claimed, it would aid Germany and cripple the Allies. If it refused to do more than negotiate with the Allies, it had, whatever the technicalities of the case might be, thrown its great weight against Germany. It had earned the enmity of the German Government, an enmity which broke out into intrigue and conspiracy on American soil. Somewhere in the winter of 1915 America was forced to choose between a policy which helped Germany and one which helped the Allies. We were confronted with a situation in which we had to choose between opening a road to Germany and making an enemy of Germany. With the proclamation of submarine warfare in 1915 we were told that either we must aid Germany by crippling sea power or be treated as a hostile nation. The German policy was very simple: British mastery of the seas must be broken. It could be broken by an American attack from the rear or by the German submarine. If America refused to attack from the rear, America was to be counted as an enemy. It was a case of he who is not for me is against me.

To such an alternative there was but one answer for a free people to make. To become the

ally of the conqueror of Belgium against France and the British democracies was utterly out of the question. Our choice was made and the supreme question of American policy became: How far will Germany carry the war against us and how hard shall we strike back? That we were aligned on the side of Germany's enemies no candid man, I think, can deny. The effect of this alignment was to make sea power absolute. For mastery of the seas is no longer the possession of any one nation. The supremacy of the British Navy in this war rests on international consent, on the consent of her allies and of the neutrals. Without that consent the blockade of Germany could not exist, and the decision of America not to resist Allied sea power was the final blow which cut off Germany from the world. It happened gradually, without spectacular announcement, but history, I think, will call it one of the decisive events of the

war.

The effect was to deny Germany access to the resources of the neutral world, and to open these resources to the Allies. Poetic justice never devised a more perfect retribution. The nation

which had struck down a neutral to gain a military advantage found the neutral world a partner of its enemies.

That partnership between the neutral world and Germany's enemies rested on merchant shipping. This suggested a new theory of warfare to the German Government. It decided that since every ship afloat fed the resources of its enemies, it might be a good idea to sink every ship afloat. It decided that since all the highways of the world were the communications of the Allies, those communications should be cut. It decided that if enough ships were destroyed, it didn't matter what ships or whose ships, England and France would have to surrender and make a peace on the basis of Germany's victories in Europe.

Therefore on the thirty-first of January, 1917, Germany abolished neutrality in the world. The policy which began by denying that a quarrel in the Balkans could be referred to Europe, went on to destroy the internationalized State of Belgium, culminated in indiscriminate attack upon the merchant shipping of all nations. The doctrine of exclusive nationalism had moved

through these three dramatic phases until those who held it were at war with mankind.

III.

The terrible logic of Germany's policy had a stupendous result. By striking at the bases of all international order, Germany convinced even the most isolated of neutrals that order must be preserved by common effort. By denying that a society of nations exists, a society of nations has been forced into existence. The very thing Germany challenged Germany has established. Before 1914 only a handful of visionaries dared to hope for some kind of federation. The orthodox view was that each nation had a destiny of its own, spheres of influence of its own, and that it was somehow beneath the dignity of a great State to discuss its so-called vital interests with other governments. It was a world almost without common aspiration, with few effective common ideals. Europe was split into shifting alliances, democracies and autocracies jumbled together. America lay apart with a budding imperialism of its own. China was marked as the helpless victim of exploitation. That old politi

cal system was one in which the German view was by no means altogether disreputable. Internationalism was half-hearted and generally regarded somewhat cynically.

What Germany did was to demonstrate ad nauseam the doctrine of competitive nationalism. Other nations had applied it here and there, cautiously and timidly. No other nation in our time had ever applied it with absolute logic, with absolute preparation, and with absolute disregard of the consequences. Other nations had dallied with it, compromised about it, muddled along with it. But Germany followed through, and Germany taught the world just where the doctrine leads.

Out of the necessities of defense against it men have gradually formulated the ideals of a coöperative nationalism. From all parts of the world there has been a movement of ideals working slowly toward one end, toward a higher degree of spiritual unanimity than has ever been known before. China and India have been stirred out of their dependence. The American Republic has abandoned its isolation. Russia has become something like a republic. The Brit