"I hesitate to discuss any phase of the great conflict now raging in Europe. By today"s mail, for example, I received long, personal letters from Lord Haldane, from Lord Morley, from Lord Weardale, and from Lord Bryce. Another has just come from Prof. Schiemann of Berlin, perhaps the Emperor"s most intimate adviser; another from Prof. Lamasch of Austria, who was the Presiding Judge of the British-American arbitration in relation to the Newfoundland fisheries a few years ago, and is a member of the Austrian House of Peers. Still others are from M. Ribot, Minister of Finance in France, and M. d"Estournelles de Constant. These confidential letters give a wealth of information as to the intellectual and political forces that are behind the conflict.
"You will understand, then, that without disloyalty to my many friends in Europe, I could not discuss with freedom the causes or the progress of the war, or speculate in detail about the future of the European problem. My friends in Germany, France, and England all write to me with the utmost freedom and not for the public eye; so you see that my great difficulty, when you ask me to talk about the meaning of the struggle, arises from the obligation that I am under to preserve a proper personal reserve regarding the great figures behind the vast intellectual and political changes which really are in the background of the war.
"If such reserve is necessary in my case, it seems to me that it also is necessary for the country as a whole. The att.i.tude of the President has been impeccable. That of the whole American press and people should be the same.
"Especially is it true that all Americans who hope to have influence, as individuals, in shaping the events which will follow the war, must avoid any expression which even might be tortured into an avowal of partisanship or final judgment.
"Even the free expression of views criticising particular details of the war, which might, in fact, deserve criticism, might destroy one"s chance of future possible usefulness. A statement which might be unquestionably true might also be remembered to the damage of some important cause later on.
"There are reasons why my position is, perhaps, more difficult than that of some others. Talking is often a hazardous practice, and never more so than now.
"The World is at crossroads, and everything may depend upon the United States, which has been thrust by events into a unique position of moral leadership. Whether the march of the future is to be to the right or to the left, uphill or down, after the war is over, may well depend upon the course this nation shall then take, and upon the influence which it shall exercise.
"If we keep our heads clear there are two things that we can bring insistently to the attention of Europe--each of vast import at such a time as that which will follow the ending of this war.
"The first of these is the fact that race antagonisms die away and disappear under the influence of liberal and enlightened political inst.i.tutions. This has been proved in the United States.
"We have huge Celtic, Latin, Teutonic and Slavic populations all living here at peace and in harmony; and, as years pa.s.s, they tend to merge, creating new and h.o.m.ogeneous types. The Old World antagonisms have become memories. This proves that such antagonisms are not mysterious attributes of geography or climate, but that they are the outgrowth princ.i.p.ally of social and political conditions. Here a man can do about what he likes, so long as he does not violate the law; he may pray as he pleases or not at all, and he may speak any language that he chooses.
"The United States is itself proof that most of the contentions of Europeans as to race antagonisms are ill-founded. We have demonstrated that racial antagonisms need not necessarily become the basis of permanent hatreds and an excuse for war."
Hyphens Are Going.
"If human beings are given the chance they will make the most of themselves, and, by living happily--which means by living at peace--they will avoid conflict. The hyphen tends to disappear from American terminology. The German-American, the Italio-American, the Irish-American all become Americans.
"So, by and large, our inst.i.tutions have proved their capacity to amalgamate and to set free every type of human being which thus far has come under our flag. There is in this a lesson which may well be taken seriously to heart by the leaders of opinion in Europe when this war ends.
"The second thing which we may press, with propriety, upon the attention of the people of Europe after peace comes to them is the fact that we are not only the great exponents but the great example of the success of the principle of federation in its application to unity of political life regardless of local, economic, and racial differences.
"If our fathers had attempted to organize this country upon the basis of a single, closely unified State, it would have gone to smash almost at the outset, wrecked by clashing economic and personal interests. Indeed, this nearly happened in the civil war, which was more economic than political in its origin.
"But, though we had our difficulties, we did find a way to make a unified nation of a hundred million people and forty-eight Commonwealths, all bound together in unity and in loyalty to a common political ideal and a common political purpose.
"Just as certainly as we sit here this must and will be the future of Europe. There will be a federation into the United States of Europe.
"When one nation sets out to a.s.sert itself by force against the will, or even the wish, of its neighbors, disaster must inevitably come. Disaster would have come here if, in 1789, New York had endeavored to a.s.sert itself against New England or Pennsylvania.
"As a matter of fact, certain inhabitants of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania did try something of the sort after the Federal Government had been formed, but, fortunately, their effort was a failure.
"The leaders of our national life had established such a flexible and admirable plan of government that it was soon apparent that each State could retain its ident.i.ty, forming its own ideals and shaping its own progress, and still remain a loyal part of the whole; that each State could make a place for itself in the new federated nation and not be destroyed thereby.
"There is no reason why each nation in Europe should not make a place for itself in the sun of unity which I am sure is rising there behind the war clouds. Europe"s stupendous economic loss, which already has been appalling and will soon be incalculable, will give us an opportunity to press this argument home.
"True internationalism is not the enemy of the nationalistic principle.
"On the contrary, it helps true nationalism to thrive. The Vermonter is more a Vermonter because he is an American, and there is no reason why Hungary, for example, should not be more than ever before Hungarian after she becomes a member of the United States of Europe.
"Europe, of course, is not without examples of the successful application of the principle of federation within itself. It so happens that the federated State next greatest to our own is the German Empire.
It is only forty-three years old, but their federation has been notably successful. So the idea of federation is familiar to German publicists.
"It is familiar, also, to the English, and has lately been pressed there as the probable final solution of the Irish question.
"It has insistently suggested itself as the solution of the Balkan problem.
"In a lesser way it already is represented in the structure of Austria-Hungary."
America"s Great Work.
"This principle of nation building, of international building through federation, certainly has in it the seeds of the world"s next great development--and we Americans are in a position both to expand the theory and to ill.u.s.trate the practice. It seems to me that this is the greatest work which America will have to do at the end of this war.
"These are the things which I am writing to my European correspondents in the several belligerent countries by every mail.
"The cataclysm is so awful that it is quite within the bounds of truth to say that on July 31 the curtain went down upon a world which never will be seen again.
"This conflict is the birth-throe of a new European order of things. The man who attempts to judge the future by the old standards or to force the future back to them will be found to be hopelessly out of date. The world will have no use for him. The world has left behind forever the international policies of Palmerston and of Beaconsfield and even those of Bismarck, which were far more powerful.
"When the war ends conditions will be such that a new kind of imagination and a new kind of statesmanship will be required. This war will prove to be the most effective education of 500,000,000 people which possibly could have been thought of, although it is the most costly and most terrible means which could have been chosen. The results of this education will be shown, I think, in the process of general reconstruction which will follow.
"All the talk of which we hear so much about, the peril from the Slav or from the Teuton or from the Celt, is unworthy of serious attention. It would be quite as reasonable to discuss seriously the red-headed peril or the six-footer peril.
"There is no peril to the world in the Slav, the Teuton, the Celt, or any other race, provided the people of that race have an opportunity to develop as social and economic units, and are not bottled up so that an explosion must come.
"It is my firm belief that nowhere in the world, from this time on, will any form of government be tolerated which does not set men free to develop in this fashion."
I asked Dr. Butler to make some prognostication of what the United States of Europe, which he so confidently expects, will be. He answered:
Has Advanced Much.
"I can say only this: The international organization of the world already has progressed much further than is ordinarily understood. Ever since the Franco-Prussian war and the Geneva Arbitration, both landmarks in modern history, this has advanced inconspicuously, but by leaps and bounds.
"The postal service of the world has been internationalized in its control for years. The several Postal Conventions have been evidences of an international organization of the highest order.
"Europe abounds in ill.u.s.trations of the international administration of large things. The very laws of war, which are at present the subject of so much and such bitter discussion, are the result of international organization.
"They were not adopted by a Congress, a Parliament, or a Reichstag. They were agreed to by many and divergent peoples, who sent representatives to meet for their discussion and determination."
One of the Examples.
"In the admiralty law we have a most striking example of uniformity of practice in all parts of the world. If a ship is captured or harmed in the Far East and taken into Yokohama or Nagasaki, damages will be a.s.sessed and collected precisely as they would be in New York or Liverpool.
"The world is gradually developing a code for international legal procedure. Special arbitral tribunals have tended to merge and grow into the international court at The Hague, and that, in turn, will develop until it becomes a real supreme judicial tribunal.
"Of course the a.n.a.logy with the federated State fails at some points, but I believe the time will come when each nation will deposit in a world federation some portion of its sovereignty.