T

HERE weigh upon Germany

against

the soul of

one

two crimes humanity, the other against God. Beginning with the Kaiser's address to the people from

the balcony of his palace, and ending with the latest speech of the Chancellor, all the faculties of the German mind have been strained toward obliterating the first of these two crimes. Germany declares through all of her bugles that the war on her part was not offensive, but defensive; not for aggression, but self-protection; not for murder, but punishment. But in order to awaken the beast in man it became necessary for her to inspire him with rancor and fear.

To the path of crime against humanity the Germans were led by their mighty science and incomparable technique by all that which we call ma

This progress has terialistic progress. bottled up the old German romanticism and philosophy as a cork seals fermenting wine. When new instruments for slaughter were invented it became necessary to put them to test.

Thus the tissue of militarism grew up on the bases

of heroic romanticism, atheistic philosophy, and practical Kultur. In this

sense the German crime was, perhaps, legitimate.

When it appeared that the kettle of Germanism reached its maximmu heat the steam had to be released, and the method did not matter. So the Doctor

Fausts and the Knight Lohengrins turned into vulgar murderers, while the children of poetical Bavaria and Tyrol surpassed in cruelty the butchers of

Brandenburg. A victim of a psychopathological and physico-chemical process, the nation in whom the valves of

conscience and sane political thought were hermetically sealed burst open, overflowing its limitations in a raging, turbid torrent. It is the task of hu

manity to restore that stream to its

original limitations, establishing a régime under which German insanity will pass

away.

gigantic

Much more complicated and profound is the second German crime-the crime before God. Its shadow has enveloped Germany, overshadowing all the rest; men call it vandalism and barbarism. For Germany challenged not only the political, nationalistic, and economic credos of humanity, but also the religious credo of man. Germany dared to extend its hegemony even over Christianity. So long as the guns thunder this may not be generally recognized, for the epos of war has absorbed the ecstasy of piety. But that hour is near when the truth of God will triumph in this war as dazzlingly as the truth of The sceptre of Christianity, bent by German violence, will be straightened again.

man.

At

The Germans have invented along with their howitzer-die grosse Bertha-also their own god of victory. If the Germans could but separate their own God from the God of their opponents, just as they have excluded German law from international law, German civilization from European civilization, German ethics from French, Russian, English ethics, then they would naturally do no injury to the body of Christendom. the worst, there would take place something that has already happened in Germany-a religious reformation. The modern Luther, Wilhelm, would declare his modern Christian dogmas, the subjection of the weak to the strong, the privilege of might over right. Instead of icons and crosses there would appear in the temples of the militant Christianity machine guns and shells. Prussian junkers with blood-stained hands would serve as pastors.

But Wilhelm is no Luther. Wilhelm hugs the true altar of Peter, the symbol

of love and forgiveness. Wilhelm does

d'être, because in conformity with justice, they can not and should not be considered as the more essential elements of the future settlement. The all-important question is the muzzling of the mad dog.

If, in a civilized country, the police hear of a factory preparing poison, that factory is at once suppressed and the directors punished. What is true for a civilized State should be true for the world at large, for the consensus of States. Such a consensus exists in the matter of keeping down plague and cholera; the only thing now necessary and urgent is to extend its action to a scourge more fatal

than either cholera or plague, the scourge of destructive science, because it destroys the best.

The following means should be adopted by the future congress of peace:

Every State would pledge itself to renounce the fabrication of submarines, warplanes, torpedoes, high explosives, (excepting for industrial purposes,) guns of more than two inches, poison gas, (excepting for industrial purposes,) and, in general, any instrument or contrivance which the Inspectors, sent out by the permanent Peace Committee at The Hague, would consider as adaptable to purposes of wholesale destruction and manslaughter.

The Inspectors, (engineers and chemists,) numbering 100, and nominated for ten years, should continually travel about the world, have the right to visit any arsenal or factory, and, in general, every place where weapons of war and destruction could be prepared. They would issue permits for certain industrial fabrications and see that they were not used for improper purposes. Should they discover the fraudulent beginning of some prohibited manufacture, they would send an immediate report to The Hague commit

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should, under penalty of being outlawed, deliver all the forbidden weapons they possess. Such weapons, with the ammunition pertaining to them, would be stored in the great arsenal of the Peace Committee near The Hague, superfluous ones being sold as metal for the benefit of their possessors. The great peace arsenal, alone allowed to keep in repair the prohibited weapons and ammunition, would be guarded by a body of 5,000 wardens of peace, an international force mostly selected from the population of minor countries, such as Switzerland, Scandinavia, &c. That force would receive orders from the Peace Committee alone and only act when the necessity

should be recognized of suppressing some unlawful manufacture or preparatives. Thus the Peace Committee would be in the same condition as the Chief of Police in a great town, where possible evildoers, although much more numerous than policemen, cannot resist them, because they are either unarmed or lack the perfected weapons and the big guns. A very small force, furnished with all the applications of science to warfare, would easily preserve the peace all over the world. It need not interfere in semi-civilized States, which could eventually be controlled by the menace of an international boycott and blockade.

Renan and Berthelot once dreamed of a great scientific discovery which would put in the hands of a well-meaning tyrant or of a small minority of friends to mankind, a terrible instrument of coercion, thanks to which nothing could be initiated against the welfare of humanity. But they seem to have overlooked the fact that such an instrument could become the property of an enemy of mankind and enable him to destroy the liberty of the world. That is what has almost been the case. The lesson of 1914-16 should not be lost. The dreams of Renan and Berthelot must be realized, but to the advantage of liberty and justice, not for their suppression. Humanity must have its police, and science must supply that police, and that police only, with sure means of holding in respect the predatory nations, the international banditti

and

of

Solomon Reinach, distinguished member of the Institute of France and author more than sixty books-including “Apollo,” a general history of art, which has run through many editions in many languages-has written an important paper on "How Peace May Be Preserved After the War." He advocates a plan that could be executed by the League to Enforce Peace, of which former Presi dent Taft is the head. In discussing the necessity of practical measures to make the peace lasting, Professor Reinach

says:

I

T would be a dangerous mistake to believe that any readjustment of frontiers could afford a sufficient guarantee for future peace, or that war indemnities, protective tariffs, and the like could oblige the peacebreakers to renounce their schemes. We are no longer in 1815, when fortresses were considered obstacles to aggression, when financial disabilities involved disarmament. The treaty which shall put an end to the present war would do nothing for the interests of mankind if it were like any of Why? Because, the character of war and warfare having undergone a complete change, the conventions and treaties which put an end to warfare cannot, in any degree, resemble those of the past.

the former ones.

At the future congress, among the seats reserved for the delegates of the great powers, one seat should remain vacant, as

reserved for the greatest, the most redoubtable though youngest of powersscience in scarlet robes.

That is the new fact; that is what diplomacy should not ignore, if that imminent and execrable scandal is to be averted-the whole of civilization falling a victim to science, her dearest daugh

ter, brought forth and nurtured by her, now ready to deal her the death blow.

As early as 1870 the great historian Michelet wrote that machinery would transform warfare, but that the mechanism of spreading death would soon find a rival in military chemistry. Michelet was a prophet. Fortresses are bygone things. The depths of the sea, the realm of the clouds, are open to machines which can work, unseen, any amount of evil. Military chemistry has only just made its appearance, but we know that whole regions can be turned into deserts by using poison gas on a large scale. Wireless electricity has not yet contrived to explode factories or destroy distant towns as by an earthquake; but that is by no means impossible and may be realized this very year. An Englishman recently wrote to The Daily Mail that Germany should not be allowed to have ports, because any port might be used by her for the building of 1,000 submarines, which could, in the space of a night, without a declaration of war, destroy the English and French Navies. But that gentleman did not realize that there were other means of wholesale destruction and murder, which might just as well be prepared in time of peace and used without a warning-1,000 armed aeroplanes carrying high explosives; 10,000 tons of poison gas, and the like.

Any precaution taken against Germany alone would be futile. Even a small country, having at its disposal the frightful implements of future warfare and using them without a scruple, might become a terrible danger to the whole world.

Let us conclude that, in 1916, if the remodeling of frontiers, the financial compensations, &c., still retain their raison

The Czar and Czarevitch On a Visit to the Russian Battle Front in Galicia; a Regiment of Cossacks Is Being Reviewed by the Emperor's Staff

(Photo Underwood & Underwood)