over we want to have a "just and durable peace," because a peace dictated by victors in a spirit of hatred is never just and is seldom durable.

We don't want to "crush Germany"-God forbid. We want to crush the system under which Germany is now laboring, and laboring under which, she has become a menace to the civilized world. If I could dictate the terms of peace tomorrow, I would say

Let Alsace-Lorraine go. Let Schleswig-Holstein go. Austria, let Bosnia form a government with her own Serbian kindred. Let Herzegovina go with her Montenegro kinspeople. Turn the Roumanians in Transylvania loose. Free Bohemia from Hapsburg rule. Reign over the Magyars if they wish that you should. Russia, Austria and Prussia, all three, let Poland be reëstablished once more as an independent power upon the surface of this globe, with rights of citizenship. Germany, let Belgium go. Turn Luxemburg loose if she wants to be. If there is any doubt about the will of the people in any of these countries, let them decide whether they want to go with you or go back to their kin.

But I wouldn't crush Germany. On the contrary, I would make Germany stronger than she is now. The German population of upper Austria and of lower Austria and of the Tyrol and of Salzburg and of any other province outside of the German Empire, I would add to the German Empire and make it stronger than it is today, and I would base nationality on the commonness of language, because you can't have a durable peace unless that is the case. Now that might result in crushing the House of Hapsburg, and it would do it very effectively, but it wouldn't crush the German people.

Says another, not an American:

We seek no territory, no aggrandizement, no revenge. We only want to be safe from the recurrence of this present horror. We want permanent peace for Europe and freedom for each nation. Crushing Germany would do no good. It would point straight towards a war of revenge. It is not Germany, it is a system that needs crushing. It is not that we happen to be sick of this particular war; it is that we mean, if we can, to extirpate war out of the normal possibilities of civilized life, as we have extirpated leprosy and typhus. We hate war so much that we shall carry it on in order to abolish it.

First of all, we want no revenge, no deliberate humiliation of any enemy, no picking and stealing of money or territory; next, we want a drastic resettlement of all those burning problems which carry in them the seeds of European War, especially the problem of territory. Many of the details will be very difficult, some may prove insoluble, but in general, we must try to arrange, even at considerable cost, that territory goes with nationality. And shall we try again to

achieve Castlereagh's and Alexander's ideal of a permanent concert, pledged to make collective war upon the peace-breaker? Surely we must.

Of course, all these hopes may be shattered and made ridiculous before the settlement comes. They would be shattered, probably, by a German victory, not because Germans are wicked but because a German victory at the present time would mean a victory for blood and iron. To prevent the first of these perils is the work of our armies and navies; to prevent the second should be the work of all thoughtful non-combatants. It may be a difficult task, but at least it is not hideous, though some of the work that we must do in order to accomplish it may be; so hideous, indeed, that at times it seems strange that we can carry it out at all-this war of civilized men against civilized men, against our intellectual teachers and compeers, our brothers in art and science and healing medicine, and so large a part of all that makes life beautiful. We must fight our hardest, indomitably, gallantly, even joyously, forgetting all else while we have to fight. When the fight is over, we must remember the phrase, “Never again!"

"Never again! Somebody advised not long ago that those words should be carried upon the kit-bag of every English sailor and upon the knapsack of every English soldier." "Never again" I say, a thing like this for us or for our brethren elsewhere. Our brethren, because all the children of God are brethren, whether they be Germans or Russians or French or Belgians or Americans. We are fighting to reëstablish the brotherhood of man and to crush forever the doctrine that anybody has the right, for the sake of making himself or his nation more powerful than other people, to ride, rough-shod over men and women and children as Germany did in Belgium without even herself contending that they had even in the slightest degree provoked enmity by any act or word or intent, and then afterwards killed the civil population because they sympathized with their own brethren and their own land and because they had dared, as a little people, rather to die free than to live slaves.

So I say as this author says about the British soldier going out with "Never again" inscribed upon his knapsack,-I want every American who goes forth to go with that on his knapsack, and if he can't put it upon his knapsack, put in his heart at any rate: "Never again."

It means a great deal, because it furthermore means that you are so resolutely determined that this hideous thing shall never again occur that you have made up your mind you won't quit fighting now until you are sure that you can make it tolerably certain that it never again will occur.

Now, these words I quote are not my words. They are the words of Professor Gilbert Murray of Oxford University, pronounced in an address in 1914. He concludes by saying "One may well be thankful that the strongest of the neutral powers”— referring to these United States-"is guided by a leader so wise and upright and temperate as President Wilson."

A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE

BY WALTER L. FISHER,
Chicago.

The immediate cause that has involved the United States in war today is that our ships are being sunk and our people killed while they are lawfully engaged in peaceful commerce on the seas; but important as is the immediate protection of our national rights and of our people's lives against other nations who are engaged in war, this alone would not have drawn us into the war. We are at war because we believe there is a compelling necessity and a real opportunity "to make the world safe for democracy"; to end militarism as a political system; to destroy Prussianism as a national philosophy. We are at war, and our immediate task is to make war effectively. But if we cease for one moment to keep in mind the deep underlying purpose of our warfare, and the great object we hope and intend to accomplish by it, we shall weaken the very effectiveness of our warfare. We shall be of those who gain battles and yet lose a war. I agree entirely with the sentiment expressed by Senator Williams' with regard to that motto which should go upon the knapsack of the soldier, "Never again"; but unless the men and women of America who are not soldiers have that motto written in their hearts and express it in action, then indeed the sacrifice of the soldiers will have been in vain.

Two years ago Lord Grey uttered the profound truth that Unless mankind learns from this war to avoid war the struggle will have been in vain.. .. Over humanity will loom the menace of destruction. If the world cannot organize against war, if war must go on . .. the resources and inventions of science will end by destroying the humanity they were meant to serve.

1 See page 178.

And in December of last year, in one of the most remarkable and significant documents that have been published in Germany since the war began, Dr. Bernard Dernburg, formerly Colonial Secretary and for a time the accredited agent of Germany in this country, expressed almost identical views:

It certainly sounds foolhardy to speak of a reconciliation of nations in these times of bitterest hate when the slaughter of nations is at its zenith. Nevertheless it is necessary and inevitable. If no lasting peace comes, peace based on confidence alone, then inevitably there will come another war, and this new war can end only with the mutual annihilation of the nations of civilized Europe. Manly courage and manly strength are no longer the decisive factors; unfortunately the decisive factor is the machine. If mankind is to give thought for ten years more to machines for destroying life and property, another war at the present rate of technical development will mean the end of Europe.

International law is now a desolate heap of ruins, but it must be rebuilt and it must so regulate the relations of nations to each other that they must stand under its protection as free states, possessing equal rights, whether they be large or small. This protection must be exercised by the common power of all, either by force or by a common ban placed upon a transgressor which would be equivalent to barring him from intercourse with the rest of the world. Nor should we overlook the declaration of the German Chancellor himself which led to Dr. Dernburg's discussion of the international situation:

When the world at last realizes what the awful ravages in property and life mean, then a cry for peaceful agreements and understandings will go through all mankind which will prevent in so far as it lies within human power the recurrence of such a tremendous catastrophe. This cry will be so loud and justified that it must lead to a result. Germany will honestly coöperate in the examination of every endeavor to find a practical solution and will collaborate for its possible realization.

President Wilson delivered a great speech when he stated to Congress the reasons which had compelled him to break off diplomatic relations with Germany, and to ask Congress to join him in declaring the existence of a state of war; but he delivered a far greater speech on January 22, 1917-a speech which, in my judgment, will live as the most important utterance of an American President since Abraham Lincoln spoke on the field of Gettysburg. If he or we lose sight of the reasoned utterances of that address or of the fundamental principles he stated, we shall just to that extent fail to grasp the issues and the opportunities of the titanic struggle of which we have now become a part,

It is said that these were but words and that what we need is deeds; that actions speak louder than words. May I suggest that words are sometimes deeds; and that the utterance of a speech like Lincoln's at Gettysburg or like Wilson's in the Senate may be as truly a deed as the unfurling of a standard about which men may rally, or the sounding of the bugle that calls them to the colors; and every ear that is deaf to that trumpet call, and every step that is taken away from that standard, lends aid and comfort to the enemy and lessens the chances of success in war and of a greater victory in peace.

We shall do well to turn, again and again, to the declarations of President Wilson when we were yet free from the hurries and the hatreds of war. If they were the words of truth and soberness three months ago, they are as true today and more sober.

In the very address which led to our declaration of the state of war, the President said:

I have exactly the same things in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the 22d of January last; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the 3d of February and on the 26th of February. Our object now as then is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles.

We will do well, therefore, to refresh our recollection of what the President did say on January 22:

The present war must first be ended; but we owe it to candor and to a just regard for the opinion of mankind to say that so far as our participation in guarantees of future peace is concerned it makes a great deal of difference in what way and upon what terms it is ended. . . . The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this: Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace or only for a new balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common

peace.

Fortunately we have received very explicit assurances on this point. But the implications of these assurances may not be equally clear to all—may not be the same on both sides of the water. I think it will be serviceable if I attempt to set forth what we understand them to be.

They imply first of all that it must be a peace without victory. It is not