Chapter VIII and psychological causes of this tendency, which seems to have taken the intellectual leaders of the world completely unawares, would be a fascinating task, for which this is neither the occasion nor the place. It is, however, absurd and fatuous to deny either its existence or its force. With weak or unscrupulous leadership, this movement, which undoubtedly has a commercial and material, as well as an intellectual background, may easily become the cover for sordid cruelty and selfish outrage. Believing it to be nothing more, superficial critics and moralists, especially the survivors of the commercial or "Manchester" school of thought of the last generation, have denounced it with a vehemence which is as truculent as it is unavailing. The moral questions involved. The moral questions involved in the relations of peoples, especially between those of materially different grades of civilization, constitute what is perhaps the most difficult theme of ethics. In no sphere of thought is clearness and precision more indispensable, and the moral as well as the political problems which it contains constitute the highest tasks of the statesmen of the future. The Peace Conference certainly did not condemn the struggles which must necessarily precede the triumph of a higher civilization over that of a lower type, and 1 A most interesting and suggestive essay on this subject by Dr. Hilty, entitled Fin de Siècle," will be found in his Jahrbuch, 1899. See also Eucken, Die Lebensanschauungen der grossen Denker, 483. 2 It is treated with classical brevity and clearness by the late Chancellor Rumelin of the University of Tübingen, in his address Ueber das Verhältniss der Politik zur Moral., 1 Reden und Aufsätze, 144. which advancing standards of conduct may soften, Chapter VIII but can never wholly prevent. Modern civilization cannot regard the existence of uncivilized or halfcivilized forces with the indifference of a St. Simon Stylites, nor will it any longer consider them from a purely commercial or missionary point of view. Moreover, it would be recreant to its trust if it did not forestall real and threatening dangers by judicious and energetic aggression.' This duty is not Aggression affected by the imputation of base motives, or by sneers about the necessary assumption of superiority, having, perhaps, no theoretical justification. Had the Peace Conference supported a contrary view, even by implication, its work would have been antiquated before it had ever taken effect." On the other hand, the work of the Conference is, of course, in direct and uncompromising opposition 1 See Schlief, Der Friede in Europa, 21. Professor H. von Holst, in his Constitutional History of the United States, in discussing the Mexican War of 1846, -a classical example of aggression, justifiable on the highest grounds, yet presenting many of the difficult problems referred to in the text, - uses this language: Might does not in itself make right, but in the relations of nations and states to each other, it has, in innumerable instances, been justifiable to make right bow before might. In whatever way the ethics of ordinary life must judge such cases, history must try them in the light of their results, and in so doing must allow a certain validity to the tabooed principle that the end sanctifies the means. Its highest law is the general interest of civilization, and in the efforts and struggles of nations for the preservation and advancement of general civilization, force, not only in the defensive form but also in the offensive is a legitimate factor." (Vol. III., Lalor's translation, p. 271 ff.) And see Hilty on the Spanish-American War, Jahrbuch, 1899, 126 ff., as well as Brooks Adams' America's Economic Supremacy. 2 See Captain Mahan's articles on The Peace Conference and the justified. idea of war good." Chapter VIII to the ideas of the "barrack-trained" pseudophilosoNegation of phers, especially in Germany, who have attempted as a "positive to regard war as a "positive good," a "necessary element in the Divine Government of the world," in a sense different from pestilence, famine, or evil in general. Argument seems wasted upon adherents of this view. It may, however, be said that he who draws a theoretical distinction in favor of the horrors. of war as compared with other inevitable evils afflicting mankind, scarcely occupies a higher point of view than those cannibals who measure the extent of the blessings expected from their idol by the number of victims offered at its shrine. The federation of the world for justice. which found its best, if not its first, illustration in the Moral Aspect of War," in his Lessons of the War with Spain, and other See also the admirable book of Professor Charles Waldstein, The Upon this subject see Schlief's chapters Der Krieg als Element der göttlichen Weltordnung, and Der Krieg als positives Gut. opposite extreme of the idea of a World-Empire, as Chapter VIII attempted by Cæsar and Napoleon. Placing sound and self-reliant national patriotism far above the vague cosmopolitanism of sentimental dreamers, it still subordinates the interests of any one people to the higher concern of humanity at large. Recognizing to its fullest extent the trusteeship of civilized peoples for those beyond the pale, the "white man's burden" and "manifest destiny," in the true sense of those much-abused terms, the spirit of the Peace Conference cannot be invoked to justify a sordid policy of rapacity or greed. of the ideas of Alliance. In a sense which surely corresponds to the inten- Development tions of its Imperial Initiator, the Conference takes the Holy up the ideas of the Holy Alliance of 1815. Notwithstanding the infamies perpetrated under the cover of its name in the bitter and hopeless struggle of tyranny against liberty, that treaty still deserves honorable mention in the history of the world's progress toward peace and justice. It represented, at the time, the best expression which had yet been given to the fundamental truth that a solidarity of interest unites all civilized Powers, and that this fact, as well as the higher law of Righteousness demands the establishment of a system of justice to take the place of anarchy and force in their ordinary relations. The Magna Charta of The Hague carries out his thought within safe and practicable limits, omitting the mysticism and bigotry which have prejudiced the opinion of the world, even against those aims of the Holy Alliance which were both noble and reasonable. Chapter VIII It is easy and rather gratuitous to prophesy against the stability of such a system. When it is remembered that the Feudal System lasted for centuries after its work seemed to be fulfilled, and that the same is true, to a modified extent, of the succeeding period of "enlightened despotism," it seems rash to indulge in pessimistic forecasts regarding the future. of modern constitutional government, which is hardly one century old. The greatest perils of the modern state are acknowledged to be internal:-reaction, clericalism, materialism, and the power of unrest, superficially characterized by such mutually exclusive terms as socialism and anarchism. It is a significant fact that all of these interests, so far as they are aggressive and revolutionary, should have united in the bitterest and most truculent hostility to the Peace Effect on the Conference and all that it implies. More far-sighted than many of their opponents, whose support of the Conference was scarcely lukewarm, these forces recognized in the success of the former the destruction of the basis of their existence and the death-knell of their hopes. perils confronting Modern, States. This would be the case even without the tremendous material blessings which would be made possible by a diversion of the huge sums now swallowed up for military uses, to the fructification of civil life, and the encouragement of general culture. The substitution of law for force in international relations will, according to the measure of its accomplishment, affect the thoughts and minds of individuals as profoundly as the ideas of religious tolerance or civil |