I

THE moral policy of Germany is as well defined and as aggressive as its military policy. They are in fact one and the same thing. Germany at once projected into the war its own political morality, the morality of power. Both in diplomacy and on the field the nation has acted with entire moral consistency. It may be a debatable question whether the political morality of Germany was or was not the direct cause of the war, but without dispute it has given to the war its very marked and peculiar ethical significance. It has caused it to assume the character of an ethical challenge. Militarism, the distinctive term of the present war, means in the last analysis not so much the assertion or over-assertion of military force as the assumption of moral prerogative. Beneath armaments and organization lies the political theory on which militarism rests and from which it draws its life: the state is power.

In order to measure the full force of this ethical challenge of the war, as it reaches us, we need to revert to the state of mind out of which it springs. The actual justification of the war on the part of Germany, that underlying justification of it which sustains and supports the German people as the war proceeds, is to be found in the sincerity and in the assumed validity of the claim to a superior type of civilization, culminating in the state. The obligation which this claim is supposed to carry with it has been accepted in the mood

of exalted passion. The destiny of the nation prescribes its duty. This can be nothing less than to supplant AngloSaxon civilization as no longer entitled to leadership, no longer equal to the burdens or to the tasks of the modern world. It lacks virility and it lacks vision. It is incapable of solving the new problems of civilization. The time has come for it to give way before Teutonic methods and ideals. War only hastens the inevitable, and saves the world the wastes of delay.

Those who are familiar with Chamberlain's Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (which, after passing through eight editions in Germany, was presented in 1909 to English readers) will recall the author's extraordinary exploitation of the Teutonic race as the essential force in human progress. The claim to superiority which was then set forth in broad and inclusive terms, with philosophical temper, was at the same time being urged by a group of intellectual leaders in Germany with vehemence and with exclusive application to the German people. What seemed at first to be the doctrine of a cult became in due time the accepted truth of a whole people. I am aware that certain German apologists minimize the influence of this school of thought. Some of them assert that the names of its leaders are practically unknown in Germany. This might well be, though in fact it is doubtful, and yet the leaven of their thought might pervade the nation. Judging from the formal, and still more from the almost unconscious utterances of the peo

ple, such at least appears to be the fact. When Germany speaks her mind officially or unofficially, she speaks in the language and with the accent of superiority. As we pass out of the range of purely diplomatic explanations regarding the causes of the war, the plea of self-defense quickly disappears, lost in its own inconsistency; and the plea of national necessity with a view to expansion is soon merged in the claim to supremacy. It is indeed singular that the clearest and ablest writers, who contend for a place of equality with England in world-relations, should so generally weaken their argument by their insistence in the end, not upon equality, but upon supremacy. Nearly every presentation of the case of Germany reverts soon or late to the claim to superiority, which through the stimulus of militarism has been converted into the terms of actual warfare.

As no one can doubt the absolute sincerity with which the claim to superiority is put forward, few, I think, will be disposed to deny that it has a certain justice when tested by the standards of our modern material civilization. I know of no nation that would be willing to subject itself to a comparison with the Germany of the last forty years in respect to organization, industrial progress, economic efficiency, and the practical applications of the sciences. These advances stand to the credit of Germany apart from their relation to militarism, apart, that is, from what they have done toward making war the grand science, the magnificent industry, under the guise of armed peace. But it is through militarism that the claim to superiority passes over into the right of superiority, and the right of superiority becomes the right of dominion. This is not the bald reassertion of the ancient dogma that might makes right. The injection of the idea of superiority tempers the original dogma, but it brings

it again into service without essentially changing its ethical character. It would be unfair to say that this modified form of the doctrine is new. It was in fact introduced through Anglo-Saxon civilization. It has done its duty faithfully in the interest of British imperialism. True, its language has been evasive and apologetic. We are familiar with its characteristic phraseology — ‘benevolent assimilation,' 'the white man's burden,' and the like. But the fact is not to be denied that the doctrine has been held and practiced by those now in contention against the present assertion of it. Be that however as it may, our concern with the present assertion of it lies in the fact that it comes to us as a challenge, a challenge designed to unmask the hypocrisy of opposing nations, but also intended to set before all nations the ethical authority of a new and higher type of civilization which finds its normal expression in the pow er of the state. Evidently it is the challenge of the half-truth, but for that reason all the more effective as a challenge. The half-truth is capable of an audacity which is denied the truth in its fullness. It can urge its demands without qualification and with little regard to conse quences.

This contention of the half-truth that superiority gives the right to dominion, a right to be incorporated into the state, has become in a very distinct way the ethical challenge of the war. Whatever the war may or may not declare in regard to other matters, it calls the attention of the civilized world to the new moral valuation which it puts upon the power of the state. Tracing the war back to the teachings in which it had its origin, we find in them the constant idealization of power, at times almost the deification of it. The most authoritative teachings have been only an ampler statement of the Machiavellian axiom that the state is power. 'The

highest moral duty of the state is to increase its power.' 'War is the mighty continuation of politics.' 'Of all political sins that of weakness is the most reprehensible and the most contemptible; it is in politics the sin against the Holy Ghost.' It will give a proper background to these teachings to have in mind Milton's conception of the state: 'A nation ought to be but as one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth or stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body, for look, what the ground and causes are of single happiness to one man, the same ye shall find them to be to a whole state.' The question of the essential morality of power when embodied in the state, which is thrust upon us as the ethical challenge of the war, is the most serious public question which we have to face. Coming before us as a challenge, it calls us back to things fundamental, both in politics and in religion. To reverse in part Mr. Cleveland's saying, we find ourselves confronted, not so much by a condition, appalling as that is in which all nations are now involved, as by a theory which is likely to outlive the war, whatever may be its fortune, and to present itself to each nation for definition. It is a theory which has a most insidious fascination. There is no allurement so great when the mind turns to affairs of state as the allurement of power. Clothe the bare conception of power with the moral sanctities and it becomes not only alluring but commanding. In this form it presents itself to us, and at a time of great doubt and perplexity in regard to subjects but lately in the category of commonplace realities, - democracy, patriotism, and religion. Speaking with the assurance, if not with the audacity, of the half-truth, it says to us, 'Your democracy, your patriotism, your religion are obsolete. They are all guilty of inadequacy. If you would keep your

place in the modern world, you must recast your fundamental conceptions of the state, and of the things which belong to it, in terms of power, and reinvigorate them with its spirit.'

II

What is the state of the case in regard to democracy? Has it ceased to be a necessary factor in the social and political order of the world? Is it no longer adequate in theory, or has it gone so far wrong in practice as to be useless? Let us see how it appears to an observer who looks upon present conditions from the new point of view. I quote from Professor Francke in a recent number of the Harvard Monthly. "The German conception of the state and its mission, and of the service due to it, is something which to members of other nationalities, especially to Anglo-Saxons and Americans, cannot help appearing as extravagant and overstrained. To the Anglo-Saxon and American the state is an institution for the protection and safeguarding of the happiness of individuals. To the German it is a spiritual collective personality, leading a life of its own beyond and above that of individuals, and its aim is not the protection of the happiness of individuals, but their elevation to a nobler type of manhood, and their training for the achievement of great common tasks in all the higher concerns of life, — in popular education, in military service, in commercial and industrial organization, in scientific inquiry, in artistic culture.'

This is not the language of challenge, or even of criticism, but of courteous comparison. The implication, however, is equally plain, that democracy does not require that surrender of the individual to the state which can enable the state in turn to perform the various functions in his behalf which Professor

Francke enumerates. The implication is true, but it is the half-truth. We reach the truth as we ask why democracy does not require or even allow that surrender of the individual to the state which is here demanded.

But before we ask this question let us take the full rebuke of the half-truth. Democracy, in this country at least, has not trained its citizens in the proper conception of their personal relation to the state. We are at fault in our political manners and in our political morals. We have not learned to pay that respect to the state which ought to differ only in degree from reverence. We lack the imagination to clothe the state with personality. We fail to recognize at their full value its symbols of authority. We do not instantly and reverently recognize its essential majesty as embodied in law. In a word, our political manners are as yet unformed. More serious still is the undeveloped state of our political morals, as evidenced in the tendency to regard the state as a legitimate source of privilege and monopoly. There is not the same moral sensitiveness in the dealings of individuals with the state as in the conduct of business between individuals. The attempt is not infrequently made to put the state to corrupt and shameless uses. Democracy may fairly be held responsible for this moral crudeness in so far as it has failed to bring the individual into morally sensitive relations to the state. We have been paying the penalty for the lack of this training in our struggle with monopoly for the past decade. It is due in good part to this deficiency that we have had to resort to the transfer, to so considerable an extent, of the state from an individualistic to a socialistic basis. The transfer has come about in the process of protecting the state itself, as well as the people at large, from the thoughtlessness and greed of untrained individualism.

It is useless to deny that some of our social and political ills are due to the laxity or the selfishness of our democratic conception of the state. We do well to heed the challenge of absolutism to democracy, as it uncovers faults both in theory and practice; but we may not hesitate for a moment to accept the challenge in behalf of democracy. The sin of democracy is laxity; the sin of absolutism is tyranny. The remedy for the one is reform; the only remedy for the other is revolution. The subjection of the individual to the state may indeed come about through self-surrender. That was the method by which the medieval church absorbed the rights of the individual in the realm of faith. Self-surrender secured the guarantee of the church for salvation. The state under absolutism assumes to guarantee, on like conditions, political security, economic gains, cultural development -everything, in fact, save liberty. And for the satisfactions of liberty it offers, through the spirit of militarism, the intoxication of power. So a nation may become self-intoxicated. 'Not against our will and as a nation taken by surprise did we hurl ourselves into this adventure. We willed it. It is Germany that strikes. When she has conquered new domains for her genius, then the priesthood of all the gods will praise the God of War.'

in the economic world equivalent to those which it produced in the political world. The war has brought us back to a revaluation of political freedom. We are forced by it to the conclusion that though it may be difficult to provide for the securities of freedom under democracy, it is impossible to guarantee its existence under absolutism. Democracy may be lax in the use of the power of self-defense entrusted to the state, but the full power is always in reserve. There is no reasonable excuse for 'unpreparedness.' The safeguard against militarism does not lie in our indifference to the means of national security. On the contrary, any sudden sense of insecurity, such as is often created by international emergencies, is quite sure to evoke the most extreme and foolish type of militarism. Preparedness is simply a common-sense adjustment of a nation to its environment. It is in no sense incompatible with the spirit of democracy. Switzerland, notwithstanding the apparently impregnable guaranties of its neutrality, has a complete and almost perfect system of national defense in which every able-bodied man from twenty to sixty bears his part. Nowhere is the spirit of anti-militarism more assured. The danger from national preparedness lies in the national temptations, or in the national ambitions. The danger is moral, not physical. The means of defense cannot be changed into the means of aggression except through a change in the spirit of a people. Such a change is quite possible, but the possibilities of it are best calculated as we try to measure that play of national impulses to which we accord the name of patriotism.

III

If we find in the war a direct challenge to democracy on the ground of political inadequacy, we can see that it

compels attention with almost equal directness to the moral liabilities of patriotism. Among moral forces related to the state, patriotism must be regarded as the most inconsistent in its action, now the watchful servant of liberty and now the blind instrument of power. It is therefore liable to become at any time a disturbing factor in international morality.

The ordinary traditions of patriotism are so great and inspiring that these alone occupy our minds. Some of the greatest and most inspiring of those belonging to western Europe and America have not passed out of the personal remembrances of men now living. The period from 1859 to 1871 was distinctly an era of patriotism. Almost within the limits of a decade three events took place which mightily stirred the peoples immediately concerned, and awakened the sympathetic interest of all peoples bred in the traditions of liberty-the Restoration of Italy, the Reunion of the United States, and the Unification of Germany. The names inseparably connected with these events, Cavour, Lincoln, and Bismarck, illustrate, with due allowance for the personal variant, the type of patriotism exemplified in the historic struggles for freedom and nationality.

And yet with these examples uppermost in our minds we have but to turn to the battlefields of Belgium to see how diverse are the deeds possible under the common incentives of patriotism, -the heroic resistance of the Belgians, the chivalrous support of their allies, and the ruthless ravages of the Germans. It was in the assertion of German patriotism that Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg uttered the words, impossible to recall, impossible to forget: 'Necessity knows no law. Our troops have occupied Luxemburg, and have possibly already entered on Belgian soil. That is a breach of international