"And if they tried to fight us, what would happen to them? Our nation is unique in an important respect. Its individuals are the best armed in the world. Not only, for example, are its farmers armed, but they can shoot, which is far more than can be said of those of Britain or of any other nation.
"The Governments of Europe cannot afford to give their citizenry arms, and, as for the European citizenry, it not only cannot afford to purchase arms, but cannot afford even to pay the license fees which Government demands of those possessing arms with the right to use them.
"But ours? Most Americans can afford to and do own guns with which to shoot, and, furthermore, most Americans, when they shoot, can hit the things at which they shoot.
"Combine this powerful protective influence with the fact that thousands of any army coming to invade us would not want to fight when once they got here, but would want to settle here and enjoy peace, and we find that we thus are protected as no nation in the world ever has been protected or can be.
"Imagine the effect upon the European fighting man"s psychology if he found that an army transport had conveyed him to a land where one man"s privilege is every man"s right! Learning this, it is not a joke to say, but is a statement of the probable fact, that the invading soldiery would not want to fire its first volleys, but would want to file its first papers. They would not ask for cartridges, but for citizenship.
"America is protected by a force incomparable, which I may call its peaceful militia, and the man who, above all other men, I most should wish to see appointed to its command would be Gen. Leonard Wood were it not for the fact that there would be some danger that in such an eventuation his professional training would carry him beyond the rule of reason.
"That is likely to be the most serious trouble with the trained soldier.
The doctor wants to dose, the parson to preach, and the soldier to fight. Professional habit may make any of us dangerous.
"But if it came to fighting I do not consider it within the bounds of possibility that we could lose. I once asked Gen. Sherman how the troops which he commanded during the civil war compared for efficiency with European troops. His answer was:
""The world never has seen the army that I would be afraid to trust my boys with, man for man.""
Would Surprise the Enemy.
"That thought of welcoming an invading army appeals strongly to me. The hostile General would be amazed by the ease with which he got his forces in, but he would be more startled by the difficulty he would find if he tried to get them out. If they once learned the advantages of our liberties they would find it hard not to get away, but to go away. I restrain my temper with difficulty when I contemplate the foolishness of the people who discuss with gravity the possibility of a successful invasion of these United States by a foreign foe. The thought always arises when I hear these cries from our army and naval officers for a greater armament: "Are these men cowards?" I don"t believe it. It is their profession which makes them alarmists.
"Not only are the physical difficulties which would hamper an invasion practically insuperable, but the reception enemies would get, if any of them landed, would be wholly without parallel in the world"s history.
"If our liberties really were threatened, every man, and very nearly every woman, in our vast population would rise to their defense as never any people yet has risen to any national defense. Americans, young and old, en ma.s.se, would sweep to the protection of what they know, and what the world knows, would be the cause of right and human liberty.
"I, myself, should wish to be invited to advance and meet invading forces if they came. I would approach them without any weapons on my person. I would not shoot at them. I would make a speech to them.
""Gentlemen," I would say, "here"s the chance of your life to win life"s chief prize. Now you are peasant soldiers. You have the opportunity to become citizen kings. We are all kings here. Here the least of you can take a rank much higher than that of any General in your army. He can become a sovereign in a republic."
"I think they would hurrah for me, not harm me, after they had heard my speech.
"Striving for peace, we shall become so powerful that if war comes we shall be invincible. Peace, not war, makes riches; the rich nation is the powerful nation.
"Perhaps I was as much a peace man in my youth as I am now, but when I was asked, during the civil war, to organize a corps of telegraph operators and railroad conductors and engineers and take them to Washington, I considered it the greatest of all privileges to obey the order.
"I was the last man to get on the last train leaving Burkes Station, after Bull Run, and, now, if the country ever should be invaded, I would be, I hope, one of the first to rush to meet the enemy--but I think my haste would be to convert, not to kill, him.
"The man who has done well in business, however, learns to abhor all waste, and I must admit that it does pain me to see hundreds of millions of our dollars spent on battleships which will but rust away, and thousands of our able men vegetating on them or in an army.
"The men who urge this vast waste of our money and men mean well, no doubt, but they do not know the nation of which they have the good fortune to be citizens--they do not realize how very potent a force we have become in the wide world, nor the fact that one of the great reasons why we have become a force lies in the circ.u.mstance that our national development has not been hampered by the vast expense of militarism."
Mr. Carnegie paused.
Some weeks ago, in an interview granted me for publication in THE NEW YORK TIMES, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, predicted that the present war would find its final outcome in the establishment of the United States of Europe. I asked Mr.
Carnegie to express his view upon this subject.
"Nothing else could occur which would be of such immense advantage to Europe," he replied.
"United we stand, and divided they fall. If the territory now occupied by the h.o.m.ogeneous and co-operative federation known as the United States of America were occupied instead by a large number of small, independent compet.i.tive nations, that is, if each section of our territory which now is a State were an independent country, America would be constantly in turmoil.
"Europe has been set back a century because she subst.i.tuted the present war of nations for the promotion of a federation plan. The latter would have meant peace and prosperity, the former means ruin.
"If in Europe this year such a federation as Dr. Butler regards as a future probability had been a present actuality, 1914 would have left a record very different from that which it is making.
"For instance, it would have been as difficult for the State of Germany to fight the State of Russia, or the State of France, or that of England, or all of them, and to trample neutral Belgium, as it now would be, here, for the State of Pennsylvania to declare war on the States of New York and Connecticut and to wreck New Jersey as she sent her troops to the invasion.
"Originally we had thirteen States, and thirteen only, but there was other territory here, and the attractive force of the successful union of the thirteen States brought the other territory in as it was organized.
"Thus we started right. Europe had begun before men had become so wise, and, having begun wrong, has found herself, through the centuries, unable to correct old errors."
A Federation of Europe.
"Certainly I hope that out of the great crime of this vast war some good will come. The greatest good which could come would be a general European federation. I do not believe that this will come at once; but the world will be infinitely the better if it comes at length--if the natural law of mutual attraction for mutual advantage draws these nations now at war into a union which shall make such wars impossible in future, as wars between our States, here, are impossible.
"But before this can come peace must come, and before peace can come one or the other of the nations now at war must at least ask for an armistice.
"If I were in the place of that great General, Lord Kitchener, and should receive the news that such a request had been made by the commander of the opposing forces, I should say: "No armistice!
Surrender!"
"But, then, if the surrender should be made, I should say, in effect:
""Gentlemen, we have made up our minds that these terrible explosions must mark the end of war between our civilized nations. Our sacrifices in this war have been too great to permit us to be satisfied with less than this.
""If we now cannot feel a.s.sured of such a federation of nations as will result in the settlement of all future disputes by peaceful arbitration at The Hague, then we shall keep on fighting till the day comes when we can achieve that end.
""Upon the other side of the Atlantic," I should continue if I were Lord Kitchener and should be confronted by such a situation, "we see in the United States of America an example which must satisfy us that world peace now can be maintained.
""There," I should go on, "thirteen States were banded into union in 1776. Their total population was less than the present population of their largest city and their area has spread until it links two oceans and offers homes in forty-eight States to one hundred millions, and the population still increases rapidly. An experiment of world significance was tried, and is a success, for the aggregated nation has grown and now is growing in power more rapidly than any other nation on the surface of the earth.""
Would Mean World Peace.
""It is plain to me and should be plain to all of us," I should continue, if I were Lord Kitchener, so placed, "that we in Europe have but to follow this example which America has set for us in order to achieve an ultimate result as notably desirable. When we have accomplished it world peace will be enthroned and all the peoples of the earth will be able safely to go about the pleasant and progressive business of their lives without apprehension of their neighbors.
Humanity, thus freed of its most dreadful burden, will be able to leap forward toward the realization of its ultimate possibilities of progress.""
"And do you really think there is the immediate possibility of an effective European league for permanent peace and general disarmament?"
I asked Mr. Carnegie.
"Naturally my mind has dwelt much on this problem," he replied. "The culmination of the European situation in the present war is very dreadful, but no good ever came out of crying over spilled milk.
However, it seems safe to conclude that a majority of the people of the civilized world will presently decide that a step forward must be taken.
"Everywhere in Europe, when the present conflict ends, this fact will be emphasized by sh.e.l.l-wrecked, fire-blackened buildings; by the vacant chairs of sons and fathers who have fallen victims; by innumerable graves and by a general impoverishment, the inevitable result of war"s great waste, which will touch and punish every man, every woman, every child.
"In the face of such an emphasis no denial of the facts will be among the possibilities, and I scarcely think that any even will be attempted.
If the federation Dr. Butler has predicted does not come about at once, it will be admitted almost universally that future disputes occurring between the Governments of Europe shall be settled, not by force of fighting men, but by arbitration at The Hague.