these schemes we try to serve peace directly. Surely they all may be helpful and therefore desirable, but the greatest aid to peace must come indi- rectly. The nations must serve peace with- out being aware that it is an especial service. All these elaborate efforts are negative ; their conscious aim is not to have war. What the world really needs is the positive assertion of good will and harmonious cooperation which carries peace with it as a natural by- product which does not absorb special atten- tion. Friends nowhere need systematic arrangements to inhibit struggles; there is no impulse toward fighting among them. The real advance of any individual does not re- sult from his efforts to fight mistakes but from his will to do the right thing. The progress of mankind must come along the same road. The nations must approach one another, must learn to understand one an- other, and bind themselves together not for the suppression of war but for the construc- tive work of the world. Peace will then be the wonderful fruit which is ripened by the warmth and sunshine. Historic alliances and organizations which have been organically 211 TOMORROW developed for common achievement will be the true warrants and sureties for lasting peace. As soon as firm international organi- zations are formed, the international courts will easily come to their rights. But through such organizations the new pacifism turns into a new internationalism. Let this be the center of my next letter. But I notice my letters have grown longer and longer. You may feel like Goethe's wizard's apprentice, who called the magic servant to bring water, but who did not know how to check the flood. Yes, your question about the changes after the war started this epistolary inundation. But let me comfort you at least by the prom- ise that the next two letters on international- ism will surely be the last. Hence I hope you will pardon Your old friend, H. M. vin THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM My dear Friend: Do you remember our long walk on the beach to the queer old fishermen's town when you visited us many years ago here at our summer place? You were delighted with its quaint New England streets. In the mean- time I have become acquainted with many of the good old-fashioned people there. They have such odd ways of talk; one phrase has struck me often : they call everyone who does not belong to their little town a "foreigner." They are doubtless patriotic citizens of their country and yet their fellow-countryman of the next town is to them a foreigner, simply because their town traditions are so essential to them that anyone who stands outside ap- pears sharply separated from their little world. But sometimes I must think that they simply say what most people feel: an alien 213 TOMORROW is to most men anyone who is not spun into their particular traditions and prejudices. We all are queer townspeople who know only our local or provincial or national home ideas and do not admit the stranger to the familiar streets of our mind. Is it not a vain undertaking ever to preach the spirit of internationalism? Have not these years of war annihilated even that faint feeling of world-community which had developed in "the piping times of peace"? Not only at the belligerent coasts were the gleaming sig- nal fires extinguished when the war began; it became dark on neutral shores too and dark on the shores of our friendships. We who had faithfully devoted our life- work to the hope that America, Germany and England would grow into a firmly allied group of friends had to suffer most from the sudden loss of international sympathies. We had confidently believed that the inner unity of these three Teutonic nations would be the greatest power for world harmony. Surely this faith which inspired us did not grow from any lack of sympathy for other na- tions. Who did not feel in those sunny days of yore that his life was richer for the con- 214 THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM tact with the fascinating brilliancy of France and the mellow beauty of Italy, with the genial spirit of Austria and the inexhaustible soul of Kussia, with the admirable dash of Japan and the tremendous power for civic good in the small states of Europe? Never- theless to us the great historic chord was America, Great Britain and Germany, three nations so different in traits and traditions and yet so alike in their health, strength and moral energy. We felt they were the three really progressive peoples which ought to work in growing friendship for the glorious advance of the world. The fulfillment of these wishes had seemed so near. Every day, we fancied, brought the three peoples more cordially together, the three Teutonic master- nations in which the aristocratic will toward highest civilization blended with the demo- cratic spirit of individual responsibility. And suddenly hatred hissed through the Teutonic lands. Every British thought was red with rage against Germany and every German feeling hurled its anger against England. America boiled with indignation against the kaiserites, and the Fatherland was disgusted with America. Even England's contempt 215 TOMORROW for America broke out again, and America came to the end of its patience with a nation which destroys its mail and its trade with the neutrals and humbles it by its black- lists. A bitter warfare of minds came over the three peoples and all the dreams of the bet- ter past were cruelly shattered. I know some months ago you took a more optimistic view and wrote to me that the so-called "hatred" had really vanished in Germany. It broke out at the beginning of the war, when it had a kind of social function. The depth of indigna- tion, you said at that time, was necessary in order to stir everybody to those unheard-of sacrifices which the defense against fivefold superiority of men demanded from every Ger- man ; but it has long since yielded to an emo- tion of higher order. You said that the Ger- mans of today are simply bound by the sol- emn resolution to fulfill the historic task of winning this war; the God of history gave them a duty to be performed. Of course, there are temperamental variations, but I think you are right as far as the masses of the people are concerned. I am inclined to think that a similar change has come to Eng- 216 THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM land and France. It lies in the character of French journalism that the language of ex- treme emotion still makes itself heard in strident tones when the thoughts have so- bered down. But the passion of hatred is still sweeping through the streets of the American East. Indeed I have the impression that the Ger- mans are unaware of the extent to which the American rage has gone. They always fancy that it is only the sensationalism of the press which fosters the anti-German hysteria of the public. They have no idea how far the churches, how far the universities have gone, and, alas, how far press, priests and profes- sors have leavened the whole social loaf. Let us not deceive ourselves. The operations are well under way to have this American hatred perpetuated when the war excitement has died out and to inject a cruel unfairness into generations to come, generations which them- selves will not know in what narrowness they have been nurtured. The entire school life will be rilled with an anti-German spirit, un- less radical changes can be effected. In the field which is nearest to you and me, the field of scholarship, the devastation is almost 217 TOMORROW tragic. In the European countries where the scholarly work stands in the foreground of public esteem and is perfectly protected by old traditions, the danger is small. Any yielding to the passion of the hour, however unfortunate, will soon be corrected. No German will ignore or belittle the scholarly contributions of Frenchmen or Englishmen, and vice versa. But in America where scholarship has not yet come to its own, where it is not backed by public esteem but has to defend itself constantly against the world of affairs, the present breakdown of the truly scholarly spirit may be irreparable. The most alarming symptom of the Amer- ican situation, however, is that the hatred against Germany has become the passport to social prominence. The large middle class of the people is essentially fair, but the layer which travels to Europe knows London and Paris a hundred times better than Berlin and Vienna. Knowledge means habit, and habit means sympathy and love. The predomi- nance of the woman in American society with her easily excited emotions and the influence of the social climbers are especially respon- sible for a passionate one-sidedness of the 218 THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM upper class, which far surpasses the bellig- erent setting of European society. And yet, my friend, it is my sure belief that in America as well as in Europe sanity will return and that without any superficial concessions in the realm of principles the de- mand for fairness will soon prevail again. Do not forget that the nations at war have been too much in contact throughout these years not to become fully aware of the noble and strong traits of their opponents too. However much indignation may be expressed in the lines, between the lines you can read the growing respect. I know the low estimate which the average German had of the moral fiber of the Frenchman: he saw in France a decadent nation which had lost its courage and spirit of sacrifice. This hasty contempt has yielded to respect, nay, to admiration. The judgment about England was more fa- vorable, but the average German had no idea of the firmness of the British Empire. He knew that through three centuries a ruthless warfare had subjugated one-fifth of the globe. But he did not grasp the earnestness with which the British nation had fulfilled its civilizing mission and its duties toward 219 TOMORROW its colonies. The loyalty with which the dis- tant members of the Empire and even the Boers stood by the island has certainly im- pressed every fair German and altered his opinion about the English. Western Europe on the other hand has rec- ognized clearly how superficial had been the talk about the difference between govern- ment and people in the Fatherland. They saw how millions of volunteers rushed forward and how all parties were united in the sup- port of the governmental policies. More- over they had derided the German thorough- ness as stupid pedantry; soon they recog- nized that it was the indispensable condition of efficiency in the hour of pressure, and their imitation expressed their approval. Many such elements of respect have intertwined with the hatred of the belligerents and weak- ened it. The Americans have been less touched by such passing emotions because they are too far off, but where an actual con- tact occurred, new sentiments flashed up. No doubt the first submarine which crossed the ocean and brought a peaceful message into the harbor of Baltimore has caught the American imagination, and the cordiality 220 THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM shown to that brave little crew contrasted charmingly with the heat of the standard editorials. The world moves forward, while hatred pulls backward. The fundamental trouble, after all, lies in the lack of mutual understanding. It has al- ways been so and the war has only reaped the harvest. The nations of the world do not know one another, and where the acquaintance remains on the surface any artificial agitation in favor of or against a nation can succeed, as it nowhere finds re- sistance. If the appeal to emotional preju- dices is skillfully made, the image of the na- tion becomes distorted for better or for worse. Today the Americans with sincere enthusiasm look on England, France and Russia as the countries which stand for free- dom in the world. The suggestion of the pro- Ally propaganda has simply extinguished the memory of all which the history of the last few centuries has taught. The three na- tions which have built up gigantic empires by relentless conquest, enlarging and enlarg- ing their territories by overpowering nation after nation without ever asking their con- sent, are suddenly brought into contrast 221 TOMORROW with Germany, which is today still like a pygmy among giants. It would be so easy to reverse the picture. Within a few weeks Charles W. Eliot has sharply formulated the reasons why the Americans ought to enter the war on the side of the Allies even at this late date in the third summer of the war. They must do so because the American ideals coincide with those of the Allies and are opposed to the German ones, which are in every respect the contrary. Those American ideals are po- litical and social. The social ones Eliot states as follows: "1. A mobile social state in which the individual is free to do his best and to enjoy the fruits of his efforts. 2. Uni- versal education, not confined to childhood. 3. The habitual expectation of more truth, light and good for mankind. 4. Publicity. 5. Efficiency through freedom and a disci- pline in which free men cooperate. 6. Wide- ly diffused private property protected by equal laws." Now can anyone who really knows Germany doubt that every one of these six social ideals is a fundamentally German ideal? Those who are not well informed need only to read some of President Eliot's 222 THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM former speeches, one of which was made only a few months before the war, in praise of German universal education and of German freedom and discipline. It is not much dif- ferent with regard to the political ideals. He formulates them: "1. Government rest- ing on the consent and cooperation of the governed. 2. Manhood suffrage. 3. The elective executive. 4. Just and equal laws. 5. The general good. 6. The popular as- sembly, democratic or representative.' ' Can it really be claimed that these six political ideals are realized in America and the allied countries but opposed by Germany, and that America ought to sacrifice its youth on the battlefield in order to crush Germany's re- sistance to these ideals? Of course, those who know the character of German government only through the caricatures would claim that "resting on the consent of the governed" indicates the dif- ference. The German would say, on the con- trary, that the American government lacks that consent, as President Wilson was elected by a minority of the voters, the majority not consenting to the principles of his platform. In Germany, he would add, the whole nation, 223 TOMORROW with the exception of the small radical wing of the social democrats, stands solidly be- hind the Kaiser. That is the whole meaning of the German idea, that national leadership ought to rest on the consent of the nation and that that is possible only if the leader is not elected by struggling parties. The in- heritance of the rulership makes it exempt from rivalry and dissent and transforms it into a symbol of the national spirit sup- ported by the cheerful trust and belief of all. How much ill will would evaporate if people everywhere understood better the meaning of foreign institutions and recognized that the difference of means and methods does not mean a difference of ends and ideals ! But there would be little hope for the harmony of the world if we had to wait until the nations learned about one another all of which they have shown themselves ignorant during the war. The only hope which we can foster is that they at least may try to for- get those travesties of the truth which the malice of the hour has created in every land. The mob shouts everywhere, remember this and remember that and remember every- thing. The psychologist cannot contribute 224 THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM anything better to the discussion than the re- minder that the mind has mechanisms for well-selected forgetting as well as for re- membering. Most people think of forgetting as if it were a weakness and a defect. Surely- much which we forget fades away from our mind because we are unable to hold it. Even that is a useful arrangement as we should be overburdened if every insignificant de- tail of our experience were to linger on in the reservoirs of our memory. But we know today that there is a more delicate adjust- ment of the forgetting process to the needs of life. Our subconscious mechanisms can inhibit those memory ideas which are linked with unpleasant emotions. We all shall need a certain impulse to repress some painful memories of these war years, but we can rely on the power of such a resolution. We really can forget, and there would be faint hope for reconstruction if we were to refuse to cross this bridge to a better time. What is the use if a reasonable man like H. G. Wells ends his book "What Is Coming'?" with the pledge, "I will do all that I can to restore the unity of mankind," and yet adds as the last word: "Nevertheless is it true that for me 225 TOMORROW for all the rest of my life the Germans I shall meet, the German things I shall see, will appear smeared with the blood of my people and my friends that the selfishness of Ger- many has spilled. " With such logic of the heart a thousand million people can today barricade for themselves every outlook to- ward the ' ' unity of mankind. ' ' If every Ger- man should say too that for the rest of his life every English and French and Italian and Russian gift will be stained by the blood of his German comrades which the jealousy and revenge of the Allies have shed, or that everything which comes from America will be tainted with the blood of his friends and brothers whom American ammunition killed, we should never go beyond the disheartening misery of today. It is so easy to remember, but true culture shows itself in the more dif- ficult art of forgetting. Yet even the war has not shaken my faith. However widely the spirit of nationalism may spread its wings, I feel convinced that a new internationalism will develop no less powerfully when the days of peace have come. I expect that the commerce of the world will give the signal for international 226 THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM reconstruction. The Paris preparations of the Allies for an economic warfare after the military one may have sounded terrifying; and yet they will not be realized. The war cannot be closed by a peace which denies peace. Moreover, strong demands and low bids will meet each other, however high the patriotic fence which may be erected. Divi- sion of economic labor is a tremendous sav- ing, and Europe will be too poor after the war to afford the luxury of disregarding this economy. Political custom unions at first may bind only smaller groups, but very soon the world will again be one great market, and soon enough the shop windows of Paris, Berlin, Vienna, London and New York will be glittering with the same trinkets from all over the world. The flag of the merchant- man will carry good will over all oceans ; and high finance, after profiting not a little from the war, will profit still more from the eco- nomic unity of the nations. I put my hopes no less in the cultural in- terrelations. You know I have always be- lieved that political harmony can be devel- oped best from a mutual cultural under- standing. You remember that this was the 227 TOMORROW real starting point for the Amerika-Institut in Berlin, the plans for which I submitted to the German Government and which I organ- ized later in the year of my exchange pro- fessorship. I felt that it was unsatisfactory to leave the spiritual interests of the nations entirely to accidental contact. Just as there are diplomatic agencies for the exchange of political interests, and chambers of com- merce and clearing houses for the economic life of the peoples, a clearing house for cultural exchange seemed to me needed in our complex times. And did I not tell you, when I showed you the beautiful Berlin institute, how much I hoped that it would soon be en- larged beyond the mere America-Germany sphere into a general institute for interna- tional cultural relations? I was sure that the other countries would soon follow the ex- ample and a network of bureaus devoted to scientific and artistic, social and spiritual give and take would be spun around the globe. It might have become the most pow- erful help toward international cordiality. The war broke in before that work could be completed. But whether it is developed in future days, 228 THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM whether cultural exchange is systematically planned and furthered by special establish- ments, or whether it is left to the chaotic en- ergies of the millions, in any case the work of the national mind will not be bound by any frontiers. It will carry its message to for- eign lands as before, will soon again have won sympathizers, friends and admirers, and again in the works of genius we will have ' ' travelled in the print of olden wars, yet all the land was green, and love we found, and peace, where fire and war had been." My chief trust is in science and art. The philoso- phy of hatred can be the text only for some short speeches ; the big volumes of the libra- ries will be written in the spirit of philoso- phy. I am still stirred by the thrill of an epi- sode which lies a dozen years back. It was the time of the Russo-Japanese War. Six hun- dred leading scholars of the world had been invited to St. Louis as guests, of the World's Fair to the great Congress of Arts and Sci- ences. On the evening of the festive ban- quet the most famous jurist of Japan made a great speech about the role of scholarship in the life of mankind. Opposite him sat the Leading astronomer of Russia, and suddenly 229 TOMORROW the Japanese shouted as the climax of his speech that this assembly hall of the scholars was the only place in the world where a Japa- nese would be ready to shake hands with a Russian. And the man from Petrograd stood up and cordially shook the hand of the man from Tokyo, while the hall thundered with the applause of their colleagues. "Wherever two scholars meet the soul of mankind is present. I am the last to preach the cosmopolitanism of science; truth must be clothed in its na- tional garb. Three times three is nine for men of all countries, and yet even mathe- matics has a different character in France, in Germany, in England, and a thousand times more is this valid for the fields of non- mathematical knowledge. History and phi- lology, economics and philosophy, biology and medicine, jurisprudence and theology, can never be molded in an international cast. Their national and to a large degree their personal coloring is their strength; and yet they all contribute to the world system of knowledge, which cannot be split into a pro- Ally and an anti-Ally scholarship. No na- tional scholarship can be great unless it is 230 THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM faithful to international endeavor, and the ultimate test of its value will remain its in- fluence on the thought of the world. I know that in Germany the new nationalism pleads for a kind of intellectual embargo. The stu- dents of the world have come to German uni- versities and have taken away with them the ideas and methods which have helped the for- eign lands. I hope sincerely that this petty view will not prevail. Whoever spreads the national gifts of the spirit cannot lose anything but only win through cultural influence. A national scholarship surrounded by a Chinese Wall is not protected but in gravest danger. The damage which these years of war have brought to the world of thought has been al- ready so great that all nations will have to stand together to repair it with an enthusi- astic movement toward open-hearted and fair-minded internationalism of thought. The feeble efforts of academic exchanges in the past will be outdone by great systematic works of cooperation. As a reaction from the terrific disaster an international human- ism like that in the days of the Renaissance will spring up in the civilized nations. Art and music, literature and the drama, 231 TOMORROW will flourish with the same expansive "ten- dency. All the suffering and all the inspira- tion of this incomparable time will live in the creations of the national arts of every nation and will fill them with national heart- blood. But wherever they reach greatness the national song of agony or of joy will ring through the world. Every war has stimu- lated the imagination of the peoples who lived through the overwhelming excitement. If a harvest of beauty grows from the blood- drenched soil of the world tomorrow, it will cover many ravages of today. The same will be true of the technical inventions and prac- tical devices, of the educational advances and social improvements, of the political ideas and public reforms, wherever the leading minds create them. They will be the more efficient the more they are produced by the conscious energies of a particular nation, but their efficiency will show itself best in the molding of the international life. The prob- lems of labor, of capital, of women, of the child, of sex, of vocation, of the church, the problems of alcohol, of crime, of punishment, of mental deficiency, the city problem, the rural problem, the today unshaped problem, 232 THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM will be furthered in one land tomorrow only to stimulate the experts and the amateurs in every land the day after tomorrow. The fash- ions without and within will spread as be- fore, and before long we shall again have world's fairs and world's vanity fairs in which every nation will be welcome. At the beginning there will be still some moral re- sistance on all sides to certain companion- ships ; soon it will shrink to a mere formality, and after a while even this will appear petty, old-fashioned, and finally tasteless. But the internationalism which will grow after the war is not confined to the spreading of commerce, culture and reform. The na- tions will not only give and take their na- tional products in eager exchange, but they will and must combine their efforts for com- mon purposes. The indignant pose cannot last long when a thousand tasks of interna- tional communication and transportation, of hygiene and law, of credit and safety, can be performed only by united labor. There is no use in abuse if hands must be clasped. Mail- ing and shipping, traveling and migrating, telephoning and cabling, copyrighting and patent protecting, trading and exchanging, 233 TOMORROW fighting crimes and disease with common ef- fort, cannot stop in order to let the world know that the German deed against the Sus- sex or the British deed of the Baralong is still alive. The work of the world cannot be done by sulking, and there will be very much more work to be done by the European peo- ples among their ruins than they ever had to do in their gay surroundings of yesterday. The distress which stalks through all coun- tries alike will force on them the need of co- operation, far beyond the necessities of the past. Surely at the international conferences of government deputies and in the congresses of administrative specialists there will be at first some cool and stiff bowing; groups will be formed in various corners of the hall, and in the discussions some sarcastic words will scratch old wounds. Yet even the sharpest discussion binds men together, and the devo- tion to the common task of the future will be stronger than the separating memory of the past. The fighting nations of today can upbuild their national happiness only if they work with one another, and that means finally for one another, with an energy which was hardly 234 THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM needed in the comfortable days of Europe's peace. Too many new problems have been added by the war itself. New central insti- tutes for world interests, new international bu- reaus, official and unofficial, will be demanded. The elaborately drawn city plan for a beau- tiful world center to be built somewhere in Switzerland or in Holland for the settling of the common affairs of all nations was mostly glanced at with a smile when it was sent around by a committee shortly before the war ; the need seemed too remote. After the war the world may feel otherwise. It seems high time that the common work of all na- tions be brought more forcefully to the fore- ground of interest. The world post bureau in Berne remains the model, but the nations have now discovered that they have more to do with one another than to write letters and postal cards. Great changes are to be secured in many fields, unless all peoples alike are to suffer from the past and are to remain threat- ened by ever new disasters. Supernational organizations will be inevitable for many functions which so far had been left to na- tional initiative and accidental international contact. 235 TOMORROW I hope confidently that such new structures will not remain isolated but will slowly be combined in a general superstructure above the national civilizations. It is of small value to discuss at this early date how future gen- erations ought to work out the details of such a world constitution, in which the civilized states and the semi-civilized territories of the world would be combined. Whether the dele- gates to the congress of the United States of the World will be apportioned according to the number of inhabitants of the various countries or to the area or to the wealth or to the literacy, or whether each one will have the same number of delegates — why ought we to wrangle about the problems of those who come after us! We know that we shall not see such a parliament and that if we were to see it, it would prove helpless and ineffi- cient, because the time is not ripe. Too many stages must still be passed through. Too many smaller organizations and looser feder- ations must be tried and tested by mankind 's experience before that firmest tie can bind the world together. But this ultimate stage of our hopes cannot even be approached unless we of today clearly recognize that such an 236 THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM international organization would in no way interfere with a vigorous and powerful na- tionalism. Europeans have pointed to the Pan- Amer- ican Union as a model for larger organiza- tions which may lead on to better times. I doubt whether the model can have real sig- nificance. This purely geographical combina- tion is, after all, so completely controlled by the United States that any analogy would be misleading. But both these United States and the German Empire suggest in a more promising way the solid union of equals which keep a far-reaching independence and a healthy cultural self-consciousness. The kingdoms of Saxony and of Bavaria and of Wiirttemburg or the republics of Hamburg and of Bremen have not lost their govern- ment or their independent control of schools and universities, of social, legal and economic affairs, by having become organic parts of the German Empire. But surely if it is im- possible today for Bavaria and Saxony or for Pennsylvania and Virginia to have a war against each other, it is because an embrac- ing federal constitution unites them for great common work. If they had combined their 237 TOMORROW state powers only for the one purpose of fighting war, and if they had established a supreme court which would settle the quar- rels of the single states among one another without the background of one common legis- lative and executive activity, they would never have succeeded. William R. Vance in a recent paper on 1 ' The Supreme Court of the United States as an International Tribunal" reminded us that during the period between the end of the Rev- olutionary War and the establishment of the Constitution, the existing confederation of the states bound them together only in name. "During this disturbing period in American history there existed among these states all those vicious influences which have always made for war, of the kind that have had much to do with bringing on the present war in Europe. There were boundary disputes, vio- lations of sovereignty, local greed and self- seeking, commercial rivalry with trade re- strictions and discriminations and retalia- tory legislation and even racial jealousies. The state of New York was particularly hos- tile to her neighbors and proceeded upon the theory that her wealth and commerce could 238 THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM be built up only by tearing down that of her neighbors. . . . The saving feature of the new constitution was the federal judiciary, headed by the Supreme Court vested with au- thority to settle controversies between the states.' ' But would this judiciary and this Supreme Court have been thinkable if in all other respects the thirteen states had re- mained unbridled and disunited? That Su- preme Court was the crowning feature of the United States Government, but it could never have been established or would never have fulfilled the aim, if there had not been a com- mon president and congress charged with an abundance of peaceful functions outside of the negative one of suppressing quarrels and wars. This is the point which the pacifists are in- clined to overlook when they gather their an- alogies from history. Their hopes for a su- preme court of the world must be in vain as long as all the non-judicial international or- ganizations are insignificant. England's re- lations to the other maritime powers cannot be settled so simply as those of New York State to its neighbor states were harmonized by the establishment of the Supreme Court, 239 TOMORROW unless some world president or at least some world commission regime with a world con- gress stands behind it. The question of the physical force by which the will of the world organization can be made paramount for each incorporated nation offers much less diffi- culty. If a real positive statelike world or- ganization can be formed, it ought to be pos- sible to check every recalcitrant people by economic and cultural isolation. The special military force would then be secondary. The cutting off of all communication and ex- change might prove more powerful than force. But we must begin at the beginning. The world federation must be established in order to have the basis for the truly impar- tial world court to which every nation is ready to submit its grievances; the court alone cannot work. The federation, on the other hand, cannot develop through mere plans for a judiciary, but essentially from productive organizations. The new interna- tionalism will surely advance along this line. But it will advance the more steadily the more it moves on by slow steps and is not misled by will-o '-the-wisps. This means that the world federation ought to be an ideal, but 240 THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM cannot possibly be a platform. The mere legal arrangement would be an artificial de- vice ruled by abstract ideas and not by the living powers of history. The federation will be the final result of such a historic develop- ment if it slowly grows out of the needs of the active nations, but it must have ages to mature. The only true historic form for which we can hope at a time within our reach must be more modest and more limited. We must have wide organizations for tech- nical or cultural purposes and in the sphere of pure politics combinations of large and small nations. If such organizations have strictly military character, they are hardly more serviceable for the final federation idea than any other technical union. But the ex- periences of the recent past suggest that na- tions which cooperate will feel the need of a fuller approach. They will be ready to or- ganize more than the mutual help of armies and navies; they will prepare for common peaceful achievement and production as well as for common dangers and emergencies. This spirit of organization and of efficiency through common thorough preparedness has taken hold of the world in the last two years 241 TOMORROW and will remain the strongest influence for the near future. The international combina- tions of powers will show this new spirit more than any other smaller human group can show it. What may be the leading group in which this new trend to international or- ganization will appear? I, for one, should say: Germany, England, America. I can imagine how your indignation rises : how can I dare ! I do, but I shall give you a week to ponder on it and to cool off, and then I shall write to you more fully about it. Hoping that at least it will not dissolve the old alli- ance between you and me, In cordial friendship, yours, H. M. IX THE RECONSTRUCTION My dear Colleague: I plunge at once into our controversy, feel- ing more than ever the shortcomings of such written words. How I should like to hear the clean-cut answers with which you enliven and enrich debates ! Instead of it I must stick to my monotonous letter paper. But the argu- ment for my political heresy would run as follows. Of course, the idea of allies today suggests to the world the nine nations which are combined in the war against the central powers of Europe. But I ask myself: Can they hope or do they even wish to remain members of an alliance when the great war at last comes to its end! Too much has leaked out. The interests are too diverging, the national temperaments too different, the historic tasks too much opposed: with the hour of peace the alliance of today will break 24-3 TOMORROW asunder. It was a team harnessed for the task of an hour. Each of them, right or wrong, was set against Germany for reasons of its own, reasons as unlike as possible. It was a master stroke of British diplomacy to weld those different hostilities into one great encircling power. The great conflict between England and France had to be suppressed, so that the French-English harmony could be demonstrated at Algeciras ten short years after the heated days of Fashoda. But the more difficult task in the service of the new campaign was to inhibit the traditional en- mity between England and Russia. They know that their fight has to be decided at the frontiers of India, and the two empires face each other like two wrestlers, making each move with masterly diplomacy and with a consciousness of tremendous power. They do not build for a day but for centuries. Russia pressed toward Constantinople ; Great Britain could not allow Russia's control of the Mediterranean. It is not long ago that the music halls of London resounded to the wild applause for the popular song which ran: "We have fought the bear before, and while we are Britons true, the Russians shall 244 THE RECONSTRUCTION not have Con-stan-ti-nople." For one sharp war against their inconvenient neighbor who spoiled the Balkan policy of Russia and pressed hard the British commerce in the world market, this fundamental contest could be set aside. But they remain "Britons true, ' ' and however the war against Germany ends, the British-Russian world conflict will be the same after as before the war. Have Russia and France any interest in continuing the alliance? The Russians never liked it, but accepted it because the great money-loaning nation was ready to give billions for the Russian armament and especially for the military railway sys- tem on the Russian-German frontier. The French hope for revenge appeared near fulfillment through the Russian alliance, and no sacrifice for it seemed too great. Those billions are lost: Russia will not be able to repay them after this war; Al- sace-Lorraine has proved with the blood of her children that it is German to its heart's core, loyal to the one thousand years of its history. What interest can keep the Czar and the French President in political union? Italy has quickly become the burden on the 245 TOMORROW shoulders of England, France and Russia. To have forced Italy's entrance into the war on the side of the Allies was perhaps the most serious mistake of judgment which the Allies have to regret. At one stroke the empire of Austria-Hungary was united and the Balkans estranged. Italy's interests con- flict with those of the Allies at almost every point. Japan has shown its world policies with perfect frankness. The treaty between Japan and Russia is certainly one of the greatest political events of our time. The two strongest Asiatic forces have joined hands and instead of struggling about Korea or Manchuria, they unite for the supremacy over China and the Pacific. The Asiatic Monroe Doctrine is declared and England knows that Japan is playing its bold game against British power in Asia. The new treaty practically annihilates the old one be- tween Japan and England. The Oriental ally, the cleverest of them all, is the only one which is a sure winner under all circum- stances, but it cannot in future remain allied with England, France and Italy. In short, the team of today must break up when the war is over. It is an artificial combination 246 THE RECONSTRUCTION bound together for a momentary effect ; there is no inner blending, no organic unity, no his- toric promise. This dissolution of the alli- ance after the war certainly does not suggest any disloyalty of its members as long as the war lasts. Such is the future of the Allies, but who will be the allies of the future? Can we determine the horoscope of the century? I think in one essential aspect the psychologi- cal setting of the coming age can be clearly foreseen: the fundamental antithesis of the political world will be that of Great Britain and Eussia. Other possibilities have often been discussed. Some expect the grouping of the whole of Europe against the whole of America. But that is a map-made and not a mind-made opposition. South America stands nearer to Southern Europe than to the United States, Western Europe nearer to the United States than to Eastern Europe. Moreover, Asia cannot be left out in any fu- ture combination: Pan-Europe and Pan- America are no longer the world. The prog- nosis of some German extremists that the great antithesis will be central Europe against the field is no less unhistoric. Even 247 TOMORROW if Germany and Austria were to end the war with a triumph far beyond the present ex- pectations, any peace which is really a peace and not a continuation of the war in a modi- fied form must reshape the present unnatu- ral constellation. Germany would sacrifice its success if it did not join other powers, as its political aims and its economic life conditions are opposed to any aloofness. Germany has not sought the dominant role of the conqueror who stands alone against the world. Not a single great political or economic principle would separate Germany from both Western and Eastern Europe at the same time. A fundamental grouping for and against Germany will be utterly mean- ingless as soon as this war is ended. The German Empire, even with all the colonies which it ever had, covers only the tenth part of the British and the eighth part of the Russian Empire. These are the two great conquering nations of the globe, and their planful expansion might indeed involve future world conflicts. Pro-Germans and anti-Germans will be in the future no more the chief opponents than Pan-Europeans and Pan- Americans ; but Britons and Russians 248 THE RECONSTRUCTION will be and must be the next protagonists in the drama of the century. They will not be the last and even a fight to the finish be- tween them would not mean the end of the human struggle in wars and war substitutes. It may be that old peoples like the Chinese, the Zionistic Hebrews, the Persians, or new peoples like the Australians, the Boers, the South Americans, will develop into overpow- ering nations which will arise against the leading peoples of today. But for the next two or three generations such a revolution seems impossible: the strategic position of the leading nations of our time is so strong that the decisive issues will lie among them. The issue of Britannia or Russia will be the central one. But neither country will stand alone. One alliance is definitely settled: the union between Russia and Japan will be un- shakable, as it serves common interests which must steadily grow. But Japan, as soon as it is supported by Russia, becomes an antag- onist to the historic tasks of the United States. It must seek not only the control of the Philippines, but of the Pacific. Mexico would be Japan's natural ally. America can meet this danger only by some kind 249 TOMORROW of understanding with Great Britain. Eng- land and America will balance Russia, Japan and Mexico. A prophecy which goes up to this point seems pretty safe, as the psychol- ogy of the situation simply demands this grouping. But as to the next great move on the chess- board foresight is much more difficult, as two possibilities seem open. Germany will have to join the one or the other party ; Germany will combine with Russia or with England. While their land is eight or ten times larger, Germany's power, mightily strengthened by its successes in the war, is amply sufficient to make its ally by far superior to any op- ponent. That side to which Germany adds its weight on the scales of Europe will outbal- ance every adversary. No doubt if this de- cision has to be made a large part of the German people would prefer to turn to Rus- sia. The terrors of the Cossack invasion in East Prussia, the most horrible outrage of all the war, will not have lost their grip on their minds, but the instinctive reaction against England will be stronger. The con- viction that England forced this war on its economic rival by harnessing Russia and 250 THE RECONSTRUCTION France will never be given up by the Ger- mans. Moreover, long historic traditions back such a German-Russian understanding. The Japanese would welcome it heartily. The alliance of Germany, Austria, Russia, Japan, would be easy and comfortable. It would be the safer as it would be controlled by the prospect of a common gain : All alike would profit from a victory over England. Many Germans believe that France would also join the Russian-German union. Yet it would be a tremendous calamity. It would burden the highly progressive culture of the fatherland with the companionship of the heavy oriental semi-culture of the Musco- vites. Concessions to such a backward civ- ilization, however fascinating its somber beauty and however valuable its deep reli- gious fervor, would slowly weaken the inner German life. But another result would be still more disheartening: an alliance with Russia would be the straight way to a fur- ther war. The momentum of the Russian Empire forces expansion wherever the re- sistance is weak. Russia, stimulated by the ambition of Japan and supported by the army of Germany, would be no longer free to* 251 TOMORROW choose; it would have to take up the fight against the great invader of Asia. India would be liberated from the English yoke in order to come into the sphere of Russian and Japanese influence: Asia for the Asi- atics! Germany would be lured into such a war by the hope of breaking forever the Brit- ish supremacy of the sea. This war, in which Eussia, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Japan and Mexico would fight against Great Brit- ain and the United States, with the position of France and Italy in doubt, would be a superwar to which the struggle of today would appear a mere preamble. Its outcome would be doubtful, but whoever won, the devastation of the civilized lands would be terrific. For the first time the whole of Asia and America would tremble, and Europe would be drenched in blood. Is that the pros- pect with which the belligerents of today are to go home from the trenches 1 Will the peace for which we all long really mean only a short truce and more horrible war at the next signal! The mere thought of it is un- bearable. It cannot be, it must not be, and yet it will be, unless from the start power- ful energies force the development into the 252 THE RECONSTRUCTION opposite direction. Germany's alliance with Russia is war; the only other possibility is a German understanding with Great Britain and America. If the three great Teutonic nations enter into a practical union, the peace of the world is secure for children and children's children. Great Britain's navy, Germany's army and America's economic power, nay, Great Brit- ain's colonizing genius, Germany's thor- oughness and America's energetic op- timism make an invincible team. It would be an organic union and the whole new set- ting of the world would have truly historic meaning. East Europe with Asia on one side, Central and Western Europe with North America on the other side, is a di- vision of the northern world in which the inner forces of the century are really ex- pressed. It would be no artificial binding to- gether, but the natural organization of two groups of divergent spirit and interest. This antithesis of Orient and Occident would not presage an armed conflict. It would be a perfect balance in which the only power which must seek expansion, Russia, would be held in check. With Germany on the English 253 TOMORROW side Russia could never attack India. The unstable equilibrium of past combinations would have been replaced by a perfectly sta- ble one. It might not mean the end of war forever. Nor would it mean the end of arma- ment. On the contrary, Germany will have to build a wall of bayonets along its eastern frontiers, even if an autonomous Poland is created as a buffer state. But while pre- paredness would remain necessary, the two groups would be able to live side by side en- gaged for two or three generations in their inner development, without actual friction in the regions of contact. Each of the two groups would be the nu- cleus for a much larger combination. Aus- tria, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, would clus- ter about the German-English-American cen- ter. Each of them accordingly would be at last in a historic position in which they could organize their own members into a firmer union. For a long time it will surely not be a real federation. Neither the Asiatic East European group nor the American West Central European group will have a common government. But some kind of representa- 254 THE RECONSTRUCTION tive assembly will surely be established for these combinations of the future in order to settle their common concerns. As these af- fairs of the various groups overlap and as no war cloud will be on the horizon the different congresses may slowly be interconnected, and the civilized world will become more and more accustomed to the plan of organized action. It need not be and ought not to be a repetition of the anemic Hague conferences, which had the stamp of insincerity and in- efficiency from the instant of the first invi- tation of Czar Nicholas. With them the idea of world organization started wrongly be- cause their only function was to forbid. True organization must begin — a psychologist can- not say it too often — with positive construc- tive common work. The so-called "interna- tional law" must be almost the by-product of the assemblies which serve the great cultural, social, hygienic, technical, scientific, statisti- cal, philanthropic and moral tasks. The im- portance, breadth of action and power of such a central body must naturally grow by itself and will approach more and more the form of a federal government. But long be- fore this last goal is reached the organization 255 TOMORROW will have gained sufficient strength to be a background for a world tribunal with really impartial judges and moral and economic en- ergies sufficient to enforce the verdict. No necessity determines Germany's future course. It can be foreseen with certainty that after the war Russia and Great Britain will be the centers of two world groups, but whether Germany will join the one or the other cannot be predicted. The only pos- sible prediction is that the Russian-German alliance would mean perpetual war, and the British-German understanding would prom- ise long, unbroken peace. We who want peace and who believe that it would be madness to make this carnage continuous can therefore see clearly for which decision we ought to work. The parting of the ways is near. No more solemn duty is before those who look with open eyes into the distance than to warn and to warn the Germans against the Rus- sian companionship and to urge and to urge a firm, frank German-British union with the United States as the third chief associate. I have no doubt, my friend, you will read these pages of my letter with distrust and embarrassment. You will shake your head 256 THE RECONSTRUCTION and say that the hope of a German-British understanding is an epigram not worthy to be taken seriously. Certainly at this hour, when the struggle is at no war front so bitter as where German and British troops face each other, it sounds paradoxical. Yet it would be poor politics to suppress an appeal because it may startle at the first moment and to wait until it pleases everyone ; then it may be too late. Think of it quietly and your reasoning will end at this same conviction. I have made a test. Recently I published an essay in the leading papers of New York, Boston and Philadelphia, pleading with similar argu- ments for future German-British-American sympathy. An avalanche of letters rushed in upon me. About fifteen per cent came from Anglo-Americans who denounced the plan ve- hemently: "Not until Tirpitz and every junker is burned alive": "Decent nations like England and America can never deal with savage barbarians," and so on. More than ten per cent were from Germans and German-Americans who spoke a similar slang : ' ' First Grey must be hanged " : "No community possible between honest Germans and English brutes and criminals." This 257 TOMORROW "was to be expected. I was psychologist enough to foresee that both the anti-German and the anti-British extremists would de- nounce me as a poor psychologist who does not understand the emotions of the indignant peoples. But about seventy-five per cent of the letters spoke quite a different language. Many confessed that they had been surprised at first, but that they recognized, "It has to be." The majority, however, welcomed the plan from the start and many were filled with jubilant enthusiasm. I do not ask for your enthusiasm : it would even be improper for the belligerent peoples, as long as the con- test of the armies lasts. I ask you only to acknowledged, "It has to be" if the peace of tomorrow is to be more than the signal for the most frightful world war in the days to come. In every land there are carpet-baggers who are bound to make a mess of reconstruction. Let us beware of their egotism and let us be- ware no less of those who remain slaves of their war mood and of their indignation. To satisfy their patriotic grudge is to them more important than to build up the strength and honor and safety of their country. The Ger- 258 THE RECONSTRUCTION mans and English and, alas, the Americans will have to forget much which has set their blood boiling. Mistakes, serious mistakes, have been made on all sides and have been sincerely regretted on all sides. Much which has been done by each people with historic justice and with clear conscience had to appear to the other party as wrong and infamous. Peoples ought to be judged only by those who are able to enter with full un- derstanding into their real motives : in war- time the opponents and their sympathizers are unwilling and unable to do so. The hatred had its time, but after the war the more sig- nificant emotion of the Germans, Britons and Americans ought to be a common feeling of regret that anger blurred their vision so sadly. War is war, but peace ought to be peace, and the nightmare must be shaken off with the fresh morning. Sober statesman- ship must replace both sentimentality and hatred. But as soon as this goal is recognized, it is not enough to begin the organization after peace is made. The peace negotiations them- selves must be a loyal preparation for the coming of a true peace and organisation. If 259 TOMORROW any great nation were crushed or humiliated at the end of this war, the time which comes would be one of preparation for vengeance with all its bartering and intriguing. More than that the chances would be ruined if any peace conditions were to contain the germs for later conflicts, and, in particular, conflicts between Germany and England. It was the glory of the past to end a war with the tri- umph over the foe thrown to the dust; it is the spirit of our time to see the goal of bat- tles in social combats and in war not in the crushing of the enemy but of the enmity. If both Germany and England look into the future with this temper some demands for the peace overtures seem essential. Germany must not keep possession of a square foot of Belgium. The Flemish part of Belgium is racially united with the Empire and in the routine style of the past the conqueror might claim its possession. But it is Germany's duty to withdraw. German fortresses on the Belgian coast would be like a pistol directed at England's breast. The instinctive feeling that Germany would be a danger if it occu- pied Belgium brought England into the war ; this feeling must be respected ; the whole of 260 THE RECONSTRUCTION Belgium must go back to the Belgians. On the other hand, England must respect the in- stinctive feeling which made Germany rest- less. The Central Empire is choked and can- not breathe freely so long as it has no large colonial possessions. The Germans with their tremendous energy and industry cannot ex- pand in Europe where solid formations limit their land east and west, and they came too late for the distribution of the uncivilized world. England, France, Italy and Russia found the world before them, but for Ger- many no chances were left, and wherever ac- cidental openings came England opposed Germany's ambition, fearing that her world market might suffer from the new rival or that her supremacy of the sea might be dis- turbed by a German hold on some distant coast. Here England must see that peace can be lasting only if the mighty energies of Germany, strengthened by the new successes of the German army and by the incompa- rable striving of German industry and civic efficiency, find an outlet in wide fields of colonial activity. How the details may shape themselves no- body can foresee. Surely France, too, must 261 TOMORROW receive back all the lost European territory. It may be that in exchange Germany will get a part of Morocco and of the French Congo. Poland must at last be autonomous. For Germany this concession to the spirit of na- tionalism may mean a sacrifice, as it may dis- quiet the Poles in eastern Prussia. Old Ger- man Courland must go back to Germany. England, which never loses, may win Egypt and perhaps parts of German Southwest Africa. But Russia, too, ought to leave the field satisfied. The exit to the Mediterra- nean will not be opened, but the peace confer- ence may give parts of Persia to Russia and thus offer the harbors which no winter ice blocks. And I do not forget the hopes of the Balkan people, of Ireland and Finland. But it is not enough that the Teutonic concord be ushered in by a fair peace between Germany and England. Nothing would strengthen it more than if the third chief friend, America, could be the mediator be- tween the two others from the start. The three leading statesmen of the United States, Great Britain and Germany ought to speak not by public notes and speeches in parlia- ment but in confidential discussions until 262 THE RECONSTRUCTION some ways of mutual approach are found. Three nations will follow, and the earth will have glorious peace for generations hereafter. To be sure, it might be said that we could have had such a British-Ger- man-American harmony before the war. Yes and no. Certainly both in Germany and Eng- land some of the best statesmen and men of all walks of life worked sincerely for a bet- ter understanding. But they could not suc- ceed. There was too much jealousy and envy and suspicion accumulated. A terrific thun- derstorm was necessary to clear the sultry air. Now at last the two countries can start anew. Each knows now the tremendous en- ergy of the other and knows how much they can harm and can help each other. But the war has also taught them how many interests they have in common. Even the freedom of the sea which Germany always demanded as a protection against England will be needed in future no less for England itself, as its trade may otherwise succumb to the sub- marines. If the Germans complain that such a peace- ful peace does not bring them enough to com- pensate them for the vast sacrifices, they 263 TOMORROW ought not to forget that no area at the west- ern front could compare with the value of lasting peace for their inner development. Their long freight trains will move to and fro between Berlin and Bagdad, their new col- onies will furnish them raw material and room for active men, the unbearable pres- sure of the last two decades will be removed from their frontiers. The whole nation will" stand before the world as a people which in the first two years of war performed a deed unique in the history of mankind. I know your Berlin friends will grumble, and yet the day will come when they will see that Ger- many would have gained less if it had gained more. Anyhow it will gain more than it ever dreamed of when it was forced into the war. Let the enemies of Germany draw a caricature of the Teuton who wants to con- quer the world and who is hopelessly disap- pointed by his failure, as he has not trium- phantly entered Paris, London, Rome and Petrograd. We know that Germany had only the one wish to defend herself and to keep the vastly more numerous white and colored enemies outside of her borders. This alone was worth any sacrifice. 264 THE RECONSTRUCTION Frederick the Great did not gain more from the Seven Years' War, and yet its out- come meant more for Germany's future than any possible conquest. Prussia's triumph was never more historically pregnant than when a century later the armies returned from Koniggratz and the peace brought not a foot of hostile territory. The German fear that before a decisive German victory is won a reasonable peace with England might be misinterpreted as a sign of weakness is absurd. Since the entrance of Roumania into the war the Central Powers with a popula- tion of 176,000,000 stand against the Allied powers with 855,000,000, the peoples of 3,000,000 square miles against the peoples of 31,000,000 square miles. Whoever can de- fend himself against such odds does not need crushing victories or increased home land in order to give weight to his will in the future. The two leaders of the war have tested one another's steel and have proved invincible; that is the most favorable condition for creat- ing a peace which may really last, a peace between two equals. America, too, had cordial feelings before the war not only for Great Britain but for 265 TOMORROW Germany, which fully shared this sentiment of friendship. No afterthought ought to distort this time of hearty exchange. Yet the idea of a political union was never in question. The old Washingtonian tradi- tion that America was not to enter into alliances remained paramount. Happy America had no neighbors; why ought it to play the costly game of the old nations whose policies begin and end with the fundamental fact that they are crowded together in narrow Europe. But America, too, has had to learn from the war, and one lesson above all: America is no longer without neighbors. Not only Mexico gave it an unpleasant reminder of this, but Europe made it clear that the Atlantic is no more a separation than the Rio Grande. The isolation of the new world has disappeared ; America is drawn into the old, old play of the Occident, a neighbor among neighbors. Whether the senate would ever be willing to enter into any kind of alliance is not decisive. Some definite attitude to the European coun- tries will be necessary for the United States after the world changes which the war has disclosed. If Russia-Japan really stands 266 THE RECONSTRUCTION on one side, England-Germany-France on the other, it is certain that America would choose the latter party. The understanding may be silent, but it will be effective as far as influ- ence and action are concerned. And this group will be the nucleus for the world union in which the new nationalism and the new idealism of the single nations will be blended with the new pacifism and the new interna- tionalism of the organized world community. The sixteenth century was one of discoveries, the seventeenth one of natural science, the eighteenth one of enlightenment and the nine- teenth one of technique ; the twentieth prom- ises to be the century of organization. Organization! — it sounds as trivial as the philistine virtue of a department store. Yet real organization means in every group that every member submits his own desires to the interests of the whole, that all friction is planfully avoided, that all parts are organi- cally interconnected and that nevertheless each member is conscious of his full indepen- dent responsibilities. If the peoples of a group, or finally of the globe, are bound by an organization, it demands in the same way that each subordinate its selfish desires to the 267 TOMORROW progress of the whole, to the aims of western culture, to the ideals of mankind. It means for them, too, that internal friction is avoided as among the states of a federation and that the productive interrelations are developed to the highest efficiency, and finally it de- mands that each people be enthusiastically loyal to its own historic mission and to its own solemn task which is unique and cannot be replaced. In short, the organization of the peoples which must come involves just those four great energies which can be clearly traced in the image of the after-war time: nationalism, idealism, pacifism and interna- tionalism. The century of discoveries was ushered in by Europe's physical discovery of America; the century of organization begins with Eu- rope's political discovery of America in the last two years. The nations of Europe have found for the first time that America belongs to their inmost circle and that they cannot settle their own conflicts any longer without America somehow taking part. The war of the Allies against the Central Powers would have collapsed in the middle of the second year if America had not supported it with 268 THE RECONSTRUCTION toils and tools. Let us forget! But let us remember the age of peace will not bring us the hoped-for blessing unless America joins heartily the pre-federation of the occidental nations. As soon as Columbia really sets her face toward peace, the war clouds will be dispelled and the age of our hopes will dawn. My mind is gleaming with radiant hopes. Peace must come soon, and who knows, my friend, when the roses bloom again in your beautiful garden, one of the German ships interned here in Boston harbor may have brought me back to the fatherland to you. I am sure in one wondrous hour at home I can tell you face to face so much more than I have told you in these letters. Yes, when the roses bloom. . . . Cordially yours, H. M. POSTSCRIPT My deab Friend: This is a miserable surprise indeed. When I finished my last letter the day be- fore yesterday I thought how four months had passed since I mailed you the first one and I wanted to make sure that at least the three or four letters of the early weeks had reached you safely. I sent you a wireless inquiry, and this moment I get your laconic wireless answer: "Not one!" Well, when I think that these were letters to Germany, that England has captured them, and that America does not protest, my hope for the British-German-American friendship after the war is a little chilled. Yet I remain an incurable optimist; and surely such methods will not uproot my wish that my letters reach you. I have copies of them, and I shall print them here. Some stray volume will finally 270 POSTSCRIPT slip through. There are no indiscretions and no secrets in our correspondence and,, while I should never meddle with political ques- tions here, no one can blame me for speak- ing frankly to an old friend beyond the sea. To get a glimpse of these nine pieces of correspondence may even be quite wholesome for the chance reader. The world has be- come accustomed to read only extreme utter- ances and the resulting habit of mind is the most dangerous obstacle on the way to peace and to a sound future. Nobody has the cour- age to urge the peace which everybody wants, because a few extremists on all sides hiss vengeance. What we need is a new setting of our feelings ; we too often take one aspect for the whole. This morning I found in my mail a large number of approving utterances from Americans, Canadians and Germans, but three marked copies of American news- papers in which the editorials objected to my suggestions of a Teutonic mutual ap- proach after the war. One came from the East and said that it is impossible, as "the world will never forget that Germany worked for this war, lied for it, schemed for it, pro- 271 TOMORROW voked it and carried it on in a way which would put to shame the most barbarous and savage races.' ' The other came from the West and said that "an approach is impos- sible, because generations would have to pass before the contempt for the English cam- paign of lies and hypocrisy and the disgust at the English crimes throughout the war would have disappeared from the world.' ' And yet the average American is fair and sound and ready to value a great goal more highly than a rankling sentiment He would say with Sophocles : ' ' My task is not to share your hatred but your love." The spirit of the Americans of today has made the lan- guage of Sophocles forgotten and almost for- bidden, but the sentiment of his words is neither forbidden nor forgotten. I am con- vinced that it is the real undercurrent in the minds of those who will give us the better tomorrow. The third clipping came from the South. The Nashville Tennessean writes : ' ' That is a very foolish thing for a psychologist to say at this time. A professor of psychology should have known better. He is supposed to know something about what is termed the psycho- POSTSCRIPT logical moment, about the temper of minds under given conditions. Even a man who knows no psychology is well aware that na- tions at war are bitter toward each other and that any suggestion of their ever being friendly is hooted, scorned and spurned. It has been denounced alike in Germany, Great Britain and the United States — notwithstand- ing its probable truth. Miinsterberg is wrong in the application of his psychology : he may be right in his vision, no matter how it is denounced. ' ' I am, of course, deeply touched by the ten- der editorial care and anxiety for my repu- tation as a psychologist. But would it really be better psychology to delay a suggestion until it is too late ! If this war ends without bringing a state of inner rest and satisfac- tion to both England and Germany a more horrible war will be unavoidable in the near future. Now is the time to encourage every effort of the neutrals to secure a peace which satisfies all. Of course such a suggestion is spurned and hooted by the belligerents. I take without whining the editorial verdict that it is a foolish thing for the psychologist. I am satisfied with the fact that he himself 273 TOMORROW feels obliged to add that my vision is prob- ably right, no matter how it is denounced. I am ready to say what is unpleasant if, as he acknowledges, it is true. We have suffered enough from the one-sided untruth. Only the truth will make us free. But I do not tremble even for my psychology. The pivot of our minds is, after all, habit. No ideas have a good chance to win except those to which we become accustomed. The harmony of the leading nations cannot become a reality un- less we make the very thought of this inner approach habitual. We have become unac- customed to the fundamental fact that Amer- ica and England and Germany have their very best in common. The claim that these three nations belong together and that their cordial union alone can secure a lasting peace when this war comes to an end may be scorned today, but the very scorning forces the thought on the minds of the nations and makes them slowly accustomed to approach even this idea without surprise, until it finally becomes habitual. We cannot wait for the day after tomorrow to take care of what will be needed tomorrow ; today is the time ; this hour will decide whether we prepare for a RD 4 * POSTSCRIPT century of warfare or for ages of peace. Let us not miss the solemn call of our duty. And now for the last time, farewell. In faithful friendship, yours, H. M. (l) • .0 w ^ O - O „o ^ ^J^M^*" ^A. A* » ^ ^ * , Deacidified using the Bookkeeper pro Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: may &± * " ' 1 * £> A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVAt] ,0" PreservationTechnoloc a? »I # ^- ^ 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township. 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