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LET US HAVE PEACE
AND OTHER ADDRESSES
BY
DARWIN P. KINGSLEY
PRESIDENT OF THE
NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY
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NEW YORK
PUBLISHED BY THE COMPANY
1919
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CONTENTS
Page
Let Us Have Peace 13
Human Brotherhood 20
Life Insurance and The Century's Opportunity 27
A Man's a Man For A' That 38
Safety First Convention in Detroit 50
Democracy vs. Sovereignty 63
The Year 1916 76
The TrilogA' of Democracy 79
The United EngHsh Nations 96
The Declaration of 1776 and The Flag 121
Nineteen Seventeen and Peace 137
The Evil That Men Do Lives After Them 140
Life Insurance as a Vocation 148
Why We ShaU Fight 169
A Knock at the Door 178
Belgium 185
Peace 191
A New Charter of Liberty 194
Woodrow Wilson, Prophet 217
A Political Superstition 238
What Shall We Do With Victory? 253
Thanksgiving 267
The Proposed League of Nations 270
Peace at Last 288
Let the Trumpet Sound 291
Shakespeariana 305
Some JefFersonian Maxims 331
Life Insurance and The Supreme Purpose 342
Taxation of Organized Beneficence 358
An Open Letter 376
The Sin of The Church 386
The Relations Between American Life Insurance and American
Railroads 394
President Kingsley's Stewardship 409
Memorial to John Purroy Mitchel 414
Japan Society 417
On Taking the Chair as President of the Seniors' Golf Association 425
Falstaff's Defense of Age 428
The American Museum of Golfing Antiquities 432
In Praise of Age 436
DEDICATED
TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
FOREWORD
The addresses in this volume which discuss war and
peace and what seems to me to be an adequate post-
bellum program, are printed substantially in the order
of delivery.
This order is followed not because it shows my
reaction to the war in its various phases, but because
it may show the reaction of the average American
citizen to the facts as they developed both before and
after we entered the great struggle in Europe.
We traveled far between August 1, 1914, and
April 6, 1917. To give up our long settled habits
of life and thought, to abandon our belief that wars,
for us at least, were a part of a barbarous past and
not to be repeated, was spiritually and mentally the
largest task we had ever undertaken.
Then to take up the affirmative side: to disrupt
all the normal relations of life, to call all our youth
and young manhood to the colors, to send them three
thousand miles overseas, — involved changes that were
revolutionary. The mind that finally found expression
at Chateau Thierry and in the Argonne represented
a people separated by an almost unbelievable distance
from the same people on August 1, 1914.
How small the world! How interlocked its peoples!
Little we knew and less we cared about Sarejevo in
1914; but a pistol shot fired there in June of that year
lighted a mine which has well nigh blown civilization
into unrelated bits.
As I read these addresses again I see as I did not at
the time of their dehvery that the central thought always
struggling for expression was: What is the remedy?
That query first took form in "Democracy vs. Sov-
ereignty", the Chamber of Commerce address in
November, 1915. It was repeated in substantially
every later address. I find, too, that there are repeti-
tions in historical citations, in figures of speech, in
many things that would be absent if I had planned in
advance to put these addresses into book form. These
blemishes could not well be removed without too much
editing, and so the}' remain.
Now we face squarely the problems that had been
inexorably taking form long before the day the Hun
first outraged Belgium.
The address called "What Shall We Do With Vic-
tory?" states the great problem and suggests a plan
for its solution. The men who now control inter-
national suggestion offer a Plan — called a League of
Nations, and a Constitution for the proposed League
has formally been adopted by the Paris Peace Congress
and submitted to the Nations of the world.
Analysis of the Plan proposed reveals striking
similarities between it and our Articles of Confedera-
tion and Perpetual Union finally adopted in 1781.
Apparently the political leaders of the world have
learned nothing in a hundred years. The democracies of
1919 are in effect controlled by the same impulses, the
same fears that controlled the autocracies of 1815. With
the agony of this war still lying heavily on the heart
of the world, with a warning cry coming up from the
plain peoples of all the earth, with Russia in chaos
not so much because her people hated the old order as
because they hated war, with the glorious example of
our fathers' unprecedented achievement in 1787-9,
when they organized a Nation from Thirteen warring
States, the Peace Delegates present a document that
in philosophy at least follows the instrument which
our fathers adopted in 1781 and abandoned in 1789,
and abandoned in order to save their liberties.
On the theory that every citizen should encourage
any serious attempt to better international conditions,
it is not pleasant to criticise this instrument.
In my opinion the League proposed will produce no
lasting benefit, unless the confusion into which it must
lead shall compel the United States, the British Empire
and France finally to brush it aside as inherently
artificial and necessarily impotent. This would not
only create an opportunity but emphasize the neces-
sity of a union between the peoples of the three
powers modeled on our Federal Constitution. No
structure in which the units are sovereignties can be
other than artificial and a house of cards. History
proves this to the hilt. In any effective union between
States there must be the seeds of life and the possibility
of natural growth and that can be achieved only when
a union of States becomes a union of peoples.
Let us hope, as the Articles of Confederation in a
way prepared the Thirteen States for the Federal
Constitution, that this solemn covenant may prepare
the way for an instrument that shall work between the
nations which approve it the political miracle wrought
between the peoples of the Western Republic by the
Charter issued from Independence Hall in 1787.
D. P. K.
New York, June, 1919.
^ ^ ^ 'M draper ^ 'i' ^i-
(Whatever men's faith or lack of faith, whatever their conception of Omnipotence,
all men pray in times of crisis. Men are everywhere praying now. The men of
each nation pray in terms of their own ideals, their own liistory, their own suffering.
Few pray aloud, hut all pray. The prayers of our own people translated through sub-
conscious understanding, lift against the agony of Europe a great antiphonal which says:)
Hrj;i' tfjc people of tfjis fortunate lanb to cfjerigfj tfje ^nglo=
^axon tradition; to remember iHagna CJjarta anli 3^ot)n
J^ampben anb (S^liber Cromtoell; to repeat anb unberstanb
tlje l^ill of i\igt)ts anb tt)e declaration of 3nbepenbence;
Help us to re=bi?uali^e tJje jUinute iHen anb to fj^ar again
tfje notes of ICifaertp J!^ell; -h^^^^h^^'h^^-i-'i-
IlKLJ* us to feel some of tlje agonp tfjat seareb tfje souls of
(George ISastjington anb !3faral)am ^Lincoln;
Help us to gibe ebents anb men anb nations tfjeir just balue;
to be brabe enouglj not to blinfe facts; to be unselfisb enougb
to gibe material Success its just balue; to see clearlp, to
tijinfe logicallp; -i- ^ ^ -f 4^ * ►!« 4- i ^
HELJ' us to fenob) tprannp toben toe see it anb to bate it,
'^ anb especially i)dp us not to loofe atoap toben it confronts us;
Help us to fenoto toben bwnian libertp is in banger anb to
see tofjerein tbe banger lies; 'i''h'h>i''i''i'>b'i''i-'i''i-
Help us, toben tbe bour comes, to strifee quicfelp anb migbt=
ilp in its befense, eben tbougb selfisbness anb batreb of toar
tooulb bolb us back; Wit bate toar; mafee our \)att groto; ^ut
make us lobe libertp so utterlp, so unberstanbinglp, so unsel=
fisblp, tbat not eben toar anb its borrors can be as bibeous as
tbe front of tprannp; i\efresb our courage tbrougb memories
of 1776 anb 1865; ►{.►{.^^►^.►^►i.vj.^j-. + +
SA^E I Hi ^\it^ are noto betoilbereb, faUnbeb,
anb cruellp beceibeb; tbep are killing eacb otber h^ millions
anb tbep knoto not tobat tljepbo; ^^.^.^^^q.^.^.
us break boton tbe toalls of prejubice anb misunber=
stanbing anb bate tobicb bibibe ti)c sons of men; ^ut sboto
us also tbe better toap; sboto us boto to persuabe men, boto to
teacb tbem brotberboob; sboto us boto to keep our inbibibualitp
anb pet keep tbe peace. Cibilijation is noto toitbout form anb
boib anb barkness rests ober it:
\r u 11 us boto tbe spirit of buman brotberboob map penetrate
ti)t barkness anb faanisb it, eben as in tbe ancient faitb of tbe
J^ebretoS— tbe Spirit of (Sob mobeb upon tbe face of tbe toaters
anbsaib: " HettberebeXigbt; anb tbere toaslligbt"==;3men.
January, 1910
LET US HAVE PEACE
FROM THE JANUARY 1, 1915, ISSUE OF THE N. Y. TIMES
CONDITION and a Question mark the
entrance of 1915. The barbarism of na-
tional sovereignty, expressed by the word
"militarism", which has brooded over Eu-
ropean civihzation for forty years, has
finally asserted itself. Europe has gone back to the
age and the methods of Attila. The mask behind
which pohtical necessity and hypocrisy have lurked
has been dropped, and Europe is headed God knows
whither. From this condition springs the Question,
which is:
What will the United States do when the hour
strikes? Have we any program? Have our leaders
any program?
Although it is unprotected, and even unestablished
by any Constitutional declaration, nevertheless there
is such a thing as a world-citizenship, and this Euro-
pean horror can be ended, and so ended that it will
never be repeated, only by a definite declaration of
that citizenship.
We had no National citizenship as a legal fact when
the "Dred Scott" case was decided, and so we adopted
the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Now
we have both a National and a State citizenship, and
we have learned after bitter experience that in the first
1 13
14 Let Us Have Peace
lies all our power, all our future, and, more important
than everything else, all our peace.
We have, therefore, in our own Constitution a model
for the world in this particular at least, viz: a citizen-
ship which reconciles and controls all the conflicts of
lesser citizenships. If we finally become a mediator
between the European belligerents, what folly for us
to attempt a mediation which aims merely to patch up
the usual form of peace, expressed in treaties, which
like all treaties of peace hitherto made, will merely
express the terms of a trade between powxr and neces-
sity, a compromise with the powers of darkness, hav-
ing written between all their lines the certainty of a
restoration at no distant date of the rule of unlimited
murder. We must do something better than that, and
our own form of government suggests what we should
do. We should offer to mediate on the basis of a
larger federation, ultimately world-embracing, in which
this larger citizenship shall be recognized. In this
Federation (not Confederation) the central authority
should operate directly on the individual and not on
the nations as corporations. The Hague Tribunal is a
Confederation. For that reason amongst others it has
largely failed.
It is only a few centuries since all men in nearly all
the relations of life were more or less savages. Now
the men of most nations are gentle, kindly, charitable
and just in all the domestic relations of life, but are still
savages in international relations. This fact brought
on the European war. The people of Europe did not
want the war. They to-day praj' for nothing so de-
voutly as that this war may speedily end and that
there may never be another. How may they and we
Let Us Have Peace 15
have that assurance? We can have it as soon as we
are wiUing to pay the price. The price, curiously
enough, is not to be expressed in money nor in Uves
sacrificed nor in the abandonment of anything that
makes for real national greatness. The only thing to
be sacrificed is pride; the only thing to be destroyed is
the cruel lie which lives in the existing conception of
national sovereignty. National sovereignty as now
interpreted denies that the citizens of one nation are
entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens of
other nations, \^Tiereas the affirmation that citizens
of each State are entitled to all the privileges and
immunities of citizens of other States is one of the
fundamental and one of the greatest declarations of
our Constitution.
Immediately someone says "The suggestion is Uto-
pian; it is most desirable, but utterly impossible of
achievement." But is it? May it not be almost as
easy and as simple as Columbus's demonstration of
how to make an egg stand on end? With the example
of this Republic before us, in which forty-eight States
retain their local government, their local pride, their
local institutions, even their local ambitions, and are
nevertheless happy, progressive and reasonably just to
each other under the aegis of the Constitution, is it
visionary to claim that the same thing can be done by
a dozen nations, if the peoples of those nations really
want it done?
And it must be done, or this existing horror will
spread and we shall be its next victims. Nothing is
more certain than that.
Our obhgation to act as mediator, when the time
comes, will not be more imperative than our obligation
16 Let Us Have Peace
to present this plan. For us to mediate on any other
basis would be an admission that our loud assertions
of man's inalienable rights, from Washington and Jef-
ferson to Woodrow Wilson, have been httle better than
mere mouthings.
There are, too, practical and selfish considerations.
Unless we do this, and unless in some fashion we
persuade Europe to accept it, we must ourselves be-
come a great military and naval power. As LjTiian
Abbott said recently: "'We cannot assume that there
are no burglars in New York and therefore disband
the poUce." And while the law of murder continues
to rule international relations, we cannot assume that
we shall never become its \"ictims or that we shall
never practice it.
If we advance such a program and fail, we fail.. The
world will be no worse for our failure. But if we
succeed, if we partially succeed, no such service to
humanity will have been rendered by any people at
any time since ci^'ilized government began.
President Wilson should immediateh' call together
representatives of all civilized and neutral nations and
with them formulate a plan. The warring nations of
Europe would listen to any plan presented from such a
source; and can it be doubted that the suffering peo-
ples of these fighting nations would make an unmis-
takable response to such a proposal? That response
might almost instantly silence every gun. Those im-
plements of death are now speaking because in some
fashion the people of the belligerent nations have con-
sented that they shall speak. Once establish a world-
citizenship under such a Federation and the people of
Germany would regard war on France, and the people
Let Us Have Peace 17
of France would regard war on Germany, with the
horror that would seize us if Xew York undertook to
make war on Pennsylvania.
Re\'iew the conditions in the Thirteen Colonies in
1787, and ask if it would probably now be any more
difficult to establish this relationship between the peo-
ples of the world, than it was to harmonize the hatreds
and jealousies of the Thirteen Colonies under the con-
ditions that existed a centur}' and a quarter ago. Then
there was no really great example: it was indeed the
great experiment. The Fathers had to feel their way
and the}' stumbled badly. We had to fight one of the
most unnecessary, cruel and bloody wars in all history
before we finally estabhshed this citizenship. It is now
no longer a mere theory. It is a great fact, an idea
that rules a continent, that controls the interstate
relations of forty-eight States many of which in extent.
and a few in population and wealth, surpass some of
the warring nations. It was more reasonable in 1787
to say that it could not be done by the Thirteen Colo-
nies than it is in 1915 to say that it cannot be done bj^
the whole ci\-ilized world, or at least by the peoples of
the Anglo-Saxon world.
It ought to be done because there is no other way to
an honorable and enduring peace: it can be done
because it has already been done here.
We should not wait for the opportunity which Fate
may or may not thrust directly upon us. In the name
of our own Liberty and for the sake of suffering man-
kind, President Wilson should act at once.
18 Let Us Have Peace
The Seattle Daily Times, Thursday Evening, Jan. 28, 1915.
A NEW "LOCKSLEY HALL"
When Tennyson wrote "Locksley Hall" there was recorded a
vision in which the poet-prophet foresaw the day when all man-
kind would be at peace.
The thought has taken powerful root; nor can it be extirpated
by the mockerv' in 1915 of the most extensive and destructive war-
fare the world has ever seen.
Alfred Lord Tennyson has been dead for more than twenty
years — but the great idea he implanted is thriving to-day.
Its latest expression has come from the pen of Darwin P.
Kingsley, President of the New York Life Insurance Company.
In lieu of his usual letter, Januarys 1, he gave forth a New Year's
disquisition called "Let Us Have Peace".
It foresees a change in the attitude of mankind — in the races of
the world, each toward all the others. It recognizes that the
nationality of to-day guarantees a citizen's rights up to national
borders and beyond that point there is an extraterritorial guar-
antee based on so-called International Law.
But International Law is merely a weak and worthy attempt
"to soften the asperities of the barbarism which, in the last analysis,
controls international relations".
President Kingslej' takes the ground that there is now such a
thing as "world-citizenship", although it is unprotected and even
unestablished by any constitutional declaration; and he declares
that th^ European horror can be ended — and so ended that it wiU
never be repeated — only by a definite declaration of that citizen-
ship.
If America become a mediator, what folly to patch up the usual
form of peace, in treaties expressing merely the terms of a trade
between power and necessity, a compromise with the powers of
darkness, with the certainty of restoring at no distant date the
rule of unlimited murder!
There must be something better — a mediation on the basis of a
world-embracing federation, in which world-citizenship shall be
recognized, in which the central authority shall operate directly on
the individual and not on the nations as corporations.
The Hague Tribunal is confederation — not a federation; and
for that reason it has largely failed. President Kingsley says:
"It is only a few centuries since all men in nearly all the rela-
tions of life were more or less savages. Now men are gentle,
kindh', charitable and just in all other relations of life, but are still
savages in their international relations.
"This fact brought on the European war. The people of
Europe did not want war. They to-day pray for nothing so de-
voutly as that this war may speedily end and that there may never
be another.
"How can they and we have that assurance? We can have it
as soon as we are willing to pay the price. The price, curiously
enough, is not to be expressed in money nor in lives sacrificed nor
Let Us Have Peace 19
in the abandonment of anything that makes for real national
greatness.
"The only thing to be sacrificed is pride; the only thing to be
destroyed is the cruel lie which lives in the existing conception of
national sovereignty."
Just this sacrifice has been made by the States of the American
Union. World-citizenship, once established, would make impos-
sible a war between France and Germany — with the same horror
that would seize the American people if New York undertook to
make war on Pennsylvania.
World-citizenship and Federation is the Vision of Kingsley.
But it was Tennyson who wrote :
For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see.
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens filled with shouting, and there rained a ghastly
dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue ;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the people plunging through the thunder
storm;
Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were
furled
In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World!
The "airy navies" are here. Speed the day when World-Citi-
zenship and Federation be realized!
HUMAN BROTHERHOOD
AN UNEXPLORED CONTINENT
FROM AMERICA TO JAPAN
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, MAY, 1915
, AVAGERY and Sovereignty, pronounced
"^ in conversation, strike the ear not dissim-
ilarly. Savagery represents the natural
fj action of human units in a lawless world
— a primitive and unci\'ilized condition of
society. Sovereignty is supposed to be the supreme
expression of the authority that regulates organized
and responsible states. But, as there are many so-
called sovereignties in the world, and as the funda-
mental claim of each is that it is uncontrolled and
uncontrollable by any other, the impact of these un-
yielding forces on each other has created a new, an
irresponsible, a lawless over-world. This over-world is
lawless because sovereignty, being itself the law, can-
not, except by physical compulsion, be expected to
obey any law but its own and such limited obligation
as may be expressed in treaties. Under the pressure
of real or alleged necessity, treaties are frequently
ignored and sometimes openly \'iolated. The result is
that national units, in the exercise of their highest
functions, operate to-day in a world that is as irre-
sponsible as the world of savagery.
Human Brotherhood 21
Savagery and Sovereignty, therefore, not only sound
alike, but are alike in the social conditions which they
define. It is not an exaggeration to say that savagery
in a thousand years together was not guilty of such
crimes against humanity as have been committed by
sovereignty within eight months.
The abihty of any state speedily to enforce justice is
universally regarded as evidence of that state's title to
respect. When the courts of any country become in-
efficient, revolution is near; when they become cor-
rupt, anarchy is not far off. No country, ha\'ing either
inefficient or corrupt courts or no courts at all, can be
said to be a civilized country. In the over-world of
International Relations there are no real courts be-
cause there is no central authority, and naturally there
are no laws which can be effectively enforced.
Proximity and common ideals until recent times
have been controUing forces in the creation of nationali-
ties and of International Relations. International Re-
lations are no longer the result of geographic proximity
alone. Peoples are near each other now who may
physically be far apart and have few ideals in common.
Proximity and International Relations have been ad-
vanced by increased population and by a multiplica-
tion of nationalities, but proximity through the service
of electricity and its allies has outrun proximity through
increasing population, and to such a degree that from
the standpoint of human interest there are no foreign
lands. Japan is now involved in a war the physical
center of which is at her antipodes.
The world was politically several diameters larger
when the American Union was established than it is
now. Any word uttered to-day by a person in au-
22 Let Us Have Peace
thority in Petrograd, or Berlin, or Paris, or London, is
published in New York or Tokio before '* to-day" has
dawned in those cities. The Battle of New Orleans
was fought two weeks after the United States and
Great Britain had signed the Treaty of Ghent, because
the world was then so large. That tragedy could not
happen to-day, because the world is so small, but the
barbarism that lies back of that tragedy has not been
touched.
The fundamental concept of national sovereignty is
self-sufficiency, but no nation is now self-sufficient.
Evidence of that lies all about us. Gradually through
the years — swiftly in recent years — through the instru-
mentalities which have annihilated time and distance,
the units of humanity have been drawn together; but
sovereignties, as such, are no nearer each other to-day
than they were centuries ago. The impact of unyield-
ing sovereignties has been intensified and extended by
the common interest which inevitably sprang out of the
closer relations between the units of humanity. The
new world thus created exhibits all the characteristics
of a state which has no efficient courts nor any certain
way of administering justice.
We have tried to soften the asperities of this lawless
world through what is known as International Law.
We suddenly awoke last August to find not only that
the land was lawless but that it was the natural habitat
of revolution and of utter anarch}'.
This increasing, unorganized, lawless, but necessary
relation between sovereignties is the great problem
before humanity to-day. It is greater than the issues
involved in the European war. It is greater because,
unless the anarchism of this over-world is stamped out,
Human Brotherhood 23
the European war will be repeated again and again
with greater butchery and with greater shame. All
the questions which trouble the statesmen of Japan
and America lie in this barbaric over-zone. All the
differences leading up to the present situation in Europe
had their genesis there. By patience, forbearance, and
the cultivation of a tolerant spirit, the statesmen of
Japan and America can solve the present-day prob-
lems. But others like them will immediately spring
up, and little progress will be made through their solu-
tion because the realm in which they arise is controlled
by the rules of savagery and not by the laws of civiliza-
tion. Whether the present questions between our
countries are peacefully composed or not, Japan and
America, and all the considerable Powers of the
world, will inevitably advance further and further
into this savage over-world. Business and the interests
of humanity will compel such advance. To learn what
will happen then, we need only point to what is happen-
ing now.
Modern business and the growth of human sym-
pathy is the new wine which the people of Japan and
the people of the United States and the peoples of the
great European countries have been and are now pour-
ing into the old bottles of national sovereignty, with
the usual results.
The anarchy of this over-zone cannot be destroyed
by Japan and America and the other great nations of
the world through any half-way measures. Nor can
we ignore it. We must deal with it. Nothing less than
revolution in the existing international order will serve.
Can the people of Japan and the people of the United
States contemplate with any patience the signing of
24 Let Us Have Peace
the usual forms of peace when this war ends? We all
know too well what that will mean. We can even now
see the contestants limping off, each to its own bit of
earth, immediately to begin preparation for the next
and greater slaughter. Haven't we had enough of
slaughter? Haven't we had enough of a program
which means periodical human butchery and can never
mean anything else?
We may as well face the truth; our leaders have
failed. They have led the world to a shambles. But
the people have not failed. Their heroism is to-day
as unselfish and as splendid as the heroism of Ther-
mopylae. The fiber of the common man has not de-
teriorated. It shines resplendent in France, in Bel-
gium, in Germany, in Austria, in Russia, and in the
Orient. In the grip of national sovereignty the people
are apparently helpless. As the world is now led, men
must periodically go out to slaughter their brothers
with whom they have no quarrel. Isn't it time for a
new leadership?
I have said that no nation is now self-sufficient. I
do not sa}^ that nationality has not served a high pur-
pose, but the bloody fields of Europe show conclusively
that whatever nationality may have achieved in the
past, it cannot now render to humanity any service
which for a moment justifies the hideous human sacri-
fice, which, Moloch-like, it exacts. This war is hu-
manity's greatest tragedy, but it will not have suffered
in vain if its opportunity is fairly grasped. The war's
close will be that ''tide in the affairs of men" which
must be "taken at the flood". No people in all the
world can render a nobler ser\'ice in that hour than the
people of Nippon. You have seen the world within
Human Brotherhood 25
the memories of men now living expand as it did when
you decided to open your gates sixty years ago, and
you have seen it contract through the discoveries of
modern science.
Beyond any other people you are in touch with
what is old, and yet you are in sympathy with what
is new. You have within recent years shown a self-
control, a broad tolerance, and a genius for achieve-
ment which stamp you as a great and a greatly humane
people. Will you, therefore, when the hour strikes,
join hands with the people of the United States of
America in the formation of a Federation which shall
place humanity above nationality?
Happily there is a precedent which indicates how
this Federation can be formed and what it should mean.
In 1781 the thirteen colonies of the United States
took half-way measures for the creation of a nation.
They formed what was known as the American Con-
federation. This was actually an attempt to create a
central power without surrendering to it whatever au-
thority was necessar}^ to control interstate questions.
The American Confederation became little more than
a travesty on government. It was as inefficient then
as International Law is now. But in 1787 the thirteen
quarreling States abandoned the old program, adopted
a Constitution, and thereby created a central authority
known as the Federal Government. The States sur-
rendered nothing in creating the central government,
except a little false pride. By that surrender they
achieved America and all that America means. They
failed to secure permanent peace because they did not
in the Constitution make the authority of the Federal
Government sufficiently exphcit. This resulted in our
26 Let Us Have Peace
great Ci\'il War. That Constitutional error was
promptly rectified, and now such a thing as war between
the States of the American Union is unthinkable. War
between the nations of Europe or the nations of the
East or between the West and the East must be made
equally unthinkable.
I believe the people of the United States of America
are ready to help ci\dlize this lawless over-zone; this
realm of Moloch; this land of no-man and yet of every
man; this land in which plighted faith has no meaning,
where the chastity of women has no protection; this
land where intrigue flourishes, where spies swarm,
where men smile and lie; this land of head-hunters;
this Gethsemane of civilization where women and
children weep before they are crucified; this land in
which, whether we will or no, we must all dwell.
The doctrine of unconditioned sovereignty — and that
alone — has filled this land with Horrors. It should be
the Land of Promise, because it is the unexplored con-
tinent of human brotherhood.
We of Japan and America must unite to slay its
artificial monsters, to banish its unnatural terrors.
Otherwise sovereignty will go on quarreUng with sover-
eignty, human butchery will be as unchecked as it has
been for centuries past, until that day arrives when the
titular head of a really unconditioned sovereignty shall
set his heel upon the neck of the world.
LIFE INSURANCE
AND THE CENTURY'S OPPORTUNITY
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE
THE BERKSHIRE COUNTY (MASS.) UNIVERSITY CLUB
MAPLEWOOD HOTEL. PITTSFIELD, MASS.
JUNE 1, 1915
OR the first time since this spinning speck
we call the world was whirled into form, for
the first time since that disputed date when
according to the Hebrew Scripture God
said: "Let There Be Light," there is on this
old earth a lack of room. The world is crowded. The
ends of the earth have come together. There are no
hermit nations; no foreign lands. No people can now
be greatly wronged without invohdng other peoples.
No question between peoples can be discussed without
inviting the interest, and possibly the direct inter-
ference, of other nations. This makes the twentieth
centurj^ the first World-Century — the greatest of all
centuries in its significance.
Earher centuries, however great their achievements,
have been, by comparison, provincial. Even when the
struggles of these centuries involved all of the known
world, the known world was not so large as the un-
known. This was true of all the so-called universal
empires — the Assyrian, the Persian, the Alexandrian,
and the Roman. It would have been measurably true
27
28 Let Us Have Peace
of the Napoleonic even if the snows of Russia had not
overwhelmed the Corsican a century ago.
The great conflicts of other ages have been the prod-
uct of racial rivalries, of religious bigotry, of political
ambitions, but all have been less than world-wide in
their reach. Never before has the whole world been
embattled or embroiled, and never before has even a
part of the world been embroiled for such a reason.
The progress of humanity had so shrunk the world that
as governments were organized there was in August,
1914, actually a lack of room. Nationality had sub-
stantially reached its limit. The nations had begun so
to press upon each other, their impact was so un-
yielchng, their relations so chaotic, that each of two
great European groups suddenly on the 4th of August
last leaped to the conclusion that their very existence
was imperilled. Believing that, of course they had to
fight. The nations of Europe, each asserting uncon-
ditioned sovereignty, could not live permanently at
peace. In a given space at a given time there can be
only one solid body, and in this world there can be
permanent peace only when there is in all the world
only one unconditioned sovereignty. How to preserve
human liberty, race consciousness, national pride, and
yet so plan that there shall ultimately be one and only
one controlling expression of sovereignty is the problem
of the twentieth century. In its early solution lies the
severest test of the present quality of the human race.
Is the race now equal to this unprecedented task, or
are we again to revert to a period of darkness? Some
of us are so optimistic as to beUeve that even then a
second renaissance would follow, and a citizenship
based on the doctrine of human brotherhood would
Life Insurance and the Century's Opportunity 29
ultimately be reached. The question is: Can the
doctrine of human brotherhood be estabhshed noiv?
Possibly our times, even before this war began, in
the perspective of history, will be rated as reactionary.
Perhaps a renaissance is quite as necessary now as it
was in the fourteenth century; indeed, it is reasonably
clear that the revival of learning was an event of no
greater importance then than a movement to make
humanity and not nationality the supreme purpose of
all government would be now.
\Miat reasons may be advanced for the belief that
the dark ages will not recur, or, assuming that our own
times represent a period of darkness, that we shall
presentl}^ establish the United States of the World.
There are many reasons, but I can deal this evening
with only one.
Such a program must be based on the doctrine of
human brotherhood and a world citizenship. Life In-
surance was the first practical enterprise to assert the
brotherhood of man, to create an organization based on
a world citizenship, and to recognize the fact that the
world has become very small.
Present-day nationalities are based on a substantial
denial of man's brotherhood, on a direct denial of such
a thing as a world citizenship, and the assumption — •
in the face of incontrovertible facts to the contrary —
that the world is very large.
Life Insurance and Nationality are in large par-
ticulars in direct opposition. Which principle is to
prevail?
But for the inertia of the established order, an
answer to that question would be easy. Just now
sovereignties in their international relations have so
30 Let Us Have Peace
utterly failed, have so wickedly cheated the world,
have so ferociously set man against his brother, that
we do not need to point to the wisdom and beneficence
of life insurance to prove that whatever may have
been true in the past, the doctrine of nationality has
reached its limits and the time has come to adopt a
larger program.
In its international relations, the world last August
was living in an age of pure savagery. We can see
things now that we could not see then. The contrast
between the good order, the justice, the safety of person
and property, which represented the inner life of each
nation, and the deadly peril which threatened every
citizen of every nation in the larger world of inter-
national relations is obvious now. The picture has
been burned into our consciousness in the last ten
months. Here were eight great powers, each adhering
to the doctrine of unconditioned sovereignty, that is
each claimed to obey no law but its own, — except such
law as it might have itself written in what are called
international treaties, obligations which after all are
limited in their force by the separate judgment of the
signatories and have, not unnaturally, through all
history been neglected or utterly disregarded under
the stress of real or alleged necessity^ Each nationality
operated substantially on the theory that it alone was
right; on the theory that whether it was right or not,
it was prepared to defend its sovereignty with the Uves
of all its citizens or subjects and its last bit of property.
These assumptions are very old. They go back to the
events that succeeded the fall of the Roman Empire.
They have not essentially changed in all that time.
But the world has changed, and changed so much that
Life Insurance and the Century's Opportunity 31
either these assumptions must be measurably aban-
doned, or the conditions which now rule in Europe will
continue indefinitely.
Nationality assumes self-sufficiency, and we all know
to-day no nation is self-sufficient. Self-sufficiency
achieved would be a mistake. Why should a nation be
self-sufficient? Why should it desire to be self-sufficient?
There is no natural reason for this except the fear that
it will be attacked. The natural law of humanity is first
self-help, then co-operation and then inter-dependence.
Inter-dependence has developed with the progress of the
discoveries of science, and has advanced in spite of the
assertions of nationality to such a degree that when the
savagery of nationality asserted itself last August, the
shock to civilization was vastly more serious and far-
reaching than it had been or could have been in any
pre\4ous conflict between nations. The world had
grown together. The blow that could force it apart
had to be terrific in its impact and necessarily hideous
in its results.
Consider how silly the assumptions of nationality
are. We had a startling illustration of the smallness
of the world just recently. The destruction of the
Lusitania was known in New York by New York time
before it actually happened. A hundred years ago,
because the world was much larger, a battle was fought
in New Orleans two weeks after a treaty of peace had
been signed between the contending parties. The
present methods of communication would have saved
the tragedy of New Orleans, but that the savagery of
nationality has been untouched is shown by the fact
that instant communication not only could not save
the Lusitania but probably contributed to her de-
32 Let Us Have Peace
struction. The barbarism that hes at the basis of
international relations is the same barbarism in the
twentieth century that it was in the times of Napoleon
and earlier. Of course this ought not to be. Con-
ditions which put all mankind in instant touch, through
messengers which outspeed the sun in its course, ought
to have brought a better understanding between men,
ought to have created the sympathy which follows
understanding. Outside of Life Insurance and some
phases of commerce, nothing of the sort has happened.
The developments of modern science, the quick inter-
change of knowledge, the growth of commerce and the
necessary inter-dependence of peoples, have been so
perverted by the demands of sovereignty as to embitter
international relations. vSo perverted they have not
softened the asperities of international intercourse, they
seem rather to have multipUed the implements of war
and death, and to have actually created in some human
hearts a cruelty so remorseless and so utter that
savagery no longer seems the proper word to use in
describing the relations of nations.
Indeed we need a renaissance. Internationally we
are now in a period blacker than the dark ages, —
savagery rampant and regnant, not in the heart of
Africa, not in some remote corner of Asia or South
America, but here and ever\n^'here throughout ci\iliza •
tion; in the twentieth centurj^, — in a time when a man
can sit at his desk in New York and talk with a friend
in San Francisco as easily as he can dictate a letter to
his secretary.
Every man it appears, therefore, in every nation Uves
in two worlds : one ci\'ilized, and one savage. He lives
in the humane and peaceful and decent order of his
Life Insurance and the Century's Opportunity 33
own country; and at the same time in the lawless over-
world of which every sovereignty and every citizen of
that sovereignty is a part. This over-world is as cer-
tainly every man's country as the ether is the en-
veloping element of the solar system. We may ignore
it ; we have tried to do that. Every nation has tried to
ignore it, with one exception. Germany did not ignore
it. She prepared and prepared ruthlessly for the con-
flict which was inevitable. Every other nation dwelt
in a FooFs Paradise. I call it a Fool's Paradise because
all nations should long since have taken action to
organize this over-world. ]\Iorally Germany may have
been wrong, because preparation meant war; morally
other nations were about equally wrong and in ad-
dition they were illogical, because while they flinched
from the brutality of the German's logic, they did
little to answer it, — they made onlj^ pitiful attempts to
sweep lawlessness out of international affairs. As-
serting after a fashion the brotherhood of man, they
did nothing effective or serious, looking to its establish-
ment. The German in effect boldly denied the brother-
hood of man, asserted the superiority of his own
ci\'ilization and planned to impose that ci\'ilization on
the whole world. The German may have been wTong
morally; but he stood up to his logic. And, mark this:
Unless the peoples of the world abandon this Fool's
Paradise, unless they organize and civilize this savage
over-world, unless they qualify the existing doctrine of
unconditioned sovereignty, and create a new order, the
basis of which is humanity, Germany, or some other
people who believe as the Germans do, will prevail and
an empire will be established that will be universal
indeed. Before that happens we shall have an utter
34 Let Us Have Peace
end of democracy. Which then shall it be, autocracy
or democracy? It must be one or the other. This
over-world will be organized. It must be. The pressure
of the life of the world ^\ill compel it. Shall democracy
— the people — do it, deri\'ing their powers from the
consent of humanity, or shall autocracy do it, deri^dng
its power from the force it commands and justifjdng
its rule by some theory of Divine permission?
This, and not the present European War, is the great
issue before the world to-day.
For us to assume that this over-world will be organ-
ized by anything but democracy is to abandon the
principles for which this nation has always stood. I
make bold to assert that democracy must organize this
unknown continent, and that it will do so. I also
assert that the first great coherent and adequate plan
which has entered this over-world and has begun to
organize it is Life Insurance. If, then, you ask me
whether I would bestow on Life Insurance the dignity
which attaches to problems of state, my answer is
emphatically that "I would and I do". I bestow on
it more than that dignity. It is the one idea current
amongst men to-day which runs so parallel to the line
of human development that it long since passed the
limits of present-day sovereignties and has for years
been busy civilizing this savagery in which we all Uve.
While nations were asserting that because of racial
differences and religious conflicts and century-old hates,
the units of humanity must remain as they are and
must preserve their integrity by bloody conflicts, Life
Insurance was demonstrating that men — in spite of
differences of race, and color, and rehgion — can work
soundly and peacefully together.
Life Insurance and the Century's Opportunity 35
The law of Life Insurance is very simple, — it is the
law of human brotherhood. life Insurance does not
proceed on any unproven theories, it does not \'iolently
take from one and give to another; it values each life
and gives to each life only what it is contractually
entitled to; and, to the confusion of sociologists and
statesmen, it finds that humanity upon the whole
wants onlj^ what it is entitled to. The republic so
established is not inconsiderable. In several American
companies there are involved directly and indirectly
more lives than are included within some of the so-called
sovereignties that are engaged in the European war.
And what have these millions of men of all races and
colors and rehgions entrusted to each other? They have
trusted each other with about all that is involved in
any proper social or governmental program. They have
substantially covered the whole ground of society and
government. They have proven, in other words, that
it can be done. For example, in one international
institution the membership owns securities worth more
than 8800,000,000. No member feels that his rights
are threatened because he finds among his associates
other races and other nations. Why should he be
anxious. Is not this lack of anxiety the natural attitude
for the man to assume? Isn't the reverse attitude the
artificial and the unnatural attitude? Frenchmen and
Germans, acting without governmental constraint,
through life insurance enter into a partnership which
involves the welfare of their families and a provision
for their own old age. To do this they have to trust
each other. They do not naturally expect to be over-
reached. They frequently put about all they have
into the partnership.
36 Let Us Have Peace
But bring these same men together in the over-world
of international relations and what a transformation!
They at once become savages. They are the same men,
and a moment ago they were brothers. What has hap-
pened so to transform them? Simply this : They have
left the world of law and order and good feeling which
exists within the limits of their own nationality, — a
condition which life insurance has carried beyond the
limits of their nationalities, — and have entered the
lawless world into which nationalities in the nature of
things cannot go without becoming savages. When,
therefore, the nation becomes savage, the man as a
citizen becomes a savage also. But the man through
life insurance has discovered that when he enters this
same world as a human being, as an insurant, and not
as a nationalist, he is not himself a savage, nor is he
surrounded by savages. And yet he is in the same
world, is himself the same man, and is surrounded by
the same men.
Men of different nations, different races, different
colors, and different religions, must hereafter have
relations with each other. The spark that Franklin
drew through his kite from the upper air was mightier
than any thunderbolt forged by Jupiter, and it will
remain. Life insurance has anticipated that this would
be the case, and has shown the way. But under the
doctrine of unconditioned sovereignty civilized relations
cannot be maintained internationally. Therefore, if
the savagery in which the citizenship as well as the
nationalities of the world now live, is to be eliminated,
Nationality as such must assume a subordinate relation
in a new and higher order which humanity itself must
establish. That relation, in a general way, corresponds
Life Insurance and the Century'' s Opportunity 37
with the relations which Massachusetts sustains to the
Federal Government.
Life Insurance has been the Pilgrim of this unex-
plored continent. The United States of the World,
which I firmly believe is coming, will simply be a great
insurance company, which will as certainly banish
the terrors of war as life insurance now banishes for
its membership the fear of premature death.
So organized there is room enough in the world and
room to spare. So civilized this over-world will become
tangible and mighty and beneficent — even as the
United States of America, though inseparable from its
constituent states, is tangible and mighty and bene-
ficent.
The cave man, whose hand was against every other
man, learned the better law of the family and sur-
rendered his unconditioned sovereignty. The family
learned the better law of the clan; the clan the better
law of the tribe; the tribe the better law of the state;
the state the better law^ of larger units. So-called
unconditioned sovereignty was abandoned in each case
as the forward step was taken. Now the great sover-
eignties must learn the better law of human brother-
hood. In order to do that some measure of so-called
sovereignty must nominally be surrendered; but the
surrender \vill be, as it always has been, a victory and
not a humiliation. It will not destroy nationality but
preserve it by protecting it. It will create the order
foreshadowed two thousand years ago —
"On Earth Peace, Good Will toward Men."
"A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT"
AN ADDRESS— RESPONDING ON BEHALF
OF THE WORLD'S INSURANCE CONGRESS TO ADDRESSES
OF WELCOME BY THE GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA AND
THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO, OCTOBER 4, 1915,
PANAMA-PACIFIC INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION
RDINARILY, insurance is regarded as a
device by which Hfe, property, and busi-
! ness are protected against the vicissitudes
of time and circumstance. It is much
more than that. It is the destroyer of
prejudice and the enemy of a very dangerous kind of
ignorance. It appeals to the mass feehng, to those
impulses which foreshadow the ultimate achievement
of human solidarity. In its offices and on its streets
the peoples of all lands and of all races meet and mingle
daily. It is a world-exposition whose doors never close.
Thus welcomed to this City of Dreams, to this epi-
tome of all that was best in our recent civilization,
insurance naturally feels itself no stranger and indeed
flatters itself that whatever pertinence the formulas of
welcome may or may not have on some occasions, the
proprieties were not transgressed nor the truth sur-
passed in the fervent and eloquent speeches of welcome
just delivered by the executive heads of the State and
City.
A world-exposition should reflect world-conditions;
it presupposes world-wide intercourse, world-wide un-
3S
"A Man's a Man for a' that" 39
derstanding, and some considerable degree of world-
wide sympathy and faith.
Tested by this rule, the Panama-Pacific International
Exposition seems not a real thing but a resurrection of
an earlier and better age. It stands out like a half-
submerged mountain peak marking the spot where a
noble continent once was. It tells us that even in our
day men did laugh together, and did love each other
and did have faith.
This Exposition, therefore, is more than an exposi-
tion. It does not reflect the condition and present
purposes of the world. If it did, it would emphasize
the possibility, aye the probability, that we may not
for generations have a civilization equal to that of
August 1, 1914. This Capital of the arts, the learn-
ing, and the achievement of the world, does not re-
motely suggest such reflections. It suggests living
beauty, and international understanding and inter-
national peace. We, alas! know that its suggestion is
little better than a mockery, because these splendid
piles, these soaring arches stand in the forum of the
world not unlike those pathetic pillars of the temple of
Castor and Pollux in the Roman Forum, eloquent of
the power and beauty of a dead civilization.
Against the methods which resulted in the existing
European horror insurance has always been a warning
and a protest and has always suggested a remedy. It
has been a warning and a protest because it has taught
the insufficiency of the unit of anything — whether that
unit be a man or a business or a nation. It has sug-
gested a remedy not only because of the billions which
it has distributed (and is distributing now) in alleviat-
ing the tragedies of life but because it has taught and
40 Let Us Have Peace
practiced the doctrine of co-operation, in which lies
the greater portion of any existing and reasonable hope
that our civilization may not after all be utterly over-
whelmed.
In the struggle for existence insurance is a de\dce by
which present strength unites to protect society against
future weakness.
Insurance is a perpetual warning that nationality as
a basis for ci\ilization is insufficient. Civihzation has
broken down because its units — the nations — could
severally no more carry their individual risk than a
man can carry the risk of his own mortality. If each
great nation had a world completely to itself, the
problem might be different. But our problem is
gravely complex. Here are eight great powers and
several times that number of lesser sovereignties, each
struggling and developing on the theory that they
severally are substantially alone in the world. They
recognize the existence of other powers through con-
tracts called treaties. The morality of these treaties
is historically shown to be little better than the
"honor" which exists amongst bullies and thieves.
They are necessarily interpreted by their makers and
not by an impartial court, because there is no such
court, and can be none under the existing doctrine of
sovereignty.
The nations have, therefore, lived internationally in
an order where the hazard was greater than the normal
hazards of life and business. It could hardly be called
a hazard at all ; it was a certainty. This world struggle
was ine\4table, unless radical reorganizations of inter-
national relations were agreed to, unless some plan of
international insurance could be established. Little,
"A Mail's a Man for a' that" 41
however, was done. The god of unconditioned sover-
eignty was everywhere worshipped. NationaUty im-
pinged on nationahty. The world grew smaller. The
international impact grew hea\der. Germans saw the
significance of the doctrine of sovereignty in the time
of the Great Frederick. They began to get ready. The
other European nations did not see the true significance
of the situation and prepared only half-heartedly for a
struggle upon which they never really expected to
enter.
No nation took the lead in a movement to insure the
perpetuity of all through assured peace for all. Ger-
many, logically following the doctrine of sovereignty,
deliberately prepared to impose her civilization on the
entire world. The other nations built up the elaborate
fabric of their peaceful purposes without adequate
preparations to defend that structure by force on the
one hand or a program of world-co-operation to pre-
serve it on the other.
Germany aimed to insure herself by her might, which
spelled world dominion and could mean nothing else.
The other nations denied any ambition for world do-
minion and at the same time utterl}- neglected to pro-
tect their integrity through co-operation. The so-
called Allies have neither lived up to the logic of
unconditioned sovereignty nor prepared the world for
its opposite through international insurance.
The government at Washington, whatever else it is,
is a great insurance company whose chief function is to
guarantee the peace and integrity of the States. It
follows precisely the principles which underlie all sound
insurance. Why do California and New York exist as
commonwealths to-day? Would they probably exist
42 Let Us Have Peace
but for the Federal Union? Have they lost any dig-
nity or power or happiness or peace because they have
duly subscribed to the great insurance compact of 1789?
Would nations fare differently if a like compact were
made under a larger Federation?
When someone remarks that we must travel a long
way fonvard before we reach such a federation, it be-
comes pertinent to reply that we have traveled a long
way backward within fourteen months and at infinite
cost. If the constructive forces of the world, as they
existed on August 1, 1914, could have been brought
into co-operation, if the bigotry that skulks behind
what we call patriotism could have been exorcised, if
human rights and not national sovereignty could have
been made the supreme purpose of ci\'il society, the
distance which then separated us from a condition of
international civihzation and world peace, real peace,
lasting peace, would have been shorter than that
already measured in the existing plunge toward chaos.
The world was so led that it stupidly chose to plunge
toward chaos.
The man who doesn't insure his life and his property
and his business we rate as stupid. Sovereignty is to
every citizen a menace as real as that of the vicissitudes
of life, an enemy as certain and cruel in its average ac-
tion as human mortality. Yet self-governing men,
men who otherwise think and look facts in the face,
make little or no provision against its operation. In
seeking for a word which describes the condition of
mind of the average citizenship of the world in its atti-
tude toward sovereignty, that word "stupid" fits bet-
ter than anj^ word I know.
"A Man's a Man for a' that" 43
For the common man to allow his governments to
force him to kill and be killed for no sufficient reason is
stupid; for him to become obsessed with the idea that
the peoples of other nations want to wrong him is
stupid; for him to believe that it is his duty to slay his
fellows and destroy their property is stupid; for him to
raise up sons with infinite pains and at heavy cost to
have those sons fed to cannon is stupid; for him not to
see through the designs or unconscious errors of poli-
ticians and rulers is stupid; for him to have followed
leaders so wicked or so blind that they have led him to
a shambles was stupid. It was stupid — because there
is little about this war that suggests Thermopylae
or Tours or Lexington or Gettysburg, where resistance
was righteously made to tyranny or error. This war
is the logical resultant of forces that were perfectly
open in their operation and perfectly certain in their
issue. The statesmen of the world could not or did
not rise above the provincialism of nationality. Re-
morselessly or blindly or stupidly — some will say de-
liberately — they drove the great machines of modern
civilization into each other, head on.
We have on our Northern border all the elements of
a similar collision. Four thousand miles of frontier
separate us from Canada. Along that entire front
there has been no fort and on the great inland seas
which lie between no ship of war, for well nigh a cen-
tury. There is nowhere in the world a more splendid
people than these Canadian neighbors. For us and
them to drift along in a sort of fool's paradise with no
strong and definite arrangement which will insure
them and their sons and us and our sons against the
insanity of war is stupid. We have been lucky for a
44 Let Us Have Peace
hundred years because nothing has disturbed our
dreaming, but we are infinitely stupid, now that we
reahze the brutal possibilities of present-day civiUza-
tion, in continuing conditions fraught with such
hideous consequences. It would be as savage and
as monstrous for us to fight with Canada as it would
be for California to fight with Oregon. There is
no natural reason why we should — and yet, who
shall say what may happen while they assert and we
assert that our rights as nations are paramount to our
several rights as indi\'iduals, as human beings?
Consideration of our relations with Canada brings
us squarely up against the question of our own con-
dition in our relations to international problems.
There are two types of international peace insurance,
one already established, the other to be established:
First. Peace insurance based on might, — ex-
pressed generally in a great standing army
and a powerful navy.
Second. Peace insurance based on a League or Fed-
eration, to which the peoples shall have dele-
gated such authority as will enable it to
enforce peace internationally.
The first type of insurance may be called the Euro-
pean plan, adopted practically by all the great trans-
Atlantic powers, and most perfectly exemplified by
Germany. What sort of peace that plan produces
Europe now teaches us. What the system ultimately
leads to Shakespeare expresses through Ulysses, in
Troilus and Cressida, when he says:
"Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make, perforce, an universal prey,
And, last, eat up himself."
"A Man's a Man for a' that" 45
The second type of insurance may be called the
American plan and is exemplified in the Federation
formed by the Thirteen Colonies in 1789. What sort
of peace insurance the American plan produces the
status of the States under the Federal Union shows.
WTiat it shall lead to depends largely on what we do
in the near future.
We are now at the parting of the ways. We are
li\-ing by the American plan; as a people we are acting
as we would act if the federation of the world were
already an accomplished fact. As a government, on
the other hand, we are acting on the European plan,
asserting our rights under so-called international law,
and threatening to establish those rights by force. We
may now and then establish our rights internationally
by what appears to be sheer moral force; but the man
is bhnd who does not see that in a direct issue, when
nations believe their existence is imperilled, the only
law is still the law of might.
Believing, on the other hand, that the time has come
for the world to abandon the European plan, and
believing that in our own Federal Government we
have a model for the government of the world, we
have taken no very serious steps to establish an ade-
quate League or Federation of the Nations, without
which, in a military sense, we are morally as much
ahead of the age as Roger Williams was ahead of his
age, and incidentally perhaps we are inviting the same
fate. We, therefore, even more than the nations opposing
Germany, have neither lived up to the doctrine of
sovereignty nor to the doctrine of human brotherhood.
You have welcomed us to an Exposition which re-
flects the civilization of the twentieth century at its
46 Let Us Have Peace
zenith — possibly it reflects civilization at the highest
point it ever reached — if we consider man's relation to
the forces of nature and his triumph over some of the
mysteries which she has until recently so sedulously
and so successfully kept from us. But the tragedy of
it! You show us these wonders wrought out for the
comfort and happiness of mankind, and behold! the
wonders have become monsters, because these master
achievements have been perverted into implements of
wholesale murder. Something was lacking in the plan.
What was it?
The world plan which this Exposition represents
lacked the principle for which this Congress stands.
The Exposition represents efficiency without con-
science; progress without order; power without re-
sponsibility. It represents the work of men far ad-
vanced into the unknown who have since become con-
fused and instead of fighting a common enemy have
fallen upon each other. They advanced so eagerly
that they lost touch, they lost sympathy — they did
not see the whole problem.
Insurance, on the other hand, represents an intelli-
gent appreciation of the whole problem. Its members
do not become confused and fight each other; they
help each other. In its efficiency there is the conscience
of just dealing, which, outside the New England con-
science, is perhaps the best of all consciences. In its
progress there is the strength of an elbow touch so
wide that disorder cannot break in; its power lies in
regulation and order and responsibility and inter-
national democracy.
This Exposition represents the doctrine of sovereignty.
This Congress represents the doctrine of democracy.
"A Man's a Man for a' thaV' 47
In our adherence as a people to the doctrine of
sovereignty, we are not only bhnd but inconsistent and
very nearly unfaithful to our own political creed. In
1776 our fathers signed a declaration of principles as
well as a declaration of rights and of independence.
They declared their adherence to the self-evident truth
that all men — not citizens of the United States alone,
but all men — are created equal, and that they are en-
dowed b}^ their Creator with certain inalienable rights,
etc. That all men are created equal is not, of course,
wholly true; but, in so far as it is sound and in so far
as it is unsound, it is equally sound and unsound
everywhere. Its error does not follow national lines.
In international relations we, with all other republics,
constantly forget that men are men whatever their
country, that the demos is the demos whatever its
nationality.
A democracy which is democratic within its own
geographic limits only and treats all other peoples
claiming other allegiance as beyond the pale, is pro-
vincial and selfish and has missed the real meaning of
the doctrine which Jefferson penned and the fathers
signed.
There are some twenty-four republics in the world.
Most of them are truly democratic internally. All of
them are arbitrary, autocratic and undemocratic in
their relations with each other. Under the doctrine
of unconditioned sovereignty democracy dies at the
frontier of every republic.
The only true business democracies in the world
to-day, democracies which do not change their princi-
ples at any geographic frontier and have themselves
no frontiers, are the great insurance corporations whose
48 Let Us Have Peace
membership is world-wide and so soundly and so demo-
cratically related that no dynastic ambition, no claim
of sovereignty, can at all change their beneficent pur-
pose or materially modify their humane achievements.
This is the doctrine that will be preached and
preached and preached in the several sessions of this
Congress. Never more than now has the world needed
to heed its truth. Because its precepts have not been
followed, governments are tottering, millions of men
have alreadj^ died, millions of women have been cruci-
fied, billions of dollars have been squandered. Civili-
zation based on the doctrine of sovereignty has failed.
It is time to adopt a new program. The old program
is damned to all eternity. That new program must
rest upon what Burns had in mind when he wTote
"A man's a man for a' that."
The thing of supreme value in this world is human
life — not because it is stamped American or English or
Russian or French, but because it is in itself the sum
of all values, without which no other thing has any
value. Nationality is the expression of a fugitive con-
dition; in sociology it is what Burns also had in mind
when he said:
"The rank is but the guinea stamp."
Change the word "rank" to the word ''nation", and
the line reads:
"The Nation's but the guinea stamp."
Insurance may be primarily a device for the pro-
tection of life, property and business; but it deals with
and is faithful to the principle of race solidarity, and
thereby has become a practical and powerful leader
"A Man's a Man for a' that" 49
amongst the forces which seek the ultimate reahzation
of the prayer and prophecy which closes Burns's
immortal declaration of the rights of humanity:
"Then let us pray that come it may,
And come it will for a' that,
*******
That man to man the warld o'er.
Shall brothers be for a' that."
FEDERATION OF
SAFETY FIRST SOCIETIES OF AMERICA
REMARKS
AT THE FIRST NATIONAL CONVENTION,
DETROIT, MICHIGAN. OCTOBER 19, 1915
NATIONAL Convention whose purpose is
to save life and protect property should
strike a welcome note in the present dis-
r cord and terror of the world. Human life
-- seems so cheap these days! Property! Of
what use is it now, except as an instrument by which
more men may be killed? Civilization has never pre-
viously faced such conditions. It had come to assume
that certain fundamentals were established with regard
to life and property, and that the safety of these,
broadly speaking, might hereafter be assumed.
The anarchy that reigns to-day — because it is nothing
less than anarchy — was supposed only a Uttle while
ago to be impossible. To the anarchist, society has no
terms to offer because he strikes at the very foundations
of order, at the safety of life and the security of prop-
erty. No plan of any group of terrorists of which I
ever read could, if unchecked, have produced the
material and moral ruin that the great Christian Sov-
ereignties of the world have brought about within
fourteen months. It is indeed time that a note of
sanity was sounded. The civilization of the year 1914
50
Federation of Safety First Societies of America 51
was brilliant, efficient in many ways, and supposedly
strong, but it is obvious now that it had some very
great defects. What was the real foundation of that
civilization? The foundation was nationalitj'^, the
doctrine of sovereignty. It rested firmly on the belief
that national preservation, national expansion, national
integrity were the supreme good, the thing that out-
weighed in value millions of male lives, oceans of
women's tears, and billions of property. Unfortunately,
each separate nation followed the same faith, and
followed it to the exclusion of the rights of every
other nation. Civilization was a house divided against
itself.
If the doctrine of sovereignty hereafter squares itself
before the Court of Eternal Justice, it must be able to
enter on the credit side of the account that which will
balance the unspeakable and immeasurable debits which
Fate has entered against it since August 4, 1914. Few
men can be found anywhere who believe that nation-
ality can ever thus justify itself.
"Safety First" is the old demand for social justice
in a new form. It emphasizes the responsibilities of
the indi\'idual in the Democratic State. The greatest
weakness of Democracy, we sometimes think, lies in the
unwillingness of the individual to perform the high
duties that attach to citizenship in a republic. Every
man is glad to be free, glad to take for himself all the
benefits that increasingly come to him from a society
organized to protect the individual, and also so organ-
ized that its appeal tends to make each man stand on
his own feet and do his part. An even greater evil than
this willingness to take and unwillingness to give lies in
the instinctive unwillingness of man in a Democracy
52 Let Us Have Peace
to trust other men with power. By that process we
gradually drift away from fundamentals of safety.
If society in a great republic is to be efficient someone
must exercise great power. A great nation cannot be
conducted by mass meeting. The prime difference
between an efficient Autocracy and an efficient Dem-
ocracy is a question of responsible or irresponsible
power. The act of authority must be substantially the
same in each case. We have before us now a striking
example of this. A Star Chamber is conducting the
European war on behalf of Great Britain. A com-
mittee of eight men has been granted full power to
carry on the war. If Parliament should not meet until
peace is made, this committee would make the terms
of peace on behalf of the British Empire. A form of
government that has been detested by Enghshmen for
centuries has been fearlessly adopted. Why? Because
the situation demands expert knowledge and quick
action, and the power so lodged can be recalled at any
time; but meantime the action of Mr, Asquith's com-
mittee is as autocratic and final as the methods of the
Stuarts or Tudors. Englishmen, by this process, seek
safety. The first impulse is to save the Empire. In-
stead of being more autocratic by the appointment of
such a committee, England is more truly democratic
than ever before. The impulse which led to this
extraordinary action was a desire for safety. The
impulse not to trust men with power lies in all democra-
cies, and in none more than in our own. Our national
impulse is strengthened by the fact that we are still so
near the time of King George III and his Ministers.
We are increasingly inclined to forget that all govern-
mental power in this country is delegated power,
Federation of Safety First Societies of America 53
subject to revision and recall. We reserve the right
to do everything ourselves more or less directly, and
then we don't do it. As a result of this, we load our
State Constitutions with a lot of legislative rubbish
and our statutes with a lot of foolishness, and think
by that process we have preserved direct control of
affairs and done our duty.
But we frequently have rude awakenings. We dis-
cover now and then that things have not gone ac-
cording to our liking. We get angry and upset the
whole program at the polls. Then we go off again
under the foolish delusion that having asserted our
direct authority everything will be all right. We dis-
cover a little later that the whole thing is again
wrong, and proceed to rip it up once more. This
process extends from the school district to the White
House.
Our slogan is not "Safety First" but ''Business
First". The result is that the duties of citizenship,
which should come first, come away down the line for
most of us, and in the lives of some of us it would be
difficult to determine that they are given any im-
portance at all. This makes the demagogue's oppor-
tunity. Between the busy demagogue and the busy
business man the doctrine of our safety and inalienable
right to hfe, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, gets
rough handling. The busy business man forgets about
these great principles of safety and the demagogue
doesn't care. Naturally we get just such civic order,
just such administration as we deserve. Not long ago
the busy business man, confronted with laws that
interfered with his purposes, wasn't over-nice in the
methods he employed to get round them. Of these
54 Let Us Have Peace
practices, however, he has recently been more or less
cured.
You ask why I inject these reflections into a dis-
cussion of the labors of this Federation? I answer
because the sense of responsibihty, the regard for the
rights of others, the intense appreciation of the value
of human life and the desire for social justice, which
lie at the very heart of this movement, will help to
lift the general conception of the obligations of citizen-
ship to a higher level, to a level more in harmony
with the political maxims which are the bases of our
government.
By this assemblage "Safety First" is to-day advanced
from a state to a national motto, from a state to a
national battle cry. It will not achieve its full mission
until its recognition of the value of human life has been
incorporated into and controls the authority which, let
us hope, is at no very distant date to regulate and
direct the relations of the international world.
The very centre of the doctrine of this Federation
and its allied Societies is the value of human life. Its
plea is: "Be careful." Why? Because you represent
in yourself the value that gives all other things value.
"Safety First" means that there is something in society
vastly more important than success, more desirable
than efficiency. If human life is to be jeopardized by
haste, don't hurry. If human life is to be sacrificed by
speeding up efficiency, be less efficient. If the human
body is to be maimed or destroyed in order to secure
speed and power, get 'along with less speed and less
power. This doctrine is not merely sentimental, it is
more than a reflection of the woe and heart-break that
follows the cruel strokes of industry and traffic.
Federation of Safety Fust Societies of America 55
On business considerations alone it is to be rated
among the soundest and sanest movements started
within our time.
We have long been responding to the impulse which
lies back of this movement, but we have been working
at the wrong end of the problem. Consider what we
constantly do when appeal is made on behalf of the
inefficient. We tax ourselves both privately and
through established authority in order to preserve and
protect lives that have always been useless, or through
some industrial stroke or accident have become useless.
We tax ourselves to take care of the insane and we look
in a sort of haphazard way after the criminal classes.
But when we face the conffict of life, we change our
whole point of view. Our goal is success and not
safety, and success as a goal is a fine thing; but in the
eagerness of our quest we strike right and left, we charge,
and if in the process we have stricken somebody down,
or trampled on somebody, or gravely crippled ourselves,
we find it out usually when it is too late. Through
haste, through following the fighting instinct, through
utter concentration of our work we probably destroy
needlessly and unintentionally more value in the pro-
cess of production than we restore afterwards by all
our public and private charities.
"Safety First", therefore, is good business. "Safety
First" means that no business achievement is worth
while that needlessly sacrifices human life. This
Federation cannot wholly stop the slaughter that now
takes place daily upon the streets of most of our cities.
The vicissitudes of life will continue to take their toll,
but the immediate purposes of this organization will
not have been achieved until the murder of children
56 Let Us Have Peace
and the maiming and killing of the efficient has been
reduced to a minimum.
"But", someone says, "WHiy a national organiza-
tion? Why a Federation? Why not trust the matter
to the fine Societies that have sprung up in Detroit,
New York, Boston, New Orleans, Portland Oregon,
and in many other of our larger cities?" I answer that
a Federal organization is needed because the question
is more than local. The same sort of conditions prevail
everywhere. The same reckless disregard of the value
of human life exists everywhere, and the same sort of
accidents happen everywhere, except that they are
more frequent and deadly in some places. Moreover,
the whole problem inamediately takes us into the realm
of interstate relations and the labor of those that seek
this reform necessarily touches Federal authority and
must seek its co-operation. Then, too, this is not a
political but a humanitarian project and human rights
and needs are not limited by state lines. There are no
questions of state rights to trouble us. We are business
men and men connected with ci\'ic administration, or
representing it. We do not seek power or profit or
honor. We are dedicating some of our time and some
of our means to a purely unselfish effort, the purpose
of which is to save human life and preserve property.
A little group of men, practically all of whom are
here, but none of whom I shall now name, have been
the leaders in promoting the Federal movement. I
shall venture to be so nearly personal as to say that
but for the whole-hearted support of certain dis-
tinguished citizens of this city, and indeed but for the
cordial attitude of the city itself, this movement
might not have taken form for some time to come.
Federation of Safety First Societies of America 57
I don't know how I became President of this Federa-
tion. I was told to take it one day by a man whom I
dared not disobey, and so here I am. I expect always
to be proud of the fact that I had some part in helping
to nationalize a movement that calls men back from the
ruthless pursuit of mere success and reminds them that
any process by which life is wasted is unfit to survive,
and any process that unnecessarilj^ destroys value,
whether that value be in property or life, is bad business.
The Safety First Federation represents a national
effort to correct some of the moral and economic errors
of so-called efficiency. The slogan ''Safety First"
means be rational if you would he efficient.
The Federation aims to deal T\ith the relations of
society and government at the particular points where
the problems of life are most difficult and the struggle
is most intense. It seeks to remind men that human
life is still the one thing in the world of real value and
that to squander it in any interests is not only morally
and economically unsound, but is almost certain to
result in utter inefficiency.
Stand any day for an hour at Fifth Avenue and 42d
Street, or at Times Square in the later evening, or at
any of a dozen other places in New York, and observe
the inefficiency achieved by the blind driving at so-
called efficiency. Notwithstanding the high flexibility
of the automobile, notwithstanding strict traffic regu-
lations and an army of efficient policemen, you
observe a chaos of inefficiency.. Traffic crawls. The
bob-tailed horse car of twenty-five years ago made
better progress than the powerful modern machines
whose energies are necessarily repressed by the crush
of traffic. Incidentally great peril to life and limb
58 Let Us Have Peace
attaches to these conditions as the mounting totals of
street accidents, fatal and otherwise, annually show.
The efficiency of the automobile puts it centuries
ahead of the theories on which cities are built. Cities
are now built fundamentally much as they were two
thousand years ago. The pressure of modern energy
has produced the sky-scraper and the automobile, —
both absolutely at war with the traffic capacity of any
city. The purpose of each is efficiency. The result is
increasing inefficiency. No one thought out in advance
how a municipality could be constructed to utilize the
pent-up capacity of both these modern developments.
Existing municipalities cannot be reconstructed. We
are obliged to tinker with the old plan and fit it to the
new conditions. So we build subways and lay the
burden of their cost on future generations without
proper tax discrimination with regard to the huge
increment of value, unearned, which the new con-
ditions have created. Here has been and is an utter
disregard of reason and of safety. All this muddle in
the streets of our modern cities involves peril to fife
and peril to efficiency. Efficiency that does not rest
on a clearly thought out program, on safety, almost
certainly defeats its own purpose.
Our plea which puts the human unit above so-called
efficiency involves more than a humanitarian impulse.
It ultimately shows the only way to true efficiency.
No material gain, no enormously increased output
which reaches its goal over mangled Umbs and dead
bodies is worth while. It not only represents loss of
moral appreciation which means degeneration, but it
ultimately leads to chaos and enormous loss.
Federation of Safety First Societies of America 59
Suppose the peoples and rulers of the world on the
first of August, 1914, instead of plunging into war, had
first thought their problems out. Suppose they had
first surveyed the splendid condition of the world at
that time and said: "This must be preserved at all
hazards. This has cost a million years of toil, miUions
of lives, and billions of treasure. The ambitions of
this people or that people realized may or may not lead
to a better condition. For these ambitions and ideals
to become dominant as against the ambitions and
ideals of other peoples means certainly immeasurable
sufifering and loss. Whether anything would thereby
be gained at all commensurate with that suffering and
loss is more than problematical. Our duty is clearly
to save what we have, to be safe first."
Safety and reason would have been almost inter-
changeable terms in such reflections. But the European
world was as illogical in the solution of its international
problems as New York has been in soh-ing the problems
of its development. The great European sovereignties,
when steam and electricity had eliminated time and
distance, each asserting unconditioned sovereignty,
became the sky-scrapers in the cosmopolis of inter-
national relations. They were thrust in upon each other
under irreconcilable and hostile conditions. New York
and other American cities have been and are faced with
kindred conditions on a smaller scale. Owners of
property in lower Manhattan and elsewhere were
allowed to build almost at will. They had little more
regard for the natural right of their fellows to light and
air and a place to stand on the street, than nations had
for other nations, in their greed for power, in their
blind determination to survive and succeed at any cost.
60 Let Us Have Peace
Appalling conditions followed in both cases. The
average citizen must now pay the cost of this civic
blundering. The people of Europe are now paying the
appalling cost of Governmental folly. Nationality has
for a hundred years as clearly foreshadowed this world
cataclysm as the sky-scraper foretold conditions in
New York. No one in either case thought the problem
out, or if anyone did the public didn't understand it.
Human life is worth more than all the Republics,
Kaisers, Kings and Czars. What consideration was
given to human life when this European struggle began?
Absolutely none. Life became the cheapest thing in
the world. Pick up any English illustrated paper and
see the endless portraits of fine young men who, as the
papers put it, are ''dead on the field of honor". The
same is true in Germany and in France and in all the
belligerent countries. The best on each side have
killed the best on the other side, and each side is proud
of its deed. What has really happened? Merely that
the true issue was lost sight of, real values were ignored.
Sovereignty was exalted into the supreme good. In a
world shrunk to the point where from the standpoint
of human life there were no foreign lands men were
persuaded to resort to the savage theories that the cave
man followed. The people — considered as people and
not as patriots — had advanced far toward the realiza-
tion of true values, but under the pressure of antiquated
ideas and false leadership, they suddenly turned to
the defense of lesser values, to the maintenance of
nationality which is after all only an instrumentality of
life and not an end. For two years they have squan-
dered with sickening prodigality the most precious
thing in the world. Now the very thing they defended
Federation of Safety First Societies of America 61
with such heroism and at such fearful cost is itself in
deadly peril. The efficiency which was supposed to
lie in nationality has become the chaos of war. Instead
of achieving the thing sought men have gone back to
savagery. The automobile, without a program, without
reason, without safety, has made Fifth Avenue im-
passable and recreated archaic conditions. Civilization,
without a program, without \'ision, without appreciation
of true values, has, seeking efficiency, not only reverted
to inefficiency^ but to unbefievable brutaUty and
cruelty, to hatreds as bitter as death, to conditions
resulting from destroyed vitality and piled up debts
which will modify the achievements of the human race
for centuries to come.
Safety First means Humanitj^ First.
WTiat will it ultimately cost New York to solve her
existing traffic problems, if indeed they are solvable?
What would New York have saved in money, time,
lives and power if she had long ago limited the heights
of her buildings, long ago controlled the location of
industries and trade? WTiat will it cost the world to
solve the problems of this war, if indeed they are
solvable? What would Europe have saved if it had
recognized that the interests of the people under the
new conditions created by modern science are as
utterly at war with existing international relations as
the automobile and sky-scraper are with the traffic
capacity of an ordinary street?
This Federation has no private ambitions to serve.
This unfortunately is a time when the voice of altruism
sounds but faintly in the din aroused by the clash of
terrific national and industrial forces.
62 Let Us Have Peace
The Federation is ready to join hands with every
kindred movement which seeks to remind men that
any process by which the world is gained and the soul
is lost is a bad process, that any program that ignores
the superlative value of human life must lead finally
to disaster.
DEMOCRACY vs. SOVEREIGNTY
AN AFTER DINNER RESPONSE
DELIVERED NOVEMBER 18, 1915, AT THE 147th ANNUAL BANQUET
OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE STATE OF
NEW YORK, WALDORF-ASTORIA, NEW YORK
NTO the terror and chaos which to-day mis-
rule the greater part of the world certain
questions are increasingly thrusting them-
selves: (1) What was the fundamental error
in ci\dlization on August 1, 1914? (2) What
fundamental change must be made in order to correct
that error?
Of written and spoken answers to the first question
there is no end. Answers to the second question are
naturally fewer, because the facts necessary to coherent
thinking cannot be arrived at until the first question
has been answered.
All the peoples of all the warring countries believe
their cause is just, that they are fighting defensively
for their existence. And the paradox of it is that all
these beliefs are true. They are all fighting for existence
and for fatherland.
I heard Dr. Bernhard Dernburg say in the early days
of the conflict, defending Germany for her invasion of
Belgium, that the act was a necessity, that a nation
could not be expected to consent to its own destruction.
Commenting on our last and formal protest to Great
Britain, against what we deem her \'iolation of Inter-
63
64 Let Us Have Peace
national law, and her disregard of the rights of neutrals,
one of the great London dailies, justifying England's
determination to retain control of the seas at all hazards,
said '*A nation cannot be expected to commit suicide".
These expressions from either side, almost identical
in phraseology and absolutely identical in philosophy,
reflect the existence of a cause of war not often referred
to, under the compulsion of which however the whole
world rests to-day.
The flames which burst into a world conflagration
fifteen months ago were not only already burning under
cover fiercely everywhere in Europe, but unquestion-
ably were lighted, unquenchably lighted when world
civilization based on the doctrine of sovereignty began
to take form centuries ago.
The civihzation of 1914 rested on that doctrine.
And what is sovereignty? Sovereignty is final authority,
the thing greater than the law, that indeed protects
the law. Sovereignty is the highest expression of
authority in a ci\dlized state, not inferior however to
the authority of any other sovereignty, be that sover-
eignty physically greater or smaller, and not qualified
in its completeness by any other power.
This is the language of sheer authority, and sover-
eignty is the doctrine of authority. Democracy can
no more live in its atmosphere than Jefferson's theory
of inalienable rights can live in a world ruled by 42-
centimetre guns and superdreadnoughts. Its demands
are such that peace is now only a period of preparation
for war. If any branch of human endeavor is anywhere
developed along purely commercial lines, it is almost
certain ultimately to be held an error. Highways
should be built for military purposes; railroads should
Democracy vs. Sovereignty 65
primarily be planned to transport armies ; ships of com-
merce should be so constructed that they can be con-
verted quickly into cruisers or transports. In obedience
to the demands of sovereignty, the shadow of war rests
over us at all times.
At the very outset sovereignty assumes that it
must ultimately fight, that war is its true explanation,
and, therefore, it reserves the right to take the last
dollar of its citizens or subjects, and, if necessary,
to demand the sacrifice of their lives as well. The
favorite phrase of sovereignty runs this wise: ''In
defense of our liberties and our soil we will fight to
the last man."
Whatever the form of government, the sentiment
is the same. Behind that sentiment and in obedience
to its necessities the prejudices, the provinciaHsms,
the misconceptions, the hates, the fears, and the am-
bitions that so bitterly divide nations, were born. On
the first of August, 1914, they had grown to uncon-
trollable proportions.
Add to these conditions the fact that we were living
in the age of electricity, when the impalpable and
imponderable ether had become not a dead wall but
a shining highway through infinite space, when the
spoken word was seized by a messenger whose speed
and orbit far outreached the imagination of the people
who kept and guarded for uncounted centuries that
glorious word picture finally expressed in the first
chapter of Genesis, and the conclusion is inevitable, —
in such an age, and in a world so small a civilization
based on eight great aggressive unyielding uncon-
ditioned sovereignties was no more possible without
5
66 Let Us Have Peace
war than that two soHd bodies should occupy the same
space at the same time under the laws of physics.
Unconditioned sovereignty was the fundamental error
in civilization.
A striking feature of this war is that its divisions do
not follow the usual Hues of cleavage. Neither race
nor color nor religion are primarily responsible for the
conditions in Europe, nor for the cataclysm which has
occurred. Christians are fighting Christians; Jews are
killing Jews; Moslems are against Moslems; whites are
murdering whites; men of color are fighting their kind.
Saxons are fighting their own breed; Slavs are against
Slavs. The special favor of the God of the Christians
is blasphemously claimed by both sides.
The ordinary causes of war had unquestionably de-
creased on August 1, 1914, but the hope which that
fact held out to many of us proved finally to be a
false hope. In the impact of unyielding sovereignties,
in the fear which created a race in armaments, in the
belief that national preservation was the supreme duty
and sovereignty^ the supreme good, there was abundant
fuel for the fires already lighted. The conflagration
was certain. Every new invention by which time and
space were annihilated, presumably bringing humanity
increased comfort and safety and happiness and eflfi-
ciency, served even more markedly to increase inter-
national friction. Sovereignties were jammed together;
they met everjrwhere; they jostled each other on every
sea; they crowded each other even in desert places.
They had no law by which they could five together.
They could have none. Each was itself the law. When,
therefore, through the ehmination of indi\ddual pre-
judices and provinciahsms on the one hand, and the
Democracy vs. Sovereignty 67
conquest of time and distance on the other, the world
had reached a point where human brotherhood was
conceivably attainable, humanity found itself in the
clutch of this monster called sovereignty. Then came
the tragedy! Not alone in squandered life and property,
but in missing the great moment prepared through
centuries of human fidelity and suffering, the moment
when humanity was prepared to see itself through eyes
suffused with sympathy and understanding rather than
as now through eyes bUnded by hate and blood-lust.
The people of the various great powers of the world
in 1914 in fundamentals were not dissimilar. Never
in the story of man's evolution had he been so nearly
homogeneous. Everywhere he had approached com-
mon standards. His dress was much the same over
most of the Christian world, and this uniformity had
even made headway against the ancient prejudices of
the Orient. He thought much the same everywhere.
His standards of justice were strikingly alike. He was
kindly and merciful. His vision reached far beyond
the borders of his own land, and he was beginning to
understand that all men are brave and should be
brothers. The various instrumentalities that brought
all peoples severally face to face, that promised still
further to increase understanding and sympathy and
therefore the prospect of peace, unhappily and finally
had just the opposite effect. Men grew in international
sympathy; sovereignties did not. Men dropped their
prejudices; governments did not. The rigid barriers
which geographically delimit nations became more
rigid and more unyielding as individual knowledge
grew and common sympathy spread. The light that
penetrated to the individual and banished his bigotry
68 Let Us Have Peace
could not penetrate national barriers as such. Its
effect indeed was not to banish the darkness, but to
cast deeper shadows. The condition that made men
gentle made nations harsh; the impulse that drew the
peoples of the world together drove sovereignties apart.
The movement which foreshadowed a democratic
world, the brotherhood of man, meant the end of the
existing international order, and sovereignty instinct-
ively knew and feared that.
So far as governments would permit, men made
world-wide rules of action. They traded together
internationally when tariffs allowed. They joined in
great co-operative movements where race and creed
and all the usual distinctions that separate men were
ignored — ignored because men found when they came
face to face that the old hates and prejudices were
based on lies. The units of humanity became homo-
geneous; the units of ci^^Uzation, the great sovereign-
ties did not. Here were two irreconcilable conditions.
Sovereignties were in desperate straits. Each, menaced
by every other, assumed that its integrity must be
preserved at any cost. None was able to change its
point of view; none was permitted to qualify its attitude
toward other sovereignties, because each feared, as
Shakespeare puts it, that
"To show less sovereignty than they, must need
Appear less King-Uke.'"
No sovereignty except that of Germany saw, fully,
what this meant. Germany saw it long ago. Sovereignty
from the beginning meant ultimate world-dominion by
some nation. It could mean nothing less.
This explains why the splendidly efficient machines
of modern civihzation, moving, from the standpoint of
Democracy vs. Sovereignty 69
the individual, co-operatively, happily and helpfully
under the guidance of powerfully advancing human
sympathy, were on the first of August, 1914, suddenly
swerved by the savagery of unregulated internation-
ality and sent crashing into each other. How complete
the ruin of that collision no one can yet tell! What was
destroyed, or is to be destroyed, is not yet clear. Was
it democracy? Or was it sovereignty? The ultimate
destruction of one or the other is probable. World
peace is possible under either, but not under both.
Out of this hideous ruin will sovereignty ultimately
arise rehabilitated and increasingly aggressive? Will a
group of Powers finally emerge substantially victorious
and will the Controlling Power of that group by per-
fectly logical processes gradually make its civilization
dominant over the whole world? That is the only
process by which sovereignty can ever bring per-
manent peace. So long as there are even two great
unconditioned sovereignties in the world, there can be
no lasting peace.
Or is it possible that out of the ruin will come the
revolt of humanity? Will a real Demos appear? A
Democracy that has no frontiers, the Democracy of
Humanity? Remembering not only the slaughter of
1914 and 1915, but the program of slaughter followed
all through the Christian era, will the people say with
young Clifford in Henry VI :
"Oh War, thou Son of Hell."
Is it conceivable that they may say to sovereignty—
"You have in some things served us well in ages
passed. You have awakened in us heroic aspira-
tions and led us to noble achievements; but now,
alas! your hands drip with innocent blood, you
70 Let Us Have Peace
are guilty of deeds which the beasts of the jungle
would not commit — deeds that show you to be
inherently and necessarily, in the present condi-
tion of the world, the arch enemj^ of the human
race, and therefore we must now fundamentally
modify your demands."
Milton, in the Sixth Book of Paradise Lost, tells
how Satan, rebeUious, and all his hosts, after a terrific
struggle, threw themselves headlong
''Down from the verge of Heaven."
He tells us, too, how the Almighty stayed his own
hand because
Not to destroy, but root them out of Heaven."
Flanders and Poland tell a tale of horror, record the
use of machines and instruments of destruction, register
a story of cruelty and hate, such as even the ]\Iiltonic
imagination did not compass. The Satanic crew now
busy in Europe, whether their blood guilt is the result of
dynastic and race ambitions or, as I believe, the prod-
uct of forces beyond their control, must in hke fashion
be cast out if we are ever to have peace in this world.
That process will raise profound issues here. The
Trans-Atlantic problem includes more than hes on the
surface. What indeed of democracy? Will it again
be strangled as it was at the Congress of Vienna a
century ago, under the leadership of Austria and
Prince Metternich? We are involved because if de-
mocracy has a future in Europe, it will largely be the
result of its triumph here — a condition that ]\Ietternich
and his fellow reactionaries did not have to face.
Democracy vs. Sovereignty 71
For a hundred and thirty-five years of organized
Hfe, and indeed through all the years since the settle-
ment of Jamestown and the landing at Plymouth,
America has been the beneficiary of the human race.
Wrapped in her all but impenetrable isolation, beyond
the reach of dynastic ambition, and until recently
substantially beyond the impact of other sovereignties,
and therefore measurably unaffected by internationality
and its savagery, she has taken to her bosom the rest-
less, the wronged, the adventurous, the bold, the brave
— of all lands, indeed she has gathered into her fertile
soil seed sifted from all the world.
Our country has not been unworthy of the oppor-
tunitj^ With all her blundering, she has done well;
and whether she is now to be branded as selfish after
all depends on what she clearly stands for when this
war closes. One great thing she has done — perhaps
the greatest democratic thing that men have ever
done. She has shown how so-called sovereign states
can be merged into a larger state without losing their
individuaUty and without parting with democratic
principles. She has shown how local citizenships
can coalesce into a master citizenship and yet remain
vital. But, unless we misread the signs of Fate, she
is now nearing the period when she must do more
than that, or prove herself recreant, show herself an
unworthy beneficiary.
Before considering what we should do in the in-
terest of humanit}^ what we should do to discharge
our obligation and our duty, let us consider what we
should do at once, not as a measure of philanthropy
but as a measure of safety.
72 Let Us Have Peace
First, we should arm, and arm adequately; not be-
cause we believe in that theory of government, we do
not, we hate it; nor because we beHeve in that method
of setthng international difficulties, but because we
must at all hazards protect this home of democracy
from the Satanic brood which, driven from Heaven,
apparently fell in Flanders and Poland.
Second, we must at the same time try at least to
show that we are as great as Fate has decreed that
we may be.
"But specifically", you ask, "what should we do"?
We should signify our willingness to meet rep-
resentatives of all the considerable powers of the world
in an International Congress, the purpose of which
shall be similar to that of the Convention which met
in Philadelphia in 1787. That Convention met in the
historic mansion where the Declaration of Independence
was signed. Those two great assemblages, the second
no less than the first, have made the words "Inde-
pendence Hall", in the imagination of the plain people
of all the world, to shine hke the Di\ine Presence over
the Mercy Seat.
We should in that Congress stand for the civilizing
and humanizing of international relations by whatever
steps may be necessary. If to do that the present
doctrine of unconditioned sovereignty must be aban-
doned, if as a nation we must surrender what each
Colony seemed to surrender in 1789, we should stand
for that. We should find when the time came — as our
fathers did — that we had actually surrendered only a
little false pride, a Uttle hate, a Httle prejudice and a
little fear, and had entered, as the Colonies did, upon
the only Order that leads to peace and true greatness.
Democracy vs. Sovereignty 73
If such a program were presented to the stricken
people of Europe at this war's close, it probably would
not raise any larger problem than Washington and
Frankhn and Aladison and Hamilton faced in 1787.
The whole civilized world is no larger nor more obsessed
by prejudice than the Colonies were then. You re-
member how bitterly they hated each other. Perhaps
you recall what Mr. James Bryce says in his "American
Commonwealth", viz: that if the people of the Colonies
had voted directly on the adoption or rejection of the
Federal Constitution, it would not have been adopted.
You certainly recall that New York State was
against it, and the Convention called to vote on it
was hostile until Alexander Hamilton compelled ac-
ceptance by the force of his logic and eloquence. We
narrowly missed reverting to political chaos.
John Fiske calls the years between the Peace of
Paris and the adoption of the Federal Constitution
the critical period of American history. So indeed
it was. During that period prejudice was put aside,
jealousies were overcome, hatreds were forgotten, and
the common aims of the people, their natural sympathy,
their homogeneity, were gathered up into a triumphant
democracy.
No exact figures are available, but the population
of the European states now at war — excluding Japan,
Turkey, Asiatic Russia, and the Balkans — was at the
beginning of the nineteenth century approximately
the same as the population of the United States now.
Our territory, geographically, is about equal to that
of the countries I have included.
At the close of the Napoleonic Wars the people of
Europe expected a new order and the end of war. They
74 Let Us Have Peace
looked for the United States of Europe. Metternieh
and his associates denied that hope and so readjusted
continental Europe as to strangle democracy. But the
dream of the people was borne over seas and the United
States of America in 1915 is the colossal fact which
damns the continental sovereignties of 1815, and points
the way to a regenerated Europe.
Emerging from this hopeless, senseless, and desperate
struggle, the people of Europe will desire democracy
as never before. They first brought democracy to us.
Shall we now take it back to them?
We shall not, of course, reach the ultimate goal at
one bound. A world state modelled after our Federal
Constitution may be a long way off, but a real beginning
would be a transcendent achievement. Ex-President
Taft's League to Enforce Peace, with its modest sug-
gestion of a modified sovereignty, if achieved would be
worth centuries of European diplomacy.
We did not ourselves achieve peace immediately
after 1789, nor a national citizenship, but after our
feet were once fairly set in the way of the Constitution,
the people would not be denied. Once the people of
Europe feel their feet firmly set upon a road that leads
away from the savagery which now commands them,
away from the slaughter which periodically claims their
sons, from the shame that claims their daughters, no
dynastic or demagogic ambition can indefinitely deny
them the achievement of the civic brotherhood which
is the glory of America.
The people of Europe are not essentially different
from us. They are bone of our bone and flesh of our
flesh. The difference lies in this: We have been the
darlings of fortune. We have realized the noble \dsion
Democracy vs. Sovereignty 75
of democracy which Europe ghmpsed and lost a century
ago. After a hundred years of agony, the Fates bring
again to those stricken peoples conditions not dis-
similar to those of 1815.
If now we arm — as we should — and do only that
we shall show ourselves a nation of ingrates. If we
arm and say to Europe that we are ready at any time
to disarm, ready with them to create an international
state, a state in which the central authority shall act
directly on the people as our Federal Government does
— a state democratically controlled as our Union is — a
state in which international questions shall be settled
as our interstate questions are — a state in which war
would ultimately become as impossible, as unthinkable
as it now is between Massachusetts and New York —
if we do that, aye, if we try to do that — we shall show
ourselves morally at least to be worthy descendants
of the intrepid men who signed the Declaration of
1776, worthy successors of the great democrats who
fashioned the charter of our liberties in 1787.
THE YEAR 1916 WILL PROBABLY BE
NOTABLE FOR MANY THINGS
FROM THE AGENCY BULLETIN (N. Y. L.)
JANUARY 1, 1916
T MAY record important changes in the
map of the world; it may indeed mark the
end of certain ideas in government and the
beginning of a new era. The struggle which
has held the greater part of Europe in a
life-destroying grip for seventeen months cannot go on
indefinitely and it cannot end without some grave
readjustments.
Someone somehow miscalculated or this could not
have happened. In fact a good many wise people
miscalculated.
You know what my belief is: That the Doctrine of
Unconditioned Sovereignty made this war inevitable —
inevitable unless the world arose to heights of wisdom and
sacrifice that were never reached but once in all history,
and that was by our Fathers when they welded the Thirteen
Colonies into a Nation.
The doctrine of Sovereignty is the doctrine of selfish-
ness and of weakness.
A nation can no more insure itself, standing by itself,
than a man can. The mortality that may come to
The Year 1916 77
nations at the close of this war was as certain under
the doctrine of Sovereignty as that out of a given
number of healthy Uves so many will die in 1916. The
individuals who will die in 1916 can do little now to
prevent it, but you are busy teaching them how they
can minimize the loss.
The nations which will be crippled, possibly elimi-
nated, by this war could not only have minimized but
could have prevented such happenings by adopting
the life insurance principle. The destructive forces
loosed by international friction are all controllable —
they are the product of ignorance and prejudice and
fear, played on by ambition and selfishness.
The discovery of the law of mortality made life
insurance practicable, gave it a sound basis. It was a
great discovery, comparable in its influence on human
happiness with any of the great discoveries in science.
There is a law of human brotherhood, closely allied to
life insurance, feared by sovereignties and only dimh-
apprehended by the people, but it is of the very essence
of any plan which will effectuallj' end war.
The natural impulse of the politician is to sneer at
such suggestions as being impractical because too
idealistic. The world cannot arise from the welter of
blood into which it has fallen unless it follows Ideals.
No Ideal can be a more hideous failure, can cost more
blood and suffering than those the world has been
following. That much is clear.
The law of human brotherhood will cleanse the
bloody hands of men, will banish the Terror that has
pursued every Mother of sons since organized society
took form. Will the year 1916 see the beginning of its
78 Let Us Have Peace
practical application to international affairs ? Its
adoption would possibly change the calendar; it would
be an event so prodigious that all future time might be
reckoned from its beginning.
You and all life insurance men have been its Heralds
for lo ! these many years.
The Republic of Nylic is the microcosm of the world-
state which must come if we are not to revert to a
condition worse than the Dark Ages.
May the year 1916 see the beginnings of that State,
see the application to governmental affairs of the
principles which you constantly teach.
THE TRILOGY OF DEMOCRACY
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED FEBRUARY 14, 1916,
BEFORE THE STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, AND,
ON EARLIER DATES, BEFORE AUDIENCES IN NEW YORK,
PHILADELPHIA AND CHICAGO
ROMETHEUS was a Titan, in the religion
and mythology of an ancient and very
great people; he was also the friend of
man. He was the remote ancestor of
') Benjamin FrankHn; he brought fire down
from Heaven. He saved the human race after Zeus had
launched a destrojdng thunderbolt against it. He stole
fire from the Gods and taught men its uses, and thereby
gave humanity the means by which it could develop
and elevate itself. He was the first great democrat.
Aeschylus, the first great tragic poet, tells about
Prometheus and his struggles on behalf of humanity,
in such fragments as survive of his great trilogy, —
Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Freed, and Prome-
theus the Fire-Bearer. Aeschylus dealt with elemental
forces, with Gods and Titans and their passions. He
was a tragic poet because he handled the stuff of which
tragedy is made.
Back of the visible and hideous scenes of this Euro-
pean war lie tragic forces which threaten not merely
this or that nation, but humanity itself: a destroying
thunderbolt has again been launched against it. The
race more or less subconsciously understands its peril,
79
80 Let Us Have Peace
and there are reactions now taking place in the soul of
the world as unmistakable as those which shocked and
changed its spiritual life in the centuries preceding and
following the birth of Jesus.
These reactions are a part of the development of
Democracy; their story is a part of its Trilogy — of
which two sections have now been completed. The
third part, which should record Democracy's triumph,
is now in the ferment of events.
The struggles of Prometheus with Zeus are singu-
larly suggestive of the struggles in recent centuries
between Democracy and established Authority. Zeus,
through Strength and Force, and in punishment for
what he had done, chained Prometheus to a rock in
Farthest Scythia, and finally', to complete his punish-
ment, cast him into the Abyss. But not even Zeus
could destroy Prometheus; and through the sur\iving
fragments of Prometheus Unbound we are able to see
that this friend of humanity was ultimately released,
and we can imagine that the text of Prometheus the
Fire-Bearer — of which there is no sur\'i\'ing fragment
— probably recorded the ultimate triumph of man and
his reconcihation with Omnipotence. Prometheus the
Fire-Bearer suggests the ultimate realization of the
dreams of Democracy; Prometheus Bound foretells our
pre-revolutionary period and all other periods of the
same character; Prometheus Freed is prophetic of the
unprecedented triumph of reason over prejudice that
achieved the American Constitution, a triumph which
now thrusts sharply upon us — its beneficiaries — the
agony of Europe, where Prometheus is still fettered,
where the vultures still tear at his \dtals. Prometheus
Bound or Freed or bearing aloft the flaming torch of
The Trilogy of Democracy 81
Liberty typifies the struggles of Democracy through
the ages.
Our Prometheus, Democracy, was driven by Strength
and Force across an almost immeasurable waste of
waters, farther than farthest Scythia, nearly three hun-
dred years ago. There was need of no Hephaestus to
fetter him. He was chained by poverty, by disease,
by savages, by famine. The vultures of jealousy came
and tore at his vitals, but he kept alive the Divine
Fire, and taught men its uses. This was the first part
of the Trilogy of Democracy: This was Democracy
Bound.
At the supreme moment our Prometheus rose su-
perior to tradition and fear and ignorance and preju-
dice. The scales fell from his eyes and he saw! Within
his then distant world, where he was free from the
ambitions of dynasties and the encroachments of mili-
tarism, he performed the supreme act which points
the way to the ultimate rule of Democracj^ to the
attainment of lasting peace; he destroyed, within his
own world, the doctrine of Unconditioned Sovereignty.
He made the boundaries between the Thirteen States
merely convenient barriers behind which local ambi-
tions could be developed. That achievement now
controls the interstate relations of forty-eight com-
monwealths, although some grave questions were not
finally settled until 1865.
The distinctive achievements of our Federal Union
are these: not only a reassertion of the fact that sov-
ereignty rests in the individual, but the assertion of
the right of such separate sovereigns at any time to
quahfy the authority of the States through which their
sovereignty finds expression, to create a larger state
82 Let Us Have Peace
whenever they see fit, and by appropriate action again
to qualify or change that.
In 1787 the people of the Western World expressed
their sovereignty through thirteen separate so-called
sovereign States.
In 1789 these same sovereigns qualified the separate
authority of the thirteen States and subordinated them
all to a new and controlling State made up of all the
people and all the territory and all the possessions of
all the States. They called the new State the United
States of America.
For the people of all the world, or if not that then
for the people of all the Democratic States of the
world, or if not that then for the people of all the
English-speaking states of the world — which are all
Democratic — to erect a controlling-state by the same
processes would in principle be no new thing ; and that,
by such intermediate steps as are practically neces-
sary, is the task that humanity must accomplish if it
is ever to control the elements of the tragedy that lies
in existing international relations, if it is to escape the
stroke of the thunderbolt that has been launched
against it.
This achievement of Democracy in America, its
rejuvenation in Great Britain and her Colonies, its
seemingly permanent triumphs in France, are the
second part of the Trilogy: This is Democracy Un-
bound.
And now the spark secretly carried from Olympus
has become a flaming torch.
To-day we are facing the third part of the Trilogy.
Will that section record the reahzation of Democracy's
Dreams? It requires some faith to say that. Can
The Trilogy of Democracy 83
Democracy be born of Tragedy? Can Brotherhood
be born of Hate? Can order come out of chaos? Can
Liberty and Equahty and Fraternity be the children
of Death?
Who shall lead humanity out of this immeasurable
disaster?
Whence is to come the inspiration which shall pro-
duce reason and the light that shall show a road?
That inspiration and that light can apparently come
from but one source. Duty as well as Destiny indi-
cate that our role in the work of redemption and
salvation, our role in the section of the Trilogy which
is to record Democracy's triumph, if that triumph is
ever to be achieved, is that of the Light Bearer.
There is apparently no other answer to the ques-
tions which the existing European tragedy thrusts
upon us.
Tragedy may follow the out-working of uncontrollable
forces, whose problems can be solved only by infinite
human suffering, disaster and death; but these same
forces uncontrollable in one age may be controllable
in a later age. A war that is a tragedy to-day,
the result of uncontrollable forces, may be a crime
to-morrow. That gallant gentleman, Sir Edward
Pakenham, and his equally gallant companions, who
died at New Orleans two weeks after the peace of Ghent
had been made, would not have died if Time and
Distance had then been conquered. The forces that
slew them were uncontrollable then; to-day they are
controllable. Such a disaster would now be not only
a tragedy but a crime.
Tragedies may also be the result of controllable
forces — of human weakness, of ambition, of fear, of
84 Let Us Have Peace
passion. The fruits of all such tragedies are crimes.
There isn't a factor in the forces back of the Euro-
pean war that was uncontrollable, although one of the
elements, and that the greatest, is ordinarily rated as
uncontrollable and would properly be so rated but for
the triumph of human reason represented by the
American Union. This, therefore, is not only the most
colossal war but the most colossal crime in all History —
a crime so universal in its extent and so hideous in its
immediate results that it ought to destroy existing
standards of international relations and ought to visit
an equal condemnation on certain individuals.
What ambitions, what fears, what ignorance, what
passions so possessed the peoples of Europe on the
first of August, 1914, that they were swept into fratri-
cidal slaughter, looking each other in the face, touching
each others hands, hearing each others voices, and
knowing in their hearts that they had no desire to
wrong each other?
Why had no great nation — including our own — ever
been able to think in terms other than those of its own
purposes and ambitions? Why had nearly all national
thinking and all national action followed selfish Unes
only? Why had Great Britain's thinking — rich, vast,
democratic and satisfied with what she had, as she
was — why had her thinking been limited to the prob-
lem of how she could keep what she had? Why did no
wider vision come to her? Why did she not see the
peril and the traged}^ that lay in such a selfish atti-
tude? Why had Germany thought only selfishly while
developing the most marvelously efficient machine that
the world had ever seen? Belie\ing in her own
efficiency, in her own greatness, why had Germany's
The Trilogy of Democracy 85
thinking suggested no way by which that greatness
could be perpetuated except through the conquest of
other peoples, through the ruin of other civilizations?
Why had it never occurred to England that she could
not, in a world so small, keep what she had, together
with her boasted control of the seas, without consult-
ing in some serious way the wishes and ambitions of
other nations? Why had no process ever appealed to
Germany except that of blood and iron? There was a
reason for this narrow thinking and it was this:
The instinct of self-preservation is just as natural in
nations as in indi\'i duals and animals and just as strong.
The Doctrine of Sovereignty made every nation an
increasing and a deadly menace to every other nation,
a menace which finally aroused everywhere the in-
stinct of self-preservation. Arouse that instinct in a
normally harmless animal and it becomes dangerous;
arouse it in a man and he becomes a savage; arouse it
in a nation and ci\dlization slips off like a cloak, the
nation reverts to primitive rules in an instant and will
fight to exhaustion. Alarmed by the demands of
Sovereignty this instinct created what we may well
call the international doctrine of the hip pocket and
the six-shooter. It made Christian peoples collectively
braggarts and ruffians. It created the world of diplo-
macy with its intrigue and lying, its conspiracies and
treasons, its violated pledges and shameless doctrines
of necessity.
It inevitably created a race for international advan-
tage — advantage in population, in territory, in com-
merce, and ultimately in armies, and in armaments.
Its sinister meaning should have been clear to all.
It was clear only to a few. It had a paralyzing grip
86 Let Us Have Peace
on those in authority, while the people with splendid
fidelity answered blindly to the demands of a patri-
otism which could not see beyond its own frontiers.
When the world had so shrunk that every man
could speak to every other man, when the light that
comes with knowledge had flooded humanity, a strange
thing happened, — a thing as elemental as any of the
happenings amongst the Gods and the Titans. In the
most important relations of life men suddenly lost
their vision, they lost their reason, they even lost their
speech; and, at the same time, they reverted in their
physical relations to the level of the Stone Age. Brought
face to face through the developments of science, they
were able to see and understand each other clearly in
all relations of life but one. As citizens, as human
beings, they saw and understood all citizens of other
countries; they trusted and traded with each other;
they were reasonably just to each other and would
have been wholly so but for the overshadowing power
of the Force that could at any time make them blind
and deaf and irrational.
That force was Sovereignty appealing to the ele-
mental instincts. That was the power that had lim-
ited the thinking of the nations. It built a wall higher
than the atmosphere, as opaque as prejudice and pas-
sion and fear could make it all along the lines that
geographically delimit nations. To every man of every
nation this wall was at once as pellucid as the ether and
as dark as Erebus. Every man could see and yet was
blind. Through this closer touch, through this better
understanding amongst the units of humanity and
especially through the achievement of the American
Union, a way for a solution of the tragedy that has eter-
The Trilogy of Democracy 87
nally scourged the human race was clearly indicated;
but so obsessed were men by the doctrine of Spver-
eignty that, on August 1, 1914, they proceeded on a
scale so vast as to dwarf Aeschylus' conception of
power, to renew and even to surpass the old slaughter.
France and Germany had no physical barrier between
them ; neither had the other nations. They had common
ties of enormous importance; their citizens moved
freely about on either side of the so-called frontiers;
they found each other individually just and kindly.
Time and Distance, the ancient and deadly enemies
of man, had been annihilated. The elements of the
old tragedy were controllable. But the doctrine of
Unconditioned Sovereignty which had limited their
thinking made them bhnd and deaf, made them irra-
tional and worse than irrational, made them savages, —
all in the twinkUng of an eye. Henry Jekyll did not
become Mr. Hyde as quickly and as completely as the
peaceful, gentle, humane, inteUigent, and just citizens
of Europe, became savages on August 1, 1914. And
the further paradox of it lies in this : WTien the Euro-
pean citizen turned savage at the behest of Sover-
eignty, he at the same time rose to great spiritual
heights and actually experienced unprecedented moral
exaltation. He became superbly, serenely brave. He
died smiling, with the approving cheers of his fellows
following him into the Valley of the Shadow, — yes,
even though by proper standards his hands reeked with
innocent blood. Measured by these tests there are no
cowards anywhere in the world. All men are glori-
ously brave. Never in all history have the individual
courage, the devotion, and the self-sacrifice of the
common man shone out so splendidly. And this com-
88 Let Us Have Peace
pletes the tragedy, — that such noble qualities should
be so ignobly used.
In Europe Prometheus is still fettered. The rule of
Sovereignty possesses it utterly. Beyond our geo-
graphic limits it possesses us too. We are as undemo-
cratic in international relations as any nation that
ever existed. And the tragedy of it is that we must
be so until the lines that delimit nations have no more
significance than the lines that separate the States of
our Union.
The situation in Europe threatens us; Sovereignty
threatens us : because while we have a law under which
forty-eight States can live together, Europe has no
law under which her States can live together and we
have no law under which our Union and the States
of Europe can live together. We ought to have, but
Unconditioned Sovereignty denies it; Unconditioned
Sovereignty, whose sinister power can make even us
blind and mad. Unconditioned Sovereignty threatens
us. Because of that threat, we are demanding that
Washington prepare — there seems to be no other sane
thing to do. Prepare to do what? Primarily of course
to defend ourselves, but secondarily to re-create a
condition under which our national boundaries shall
become a wall through which we cannot see, behind
which, — not beyond which, let us hope, — we may be-
come as mad as any. How we hate it! As we make
this demand, we feel that we have compromised our-
selves, that we have parted with some measure of our
most precious possession, — our self-respect. Prepara-
tion with us as with every true Democracy is indeed a
necessity only a little less hideous than war itself.
The Trilogy of Democracy 89
If to prepare — which at best is a patriotic reversion
to barbarism — is all we are to do, we might well con-
clude that Plymouth Rock and Jamestown have lost
their inspiration and meaning, that Lexington and
Ticonderoga and Yorktown and Appomattox mark no
advance. But preparation is not all — it must not be
all. The necessity which demands preparation pre-
sents also a supreme duty. Not to discharge that
duty, not to try at least to discharge it, will be to
shirk our natural role and to fail humanity in a great
crisis. As we demand that Washington take whatever
steps are necessary for our adequate defense, we should
demand that those steps be so taken that our brothers
in Europe and in all the world shall at the same time
understand this: that as yet we are neither blind nor
dumb nor mad; that we hate war and all its hideous
fruits; that we have no enmity against them; that we
know a better method than war ; that these forty-eight
Commonwealths, having a territory as large as all of
Europe outside Asiatic Russia and a population as
great as that territory had a hundred years ago, have
been freed and we believe that through the wise exer-
cise of the authority that freed them Europe may be
freed, and ultimately all the world may be freed. Our
duty and opportunity lie in this:
WE MUST BREAK DOWN THE WALLS OF
UNCONDITIONED SOVEREIGNTY. BY NO
OTHER PROCESS CAN DEMOCRACY SUR-
VIVE.
By no other process can the heroic, god-hke quali-
ties of the common man be applied to his elevation,
and not eternally to his destruction; by no other
process can these qualities be redeemed from their
90 Let Us Have Peace
present savage and internecine misuse; by no other
process can the elements of this tragedy be controlled.
If we assume the role of Prometheus the Fire-Bearer
in the third section of Democracy's Trilogy, the leader-
ship in that colossal task is ours.
Since Prometheus brought fire from Heaven, no
greater opportunity has faced men.
No form of government can long survive that does
not give security to life and property. That is axio-
matic. In the present constitution of this little world,
ruled by the Doctrine of Sovereignty with its elemental
appeal, the nation that would survive must be ready
to fight. That is an admission which the citizens of a
democracy make reluctantly, hesitantly, and shame-
facedly. But we must face the facts. The citizens
of a democracy naturally feel that they have moved in
their ideals, their methods, and their purposes, beyond
the savagery of such methods. But have they? Is
there under the rule of Sovereignty so much less likeli-
hood of trouble between democracies than there is of
trouble between democracies and other forms of gov-
ernment? To be specific : Is there so much less possi-
bility after all of trouble between the United States
and Great Britain than there is of trouble between the
United States and Germany? The same barbarism
rules international relations in each case. If the think-
ing of the United States and Great Britain is more
sympathetic and similar, it is because of a common
origin and not because either nation is disposed at all
to take down the cruel and dangerous barrier which
divides them. They may think alike on either side
of the barrier, but the barrier remains. The Doctrine
of Sovereignty and the principles of Democracy are
The Trilogy of Democracy 91
irreconcilable. Both cannot permanently survive in
the same world.
In international relations democracies are at a dis-
advantage even in times of peace: they despise lying.
In times of war they are certain to play a pathetic
part: when sovereignty orders the citizens of a democ-
racy to march out and kill men who have never con-
sciously done them wrong, men who are by nature
endowed with the same inalienable rights which the
citizens claim for themselves, they obey, but they are
ashamed, and for a time at least they do their work
badly.
Democracies will not be true democracies until they
apply their own principles of government to inter-
national relations, until by the creation of an effective
union of democratic nations they banish the savagery
of sovereignty and the monstrous inefficiencies of so-
called international law.
Until such a Union is achieved we must be prepared
to defend ourselves; but as we prepare, what other
things should we do? After all our glorious history,
after our Declaration about man's inalienable rights,
after our solemn assertions that all men — not Ameri-
cans only, but all men — are created equal, have we no
peculiar responsibility at this time? Must we just
get ready and march out and sink into the ruck and
horror of human slaughter? Is that the whole of the
problem? I submit, in the light of our professions
and our history, that humanity has the right to expect
something more than that from us. Humanity has
reached the hour when it is asking for a new Order
and is listening for the voice of the Prophet who is to
herald its coming. If the close of this war is not to be
92 Let Us Have Peace
the hour of deliverance, who shall say that deliverance
will ever come? If we are not the people to speak,
then from whence in all the world shall the voice of
deliverance be heard? Shall we by preparation for
defense and by silence express our belief that deliver-
ance through a new Order is impossible? Do we be-
lieve that this European slaughter is a part of the
Order of Nature, and not to be avoided? Is the im-
pulse which makes men love their country born of
Evil? Must it forever bring in a harvest of tears?
Let us be candid: When the Roman Augurs,
around the beginning of this Era, in obedience to the
ritual of their religion examined the entrails of animals
in order to learn what the future was to be and then
told the people, they at last reached the point where
the absurdity of the process penetrated even their
consciousness and they laughed in each other's faces.
They finally knew themselves for the tricksters and
liars that they were. But the people for centuries
willingly sacrificed their lives under the direction of
these Augurs with the same fine fidelity that rules the
peoples of Europe to-day. The loud assertion by
great commanders on both sides of this war that they
have direct knowledge of the Divine purpose and assur-
ance of Divine approval has in it a note which suggests
the ribald laughter of their Roman predecessors. These
modern Augurs are the High Priests of Sovereignty.
They (and we in so far as we concur) are betraying
the people in order to support the established order.
The established order must be supported; but this is
not the way to support it, this is the way to destroy it.
When in 1788 our fathers created a larger State,
they did not destroy the established order; they de-
The Trilogy of Democracy 93
stroyed disorder: they did not destroy the integrity
of any of the thirteen states; on the contrary they
gave to each a vastly enlarged outlook and a broader
spiritual assurance. They gave patriotism a new
meaning.
The United States of America was then not a fact
but a thought, not a geographic entity, but a vision:
it lay like a new Heaven and a new Earth all about
the thirteen states but was perceived only by men of
vision. Washington saw it, and Madison and Jay and
Franklin and, most vividly of all, Hamilton saw it.
Into the larger world which enveloped them, which
they dimly saw and seeing dimly greatly feared, the
people were induced finally to go — partly through fear,
partly by persuasion, chiefly by the power of masterful
leadership.
The United English Nations is to-day only a thought,
a \'ision; but as against the menace of Sovereignty its
suggestion enfolds the English-speaking states hke a
benediction.
We in the United States have seen a vision crystallize
into a great political fabric: we have seen a dream
become the most practical and prophetic fact in human
government.
We now see another and a nobler vision: it pictures
the solidarity of the English Nations, it tells us that
they are to-day divided only by a political fiction ; that
in their united action lies the only hope that Democ-
racy's Dreams will be realized. They are one in
language, one in sympathy, one in traditions, one in
principles, one in standards of justice, one in ideals.
The foundations of a Democratic Government so vast
that it could compel peace are already securely laid if
94 Let Us Have Peace
the English world shall now arise and make the vision
a reality.
Is there to-day somewhere a Prophet who shall yet
stand in a Congress of English-speaking nations — a
Congress similar to that which met in Independence
Hall in the summer of 1787 — and say as Washington
did on the opening day: "Let us raise a standard to
which the wise and the honest can repair; the event
is in the hand of God"? Are there ^Madisons and
Jays and Hamiltons to plead for the acceptance of the
Order which that Congress would foreshadow?
The opportunity is greater than in 1787, the need is
more dire, the task is easier, the issue no less certain.
The larger English Nation which could be so created
would do for its units what the United States has done
on this continent. It would bring the "Federation of
the World" within the realm of probabiUties.
Prepare for war? Yes, we must.
But are we great enough at the same time to plead
for peace? Are we strong enough to lead in the
movement which must ultimately unite the English-
speaking states of the world, if the glorious Anglo-Saxon
tradition is to survive, if democracy and not the
doctrine of sovereignty is to prevail ?
If we essay the part of Prometheus the Fire-Bearer,
let us not too much doubt the potency of our example.
Our brothers in Europe may be bhnd and deaf and
mad, as we once were, as we may be again. But
there is a great sadness in their hearts and a great hope.
They are waiting, as the world was waiting nineteen
hundred years ago. They expect deUverance. They
cannot deUver themselves. Sovereignty holds them
bound and helpless. The vultures of war still tear at
The Trilogy of Democracy 95
their \itals. They are as heroic as Titans and as weak
as children. Giants in their own strength, they are
bound by LiUiputians. They are not enemies, but
the Doctrine of Sovereignty has made them beheve
they are. They do not hate each other, no, not even
when in obedience to orders they slay each other.
They are confused and bewildered. They are kilhng
each other hy millions, and they know not why.
Therefore as we prepare to defend ourselves let us
also speak to them. And as we speak let us pray:
That even as the Spirit of God moved upon the face
of the waters, when the earth was without form and
void and said : Let there be light and there was Light
— so may our united voices, charged with Sympathy
and the spirit of Human Brotherhood creatively pene-
trate the horror that hangs over Europe, and carry
to those who are now in darkness the great Light
that first came to us one hundred and twenty-seven
years ago.
THE UNITED ENGLISH NATIONS
AN ADDRESS IN COMMEMORATION BOTH OF
THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE FOUNDING OF THE UNIVERSITY. AND OF THE ADMISSION
OF THE STATE OF VERMONT TO THE AMERICAN UNION; DELIVERED AT
THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWELFTH COMMENCEMENT OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT, JUNE 28, 1916.
BURLINGTON. VERMONT
> N THE 1st of March, 1791, George Wash-
ington, then serving his first term as first
President of this Repubhc, by proclama-
tion directed the Senate of the United
O States to meet in special session at Phila-
delphia on March 4th, and on that date he presented
for confirmation his appointments to Federal Office in
the new State of Vermont.
Vermont had then been an independent Republic
for fourteen years. Her intrepid sons had won the
first important victory in the struggle for independence.
Three weeks after the fight on Lexington Common
and at Concord, Ethan Allen had thundered at the
gates of Ticonderoga in the name of the Great Jehovah.
Paul Revere had scarcely completed his immortal
midnight ride before Lake Champlain had been cleared
of the British by Allen and his associates.
These were great da3^s, great as a record of passing
events, but greater as introducing a new and a nobler era.
The founding of this L^niversity dates from the
same j^ear; but, as an expression of purpose, it goes
back to 1777, to the remarkable Fundamental Law
The United English Nations 97
which the Pioneers of the New Hampshire Grants then
wrote for the Repubhc of Vermont — a law that as
clearly called for One University in the State as it
clearly inveighed against the crime of human slavery.
Through the intervening years — 1777 to 1791 — when
the easterly and westerly boundaries of Vermont were
undetermined, when a persistent effort was made to
dismember the Republic, when its fine service to the
Colonies during the Revolution were flouted and
ignored, when Dartmouth College was one daj^ within
Vermont and the next day within New Hampshire, the
educational ideals and standards of the people were
never lowered. Dartmouth so powerfully disturbed the
politics of the Republic that the results of the contest —
which proposed to make that now venerable institution
the educational head of the State, — remain to this day.
Dartmouth's appeal was temporarily effective, because
it satisfied the fixed determination of our forebears to
have an educational institution of the first rank within
their borders. With the admission of Vermont to the
Union, her easterly boundary was fixed at the Con-
necticut River and thereby the further plans of Eleazer
and John Wheelock and their associates were finally
defeated.
The Act of 1791 clearly states its purpose in the
Title. It was an "act for the purpose of founding a
University at Burhngton". Mark the word "founding."
The Act was passed during the existence of the Con-
stitution of 1786. That Constitution by comparison
with the Constitution of 1777 had been educationally
emasculated, and there is abundant evidence showing
that this had been accomplished by the influence of
Dartmouth College.
98 Let Us Have Peace
The language of the Title and of the Act itself
makes it clear that the people after the miscarriage of
Dartmouth's plans were as determined as they had been
in 1777 to have a University of their own; they, there-
fore, not only passed the Act founding a University
at Burlington, but they provided a foundation for it
by dedicating to the use of the institution so founded
"all such grants as have been already made by authority
of this State for the use and benefit of a college."
Their belief that by this language they had not
only founded a University but had re\4ved the unequiv-
ocal declaration in the Constitution of 1777 in favor
of one University in the State, can hardly be questioned.
I shall not, however, to-day further discuss any of
these old problems: whether Ira Allen was or was not
the perficient founder of the University; whether it is
or is not legally a ward of the State. Within our
University world these problems have already been
exhaustively and ably handled.*
I shall dwell rather on the Anglo-Saxon renaissance
which was coeval with the act founding this Univer-
sity and with the admission of Vermont to the Union, —
a re-birth which in the intervening period of one
hundred and twenty-five years has politically and
*For a full discussion of these problems see:
CENTENNIAL ADDRESS, bv Hon. Robert D. Benedict, June
21, 1891;
"THE STATE UNIVERSITY AS THE HEAD OF THE PUBLIC
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM OF THE STATE," an address before
the N. Y. Alumni Association of the L^niversity, Feb. 3, 1915, by Hon.
Warren R. Austin;
"THE STATUS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT AND
STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE FROM A LEGAL STAND-
POINT" (1914) by Hon. Geo. M. Powers.
REPORT OF THE COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE THE
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM AND CONDITIONS OF VERMONT
(1914).
The United English Nations 99
educationally glorified the Western world and carried
the Anglo-Saxon love of liberty and law across the
Pacific and around the globe.
I shall assume that you, as their lineal political
descendants, have in some measure the vision of
Hamilton and Washington, and that even as they
saw beyond the quarreling Colonies to the present
power and peace of the great Republic, so you can
see beyond the bloody fields of Europe in 1916 to a
still greater Republic where the "war-drums throb no
longer and the battle-flags are furled".
The charter of the University dates from the year
when the fourteenth star was added to the azure field
of the national flag, from the year when the States
under the Federal Constitution performed substan-
tially their first sovereign act by enlarging their geo-
graphic boundaries, from the year when the Union
entered upon that unprecedented period of demo-
cratic expansion which has made it for a hundred and
twenty-five years the desire of all the world, the refuge
of the restless and the wronged. Vermont, entering
the Union, pointed the way of honor and of glory.
Thirty-four other stars have since been added to the
field of blue. This Union is now not merely incredibly
rich whereas it was then poor, immeasurably strong
whereas it was then weak, geographically vast whereas
it was then a mere fringe along the Atlantic littoral;
it is that and something more: it is the cosmos of
democracy, the great example, the glorious product
of a process that has put human rights above so-called
sovereign rights.
In Greek mythology the Sphinx was a female monster
which sat on a rock by the roadside and propounded
100 Let Us Have Peace
to each passer-by a riddle. She killed all who failed
to guess the riddle. Finally Oedipus answered cor-
rectly, whereupon, in accordance with her own con-
ditions, she killed herself. The doctrine of Uncon-
ditioned Sovereignty is the modern Sphinx which has
propounded her riddle to the nations of Europe. Her
riddle unsolved, the Sphinx is enforcing the destruction
of the infinitely precious structure of their several
civilizations painfully erected by the people through
centuries of devotion and self-sacrifice. I shall try
to point out a modern Oedipus whose clear duty it is
to face this Sphinx and answer her riddle.
Europe — indeed nearly all the civilized world except
America — stands to-day besprent with human blood,
soul-sick and weary, exhausted physically, well-nigh
ruined financially, and saj^s: "Show us a better way.
We can go no further on this road. Show us the way!"
Ebenezer Elhott, "the Corn Law Rhymester",
expressed this agony when he said:
"When wilt Thou save the people?
O God of mercy, when?
Not kings and lords, not (but) nations !
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
Flowers of Thy heart, O God are they;
Let them not pass, like weeds, away,
Their heritage a sunless daJ^
God save the people!
When wilt Thou save the people?
O God of mercy, when?
The people. Lord, the people,
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
*******
God save the people!"
From the year that marks the date of our charter
and the entry of Vermont into the Union, this nation
The United English Nations 101
has played a unique part in the drama of human
Hfe and in the evolution of free government. We see
it standing in 1791 at the shore of the Western world
with open arms welcoming all who came. Many of
us saw it in the agony of civil strife. We saw it emerge
from that struggle triumphant, to find itself spanning
a continent and facing two oceans instead of one. It
has blundered, as all democracies apparently must ; but
regarded merely as a unit of power amongst the units
that make up the ci\dlization of the world, it has a
record that is a little cleaner, a little sweeter, a little
less blood-stained than that of any other great sov-
ereignty that exists now or that has ever existed. But
that is not its greatest nor its finest achievement.
That is not the prophetic fact upon which I would
dwell to-day. The problem before the world is:
"The people, Lord, the people,
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
God save the people!"
Thrones and crowns and nationalities and the savage
doctrine on which they stand have wrought their
bloody work. Is the day of the people about to dawn?
That this European horror lies in the very order of
nature and is therefore necessary, this nation not only
does not believe, but disproves in every line of its
history. That blood must be let forever we do not
believe. That man congenitally is so much a savage
that he is incapable of universal self-government we
strongly dispute. That learning and so-called culture
and the seeming triumphs of science are only a thin
veneer hiding an irreconcilable brutality we deny.
On what may we soundly base these denials? The
situation in Europe to-day and indeed no inconsider-
102 Let Us Have Peace
able part of human history indicate that our denials
are based on insubstantial dreams. CiviUzation has
run into another bloody impasse. Must this dreadful
condition forever recur? Is there no great example
showing the way out?
We celebrate to-day the anniversarj^ not of the dis-
covery of a new principle in government but the anni-
versary of a new application of a principle. The period
of governments based on sheer external force began to
pass when Rome passed. That was why Charlemagne
and Napoleon, who later strove for universal dominion,
failed. The principle that began to assert itself after the
Roman era is this : That sovereignty hes in the indi\'idual
and comes by no other Di\ane right. This was a violent
departure from long established doctrines. After the
fall of Rome and after the development and decline of
Feudalism, the authority of the individual, as dis-
tinguished from authority by Di\dne right, began to
find expression in units of ci\'ic power, which we call
democracies. At first these units expressing the com-
posite will of individual sovereigns were geographically
small, — the machinery of transportation and com-
munication at that time were such that the radius of
democratic power was necessarily circumscribed. There
was, moreover, plenty of room. The world was still
very large; the oceans were broad; time and distance
kept men and nations far apart. They did not jostle
each other as they do now. But that period passed,
and nowhere is the effect of its passing more clearly
written than in the history of this Repubhc.
Washington and Hamilton certainly did not foresee
the part that the railroad, the telegraph and the
telephone would ultimately play in the success of
The United English Nations 103
their experiment. The Federation of the Thirteen
States under the Constitution was at the time a heroic
defiance not only of the accepted rules which then
regulated and still regulate international relations, but
it was substantially a defiance of the belief that democ-
racies could not be large and successful. To-day the
machinery of democratic governments controls ter-
ritories greater than those of some of the earlier so-
called universal empires.
In 1783 there was neither telegraph nor telephone
nor railroad, yet when the common tie that bound
them to the mother-country was severed and sover-
eignty was asserted by each of the Thirteen States, there
was not room enough for them in the whole Western
world. After the Peace of Paris, the same hostility
began to develop between these sovereignties which
is now destroying Europe.
The soil of each of the Thirteen States became some-
thing sacred. National sovereignty demanded this but
there was in the nature of things no reason for it. Any
one of the Colonies might have been geographically
greater or smaller than it was, and it would have been
just as well. There had been no Divine fiat through
which so many square miles of a certain more or less
illogical contour were ordained to become the sacred
soil of Connecticut or of Maryland or of any other
Colony. We know that but for the greed and grafting
of some Governors of New York and the obstinacy
of others, Vermont would to-day be a part of the
Empire State. Fortuitous reasons chiefly made Rhode
Island and Delaware geographically small while New
York and Pennsylvania were geographically large.
Nevertheless the territorial limits of each State,
104 Let Us Have Peace
whether it was great or small, whether its contour
was logical or illogical, became in 1783 substantially
the limit of the world for the people who resided
in that State. They adopted the mental attitude of the
patriots of all nations and were unable to see or think
beyond their own frontiers. Each of the Thirteen
States assumed that every other State was trying to
rob it. The assumption was quite sound, too. Com-
mercial anarchy followed and war was narrowly avoided
a dozen times between the Peace of Paris and the
adoption of the Constitution. The Thirteen States
started out to do exactly what Europe is doing now.
No nation has yet squarely faced the full significance
of the doctrine that sovereignty lies in the indi\'idual.
If democracies dealing with democracies must finally
use the methods of autocracies, then, internationally
at least, democracy hasn't accomplished much. When
the peoples of two nations go out to slay each other
the spectacle and the morals of it are equally grotesque
whether the leaders of each side claim to have been
Divinely anointed or whether each side, self-governed,
rallies to the cry: "For God and Country." The
reference to the Divinity is as blasphemous in the one
case as in the other.
The event which we celebrate to-day marks the
time when our fathers, ha\dng already placed their
interests as human beings above the fortuitous ex-
pression of their authority called States, applied this
principle in a still broader way. By admitting Vermont
to the Union they recognized the inalienable rights of
people not within their territory.
THE PEOPLE OF VERMONT BY ENTERING
THE UNION DID NOT SURRENDER SOVER-
The United English Nations 105
EIGNTY; ON THE CONTRARY, BY GAINING
A VOICE IN THE GOVERNMENT OF FOUR-
TEEN FEDERATED STATES THEY VASTLY
ADVANCED THEIR POWER AS INDIVIDUALS.
THEY SURRENDERED ONLY THEIR SOV-
EREIGN RIGHTS TO BECOME SAVAGES IN
THEIR FUTURE RELATIONS WITH THEIR
NEIGHBORS.
If individual sovereignty means anything it means
something wider than the geographic hmits of any
existing State.
The federation of thirteen hostile states was a logical
apphcation of the principle of individual sovereignty;
but while it solved grave problems, it created others. If
the Union was necessarily to be limited geographically
to its thirteen constituent units and was without power
of expansion, if it must assume toward the remainder of
the world — particularly the Western world — the rigid
aloofness apparently indispensable to the maintenance
of national sovereignty, then its creation marked no
supreme advance; but, if the Union had the power of
expansion, if it could when it saw fit extend its geo-
graphic limits and its institutions and laws to include
other States — States created out of territory owned by
the federated States at the time of their federation, or
States created out of territory to be acquired later, or,
and this would be the supreme test. States that before
had been free and sovereign, — then an advance of
supreme significance had been made. The act which
showed that the Union had that expansive power was
certain to take high rank in the history of free govern-
ment. The admission in 1791 of Vermont, an inde-
pendent Republic, was that act. In a less dramatic
106 Let Us Have Peace
but no less prophetic way, the admission of Vermont
was as significant as the Declaration of Independence.
It would have been easy for the Thirteen States to
fritter away the fruits of their victory at Yorktown.
By federating as they did (and in at least five par-
ticulars* their plan differed from any that had pre-
viously entered into the structure of federated States)
they preserved all that they had won. By admitting
Vermont they opened a door that led and leads to
almost infinite possibilities. The process of federation
was simple but new. The sovereign citizens of the
Thirteen States specifically transferred to a new unit of
power called "The United States of America" certain
authority, and definitely recited what that authority
was in an instrument which we call "The Consti-
tution of the United States". Later on that there
might be no misunderstanding with regard to what
they intended, they declared in the X Amendment to
that Constitution that any power not specifically so
ceded to the central government was reserved to the
States or to the people. This larger unit of power, like
the original Thirteen units, is controlled by the people.
That control is supreme across the frontiers not only
of the original Thirteen States but of the thirty-five
others that have since joined them under the Con-
stitution. The supremacj" of the Federal Law, however,
has not interfered with the autonomy of any of the
Forty-eight States nor with their local institutions, nor
with their local government, except as local institu-
tions may have conflicted with the Constitution itself.
Between the governments of Europe there is no
* Taylor's Origin and Growth of the American Constitution —
Houghton Mifflin, 1911.
The United English Nations 107
such controlling power. The interstate hostility which
we have destroyed within this country has persisted
in Europe, and has maintained the hard outlines of
nationality except where those outlines have from time
to time been changed by the cruel verdicts of war.
Recently on account of increased international pressure
brought about by the elimination of time and distance,
these units have been compelled in self-defense to do
imperfectly and ineffectively what the Thirteen States
did in 1788. The European Nations have formed
themselves into two great groups. The formation of
these groups was really the prelude to this war. The
alignment was made, consciously or unconsciously,
for no other purpose. When the war is ended, both
groups by sheer centrifugal force will separate into their
constituent units, and soon thereafter the units of one
or both groups may fall to fighting each other or they
may make a different alignment in preparation for a
later war. No \'ital principle binds them together.
Acting as groups they do not express the sovereignty
of the people. England, France, Russia, Italy and
Japan can no more remain harmonious, each being a
separate unit of power, than the Thirteen Colonies
could make an efficient government under the Con-
federation of 1781.
The principle which binds the States of this Union
together illustrates the only process by which war can
be ended ; it offers the only correct answer to the riddle
propounded by the modern Sphinx, Unconditioned
Sovereignty. Until this vital relation is created
amongst the individual sovereigns of so large a portion
of the world that the governmental unit expressing
their authority is of commanding size and strength.
108 Let Us Have Peace
we shall have war. Until the people assert their
sovereignty and their power in this way, millions will
periodically kill other millions, each side praying to
the same God, and fighting as each will believe for
existence and liberty.
In the anarchy of international relations individuals
lose the dignity of their sovereignty and become in
effect slaves. There can be no lasting peace until this
slavery is ended.
The doctrine that sovereignty rests in the individual
hes at the heart of what we may call the Anglo-Saxon
Tradition. It began to take form in Magna Charta.
It has come down to us in imperfect and sometimes
illogical form through Oliver Cromwell and John
Hampden. It found a voice in the Bill of Rights and
the Declaration of Independence. It was incarnate
in George Washington, and found its first perfect
expression in Abraham Lincoln. Under this doctrine
the people of the world can have as now, a multiplicity
of independent sovereignties and war, or one supreme
expression of their authority and peace. They can
create States and destroy them. They can federate
the world whenever they really want to do so. We
have apparently reached the time when, in the slow
moving processes of political evolution, men must either
take a great step towards world federation, or go on
fighting until some people or some nation, through
force, become masters of the world. The existing
crisis will finally compel a more or less definite indica-
tion of what the people really propose to do. If they
flinch and say there are too many difficulties in the
way, that the problem is too complex — be sure autoc-
racy and militarism will be quick to seize the oppor-
The United English Nations 109
tunity and once the world is readjusted on the old basis,
with civilization resting on Sovereign States, with no
law controlling the inter-state relations of these sover-
eignties except the law of force, and the outlook for
democracy and for peace will not be hopeful.
This is America's hour. This is her time to speak.
Her Declaration of Independence demands that she
speak. Every line of her history makes the same
demand. She should speak to end war. But how may
war be ended?
Any program which seeks to end war must do some-
thing more than picture its horrors. Men can never
be induced to stop fighting merely because war is
illogical, brutal, and inconclusive. They know that now.
Man is a fighting animal, but amongst really civil-
ized men the fighting impulse demands conquest and
not blood. With civilization organized as it now is,
man's fighting impulse means war; but the heroic
qualities which men exhibit in war are not, as some
claim, the product of war. The red blood that leaps
at the bugle's note is a reflex of the divinity that dwells
in man. War simply calls it into splendid but per-
verted action. The soldier who bayonets a woman
resisting his bestial demands, does not thereby nor in
any way create the virtue which makes the woman
welcome death.
Can this fighting impulse be satisfied by war only?
Is that Nature's law? Is there no other way by which
the moral as well as physical courage of the common
man can be supremely appealed to? Is there no way
by which these qualities can be applied always to
construction and never to destruction?
110 Let Us Have Peace
Men have slain each other like beasts and died Hke
heroes every day now for almost two years; but their
heroism has been of a lower order than that exhibited
at the same time by others who unheralded have also
died, not stri\4ng to slay but to save their fellows.
Those who have died to save life are more truly repre-
sentative of the morally heroic quahties of humanity
than those who have died at the front in the frenzy
of battle.
Has peace no qualities which in a higher and to a
greater degree than war give opportunity to the
fighting impulse? What moral, what heroic appeal
does peace make?
For fifty years we have had substantially continuous
peace. Has the heroic, the fighting impulse been ap-
pealed to during that period, and, if so, what have been
the results?
Following Appomattox came an outburst of energy
in which there was some of the fierceness and much of
the ecstasy of battle. The conquest of the West and
the unmatched industrial development of the nation
during that period give us our answer and much more.
The fighting impulse found here an appeal that has
not only conquered a continent but has carried it
far into other fields.
It has —
Built the Panama Canal;
Quixotically won freedom for the Cubans and pre-
sented it to them, — for which now we have small
thanks;
Conquered, or partially conquered, the air and made
it a larger sea;
Conquered, or at least subdued, the mysteries under
the sea;
The United English Nations 111
Applied the power of steam in locomotion to an
extent not approached by any other people;
Developed the telephone and bound it to the daily
uses of life until it has become almost as necessary
as daily bread;
Made the illimitable and imponderable ether a
messenger which takes the human voice half way
around the earth, and may ultimately take it
through the silent spaces of the universe;
Made the mysterious, elusive, subtle, and still un-
know^n force called electricity the servant of
servants.
In the intense physical and mental activities which
have produced these unprecedented results we have
been first, or amongst the first. In all these conquests
there has been the strain and shock of real battle.
The victories won in these conflicts have not always
been without injustice, but they have been as truly
\actories — though bloodless — as any won on land or sea.
In earlier years man had not only to fight, but he
had to kill. He still has to fight and he ought to fight.
When man no longer seeks for something to overcome,
something to conquer, he will not himself be worth
killing.
But war to-day between civilized peoples is the
product of an utter misapplication of the fighting
impulse. War was necessary once; it is necessary
no longer. It is necessary no longer because the con-
ditions that earlier made it inevitable can now be
controlled.
War has been inevitable because the world was so
large. Men could not understand each other. It is
now unnecessary, but as civilization is organized, more
likely to recur, because the world is so small.
112 Let Us Have Peace
It was inevitable once because of the doctrine of
sovereignty. In the American Union we have de-
stroyed the evil of that doctrine.
It was necessary once because the majority of
civilized people believed in the Divine Right of certain
families to rule. It is unnecessary now because the
majority of civilized people believe in the right of the
people to rule themselves.
War nevertheless exists because the greatest single
force in the world calculated to banish war, the force
that instinctively hates war and all its works, is still
a house divided against itself: Democracy has not yet
dared fearlessly to follow its own declaration of prin-
ciples. It is still provincial; but its tenets now claim
so vast a body of adherents that it has only to rise
above that provincialism to do for the ci\'ilized world
what our fathers did for the Western world one hundred
and twenty-five years ago.
And what after all is the great cause of war? The
great cause of war is whatever alarms the elemental
instinct of self-preservation, men's intuitive determina-
tion to defend his natural right to life, liberty and
happiness: the fear that others plan to take those
rights away. This instinct first made man's ci\'ic unit
his family and his home a cave; then it found a larger
safety in the clan, then in the tribe, and finally in the
nation. It is instantly aroused whenever the nation,
as every considerable nation now must, projects itself
into the unorganized, lawless and primitive portion of
society called the world of internationahty.
Before we can have peace we must end the savagery
of internationahty. We must hunt out of this no-
man's land the serpents of fear and jealousy; we must
The United English Nations 113
slay the tigers of greed and ambition. We must
become truh' democratic. How?
Ultimately through the Federation of the democratic
world, but, as a first step, through the reunion of the
Anglo-Saxon world. This reunion must be accom-
phshed not to over-awe any other people, not to pile
up force with which to meet force, not to eliminate
small nationalities or make great ones afraid, but
primarily to make the Anglo-Saxon world really demo-
cratic — democratic inter-state as well as intra-state —
democratic as our forty-eight States are internally
democratic. Such a Federation (not Confederation)
would almost certainly come to include— perhaps
before its completion — France, Holland, Switzerland,
probably the Scandinavian Countries and Spain, and
possibly some of the Republics of South America.
"The Parliament of Man" would then be something
more substantial than a poet's dream.
The Anglo-Saxon world has had only one great
division in its empire since the days of King Alfred.
The people of the Thirteen Colonies exercised their
power as indi\'idual sovereigns and revolted against
the purblind folly of a King who was half-insane, and
ministers who were selfish and stupid. That revolt
broke the Anglo-Saxon world in halves; but it nowhere
changed the Anglo-Saxon faith or the Anglo-Saxon
theory of human rights.
The admission of Vermont confirmed the breach in
the Anglo-Saxon world. That as a bald fact was a
calamity, but it brought blessings too. By the ad-
mission of Vermont the new nation showed itself not
only free but self-sufficient. This reacted on the
Mother Country. The folly which alienated the Thir-
114 Let Us Have Peace
teen Colonies was not repeated. The great Englishmen
who had denounced that folly came into power. Great
Britain entered upon that unparalleled period of
colonization that has put a circle of English-speaking
nations round the world and brought English law and
justice to the remotest corners of the earth.
Canada, long flouted and neglected by us, has
finally sprung into national being, as English as the
English, as democratic as we are — bone of our bone
and flesh of our flesh. The Commonwealth of Aus-
tralia has been created under a constitution largely
copied from ours. The South African Union is rounding
out another great, if racially heterogeneous people.
New Zealand, Ne^v^^oundland, Egypt, India, all the
other dependencies of Great Britain, have found the
great mother just and wise. Tested suddenly by an
assault of unprecedented fury, the loosely held units
of the British Empire have stood fast and the Anglo-
Saxon world — outside of the United States of America —
and all that it controls has been hammered into a Union
which will become closer with the post-bellum re-
adjustments. The English states which may rightly
claim the dignity of nations, Canada, Australia, South
Africa, New Zealand, have all drifted constantly
towards our standards and our ideals rather than
towards those of earlier England. Each has a written
Constitution; none has an aristocracy; and while all
cling to the nomenclature and some of the forms of
monarchy, all are thoroughly democratic. The IMother
Country herself has moved in the same direction.
New and \'iolent readjustments will follow the close of
this war. The British Empire, so-called, is certain then
to be reconstructed. The anomalous conditions under
The United English Nations 115
which Canada, for example, finds herself a nation and
yet not a sovereignty will not be continued. Canada
had no voice whatever in deciding that there should
be a war. She had and has no control over the foreign
relations of Great Britain, though she now^ realizes
that whatever Great Britain does binds her. Canada
will have no voice in making peace. In the realm where
the supreme questions of war and peace are determined,
Canada is less sovereign than the States of our Union.
Through their representatives in Congress our States
speak in the decision of all these supreme issues.
Let us bring the argument still closer home.
Suppose Great Britain had been as wise in her
attitude toward the Thirteen Colonies in 1776 and
earlier as she has been in her relations with Canada and
AustraUa. Picture America to-day as a Dominion of
the British Empire. Is it thinkable that we would
long consent to have the questions of war and peace
settled for us by a Parliament which represents the
British Isles only? There can be but one answer to
that question put to Anglo-Saxons anywhere. There-
fore for Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa
and Newfoundland, there can be no half-way course
when peace comes. They must then become actually
independent as the Thirteen Colonies did — an utterly
unlikely proceeding — or the whole structure of the
British Empire must be changed. These Anglo-Saxon
States cannot otherwise fully apply to their own
benefit the principles of justice and of liberty for which
thousands of their sons have unselfishly and heroically
died. This reconstruction will vastly increase the
homogeneity of the English-speaking world, but will
still leave it split in twain.
116 Let Us Have Peace
What an opportunity! What a glorious opportunity!
After the hideous ruin of 1914-15-16: after seeing
Europe do what our States would certainly have done
but for Alexander Hamilton and the great Federalists
who drove the Federal Constitution through in 1787-8,
after seeing the Southern States fearfully attempt its
ruin in 1861-5; after coming ourselves up out of the
world of littleness and jealousy and fear; after feeling
the pride that citizenship in this great Republic justifies
— can we not now see a nobler picture, do we not get
a wider vision, do we not hear the call of a still more
majestic citizenship? What would an Anglo-Saxon
world, joined as our forty-eight States are joined, mean?
Geographicall}^ what would it mean?
It would comprehend 16,500,000 square miles
of territory as against 16,290,000 square miles in
the dominions of the remaining six great powers,
allowing Germany credit for all her ante-bellum
colonial possessions. Such an Anglo-Saxon empire
would embrace most of the choice territory of
the world, including both the Suez and the Panama
Canals.
In population what would it mean?
It would have under its Constitution 550,000,000
— white and colored — against 496,000,000 for the
other six powers.
In wealth what would it mean?
Its wealth would approximate S300,000,000,000
against S250,000,000,000 for the others.
Its commerce
including exports and imports would total nearly
$14,000,000,000 per annum against §12,000,000,000
for the other great powers on the basis of ante-
bellum conditions.
The United English Nations 117
Such a Federation would be a menace to no nation;
it could not be formed for aggression — its democratic
units would forbid. It would interfere no more with
the local government and institutions of its constituent
nations than our Federal Government interferes with
the internal machinery of New York State. It would
ennoble local citizenship, intensify local pride and
preserve local institutions.
Can it be done?
Of course it can be done.
Will it be done?
That involves the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx.
Tell me whether America is a modern Oedipus and you
already have your answer.
It is certain that the old forces, which have con-
trolled civilization, will, at the close of this war, be
exhausted. They can commit no more murders, create
no more staggering debts, breed no more bitterness
and hate, until they have had time to recuperate.
Will the people seize the opportunity while the old
doctrines are discredited and force a readjustment
that will cast the Doctrine of Unconditioned Sover-
eignty on the scrap-heap of history? That Doctrine
is as much an anachronism to-day as the Ptolemaic
theory of the universe.
Some years ago, Lord Roseberry, speaking as Lord
Rector to the students of Glasgow University, tried to
imagine what would have happened if George III had
hstened to reason, if representatives of the American
Colonies had been admitted to the Imperial Parhament
and America had been preserved to the British Crown.
He saw the seat of Empire transferred by sheer force
of necessity across the Atlantic. He tried to picture
118 Let Us Have Peace
the stately procession across the sea of King and
Parliament, of Ministers and Judges. He admitted,
apart from all other considerations, that he would
even now approve of such a transfer if the wars of the
Revolution and of 1812 with all their bitter memories
could be blotted out.
The seat of Anglo-Saxon Empire has already made
the stately journey that Lord Roseberry saw in his
vision. The white population of the entire British
Empire is only a little more than one-half that of the
United States.
Never before, since responsible government began,
has so large and rich a portion of the earth as that
lying between the Gulf of Mexico on the South and the
North Pole, between the Atlantic on the East and the
Pacific on the West, been occupied by an almost
wholly homogeneous people, — homogeneous in speech,
in blood, in literature, in law, and in ideals. Great
Britain is now the far easterly outpost of a prodigious
empire. If we start at the Meridian of Greenwich,
skirt the Western shore of Europe to the thirtieth
parallel, and then travel west we shall find, north of
that parallel, a world solidly Anglo-Saxon to the anti-
podes. If then we pass to the south of the Equator
and still westward, we find New Zealand and the vast
reaches of Australia. From the Meridian of Greenwich
westward to the parallel that cuts Western Australia
is three-quarters of the way around the earth. The
possibilities of this world-girdling, ocean-encompassing
empire, united in fact as it now is in its love of liberty
and in its ideals, stagger the imagination.
Every reason advanced in 1788 by Washington and
Hamilton and Madison for the creation of this Union
The United English Nations 119
pleads trumpet-tongued to-day for the creation of this
larger Union, for the creation of the United English
Nations. If such a proposal were now placed squarely
before the English Nations, it is lamentably probable
that the one most responsive would not be ours. It
may be necessary that we be seared and bhstered by
the flames of war before we rise to a due appreciation
of what our Fathers did for us, a full understanding of
our high duty to humanity.
With Great Britain we have already progressed far
on the road that leads to Anglo-Saxon Federation.
We have admitted the essential facts, only the non-
essential, but practically ihe most difficult questions
remain to be settled.
For a hundred years we have maintained on our
northern border over three thousand miles of frontier
unfortified. Why is it unfortified? Because both sides
believe that any serious difficulty there would be un-
pardonable — not to say criminal — that the relations
between the two nations are such that fortifications
would misrepresent the attitude and wishes of both
peoples and of both governments.
Admirable as that arrangement is, it solves no
problems; and no thoughtful man can deny that there
are problems. Two years ago we might have needed
evidence of the savage extremes to which nations will
go when the doctrine of sovereignty asserts itself,
when the instinct of self-preservation is aroused.
To-day we need no such evidence.
To fortify that frontier would be to revert to bar-
barism. To leave it unfortified assumes a condition
which, at best, exists perilously. We are like children
playing at peace and "making believe" that the Anglo-
120 Let Us Have Peace
Saxon Republic already exists. We have on neither
side as yet had the courage to face the truth.
All along that far-flung frontier the identical peril
that drove the Thirteen States into Federation exists
but now sleeps. It is folly to say that it will never
awake. If the existing division in the Anglo-Saxon
world persists, it is certain to awake some day. It may
awake to-morrow.
The close of this war will bring to the Anglo-Saxon
nations problems almost identical with those that
faced the Colonies after the Peace of Paris. Have
Wilson and Hughes and their associates here, have
Bryce and Grey and Asquith and Lloyd George and
their associates in Great Britain, the vision and the
courage of Washington and Madison, of Jay and of
Hamilton? If they have, federation will come, the
riddle of this Sphinx will be answered; if they have
not, the Anglo-Saxon tradition which is now glorious
may gradually lose its inspiration and its meaning.
The Anglo-Saxon Republic: The United English
Nations. Who shall estimate its significance?
Its territory, apart from the dominions of its member
Nations would be as immaterial as the realm which
Jesus described when he said: "My Kingdom is not
of this earth." Physically it would be greater than
Rome ever was. Morally it would be master of war
and of the destinies of the human race.
THE DECLARATION OF 1776
AND THE FLAG
THE
DECLARATION OF 1776 AND THE FLAG
AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, CLEVELAND, OHIO. OCTOBER 3, 1916
1^ EN are almost ashamed to be men in these
days. Governmentally they have failed
so pitifully. In the larger relations of life,
in the matters which really test their sani-
ty and capacity they are being decorated
for deeds which done ordinarily would take them to the
gibbet or the electric chair. The one rational animal
has either gone mad or was never rational except in a
small way. The lower animals are rational in a small
way. The world \\dthin which men are rational and
efficient governmentally seems to be materially smaller
than that other world within which men are clearly
irrational and inefficient. Men are big enough for
world-wide business; but as yet they apparently are
not big enough for world-wide government.
Reason means the power to differentiate, to integrate,
to deduce. Men are assumed to have these powers
under all conditions. They know danger when they
see it. They don't fool themselves. They know a tiger
will kill; that typhoid can devastate a community; that
diphtheria is the natural enemy of the child. They
don't coddle and feed tigers and assume that they can
be made into household pets ; they look after the purity
9 121
122 Let Us Have Peace
of their drinking water and of their milk; they revere
the names of the men who developed the diphtheritic
antitoxin ; they are strugghng to find the formula which
will deliver them from the terrors of infantile paralysis.
By these processes they have built the great fabric of
present-day civilization. At infinite pains and cost they
have covered the earth with palaces, put the product of
their toil into institutions whose value depends on their
permanency — whose permanency in turn depends on
their safety; and at the same time they have ignored —
have indeed helped to create — conditions in which lurk
tigers fiercer than those with which prehistoric man
struggled, in which disease and terror reign supreme.
They have built splendidly and, unconsciouslj'- at first
but deliberately afterward, have put under the struc-
ture a mine which was certain ultimately to obliterate
in one hellish blast all the beauty and utility so slowly
and painfully created.
This was not a rational process. In the larger rela-
tions of a reborn world, in handling the new govern-
mental problems that have arisen through the elimina-
tion of time and distance, man appears to have Uttle
more intelligence than a fish.
While building the delicate and complex structure
called ci\41ization men assumed, amongst Christian
peoples at least, that humanity had advanced far out
of the world of savagery. They read with sympathetic
wonder of the savage cruelty of the North American
Indian. They tried to picture the scenes in Wyoming
Valley and at Deerfield when the red man gave fuU
play to his hate and spared neither youth nor age. Men
were disposed smuglj^ to thank God that such days
were passed.
The Declaration of 1776 and the Flag 123
But in sheer cruelty, in fiendish, helUsh, malignant
disregard of all humane impulses, no massacre by the
red man of America, no deed committed by any savage
people at any time equals any one of a half-dozen inci-
dents of this war. We may console ourselves, how-
ever, with the reflection that there are people — some of
them non-Christian — who would scorn under any con-
ditions to do such deeds.
What is there in the larger problems of government
that makes man irrational? In business man has been
as big as the opportunities of a new born world. He
has sent the product of his labors over every sea. He
has trusted his fellowman almost without limit. His
\dsion has been as high as Heaven, as comprehensive
as the oceans; he has been entirely rational; entirely
logical; completely sane.
But in government he has been quite otherwise. A
mysterious something called sovereignty has limited
his action, limited his thinking, blasted his reasoning
powers, and finally brought down in woeful ruin the
splendid creation of his infinite labors. Between mod-
ern nations, acting as nations, the law of the jungle
rules. Rational in all other matters, men are irra-
tional in this. Driven by the creative impulses of life
they toil and study, they dig and delve, they dream
and create, they put their all — all their property, all
their hopes, all their dreams into units of society called
states, and at the same time plant the seeds of death in
the very vitals of the organization, and when the day
of reckoning comes they weep over the calamity and
the wickedness of war.
Under the governmental relations of modern states
nothing but war was possible; there was no other
124 Let Us Have Peace
answer to the riddle. Consider again how irrational
the process is: as human beings men create at hea\"y
cost the intricate and deHcate fabric of modem states;
as patriots the same men at the same time deliberately
prepare the forces that mean ruin to that fabric, and
finally themselves launch the forces of destruction
against themselves. Could irrationality go further?
The beasts of the field never surpassed that.
As citizens men do splendid things in times of peace;
as patriots they do splendidly dramatic and heroic
things in times of war. We are still disposed to think
that the patriot is greater than the citizen. But doesn't
that in part explain this irrationahty? War is seldom
the product of sane processes.
Observing the heroism of men in war William James
says that we must discover the moral equivalent of
war before wars can be ended. Abraham Lincoln said
in his second inaugural that if the war had to "continue
until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman's two
hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk,
and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall
be paid by another drawn with the sword * * * *
so still it must be said that the judgments of the Lord
are true and righteous altogether." James sees in war
something which creates heroic qualities in men. Lin-
coln saw in war the visible e\'idence of the wrath of the
Almighty. The central thought in James's idea is
that men's heroism and capacity for self-sacrifice can
be aroused only by assault, by some deadly peril. The
central thought in Lincoln's immortal utterance is the
retribution which men's inherent sense of right ulti-
mately insists on and achieves. Both are negative
conceptions. War doesn't create moral heroism; it
The Declaration of 1776 and the Flag 125
merely calls it into action. War doesn't achieve jus-
tice; in Lincoln's gloomy and fatalistic philosophy it
becomes Nemesis. Neither conception reveals affirma-
tively the moral possibilities of men.
The basis of modern ci\'ilization is the unit called the
nation. Out of this has sprung the madness if not the
cruelty of modern men. Why? And how? The life
of every considerable nation goes back to a period when
the world was many diameters larger than it is to-day.
In the beginning distances were cruelly great. Inter-
course — which ought always to have been the mother
of International Understanding — was limited and diffi-
cult. Life was indeed a struggle. Heroic memories
cluster about all national beginnings, and tradition —
which is sometimes the mother of lies — has always
busily plied its trade. The land "where the Fathers
died" naturally became sacred. Governmental im-
pact between nations took men always into a lawless
and dangerous zone. By bitter experience men learned
that safety lay only in preserving the fatherland at all
hazards. As this impact became stronger the instinct of
self-preservation more and more asserted itself. People
soon came to understand that this international friction
meant ultimately the sur\dval of the strongest. There-
fore to preserve the fatherland the nation must itself
become strong: strong in numbers, strong in wealth,
strong in territory, strong in armies, strong in navies.
Then came the miracles of modern science. The world
shrunk almost in a night from a huge sphere covered
by unexplored continents inhabited by monsters, to a
spinning speck where time meant nothing in inter-
course and distance substantially disappeared. The
new conditions did not clarify, but on the contrary
126 Let Us Have Peace
complicated the old problems by crowding the nations
still closer together, without eliminating any of the
old fears and prejudices. The world shrunk, but its
problems grew.
We sometimes speak of a people, to whom the oppor-
tunity of self-government has come, as being unfit for
it, not "up to" it, unable to grasp its meaning and
likely therefore to misuse opportunity and destroy
themselves. That observation can be applied to the
entire modern world, to the whole problem of the rela-
tions of the great powers. It explains the ruin of
Europe and the cataclysm which has directly or indi-
rectly involved all ci\dlization.
Our ci\alization, based on separate sovereignties each
claiming and maintaining exclusive and unlimited au-
thority over its own people, was not "up to" the de-
mands of a world compacted by steam and electricity.
Seven of the eight great powers have fallen into inter-
national anarchy from exactly the same causes that have
ruined Mexico. The great opportunity came, but the
Powers were unable to shake off the barbarism of nation-
aUty, unwilling to rise into the larger world of inter-
nationality. They have failed, as utterly as Mexico
has, to meet opportunity. The morality of their pres-
ent position is no better than that of Mexico.
The ends of the earth have fallen together. The
conditions that necessarily made men misunderstand
each other, fear each other, and periodically kill each
other, have passed away. But while the people as
citizens know this the people as patriots do not, and so
the killing goes on, goes on as never before.
Internationalism, Brotherhood — call it what you
will — beckons to us. It is the new Heaven and the
The Declaration of 1776 and the Flag 127
New Earth ; it should be to the civiHzed nations what the
great charter of government produced in Independence
Hall in 1787 became to the Thirteen American States.
But nationality rooted deep in tradition and institu-
tionalism fetters the world. It will not easily yield.
It is entrenched behind every crown, every rule of
caste, every army, even behind the integrity of demo-
cratic states. It flaunts the flag, symbol of its bitter
experiences and heroic memories, in the faces of the
people; the people thrill to its call and gladly go out to
die by millions. No other spectacle so cruel and hu-
miliating has ever disfigured this fair earth; no such
failure has damned humanity since it forfeited Paradise.
We know that humanity itself, with all its faults, is
not an aggregation of bloodthirstiness. We know that
the people do not want to commit wholesale murder.
They want to be left alone to solve the ordinary prob-
lems of life, which are difficult enough. They hate
war. Naturally they do not believe that their civilized
neighbors uninfluenced want to wrong them. But
when a certain call issues they act unquestioningly.
The flag has long been the call to battle, the old tribal
symbol, the call of the clan. It is still the appealing
e\ddence of our pro\'incialism in government — the
refuge of pohticians as well as of Kings, Kaisers and
Czars. But isn't it coming rapidly to be something
larger and finer than that? What is it that grips your
heart when you see the flag ripple in the sunlight?
What is it that makes your blood leap when you hear it
rustle in the breeze? Is it the desire to kill your fellow-
men? Certainly not. Is it greed or ambition or pride
or a disregard of the rights of other human beings?
In a democracy again certainly not. Can you analyze
128 Let Us Have Peace
it? There isn't anything just hke it. It can, in a
moment, transform a gentle, shrinking woman into a
Joan of Arc. It can make a ne'er-do-well into a hero.
It can stir depths in a man whose existence he did not
suspect. The impulse so aroused is not destructive,
not negative, it is positive : it is aroused by the flag but
it is greater than the flag. In these days and in this
Country the flag touches something in the soul that is
not limited, not selfish, something greater than pa-
triotism, something that rises to the level of conscious-
ness only when the blood leaps and the eyes moisten.
The world will never be really rational and wars will
never end until these mysterious qualities emerge fully,
in response to a positive appeal. They can be aroused
but not interpreted by the flag ; they can be stirred but
not inspired by fear. War gives only a picture of man's
heroic capacity perverted and misapplied. The great
problems of society cannot be solved by negation
and fear.
Progress toward better standards has been made.
Except in the wars of the Crusades when religious
enthusiasm drove men into affirmative action for what
they believed to be a holy cause, and except in the
wars of Napoleon or others of his sort when it was in
effect frankly admitted that conquest alone was aimed
at, wars in modern times professedly^ at least have been
fought defensively. Neither side in Europe admits
that it wanted war on August 1, 1914, or that it began
the war. Each side has been busy for two years trying
to prove that it did not begin the war and that it is
fighting defensively for existence; and in the latter
claim at least both sides are right.
The Declaration of 1776 and the Flag 129
Out of the blind groping of men has at last been
evolved a world-opinion such that no nation now dares
to begin a war of clear aggression, and admit that pur-
pose. This marks a tremendous advance; it indicates
the birth ultimately of a controlUng world opinion.
One of the most potent forces — perhaps the most
potent — in the creation of this world-opinion has been
this government and its history for a hundred and
twenty-eight years. Territorially limited— as of course
it had to be — it nevertheless rests upon principles which
are the real source of the powerful emotions evoked by
the fluttering flag. The Declaration of Independence
laid down the doctrine of individual inalienable rights.
This was made \atal in the Federal Constitution and
was an entirely new thing in government.
Our Federal Constitution was created by the sover-
eign acts of indi\'idual citizens. That Constitution
affirmatively defines certain inahenable indi\ddual rights
and negatively denies further existence to certain gov-
ernmental practices and says in effect — "These affirma-
tions and prohibitions may not be disturbed even by
majorities." Having declared these principles the
fathers created a great Court with power to protect
them, with power to neutralize any legislative attack
on them. This was the first concrete governmental
expression of the doctrine that sovereignty dwells in
the individual, that states are mere instrumentalities
for the promotion of men's happiness, that the right to
life, to liberty, and to property, are inherent and not
to be alienated by any external authority whatever.
Given the belief that sovereignty dwells in the indi-
vidual and not primarily in the state, given the belief
that every individual sovereign has certain rights which
130 Let Us Have Peace
no majority may invade, and all that is lacking to end
war is courage, vision and great leadership — such as
our fathers had in 1788. The gradual extinction of
the savage fears aroused by separate sovereignties would
follow. The superstition that for centuries has sus-
tained government by Divine Right or by some right
other than man's individual, inaUenable right would
pass. Between two peoples, between any number of
peoples, so believing war would at once become utterly
unnatural. Wherever the doctrine of inahenable rights
was really adhered to war would become a crime with-
out palliation. The irrationality, the unnatural and
artificially created fear which have heretofore partially
explained the savage conduct of men would no longer
exist. With this condition would come a controlUng
appeal to the morally heroic quahties of man and the
flag would become the symbol not of a sovereignty but
of humanity.
The logic of our Declaration of Independence was
probably not fully appreciated even by the men who
signed it. The Declaration was the explanation, the
justification of what the Colonies were about to do.
They were about to set up a new government — although
when the Declaration was issued they were by no means
prepared to set up an effective government — and they
justified what they were about to do by a declaration
of principles which asserted that all men are created
equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights. They thereby affirmed —
whether they knew it or not — that sovereignty as a
thing apart from the individual, had served its purpose
and must be superseded by something broader. They
estabhshed a government a few years later as nearly
The Declaraiion of 1776 and the Flag 131
consistent with those declarations as the times permit-
ted. The new State was, and had to be, in essential
conflict with the doctrines which its founders professed.
The doctrine of inalienable rights and the practices
of sovereignty were as irreconcilable then as they are
now. We have followed that contradictory program as
closely as we could since 1789. We have welcomed the
restless and oppressed of nearly all the earth — including
many who do not understand our doctrine or compre-
hend oiu- ideals. We have spread this doctrine from
ocean to ocean. There are now forty-eight stars in the
blue field of our flag instead of thirteen. Expansion
along those lines has seemingly reached its limit and,
if the principles of our Declaration are to be further
apphed, other Nations must governmentally subscribe
to our creed.
The inalienable rights of man asserted in the
Declaration and embodied in the Constitution are now
directly attacked by the necessities of a civilization
based on separate and practically unrelated sovereign
units, a condition which flatly contradicts the funda-
mentals of our faith, and paradoxical as it sounds, we
are and as the world is organized must remain a
party to the attack.
Here, then, is exactly the problem of the world.
Where does sovereignty rest?
Few can be found in any democratic country who
will admit that it rests with certain families especially
selected by Divine Favor. Some may be found who
believe that it rests in the collective voice of a democ-
racy as a thing apart from the individual members of
that democracy. Most of us believe that it lies in the
individual, is inalienable, and that it carries certain
132 Let Us Have Peace
rights which may not be invaded either by King or
Demos.
If that Doctrine be sound it means a democracy of
humanity; it means the end of Kingcraft, the end of
sovereignty as now understood and enforced.
In spite of the barriers, natural and artificial, which
now di\dde humanity into hostile camps, business has
done what the Declaration of Independence professed,
what governments can do only in a limited way ; it has
created a democracy of humanity; it has given the
principles of our Declaration a broader application than
that made by the government erected on the Declara-
tion. It has demonstrated that it is practicable to
enforce these principles— even across the frontiers of
sovereign states.
Business rests, as our government does, on a declara-
tion of principles which are true everywhere; but busi-
ness unlike our government, has applied them every-
where. Modern states have governmentally limited
the activities of indi\'idual sovereignty within national
boundaries, but business has made a world-wide dem-
onstration of this world-wide principle; it has shown
that men can work together without fear and with
entire equity, whatever their race, whatever their
creed, whatever their allegiance, and can, but not
without peril, so work even in times of war.
Let us not deceive ourselves; these are reactionary
days. By what may be called a curious ata\'istic im-
pulse men are everywhere reacting toward their racial
origins. The call of the blood seems stronger than
national fealty. The doctrine of sovereignty by
Divine Right, or the doctrine that sovereignty^ dwells
in the state, is working its own destruction. Men
The Declaration of 1776 and the Flag 133
intuitively understand that this doctrine means the
ultimate triumph of force, the conquest of the world by
whoever or whatever is finally the strongest. Faced
with this danger the call of the blood becomes stronger
than the call of the flag. The negative appeal begins
to fail. Men recoil from the anarchy that exists in
international affairs and grasp at whatever seems to
promise safety; they return politically to the faith of
their childhood, the faith of their fathers, just as men
frequently do religiously' when age or disorder seizes
their bodies.
Disorder has governmentally seized the whole world.
Nationality has reached the limit of its cycle; it has in
twenty-six months brought the world enough woe to
damn its claims to further consideration. No compro-
mise is possible. Sovereignty by right of the state or
by Di\'ine Right cannot compromise. Sovereignty
through individual, inalienable rights can compromise,
reconstruct, rearrange. It indeed eliminates the neces-
sity for compromise. Under that doctrine each man
must recognize the inalienable rights of every other
man. That there should be as there undoubtedly is
an intuitive reaction, under existing conditions, toward
the doctrine of inalienable, indi\ddual rights is natural
and hopeful. It represents recoil from wholesale murder ;
from the hideous failure of the present system; from
the irrational brutality of force from the breakdown of
the existing order. That the doctrine of sovereignty has
broken down, that it has led the world to a shambles,
that it has turned civilization back to chaos and wiped
out in two years the material, moral, and spiritual
achievements of many years, no one can fairly deny.
This present reaction represents an instinctive call for
134 Let Us Have Peace
something very near to revolution. Men have had
enough of this irrationahty, enough of murder, enough
of feeding young men to cannon and women to The
Beast. NationaHty can now give men nothing to justify
such a price and nationality so preserved is forever
open to the same perils. To maintain itself it must
forever re-cormnit the same crimes.
The flag — our flag — has always appealed to some-
thing bigger, broader, and more rational than mere
nationality, to something finer than patriotism: it has
appealed to the soul; it has reflected a sunlight that
shines on no savagery; it has in its rustlings whispered
of man's longing for justice. It represents to-day the
noblest effort yet made to establish human rights; be-
cause of the sincerity and nobility of that effort, be-
cause of the call it has issued and the haven it has
offered, the stars and stripes have become not merely
the emblem of a great democracy but the prophecy of
a w^orld democracy. Nations at war are savages for
exactly the same reasons that men were indi\'idually
savages until they learned a better way. Through the
establishment of orderly society men grudgingly gave
up some so-called indi\ddual freedom, but they gained
infinitely thereby, and later discovered that they had
surrendered nothing of value. The subordination of
existing nations to the rule of a higher law '^'ill as
certainly limit war as laws against duelhng have hmited
murder by that brutal and illogical process. Sover-
eignty, as the nations now assert it, rests on the inter-
national code duello. Diplomacy is the hypocritical
negotiations between seconds, the measuring of dis-
tances, the choosing of positions and of weapons. War
is the product of the identical irrationality that in
The Declaration of 1776 and the Flag 135
strict conformity with the code snuffed out the hfe of
Alexander Hamilton. The verdicts of war are not
infrequently as monstrous as that verdict was.
Beyond our frontiers — now that our geographic limits
are fixed we are constantly in contact with all consider-
able nations — the existing rules of sovereignty demand
that we adhere to this savage code. All its rules are in
full operation. We are as mad as any. The seconds
are delivering the usual notes; each side is quibbling
over questions of honor. Hating war, agonizing over
the peril that threatens all we own, all we are, all we
hope to be, we find ourselves struggling helplessly with
the intricacies of a program as irrational in its processes,
as bloody in its significance, as it was in the era of the
cave-man when indeed it was born.
Two years ago Secretary Franklin K. Lane called the
flag "The mystery of the men who do without knowing
why". All up the weary distance from a cave to a
palace men have not fully known why. But a Di\dne
Something has driven them on. They have followed
the flag. They have built painfully and then repeatedly
had to modify in part what they had built lest it turn
and destroy them. They have had a thousand flags
and changed them all because none fully explained the
mystery.
You love your flag because you love life, because
that flag in some way expresses your ideals and your
dreams. You love your country because it exalts life,
because it protects life and liberty and when in any
particular it fails, you are humiliated and ashamed.
But your demand that government protect your life
and your liberty does not imply a savage disregard of
136 Let Us Have Peace
other men's rights and hberties, and does not call for
the insanity named War.
Your life and your property are safe and your liberty
secure only as far as law exists and is enforced. The
flag symbolizes the day when law, born of the princi-
ples of the Declaration, shall supersede international
lawlessness.
I greet you not as patriots but as business men and
citizens and therefore as true protagonists of a larger
democracy, — a democracy whose flag has not yet been
designed: a flag whose field must be so designed that,
like the field of our national flag, it shall by its expand-
ing symbolism register the triumphs of expanding
democracy, until within it, like a new Bow of Promise,
will ultimately stand the assurance that the principles
of the Declaration of 1776 have become vital inter-
nationally as well as nationally and that men at last
are governmentally sane.
NINETEEN SEVENTEEN AND PEACE
FROM THE NYLIC AGENTS' BULLETIN, DEC. 23, 1916
OR the third successive year, Christmas
finds the greater portion of the Christian
world — and much of the non-Christian —
fighting, hating, bleeding and dying. The
toll in casualties and in human lives that
has been paid to ignorance, ambition, covetousness,
misunderstanding and fear now approximates in number
the entire population of the Northern States at the
time of our Civil War, and in treasure it exceeds the
total wealth of those States at that time by 400 S^.
More men are under arms in Europe now than the
entire population of these United States fifty years ago.
Great Britain alone has spent more money since
August 1, 1914, than the entire estimated wealth of this
country in 1860. All the belligerents have relatively
done as much. If the war lasts on the present scale
through 1917, the States of Europe will have increased
national debts alone by a sum equal to the entire wealth
of this country in 1900.
These are supreme sacrifices and should be for a
supreme issue. Governments cannot finally justify such
struggles and sacrifices by pleading misunderstandings.
That plea would indicate that statesmen, after all, are
not rational; and they are not rational — they are now
mad with fear or ambition or both. Honest, gentle,
10 137
138 Let Us Have Peace
kindly — the people have been caught in the intricacies
and limitations of a social and governmental plan which
has driven them mad also. If this war shall forever
banish that madness it may be worth all it costs.
When we get to the hearts of men we find no such
differences as this war indicates. Men differ in educa-
tion, in self-respect, in ideals; their skins are not
all of the same color and they do not all respond to the
same moral standards; but take them when acting
normally, away from the shadow of fear, away from
the pressure of some so-called necessity, and they are
much alike the world over. Shylock, speaking for the
Jew, expressed the voice of every section of humanity
when he said —
"Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands,
organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed
with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, sub-
ject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer,
as a Christian? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us,
do we not die?"
And on the other hand, Shylock, speaking for insti-
tutionalism, for ignorance and fear, expresses the pre-
judices of men when he says —
"I hate him for he is a Christian."
This line gives us a glimpse of the differences that so
bitterly divide men. There are others — many others.
But at bottom all these differences are alike; all hark
back to savagery, all teach men that they must hate
because others hate them, that they must plot against
others because others plot to take away their hves,
their liberties and their property.
Nineteen Seventeen and Peace 139
These obsessions grow into institutions, into States
which hmit men's \ision, emphasize their differences,
minimize their similarities, cultivate their hates — until
finally the forces of ignorance and fear get beyond
control and men rush out with less reason than the
beasts of the field and commit such atrocities as now
shame the earth.
How many of the great institutions of the world are
as broad as the similarities and common interests of
men? How many make an appeal that is broader than
race or color or religion or geographic limitations?
Show me one — except Life Insurance — that doesn't
stop at some frontier, at some interpretation of revela-
tion and say —
"Everything beyond this is dangerous and wicked
and we must stand against it to the death."
Show me one!
I do not say that boastingly, but sadly. I am proud,
as you are, that there is no blood on the hands of Life
Insurance; that in a world at war it has preached peace;
that in days of monstrous cruelty and hatred it has
worked to relieve the sufferings of humanity whether
Jew or Gentile, Christian or Pagan. It has gone on
demonstrating that all men can work together even when
they are so controlled by fear that they kill each other.
Life Insurance does not hold that conception of
Deity which puts Him into the fighting ranks of either
side in this or any war. It holds to the conception
which made the Heavenly Host chant to the shepherds
while they watched their flocks by night —
"On Earth Peace; Good Will Toward Men."
May 1917 bring the world Peace — Peace born of the
knowledge that humanity is greater than any state,
that human life is the supreme, the only value.
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO LIVES
AFTER THEM"
AN AFTER DINNER RESPONSE
BEFORE THE CANADIAN SOCIETY, HOTEL BILTMORE, NEW YORK,
JANUARY 27. 1917
HE existing di\nsion in what is generally
called the Anglo-Saxon world was brought
about by the stupidity of certain English
Ministers of State and the folly of an English
King who was not mentally responsible.
"The evil that men do" truly "lives after them".
No American citizen has any regret for any specific
thing done by the Fathers from the Boston Tea Party
to Yorktown. On the contrary, that period is not only
our heroic age and the reservoir from which we draw
unending inspiration, but it is the inspiration of men
all over the world who resist tyrants and are ready to
make the supreme sacrifice for human rights.
Viewed from the standpoint of 1917 almost a century
and a half after these e\'il forces brought on the issue
which created the schism there is room for regrets and
no true lover of the Anglo-Saxon ideal is ashamed or
afraid to express those regrets.
Successful revolutions seldom need justification.
Usually the power against which revolution has struck
justified later on the e\'il qualities which the revolu-
tionists charged. Seldom has the offending power, the
140
"The Eml That Men Do Lives After Them'' 141
Mother country, reformed itself, adopted in large
measure the ideals of the rebels and even surpassed
them in the general application of those ideals to itself
and to large sections of humanity.
So completely did Great Britain repudiate the
leadership which drove the colonies into revolt, so
really democratic did she become that since the war
of 1812 the two great powers of the Anglo-Saxon
world have been not enemies but rivals in the ad-
vancement of human hberty; one gradually absorbing
a vast continent through the erection of free common-
wealths peopled by free men who came freely from all
over the world; the other making her kingdom the
sea and carrying to all corners of her waterbound
Empire the ideals of human rights which earlier her
King and jMinisters so wickedly denied our Fathers.
Together the two to-day surpass all the other great
powers of the earth combined in population, in trade,
in territory, in wealth. Technically they are divided,
but in their aspirations, in their institutions, in their
language, in their literature, in their traditions, in their
standards of living, in short in all the conditions which
justify free government and in the ideals which give
them vitality, they are substantially one. In their
continued integrity and in their co-operation he the
hopes of democracy. If this Company representing
as it does all the men who fought at Bunker Hill and
all the men who fought at Quebec and all the men who
fought at Plattsburg should, as I venture now to do,
express the fervent hope that at no distant date these
great kindred powers shall enter into some federated
relation which will make any serious difference between
them hereafter as impossible as serious differences now
142 Let Us Have Peace
are between New York and Massachusetts, we shall
on neither side be unpatriotic. That the United States
and Canada in spite of some serious misunderstandings
in the past, in spite of interests and ambitions that
have clashed, should now find themselves so nearly
one in purpose and sympathy is not strange. They are
intimately related in their origin, history and develop-
ment. Canada even after it became British extended
as far south as the Ohio River. Before Canada became
finally British — which was only sixteen years prior
to our Declaration of Independence — she had been
almost continually French, and there are few pages of
history so crammed with romance as those which im-
perfectly record the heroic labors of the French in the
wars between France and Great Britain for the pos-
session of the continent. The colonies to the south
had a part in the struggle which did not end until 1760.
Again in their fight for independence the Colonies were
by no means unanimous. The Tories who were loyal
to the crown made up an appreciable per cent, of the
population of the Thirteen Colonies. Between them
and the followers of Washington and Hamilton there
was feud-war of the cruelest kind. The patriots con-
fiscated the property of the Tories and hunted them
down with the cruelty that such conditions have
historically always developed. Forty thousand Tory
inhabitants of the Colonies fled to Canada — largely
to Nova Scotia. Naturally as they fled from what
they considered gross injustice and cruelty they
cherished bitter animosities against their neighbors.
As a result of this and other migrations large numbers
of the inhabitants of Canada to-day, including some
holding high positions in the government, are fully
''The Eml that Men Do Lives After Them" 143
eligible to membership in the New England Society
of New York. In the lapse of time the descendants
of these exiled Loyalists returned to this country and
the genealogy of no inconsiderable portion of the
membership of this Society will lead from here back
to Canada and again return in the seventies and
eighties of the eighteenth century to Cape Cod and
the lower reaches of the Hudson River. Thousands
of Canadians fought on the Union side in our great
Civil War. Later on many other thousands migrated
to this country and became American Citizens.
In very recent times hundreds of thousands of the
best citizenship of our Middle West, themselves remote
descendants of the pioneers of Massachusetts and
Connecticut, have gone into the Canadian Northwest,
become citizens of Canada, and are to-night, with
thousands of others who are still American citizens,
defending the allied lines in Flanders.
Time has softened animosities and re-awakened
heroic memories. The call of the blood has finally
triumphed. A frontier cuts the lines of influence that
radiate north and west from Plymouth Rock, and
south and west from the Plains of Abraham, but so
powerful is the sense of a common purpose that along
that frontier for over 3,000 miles there is neither gun
nor battleship, and if that condition ever changes the
race to which we belong will somewhere have been
betrayed.
If therefore the descendants of both sides, in the
issues raised in 1775, should now clasp hands, not
merely because they have learned to respect each
other, but because they have mutually come to re-
cognize a common purpose from the beginning and to
144 Let Us Have Peace
honor a common ancestry, — who shall say that they
are other than true Anglo-Saxons and true patriots?
Our forebears were right because they resisted tyrants ;
that resistance in large measure brought Canada her
freedom ; it also helped to give Englishmen their democ-
racy. Whether the Tories were loyal to the crown
because they had a clearer \'ision than the other
Colonists, because they knew that the heart of Great
Britain was sound and that hberty still lived there
and would triumph, I don't know. In passing I am
obliged to say I doubt it ; but in any event driven in the
name of liberty out of the Thirteen Colonies, they have
north of us helped to erect a new nation as devoted to
the principles of 1776 as we are; they have produced a
people as brave, as generous, as capable, as true to
Anglo-Saxon ideals as any branch of the Anglo-Saxon
race. They command our unstinted admiration be-
cause they and the men of Australia and New Zealand
and South Africa have heard the call that John But-
trick and his men heard at Lexington Conmion, and
are answering it as superbly.
None of these Dominion men was obhged to enter
this war. Some very good reasons could have been
advanced why they should not. There was one very
great reason. None of these young nations had any
voice in Great Britain's Foreign Office. They were not
consulted when the Mother country made her great
decision in 1914. They had their own governments
and between them and England the connection was
small and useful and apparently void of offense to
free men. Canada for example watched with much
of the curiosity of a bystander the diplomatic issues
now and then raised in Europe, such as — the Fashoda
"The Evil that Men Do Lives After Them'' 145
incident, the crises in Morocco and the Conference at
Algeciras. I doubt if even the Boer War, in which
Canada unhesitatingly took part, brought home to
Canadians their true status or lack of status in the
Empire. But now Canada understands that while
with her fellow members of the Empire she is giving
her sons and her money as heroically as any people
ever did, she is something less than a nation. Never-
theless with a generosity that is quixotic she is giving
her all and is willing to wait for exact justice from the
great Mother, in the post-bellum readjustments.
As an Anglo-Saxon nothing is clearer to me than this :
The great questions of peace and war will never again
be settled for Canada and her sister free Dominions by
a Parliament which represents the British Isles only.
The new head of the British government, David Lloyd
George, has already said that new and closer relations
with the Dominion governments will follow the coming
of peace. He doubtless understands, as the world
generally does, that while Canada believes she is
fighting for human liberty, she knows that she is
fighting for her rightful place in the Empire.
Whether it will be possible to form a League of
Nations after this war through which the future peace
of the world can be assured is now in the thoughts of
every serious-minded man. Within recent days the
idea has been discussed by the men who lead the
governments of all the great Powers, and by none has
it been more nobly stated than by our own President.
The task will be colossal. The forces that will have to
be controlled are rooted deep in religious bigotry, in
racial hatreds, in profound ignorance, in instinctive
fears. The storm center of the world is located not
146 Let Us Have Peace
far from the spot where the Aryan race had its birth
where man himself is supposed first to have appeared.
But as we move to the West the differences that sprang
out of these ancient problems, their hates, their fears,
their real kings and their sham kings have less and less
significance, until we finally emerge into the blessed light
of the sun of liberty that shines on all the land from
the Rio Grande to the North Pole.
But whether or not such a league is now possible
there is a League — no, not a League, a Federation —
quite possible of formation (if Anglo-Saxon men have
not lost the power of generalization and deduction)
which would go far toward achieving the end sought,
if indeed it would not ultimately and more surely
achieve it; and that is a Federation of all the English
speaking nations of the world. Never since govern-
ments began has there been an Empire to compare with
the countries now controlled by Anglo-Saxon ideals.
Such animosities as were born a hundred and forty
years ago have substantially died out during the
century of peace that has existed between the two
great units. Measured westward from the meridian
of Greenwich, this Empire covers three-quarters of
the distance round the earth and reaches, sweeping
northeast to southwest, from pole to pole. It encircles
the two great oceans of the world, includes almost
solidly two continents and has set the light of its liberty
burning steadily around the globe. It is substantially
one in speech, in law, in literature, in forms of govern-
ment. Its people love liberty and are wilUng at all
times to fight for it. It is still di\dded because of the
work of ministers whose very names Great Britain
would like to forget, and of a King who is remembered
''The Evil that Men Do Lives After Them" 147
chiefly because he is an example of what an EngUsh
King ought not to be. Their evil deeds survive.
But if Anglo-Saxons have always been brave enough
to revolt and fight for their rights, can it be that they
are not big enough when the hour strikes to unite for
the same purpose? Is their pride greater than their
convictions? Was their constructive capacity ex-
hausted with the great Union created in 1789?
The force that stands to-day against a Federation of
the Anglo-Saxon world is the same false pride that
controlled George Clinton when he fought Alexander
Hamilton all through the Summer of 1788 and so
nearly kept this State out of the Union. By the
narrowest of margins Hamilton won; but he won
because his logic had in it the force of Thor's hammer,
because his speech had in it a Divine eloquence.
In this struggle between the sovereignties of Europe
there is a logic more compelling than Hamilton's;
it beats upon us with the power of thunderbolts. It
says to the Anglo-Saxon world —
"Federate! Federate and neutrahze the evil wrought
by King George III and his ministers. Federate
because you are all democratic and frontiers are the
enemy of democracy. Federate because the dogma of
sovereignty must never again be permitted to crucify
humanity. Federate because that way hes peace."
Let the sweUing millions of our common race pray
for a greater Washington and a greater Hamilton and
a greater Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and when they re-
appear, as they must if the Anglo-Saxon ideal is to
survive, let us put aside our false pride and our fears
and follow them.
LIFE INSURANCE AS A VOCATION
AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE
STUDENTS OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE, WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS.,
FEBRUARY 15, 1917
COULD as well have said ''Life Insurance
as a Profession". Vocationally defined ''Life
insurance is the application of special know-
ledge to the benefit of others rather than to
one's self". I know no better definition
than that of the qualities which lift any daily effort
out of the hum-drum of bread and butter and entitle
them to be rated as professional.
The man whose academic years have been spent
in this atmosphere must seek in selecting his life work
something which reasonably meets the current demands
of living and at the same time appeals to his imagina-*.
tion.
No vocation can appeal to the well-balanced mind
and to the imagination which does not in some fashion
respond to the peculiar conditions of the times. These
are strange times. You who leave college this year
will begin work in a very strange world.
The world of 1917 is not the world of 1914 nor the
world of any previous epoch. The changes from August
1, 1914, to a stabilized world, following this war, may,
indeed probably will, be as tremendous as those which
separate the fossils of Lake Florissant, Colorado, and
148
Life Insurance as a Vocation 149
the life of the Rocky JMountains of to-day — spanning
a period of countless years.
Between 1914 and 1917 something prodigious hap-
pened. Hostile forces developed through centuries of
struggle came into conflict. Institutionalism with its
dogmatic affirmations clashed with institutionalism.
Differing theories of government and of human rights
came to grips. In society and government prodigious
forces stirred and changed the social geography of
the world, sinking the Atlantis of 1914 and hfting out
of the ooze a new continent. To state the conditions
a little more simply let us change the analogy:
Mary Shelley made her hero Frankenstein construct
the physical body of a man in his laboratory hoping
that like Prometheus he could bring to it the divine
spark of life and that when life came his creation,
being free of mortal ills, would be immortal. Instead,
with life, Frankenstein's creature became a monster
which relentlessl}^ pursued and destroyed its creator.
The peoples of the world in 1914 had created a
wonderful civilization based on separate, substantially
unrelated units called nations, each asserting unlimited
and unconditioned sovereignty over its own territory
and people and a not too clearly defined authority over
its people and their property when within other sover-
eignties. The nations in turn, like Frankenstein, tried
to create another state out of the necessary impact
between governmentally unrelated units. They put
the parts together as Frankenstein did and hoped as
he did that in some way they might bring down from
Heaven the vital spark of peace. They called the
product International Law; but it was no more Law
than Frankenstein's creation was a man. Then sud-
150 Let Us Have Peace
denly, on August 1, 1914, this law that was not law but
potential anarchy asserted itself and became real
anarchy, became a monster which, like Frankenstein's
creation, is relentlessly destroying its creator. When
Frankenstein perished his monstrous creation passed
away. When the doctrine of unconditioned sovereignty
passes, when that Frankenstein is succeeded by the
doctrine that human life is the only real value in the
world, the monster which it created, called Inter-
national Law, will pass away also.
Whether you would have it so or not you are already
literally projected into the struggle which centres
around this problem. The existing struggle will never
end — just as no man can place its beginning — but it
will in the span of your lives bring in very definite re-
sults. You will — or you may — work in an inspiring
age. You will be on the frontiers of human hopes, or
at least you can be. Whether you are or not, whether
you do a strong man's part or not, will to no small
extent depend on the vision that lies in your vocation.
If your vocation has vision you will develop vision.
If your profession is in sympathy with the spirit of
the age, you will understand its problems. It is still
quite possible for men, yes for educated men, to hve
like swine. It will be possible for you to go through
life successful and materially rich without knowing or
caring what the condition of this struggle is or what it
portends.
The world is already reacting to the challenge which
these conditions have issued. Men were never so
great and never so small as they are to-day; never so
kind and never so cruel; never so generous and never
so mean; never so capable and never so incapable;
Life Insurance as a Vocation 151
never so rational and never so mad. The average day
laborer has a wider knowledge of the world day by day
than the College President of a century ago had. The
average man has a clearer knowledge of the forces that
lie back of current international questions than most
of the statesmen had who struggled with the problems
of statecraft in 1817. Knowledge has marvelously
expanded and the physical world has marvelously
shrunk. All this makes it desirable that the college man
should question the old professions and study the new
ones before making his choice.
What \\ill be found in the bottom of the crucible of
European ci\dlization when the fierce flame of battle
has died away? Will it be sanity or more madness?
Will it be nationality or humanity, a world-citizenship
or more so-called patriotism? In completeness pro-
bably neither. But I am one of those who believe
that while a world-democracy is not immediately
attainable, out of this ruin and madness the people
will emerge with a new realization of their power, with
a broader comprehension of their interdependence, with
a fuller understanding of the fact that in a world as
small as this world now is, nationality asserting the
doctrine of unconditioned sovereignty, is an anach-
ronism, whether it bases its several claims to power on
Divine Right or on the suffrage of a people theoretically
free. Republics asserting the doctrine of unconditioned
sovereignty are about as grave a menace to the peace
of the world as autocracies. The reform that will
remove this menace must be born of the people, of a
consciousness that the thing of supreme value is human
life. Great reforms in society are no longer imposed
from without. Nations are no longer baptized by force.
152 Let Us Have Peace
It is still bitterly true that in the incidents of colossal
world struggles nations may be raped and the final
answer to the questions which spring out of inter-
national lawlessness is still sheer force. But dreadful
as these facts are we must believe that they are fugitive
and do little more than touch the deep currents of the
people's thinking. Governments may have reacted to
medievalism but the people have not. Religious re-
forms and civic reforms may and sometimes do reach
sudden and dramatic climaxes but in the Anglo-Saxon
world the great reform finally comes because the idea
has long been gestating in the lives and work of the
people.
Nothing is therefore so important as what the in-
dividual units of a nation do and think day by day.
Nothing will be so important to you as what you do
and think day by da\'. If your chosen work comes
finally to have no significance except a hving or material
success be sure you have chosen unwisely, and you are
in a fair way to lose your own soul.
I do not forget that I am speaking to educated men,
to men who have been fortunate. The mass of men
are not equally fortunate. Nevertheless we are all,
educated and half-educated, in one boat together and
a vocation or profession which leads educated men to
use their confessed advantage for selfish purposes
merely, which tends to put them in a class apart,
which teaches them to forget that education is even
more an obhgation than an asset, is not the soundest
of vocations and cannot lead to the highest usefulness.
The attainment of success, material success, money,
will necessarily be the immediate purpose of most of
you. In these days competition is keen and your im-
Life Insurance as a Vocation 153
mediate goal will not be instantly or easily reached.
The danger lies in this: Under the stress of competition
you may go so deeply into your vocation or profession
that you will be strongly bound by its hmitations;
that indeed is likely. Later in life, these limitations
may narrow your outlook and deaden your sym-
pathies. You may be rated by men as a distinct success
at forty and at sixty-five know in your own soul that
you have been a failure.
Without analyzing other professions, without point-
ing out their limitations, I in\ite your attention to Life
Insurance as a Profession, as a vocation, as a career,
because in its very fundamentals it is truly democratic,
because the matter of its business is human life — the
only value in the world — the thing that gives all other
things value, because it knows no creeds or frontiers,
because it knows no hates or fears, and because it is
at the same time so intimately related to the ordinary
professions and vocations that in its ser^'ice you may
be a great lawyer, a great physician, a great financier,
a great scientist, a great salesman, a great executive,
a great sociologist. Nothing human is foreign to it.
But, more than that, in life insurance j'ou cannot be
merely a great lawyer or a great financier or a great
salesman or a great executive; you can be that, but if
you are you must at the same time be something more.
All these professions and vocations are included in the
acti\'ities of life insurance, but each, in that service,
definitely and scientifically goes on to a higher purpose
which is the solidarity of human life, the co-ordination
of its units, which acting separately are helpless even
hostile, but acting co-operatively come to possess a
power like that of the tiny wires in the cables of a great
154 Let Us Have Peace
bridge — able to support the orderly traffic of a nation.
This is only another way of saying that Life Insurance,
itself a science, leads directly to the greatest of all
the sciences — the science of society.
And what is the fundamental condition of society
now? Essential savagery! As a part of the solar system
this earth is a unit and a relatively small unit, but
governmentally and sociologically its conditions suggest
the chaos that would follow if between the planets from
Neptune to Mercury the centrifugal force of matter
suddenly ceased to operate. The eight planets sepa-
rated by almost infinite distance and held apart by the
unchanging laws of matter are not more strange to
each other than the eight great powers have been,
standing rigidly on the doctrine of unconditioned
sovereignty and until recently separated by barriers
which to the spread of human understanding and
sympathy were a hindrance comparable with the ether
in inter-planetary understanding. Into the shining
infinites of the ether the human voice is beginning to
penetrate. No voice of reason has ever been able to
penetrate the blind walls of sovereignty. Within fifty
years science, business and the natural impulses of the
people have delivered some sturdy blows against these
barriers and have almost seemed to make breaches in
them; but sovereignty as such has heard nothing, seen
nothing, learned nothing. Through increasing inter-
course amongst the people centripetal forces had in
1914 so driven the nations together that either the
citizen or the patriot had to yield. As usual the patriot
won and the eight separate civic worlds scattered over
the face of this particular planet have now fallen
together with a crash as clearly epoch-making as the
Life Insurance as a Vocation 155
catastrophe would be if Neptune and Uranus fell
against Jupiter, crashed against Saturn, and then
gathered up the Earth, Venus, Mars and Mercury in
their flight into the Sun. The doctrine of sovereignty
was as certain to bring the eight great civic units of
the world into fearful colUsion when science eliminated
time and distance, as the centripetal force of matter
would be certain to smash up the universe if the cen-
trifugal force of matter suddenly ceased to function.
Exactly that is happening now. The chaos, the form-
lessness, the darkness which rested on the deep, were
no more vi\'id to the people who produced the Book of
Genesis than they are to us to-day on the Eastern
Atlantic and the North Sea. The creative fiat that
shall sound over the face of these waters and say "Let
there be Light," must be the voice of the people,
speaking as the people, and not the voice of either
autocratic or democratic sovereignty; it must be the
voice of real democracy, a democracy which within the
realms of its own professions at least shall have no
sovereign frontiers.
Such is the condition of society and such are its
problems. No more terrible, no more appealing, no
more inspiring period of history has yet been recorded.
Our great problem is the democratization of the
world and that can never be achieved until the existing
theories of sovereignty are abandoned. Democracy is
now a house divided against itself. Its principles are
in theory as broad as humanity. We said so in the
Declaration of Independence — asserting that all men
are created equal and endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights. Between States professing
these principles there should never be war, there could
156 Let Us Have Peace
never be war if these principles were lived up to.
There is justification perhaps for war between demo-
cratic and non-democratic peoples. They do not
speak the same political language and a democracy
has an unquestioned right to defend itself. But all
democratic states speak the same political language,
they profess the same principles, they cherish the same
ideals, the sources of their sovereignty are the same.
In order to create a ci\dc organization they must have
nominal frontiers, but their principles as between democ-
racies should not be abandoned at those frontiers.
The model for the democracy of the world is our
Federal Government. The original states in 1776 had
frontiers in the sovereign sense, but those frontiers
had to be given up — in that sense — in order to make
the federated states really democratic. They gave up
nothing but false pride when they followed the De-
claration of 1776 and formed the Union. Each Colony
entering the Federal Union preserved its identity and
instead of losing authority took on a vastly increased
power. The next State that enters this Union will
surrender nothing of value; on the contrary it will
preserve its identity and acquire a voice in the govern-
ment of forty-eight other States. It will surrender
only the sovereign right to resort to savagery in future
relations with its neighbors.
Until the Democratic States of the world form such
a Federation, Democracy — now a house di\'ided against
itself — will be untrue to its own professions, will always
be in danger and likely to be as blood guilty through
war as other states which do not profess its faith.
Before pointing out how wonderfully, almost singu-
larly. Life Insurance as a sociological force forwards
Life Insurance as a Vocation 157
the solution of that great problem, let us consider its
practical power.
In its practical and material relations Life Insurance
introduces you to a world which represents one of the
largest single accumulations of value earned, saved,
set aside for a constructive purpose and expressed in
terms of money and securities ever known to organized
society.
A few statistics will be informing:
On January 30, 1916, the total de-
posits in the Sa\dngs Banks of the
United States, representing 10,-
686,000 depositors, was S4,997,000,000
The total deposits of the Trust Com-
panies on the same date was 6,247,000,000
The total time and demand deposits
in National Banks was 8,500,000,000
The total outstanding bonds and
stocks of all the Railroads in the
United States, less bonds and
stocks owned by such roads, was 15,700,000,000
The total assets of 235 American
level premium Life Insurance Com-
panies on the 31st of December,
1915, was 5,200,000,000
This total is expressed through forty-seven miUion
contracts.
The above figures as to Savings Banks, Trust Com-
panies and National Banks are probably abnormal.
They include the tremendous increase in deposits made
within two years as a result of existing war conditions.
158 Let Us Have Peace
The corresponding figures on the 30th of June, 1914,
would be as follows:
Savings Banks $4,936,000,000
Trust Companies 4,347,000,000
National Banks 6,268,000,000
Life Insurance — level premium, scientifically con-
structed life insurance has outstanding contracts
amounting to S23,200,000,000 in all. Compared with
Sa\dngs Banks, Trust Companies and National Banks,
fife insurance in its accumulations of money stands in
normal times ahead of the first two and at the present
time ahead of the first. As a holder of contracts that
are calculated powerfully to affect the people in the
future, it surpasses all the railroads combined by
several billion dollars. These Railroad Stocks and
Bonds are much less dependable than the contracts of
life insurance, because Stocks are not a promise to paj^
at all and frequently do not represent a corresponding
investment ; Railroad Bonds do not generally carry any
sinking fund provision. American life insurance stands
pledged to pay and will ultimately pay to the holders of
its contracts a sum greater than the combined deposits
of sa\dngs banks, trust companies and national banks.
The opportunity here is ob\dous: — for the lawyer,
for the salesman, for the financier, for the executive,
for the physician, for the sociologist. This world of life
insurance is larger than the world of any single group
cited, because it includes them all and gives all an
added significance. Such reflections however bring us
only to the threshold of what Life Insurance means.
Statistics are sometimes mere statements of rela-
tively unimportant facts, dead things ; sometimes they
Life Insurance as a Vocation 159
are alive, sometimes they pulsate with hope and some-
times prophecy shines through them.
Life Insurance statistics are h\'ing things. The
social superiority of Life Insurance is only partially
expressed by these contrasted totals.
A million dollars covered by the contracts of a Life
Insurance Company are impressed with a social power
unknown to a million dollars in a Sa\'ings Bank. The
money of a Savings Bank or a Trust Company or a
Railroad is busy, useful money, but useful as it is, it
is not impressed with the singular power that attaches
to Life Insurance money. This brings us to the very
fundamentals of the idea:
When Dr. Halley assembled in 1693 the observed
facts which became the basis for the first table of
mortality, he made a discovery which in its present
influence on sociology ranks with the greatest of dis-
coveries, and in its ultimate effects on society may
ultimately outrank most others.
Emerson tells us that humanity as a whole is walking
along the edge of a precipice over which thousands
are quickly thrust if the price of bread is advanced a
few cents a loaf. All that stands between the average
family and destitution is the earning power of the father.
Just behind him stalk accident, disease, war and
economic disaster, any one of which in a moment can
take away the only safeguard the family has. The
application of the law of mortaUty or of longevity
through life insurance binds such families, millions of
them, into a great co-operative guild through which
the life of the bread-winner is instantly capitalized for
the direct benefit of the family and of course the
indirect benefit of society.
160 Let Us Have Peace
This transforms the mob into an army; it substitutes
coherence for incoherence; certainty for uncertainty;
solvency for insolvency; it meets and discharges to a
large degree the obligations which the state potentially
assumes with the creation of every family. If the
father lives presumably those obligations will be dis-
charged; if he dies prematurely there is a default to
society. The orphan asylums, homes for the aged and
destitute, and even the reformatories and peniten-
tiaries, testify to the present extent of that default.
Life Insurance minimizes that default through a direct,
scientific, practical program. Apart from the pro-
tection of the family, this is a service to the state —
generally unrecognized — of the first order.
The ser\dce of Life Insurance to the individual,
morally, is equally striking. Panic is the word that
most frequently explains the failure of men, of in-
stitutions and of nations. War is panic. Reason
ceases somewhere to function before war happens.
Death is panic. In the thoughts of every serious-
minded man is the fear of death; not because men are
cowards but because they are brave and rational.
The fear is born of anxiety about their dependents.
Against the remorseless demands of mortality, which
is organized, certain in its stride but uncertain as to
where its stroke will fall, stands the thin unorganized
red line of the indi\adual ; and panic stands hard by.
But put individuals of that thin line into touch with
their fellows, show them how they can organize and
face the organized and remorseless approach of the
dread enemy, and panic disappears. The indi\'idual
then steps out with lifted forehead and a new courage.
Life Insurance as a Vocation 161
Shakespeare describes this new man in "Measure for
Measure" as being
"* * * * * * fearless of what's
Past, present or to come; insensible
Of mortality, and desperately mortal."
Sociologically the largest significance of Life Insur-
ance lies in service generally not thought of at all, yet
these unheralded qualities are the ones that most
appeal to the imagination, they are the ones which
should make it most attractive to the educated man as
a vocation. I di\dde them into two groups :
1st. Those which teach rules of action which
must ultimately control the citizenship of
any really efficient democracy; those
which teach the world what responsible
democracy is.
2d. Those which not only teach the theory of
universal brotherhood but under prodi-
gious difficulties scientifically apply them.
As to the first group:
We can think of no better example of democracy
than our own country. There probably is in all history
no better example. And yet with all the great things
it has done who is not conscious of some grave weak-
nesses. Becoming a sovereign the citizen refuses to
rule; he finds money-making more attractive. He
has no scale by which he can measure his obligation to
society nor any by which he can tell what society should
give him. He therefore takes all he can get. He
seldom worries over whether what he gives is adequate
— unless it takes the form of taxes. The mere payment
of taxes does not discharge the obligations of our
citizenship. There are grave obligations of which we
162 Let Us Have Peace
seldom think. Some of our obligations are daily, some
yearly, some once in four years and some — and those
the gravest — have an uncertain periodicity.
As the world is organized now war is as certain to
come to us as the sun is in a few weeks to bring back
the flowers. To defend what the Fathers created is
the profoundest of obligations. And yet until Europe
staged and began to play an epochal tragedy what
American thought much about war, of the certainty
of its coming and when it came how he would meet it?
Now we stand appalled — some of us at least — realizing
that while we can and must have a paid navy we
cannot as a republic have a great hireling army, but
that we must have a great available army nevertheless.
We realize that it must be a citizen army and that as
men we are physically flabby and unfit, that we have
no program by which that appalling condition can be
surely remedied, and, worst of all, that some are
morally equally flabby and are disposed to go on keeping
both feet in the trough.
The truth that this country has yet to learn — and in
learning may pay a bitter price — is that in no form of
government is a disciplined citizenship as necessary
as in ours and in no individual governmental instance
has that disciphne been so utterly neglected. Because
the source of our sovereignty is in the citizen, and
therefore the same citizen must both rule and serve,
must both give and take, the balance must be pre-
served or ruin is as certain as a correct balance sheet is
inexorable. We haven't bothered ourselves much about
that balance sheet. We haven't seriously attempted to
ascertain definitely what each citizen must give and do
to be a real sovereign as he professes to be and not a
Life Insurance as a Vocation 163
defaulter to society as many of us are. Deficits in
business can be ignored and concealed for a time, but
in the end they must be met to the last penny or they
assert themselves in the courts of bankruptcy. Our
social deficit has been accumulating for some time.
What about the size of it? Shall we ascertain the
truth in the matter of defense by taking our feet out
of the trough long enough to establish the facts and
face them, or shall we wait until flabby and unmobilized
we are forced to face the industrial competition of the
highly trained and centralized units of Europe? Shall
we wait until ready to be looted we face in helpless
terror their armies and fleets? In the latter case the
deficit will assert itself in ruined cities if not in lost
liberties.
I invite your attention to an International republic
whose structure indicates a way out, a republic in
which each citizen is within the Hmits of his capacity
the equal of every other citizen, where duty and rights
are exactly measured and enforced, where there is and
can be no default by either the indi\ddual or the
general body, where each citizen is certain to get all
he deserves and no more, where all are satisfied because
it appears that the majority of men are naturally
satisfied when they know that no one can get more
than they can for the same value, and all get full value.
That republic is the republic of Life Insurance. It is
already so large that it touches the interests and applies
its discipline to substantially every man, woman and
child in the United States, and includes with them on
terms of true democracy and equality many thousands
of different races and creeds who live under totally
different jurisdications.
164 Let Us Have Peace
This Republic is first of all financially sane, it spends
no money until it knows exactly whence the money is
to come. Its contracts are based on exact knowledge,
and yet before Halley established the law of mortahty
the solution of its problems would have seemed almost
miraculous. It starts with a table of mortality, it
assumes that for the life of the contract it will earn a
minimum rate of interest, it adds a percentage for
expenses which if conservatively managed it never
exceeds and by scientifically combining these three
elements it puts under its structure a foundation as
dependable as the continuity of human life.
It is democratic, efficient, and so just that it doesn't
need to be merciful. It is the greatest peace organiza-
tion in the world. In civic affairs the man who neglects
his civic obligations is not immediately punished, if
indeed he ever is; he rather wins than loses by his
default. But in the Republic of Life Insurance the
quitter loses. He gets an equity, he is not wronged, he
gets all he has fairly paid for but the man who sticks
gets a margin more. There is never a deficit. The poor
man's money is just as potent as the rich man's. If
the rich man finally gets more, be sure he paid more.
Moreover the whole structure while essentially peaceful
is always mobilized. Generally speaking the whole of
a company's assets, with all its variety of security
stands solidly behind the smallest as well as the largest
pledge of the institution.
In this Republic sovereignty dwells in the indi\'idual,
without distinction of sex, but the sovereigns neither
neglect their duties as rulers nor do they attempt to
conduct the business of the state by mass meeting.
They delegate enormous discretion to a few men and
Life Insurance as a Vocation 165
then hold them responsible; they understand that to
insure efficiency and justice power must be exercised.
They have learned that power, if responsible, is not a
menace, but a necessity. As citizens of the American
Republic we follow no such rule. We are almost as
irresponsible in our attitude toward government as
we would be if all civic responsibility rested with an
autocrat. We are disposed to regard the government
as of interest to us only during the excitement of an
election. We look on the soldier with suspicion and
on politics as an unworthy game. We can fail to
register and fail to vote and suffer no direct penalty.
Under a proper enforcement of the ideals we profess
a man would be compelled to purge himself of fault
before a court after such failure.
The Republic of Life Insurance in short offers a
model of what the relations between citizens and their
government should be in a democracy, to achieve
efficiency and justice.
As to the second group:
If there ever was a time — and perhaps there was —
when it was beyond the capacity of the people to see
farther than the natural and artificial barriers that
had divided them into hostile camps, if there ever was
a time when under the laws of nature they had to
fight and kill each other, that time is passing. Assume
if you please that the results of this war will be dis-
tinctly a triumph for democracy and human liberty.
Nevertheless the horror of it, the agony of it, the
losses it brought, the burdens it laid on future genera-
tions will bulk larger in the minds of men than any
possible military victory. The people will have won
no victory if it does not eliminate or hereafter control
166 Let Us Have Peace
the forces and conditions which resulted in this red
horror. No one can say now how completely that
truth will grip the wills of men when peace in some
form comes. But that there will be tests applied to
the institutions of the world such as were never ap-
plied before is beyond question.
What is the one hard, inflexible condition that has
kept and still keeps the people of the world apart?
Whence came the power which for generations has
made the States of Europe armed camps while the
people as citizens traded with each other and trusted
each other and had in their hearts no fear of each other?
Whence came the orders which in a twinkhng trans-
formed gentlemen into savages? What was the power
that has already killed 5,000,000 men and maimed or
captured 14,000,000 others? What is it that now keeps
over 40,000,000 men under arms or in training? One
answer serves for all :
UNCONDITIONED SOVEREIGNTY.
It is futile to speculate now on why men chose to
develop society through separate sovereign units called
nations ; but it is not futile to speculate on whether that
program has not outlived its usefulness. Nations as
units of organized life will of course continue; that
condition is not on trial before the bar of humanity.
The dogma that is on trial is the dogma of sovereignty.
That dogma nearly defeated the wisdom of Washington
and the logic of Hamilton in 1788. Enough of it sur-
vived in 1861 so that it again reared its horrid front
and it died here only after four years of fratricidal war.
And how the dogma lied to our fathers and now it
lies to us! How it appealed to pride and fears in 1787
Life Insurance as a Vocation 167
and 1861 — just as it now appeals to the pride and the
fears of the suffering peoples of Europe,
We know that the pride it always appeals to is false
pride, the fears it awakens are groundless. When we
put that pride aside in 1789 and abandoned those fears
— and not till then — we entered on the career that has
covered this hemisphere with free, separate and yet
united commonwealths and made it the desire of the
world.
This Republic is the great exemplar of the processes
by which States can preserve their identity and their
liberties and yet be merged into larger States.
Life Insurance is the great exemplar of how peoples
of separate sovereignties without regard to race or
creed can be merged as human beings into an inter-
national organization — and if into an international
organization which deals with men's most profound
interests why not into an international State. The
Life Companies which operate internationally have
already made the brotherhood of man something more
than a poet's dream. They have been amongst the
few institutions whose ministrations for two and a
half years have gone on along with the Red Cross and
other relief, but free from all suggestion of charity.
The government of one of these international com-
panies is a very real parliament of man, a prophecy of
the greater parliament to come.
The man who beheves that the people of the world
will ultimately patch up some sort of peace, go home
to mourn for their dead, bend their backs under the
crushing load of debt, and ask no further questions,
has no vision and no faith. That they will bring the
dogma of sovereignty to bar is certain; it is equally
168 Let Us Have Peace
certain that they will ultimately condemn and abandon
it. If the people win in this great fight they must then
win a second victory and their second victory will be
greater than the first because it will be over their own
prejudices and fears.
Between the close of this war and the final
destruction of this dogma many years may lie. But
whether the years be few or many is, in the march of
events, less important than that the issue should be
certain. Who would not like to make those years
fewer? What educated man may not well be attracted
by life insurance, a vocation which gives a new meaning
and a higher significance to the standard professions
and distinctly leads in the thinking and in the methods
which foreshadow the destruction of this dogma and
promise the world salvation.
The vocations or professions which seek these great
ends will keep certain principles in view —
The source of sovereignty — the citizen;
A trained citizenship;
The religion of self-respect;
The power of co-operation;
The solidarity of the race;
Recognition of the supreme value — human life; and
The merging of so-called sovereignties into a greater
authority, following as a model the Federation of
the Thirteen Colonies in 1789.
In the realization of these ideals lie the real purpose
and the dynamics of life insurance.
As a vocation, as a profession, it touches the im-
agination; it responds to the problems of the age; its
call is creative ; its gospel is prophetic ; the Brotherhood
of man is its goal.
WHY WE SHALL FIGHT
ADDRESS AT A PATRIOTIC RALLY, RIV'ERDALE, N. Y., APRIL 28, 191:
^NLY those of us who are well on toward
three score years of age have any vivid
memory of the Civil War. This is true
North and South. Two generations are
embraced in the period which separates us
from Sumter and Appomattox. In that time we have
been very busy in peaceful pursuits and have almost
never thought of war. Millions from other lands have
come to our shores, accepted the responsibilities of
citizenship, and have been imperfectly assimilated by
our national life. These, too, hate war. They fled
from its shadow.
Under the inspiration of a society in which the
inalienable rights of the individual were declared to be
paramount, with resources at hand almost unlimited
in both variety and extent, protected by an almost
impenetrable isolation, we have become the richest,
the most homogeneous, the most pacific of all the great
nations. We have come to hate war with a complete-
ness that is comparable only with Billy Sunday's ha-
tred of the devil. The war with Spain did little more
than give us a thrill; it was over in three months — all
except the shame of our own inefficiency and the
scandals that attended — over except that the fruits of
12 169
170 Let Us Have Peace
that waT territorially moved us a long way out of our
isolation and toward the duties which we now face.
We are just beginning to realize that.
New conditions, new duties, new problems now face
us, and the patriotic acti\dties of this secluded section
of New York are a part of the National effort to
awaken and readjust itself.
There is and has been nothing the matter 'w'ith
the patriotism of this Nation; but the Nation had to
do a lot of readjusting mentally and morally before it
could become a belligerent. Think of it! We had
assumed that such wars were not to come again. For
these two generations we have not only peacefully
developed this continent but we have seen the peoples
of the world generally working together, trading to-
gether, thinking much the same, dressing alike, and
erecting a great international fabric of credit and trade,
the destruction of which we knew w^ould be sheer
senseless savagery and vandalism. But even if sav-
agery reasserted itself, even though the world other-
wise went mad, we had a smug feeling that it could
not reach us. We were safe because isolated.
Before we could become belligerents we had to
abandon many of our dreams. We had to wake up
and realize that some of our assumptions were erro-
neous. We had consciously to admit that the me-
dieval Hun still lived and had power to reach across
the seas, power to penetrate our isolation; we had to
revise our estimates of peoples, and that is as difficult
for Nations as it is for individuals. We were obliged
mentally to admit that we must revert to the methods
and ideas of savagery, and that, from our long training
in the ways of peace and because of our ideals, was a
Why We Shall Fight 171
more difficult task than it was or could be for any other
people in the world.
We did not hesitate so long over what we should do
because we were cowards, nor because we were making
money, as has been so frequently charged, but because
we believed we had lifted a great portion of the world
under our Federal Constitution above the shame and
terror and insanity of war, and it was difficult for us to
realize that we had not done that after all. Before we
could become belligerents we had mentally to admit
a large measure of failure, to face the necessity of
reaction, to confess that the right to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness not only was not everywhere
a recognized right but that its continued existence here
was imperilled.
The Anglo-Saxon world generally slept through these
two generations. There were abundant signs of a
gathering storm. Even France slept, but not as the
Anglo-Saxon did. Every Frenchwoman who has given
birth to a man-child within forty years has known that
he would sooner or later have to face the identical
monster that despoiled France in 1871, through the
trick of a lying telegram and the vanity of the French
Emperor. Despoiled of two great provinces, humili-
ated and prostrated France did not, as she struggled
up out of that disaster, comprehend the full purpose
of Germany. To the Frenchman life meant something
finer than plans of conquest. With all that she had
suffered, and all that she feared, France still believed
that the solemnly plighted word of a great Nation,
even of the German Nation, could be relied on.
Great Britain did not comprehend the truth, although
she faced the facts across a very narrow arm of the sea.
172 Let Us Have Peace
She could see Germany and her trade and miUtary
activities, but she could not see Germany's soul.
Alarmed, puzzled, Great Britain built her war fleet up
as she saw the unconcealable evidence of the Teuton's
purpose ; but she did not see the necessity for anything
beyond the defense of her own waterbound Empire.
She, too, believed that the solemn pledges of Nations
could be relied on. Except in her war fleet, England
slept, and dreamed of Democracy's triumph.
But the Prussian Monster grew and never slept.
His philosophers and his Kaiser told the world what
was intended; but the world smiled at such medieval
foolishness and refused to believe that the methods of
the Dark Ages could return. The Kaiser asserted
and reasserted his partnership with the Almighty, and
all the Anglo-Saxon world listened with mild amuse-
ment. These were the vagaries of a man born several
centuries too late; they would never really mislead a
great, capable, modern people.
It has taken the world almost three years to realize
that, in Germany, autocracy, government by Divine
Right, is making its last, its most worthy stand.
German autocracy represents autocracy at its best and
therefore when most dangerous — at its best because
while it mercilessly crushes out the individual, it is
as a machine splendidly efficient and honest in admin-
istration. Moreover, it had the wisdom in matters of
trade development to adopt a program more advanced
than any other Nation; it put the whole power of its
centralized life behind its factories and its ships and
all they produced and carried. German autocracy
fought the world in trade, in the shop, and on the sea
long before it drew the sword.
Why We Shall Fight 173
After August 1, 1914, it didn't take France long to
awake from her lethargy; it took Great Britain much
longer; it has taken us nearly three years, and we are
not awake yet.
And what finally shocked and partially aroused us?
We kept silence — to our shame — when Germany
forswore herself and violated Belgium's neutrality.
It all seemed so far away; we were so snug and safe
across the sea. It was dreadful, but was it our busi-
ness? Then came the second great shock, the second
warning that a medievalism more hideous than that
represented by Attila was abroad in the world. The
Lusitania was sunk. Aroused by that horror our peo-
ple would have followed the President in whatever he
did then. He only protested, and it may yet appear
that his course was wise. Then followed other evi-
dences of what the Hun intended — until finally the
Essex was torpedoed. Then our President spoke in
different terms. Germany promised to sink no more
American ships without observing the rules of inter-
national law, intimating, however, that she might re-
turn to her barbarous methods if w^e failed to make
England cease certain practices. Meantime, as the
Allies fought on, they came to understand — to grasp
the full significance of Germany's intentions; they came
to see that Serbia and Belgium were merely incidents
in a larger issue; they understood what the sneer that
reduced a solemn treaty to a scrap of paper meant,
what the shooting of Edith Cavell and Captain Fryatt
meant. They slowly recognized that this was the great
fight between forces that have been irreconcilable from
the beginning, the death grapple between Democracy
and Autocracy. At first the Allies understood and
174 Let Us Have Peace
approved our neutrality. Then, as the contest devel-
oped and the real issues emerged, they said: "Where
is America? This is her fight. She above all nations
has been the beneficiary of the Democratic principle.
Can it be that she will not defend it in its hour
of peril?"
Gradually, as we stayed neutral, there grew up, and
particularly among our Canadian friends, a feeling of
bitterness; we were held in an increasing contempt.
We were in danger of being rated a people which,
favored above all others by nature and benefited above
all others by the Democratic impulses of the world,
nevertheless became poltroons at the supreme crisis.
Our own mental readjustments can best be illus-
trated by contrasting two utterances made by Presi-
dent Wilson within four months:
As lately as December 16, 1916, the President of the
United States, through his Secretary of State, said in a
note addressed to all the belhgerents:
"He (the President) takes the liberty of calling
attention to the fact that the objects which the states-
men of the belligerents on both sides have in mind in
this war are virtuall}^ the same, as stated in general
terms to their own people and to the world."
President Wilson did not mean to create the impres-
sion that he thought and we thought that the cause of
each side was equally just, but the language used made
that impression. Forces dangerous to Anglo-Saxon soli-
darity began to stir when we seemed to say that we saw
no difference in the two causes. Within a few days
after that message was sent to the powers, we hadn't a
friend left amongst the nations. We who ought to have
reacted quickest when this great assault on Liberty was
Why We Shall Fight 175
made, continued to hesitate, while Frenchmen and
EngHshmen and Canadians died by thousands.
Then came the logical conclusion of the Hun's pro-
gram. On January 31, 1917, we were in effect told to
get off the seven seas. We were told that we must fly
on our ships a new and prescribed emblem, that we
must keep Old Glory in a place named and nowhere
else, that we must sail along a certain parallel of lati-
tude, and could send one passenger ship a week to
Falmouth. We were told that every other American
ship not so decorated found within a huge section of
the Eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean would be
sunk without warning. We disregarded these insult-
ing directions and the Hun sank our ships in violation
of every rule of international law and civilized warfare.
Out of the bloody struggle itself there came suddenly
to us a definition of what the Allies were fighting for.
We saw the issue at last. It was translated into words
b}^ the same man who spoke on the 16th of December,
1916. Speaking to the Congress on April 2, 1917,
President Wilson finally said:
"The present German submarine warfare against
commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war
against all nations * * * . The challenge is to all
mankind * * * . We are now about to accept the
gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall,
if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to
check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We
are glad now that we see the facts with no veil of false
pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate
peace of the world * * * . The world must be made
safe for democracy * * * . We have no selfish ends
to serve, we desire no conquest, no dominion."
176 Let Us Have Peace
This utterance shocked a self-satisfied and still leth-
argic people into some measure of action. It stated the
only cause that seemed great enough for us to fight
for. What Belgium and Serbia and the Lusitania
and the cruel slaughter of American citizens could
not do, this call accomplished. There is and has
been nothing the matter with our patriotism; but
the old war cries do not easily stir it now. Ours has
come to be the larger patriotism of true democracy.
We are slow to fight. We will not fight for conquest
or trade; but we will fight for liberty. We will rather
suffer much and even endure being misunderstood.
We struck the true note when we freed Cuba and left
her mistress of her own destiny.
We enter this war now because we "can do no other".
If we do our share in defending the hberty of the
world, in restoring a peace that wiU mean peace and
not a period of preparation for another war, we shall
have accomplished four great practical things, all for-
warding a world democracy and the estabUshment of
the principles of our Federal Constitution:
1st. We shall secure universal training and ser\ace,
and shall have taken the first definite step in the
production of a disciplined citizenship. A disci-
plined citizenship is more necessary in a democracy
than in an autocracy.
2d. We shall have reunited the Anglo-Saxon world,
how closely I don't know, but let us hope suf-
ficiently to nullify in large measure the fatuity
and folly of King George III and his ministers,
which split that world in twain almost a hundred
and fifty years ago.
Why We Shall Fight 177
3d. We shall have earned the approval and confi-
dence of all Central and South America where we
have always been feared and misunderstood; that
will be an achievement of great value to democracy.
4th. We shall have helped to unite all democratic
peoples in a League or Federation so mighty that
no man or group of men obsessed by ambition and
an insane belief in rule by Divine Right will ever
again be able so nearly to crucify humanity.
As we face sufferings of which we have no conception,
we remember that little band of our forebears — our
political if not our lineal forebears — who stood by that
rude bridge in Concord in April, 1775, and "fired the
shot heard round the world". We enter this war in
their spirit, the
" Spirit that made those heroes dare
To die and leave their children free ".
"A KNOCK AT THE DOOR"
ADDRESS BEFORE A MASS MEETING
OF LIFE INSURANCE AGENTS, CENTURY THEATRE, NEW YORK
TUESDAY EVENING, MAY 29, 1917
"I approve most heartily your suggestion that the life insurance
"agents devote one or two days to the sole work of placing Liberty
"Bonds. * * * * W. G. McADOO, Secretary"
to Life Underwriters
EFORE Rhode Island entered the Federal
Union it had existed as a ci\'ic entity for
137 years under a charter granted to Roger
Williams. That instrument was so Hberal
and advanced in its theories of human
rights, so entirely in harmony with the doctrines of the
great charter of 1787 that when the State entered the
Union no change in its already ancient fundamental
law was necessar3^
Roger Williams was one of freedom's great prophets;
yet because of his theories of individual liberty and of
government he was persecuted and banished from
Massachusetts Bay where freedom is supposed to have
been cradled.
When our Federal Constitution was written men
began to understand that Roger Williams was an
earher if not a greater prophet than Thomas Jeffer-
son. He had prepared the way.
We are now at war. We are at war for reasons so
unselfish that the average citizen needs to be quickened,
to be quickened morally and mentally in order to react
178
"A Knock at the Door" 179
to the standards which the nation has set up under
the leadership of Woodrow Wilson.
In the labor of that quickening what group of our
citizens is most certainly, most completely equipped for
service? Who have prepared the way? Who can best
preach this relatively new gospel: the gospel of war
without hate or desire of conquest or indemnities or
material gain? the gospel of war not for peace first but
for justice first ? WTiat men by training, by convic-
tion, by the principles which they have advocated,
have taught the world constantly and mightily the
truths for the wider establishment of which we as a
nation are now about to fight : individual responsibility
and sovereignty, liberty with justice, the economic
power of co-operation and the supreme value of all
human life? Who have labored to erect certain great
peaceful fabrics of faith and credit and values which
have become in effect International Republics limited
by no savage frontiers? Who have labored success-
fully in the development of world-wide enterprises which
long since foreshadowed the post-bellum dream of uni-
versal justice and permanent peace?
Before we as a people undertook to make the world
safe for democracy, who had already long labored to
make it safe for the defenceless?
To all these queries one answer:
You and thousands of others like you who carry the
Rate Book — the Bible of true democracy and of sound
economics. You have had this equipment, you have
preached these doctrines, and you have done these things.
Your business is teaching men — indi\'iduals — to do
their duty. You constantly fight the natural inertia of
selfishness. Men know that all must die, but most
180 Let Us Have Peace
men think that the other fellow will be the one to go.
Endowed with good health, busy at his appointed work,
death seems far off and no man hkes even to discuss it.
"Why worry? Why surrender time or money as
against a contingency that of course threatens others
but not me?" is about the train of thought of the
average man.
There is a striking similarity between this mental
attitude and the attitude of the American people to-
ward war, — toward this war. "Why should we worry?
We are protected against invasions by two great oceans.
We love peace and hate war. We want no other
people's territory. We have no designs on other people's
rights. War may come to others; it may come to us
some time but not now." That fairly expressed our
feelings up to April 2, 1917.
Then something happened. Just as there comes a
day to every man when he realizes that death is for
him as well as for his brother, so on the second of April
we — some of us at least — realized that war meant no
longer to make favorites of us but in its hideous activi-
ties would thereafter have no regard for our high pro-
fessions and love of peace. But not all of us under-
stood that instantly. Some do not grasp the truth now.
Your ordinary work as life insurance men is rendered
very easy when your prospect has squarely confronted
his duty, when he has either mentally worked the
problem out under your tutelage or has been shocked
by some physical circumstance into a realization of his
indi\'idual weakness. Then he responds. Then he
gets ready.
The nobility of your work day by day, in the undra-
matic times of peace, lies in this: You persuade men
"A Knock at the Door'' 181
to think when the natural tendency is not to think.
You persuade them to face duty — when the call of duty
is uncomfortable, when it seems indeed almost an ab-
straction. You persuade them to prepare for loss and
to make sacrifices in that preparation when no sense
of danger lives in their consciousness. You labor to
make men a little bigger, a little more unselfish, a little
more heroic, a little more rational, a little less pro-
vincial and a little more God-Uke than the average man
naturally is. Who attempts daily a more difficult or a
nobler task? What other training so perfectly equips
men for the labor that confronts us all to-night, as
patriots? This particular call of the nation finds you
so ready that you have only substantially to go on doing
your usual work. The charter which controls your
activities needs no change.
The day has come when America — generous but self-
centered, idealistic but intensely practical, peace-loving
and war-hating — must be shaken from her lethargy,
must be taught that in this little world rivers of human
blood cannot flow without draining her veins also.
There is nothing the matter with the patriotism of
our people; they have lost none of their idealism, none
of their love of liberty — just as there is nothing the
matter with the individual man's love of his family.
Your task as life insurance men with the individual, is
to make him appreciate the obvious; your task as
patriots with the nation, is exactly the same. The
first task ought to be easy, but we know that it is not;
the second task must be performed however difficult
it may be.
On the 5th and 6th of June you and your fellows will
sell Liberty Loan Bonds exclusively (I hope you'll sell
182 Let Us Have Peace
them incidentally every day) — bonds which rest on
the faith of a free and mighty people. Why does the
Government sell these pledges? Because it believes
and on our behalf has declared that the natural, the
inalienable rights of humanity are desperately assailed
and that even our own liberties are imperiled. Unless
the people can be made to see that, they will not buy
these bonds. Until a man has been shocked into an
appreciation of his inability to carry the risk of his own
mortahty you can't insure his life. Until a peace-
loving nation has been shaken out of its natural leth-
argy it is difficult to make it understand that a given
condition is a deadly menace, when that condition is
physically a long way off.
Later on many of you may take your places under
the flag in the trenches or on the sea. Once the nation
is aroused there can be but one result. These, how-
ever, are the days of hesitation. It all seems so horrible,
so impossible. To arouse our people Paul Revere must
again go thundering through the countryside. Signals
of great danger have been flashed to us from the watch
tower as they were to him, and there must be riders or
the people will not be awake and ready. And what do
the signals tell? They tell that a great nation drunk
with power has forsworn itself; that the Lusitania has
been sunk in such \'iolation of every natural impulse of
civihzed men that it is clearly a case of conscious
barbarism; that Edith Cavell has been shot; that
Belgium has been outraged again and again; that the
young womanhood of Northern France has been de-
bauched by savages more ruthless than the Huns ; that
a power is raging through the land and lurking under-
sea as sharks lurk, in order to strike as sharks strike, a
"A Knock at the Door'' 183
power which jeers at the principles of our Declaration
of Independence and mocks at government by the
people. If the true significance of those danger signals
can be driven home, there will be no trouble about the
bonds nor about the other bilHons yet to come ; but on
June 5th and 6th Paul Revere must ride again; there
must come to every home in the Nation as there came
to every home in Concord and Lexington on that April
morning in 1775:
"A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
"And a word that shall echo forevermore."
On June 5th and 6th you will ride to help quicken
the patriotism, the idealism of the nation. You are
already organized; you are veterans in a like ser\ice;
you know what the signals mean and you know your
duty. You can qualify in this fight for Liberty as
completely as Rhode Island did under Roger WiUiams's
charter. You will thereby help to win from the people
assent to the high and unselfish purpose which has made
our Government denounce and attack this Prussian
monster.
During our Civil War — the wounds of which are now
happily healed — the plain people — always more or less
mute — expressed their loyalty to their great weary
Leader in the White House through song. In one of
these songs they said:
"We are coming Father Abraham."
The message so sent reached Lincoln and he was
cheered and strengthened by it.
The masses are mute to-day. They have no me-
dium through which to express to our war-worn Allies
their wonder, their admiration, their affection, and
184 Lei Us Have Peace
their devotion. By your work on these appointed
days 3^ou will help to give these emotions a voice: a
voice which will daily rise in volume and power, a
voice which when full-throated will sound round the
earth bringing hope and courage to all lovers of liberty,
a voice which shall say to our comrades over the sea:
"We are coming 0! glorious sister, France!
"We are coming O! great Mother England!
"Coming because Liberty is assailed and we have not
"forgotten that our fathers did not fear death, for
"liberty's sake.
"Coming because we have highly resolved anew that
"government of the people, by the people, and for the
"people shall not perish from the earth."
BELGIUM
BELGIUM
FROM AN ADDRESS, NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER, 1917
jINCE the Greeks stood at Thermopylae
and stopped the rush of the Persian hordes
there has been no parallel to what the
world saw on the three fateful days in
early August, 1914, when Belgium chose
death rather than dishonor.
Since Joan of Arc faced her accusers and stood un-
dismayed while the fagots were lighted about her the
world has seen no more heroic and pathetic figure than
Belgium personified in her youthful and intrepid leader.
King Albert.
Belgium has quickened the soul of the world. She
has made us put a new estimate on men and events.
We see John Brown of Ossawatomie in a new and
glorious light; we catch a new inspiration from the
martyrdom of John Huss.
Power of arms, masses of wealth, vast territories,
millions of people shrink and shrivel when there blazes
out in the consciousness of men a recognition that after
all the only great thing in the world is self-respect, the
Divine fearlessness which sustained Jesus Christ and
Socrates and all the saints, religious and political, who
have died for humanity. The power that has periodi-
cally requickened the conscience of the world has some-
13 185
186 Let Us Have Peace
times found expression through a man and sometimes
through a people.
Since 1832 Belgium has been the keystone in the
arch of international good faith. On the physical in-
tegrity of Belgium all the great European sovereignties
agreed. Her soil was to be as sacrosanct as the sol-
emnly pledged word of great nations could make it.
All the powers, including Belgium, beheved in Ger-
many's good faith. The pledge held through the war
of 1870. Few doubted that it would hold always.
Then under the high-sounding phrase of "military ne-
cessity", Germany proceeded to smash the one great
compact under which sovereign states had estabhshed
the higher law of internationality. And what was
Germany's necessity? The necessity of the burglar
and the assassin — no more. A nation cannot be assas-
sinated and leave ''no trace". The record in Belgium
will endure to the last syllable of recorded time.
Little Belgium defied the perfidious monster and
therefore it is that Belgium has become the monitor of
the self-respect of men. She met the first rush of the
new Attila, the organized forces of barbarism, the lust
of power, the demands of a monster criminal, almost
alone, almost unaided.
She had to decide quickly. She w^as first taken up
into a high place, shown the riches of the world, prom-
ised ease and recompense and safety if she would bow
down. And what a temptation it must have been!
How it must have appealed to her practical statesmen!
How such an appeal made here would go home to
certain United States Senators! If she resisted she
couldn't stop Germany. She knew that. Germany
would pass through with or without her consent. Ger-
Belgium 187
many would probably do all she planned to do in any
event. Therefore why hesitate? If she resisted she
had ever}d:hing to lose and for that loss no reasonable
prospect of gain. By yielding she would lose no ma-
terial thing, she would undertake no quixotic enter-
prise; she would simply step aside and let the monster
attack its real objective.
But Belgium had a soul as high and serene as the
soul of the Maid of Orleans. Between dishonor and
death she chose death, and her land has been a Calvary
from that day to this.
The shame of the assault, the moral heroism of the
resistance, we did not as a people grasp. It was all so
far away and the Beast that outraged Belgium lived
and worked insidiously in our very midst, and cleverly
dulled our moral sense. He was very busy, and, as
always, very efficient. His appeal was cunning and it
was effective for nearly three years. Without any
real appreciation of whether or not it was morally
infamous for us to be "in" or "out" we elected a
President on the cry "He has kept us out of war".
In the light of President Wilson's later action, in view
of his splendid leadership, I wonder whether he now
remembers that cry with any satisfaction. But we
were then all — or nearly all — alike. We couldn't
clearly see Belgium; we didn't understand the situation
even when the unspeakable Brute sank the Lusitania.
We are only beginning to understand Belgium now.
We must understand her or we are lost.
Belgium is the Light of the World. Belgium is the
Hope of the World unless hope is to die.
In a physical sense Belgium cannot be restored.
Morally she needs no restoration. We are they who
188 Let Us Have Peace
need moral reconstruction. We are climbing now
slowly toward the heights where Belgium stands with
glorious France and mighty England. We are begin-
ning to understand that we cannot share in the moral
regeneration of the world unless we unite in its sac-
rifices.
We cannot win a share in Belgium's moral grandeur
by restoring her cities, for the same reason that Ger-
many could not sully that grandeur by destroying her
cities. If we rise to Belgium's level, we must pay the
price: that price is primarily spiritual. It calls us
now. As Antony exhibited to the Romans Caesar's
bloody mantle and showed the ugly sht made by
Casca's dagger so Conscience and Human Pity show
us the wounds of Belgium, and France and Poland and
Serbia, and wait to see whether we are that Antony
that will put a tongue in every gaping wound to stir
the world for vengeance and for justice.
Our moral test in one sense was not quite so high as
that applied to Belgium. She had no time to organize
her soul. We had nearly three years. But in another
sense our test was severer than Belgium's. No savage
was knocking at our doors; we did not suddenly have
to become either serfs or heroes; our decision was
made deliberately; we had time to count the cost.
When the average American citizen decided last April
to support President Wilson, that citizen climbed to
heights never before trod by free men. He showed
himself a statesman; he showed himself a worthy de-
scendant of the men who stood at Concord and "fired
the shot heard around the world".
And therefore it is that we are now mobilizing our
power. In spite of politicians and their ambitions, in
Belgium 189
spite of slackers and traitors, in spite of an espionage
which penetrates even the remote corners of our Gov-
ernment, in spite of the yellow streak in many of us, in
spite of our horror of war, in spite of everything, and
without regard to any costs, we are gathering our
power. Not alone our material power but our moral
consciousness. We are seeing Belgium as she is. We
are seeing Germany as she is. We are beginning to
understand what each stands for.
The peoples that hesitate after getting a clear vision
of the issue before mankind to-day deserve to perish.
Oceans may protect them for a time, but who or what
shall protect them from themselves? A correct moral
vision for us at least made all the rest ine\dtable. Men
who get that \dsion no longer count the cost; neither
shall we. Women do not weep when their sons march
away; ours will not. If to assert our moral standards
it is necessary that a million of our boys die — so be it.
Better that they should physically die and thereby
save the nation's soul than that we should for a season
rot in wealth and safety.
The road to Belgium leads through Berlin.
The German menace lies in her assumption of superi-
ority. Given that conviction amongst any people and
the achievement of the ambitions of politicians be-
comes the duty of citizenship. There are other insti-
tutions in the world that rest on Uke assumptions, and
they will have to be dealt with in time; but Germany
is the present enemy of humanity. She must change
her attitude, her declared purposes and ideals, or she
must be crushed. There can be no peace, there can
be no morality in the world until one or the other is
achieved.
190 Let Us Have Peace
We long for peace, although as yet we have done
little to win it. But when we decide about the terms
of peace let our decision be as fearless as Belgium's
decision was on August 3, 1914.
Belgium could easily have lost her soul that day. By
paltering, by compromising, we can easily lose our souls
now.
Peace proposals which deal only with what is expe-
dient, which do not recognize the moral outrage as well as
the physical ruin of Belgium are only another form of
the temptation which Belgium so gloriously overcame in
the beginning.
Shame be to us, and woe be to us, if we ever endorse a
peace which does not remove this Terror from the world.
Morally we must go to Belgium; there only can we win
absolution. To do that we must physically go no one
knows whither. And we will not ask.
PEACE!
PEACE DID NOT COME IN 1917.
IT MAY NOT COME IN 1918.
WHY DID IT NOT C0ME.3
FROM THE AGENCY BULLETIN (N.Y.L.)
DECEMBER 19, 1917
HAT does peace mean? Does it mean
merely that the guns have ceased to
speak and nations no longer devote all
their powers to human slaughter? It
means that, but does it mean only that?
If peace means only that and if peace is the thing
supremely to be desired, then the United States and
her Allies should immediately stop short. Peace can
be had — that kind of peace — almost in a moment.
That sort of peace could have been secured by any one
of the Allied Nations any time since July, 1914.
Russia seeks it now.
Serbia could have won that sort of peace — at a price!
Belgium could have gained that sort of peace — and
lost her soul!
France could have saved her 1,000,000 dead sons and
all her ravished daughters — at a price.
Great Britain could have won peace and probably
what at the time might have seemed some material
advantage if she had put peace above her plighted word.
We could have still kept the peace, the peace that
we kept long enough, if we had not put self-respect
higher than hatred of war.
191
192 Let Us Have Peace
When should peace come in order to be peace?
When Belgium has been avenged — not merely
evacuated by the Hun, not merely physically restored
but righteously avenged. There is a wrath that is the
finest expression of righteousness and peace will mean
nothing until the German State has been scorched with
its hot flames.
When France has been rehabilitated. France
has suffered for us in a way that we can never repay.
France, liberty-loving, artistic, heroic France, had her
home next to the bit of earth where was born some
two centuries ago a man called Frederick the Great.
In his soul was spawned the doctrine of force, of
power, of the Divine Right of Kings, of the moral
justification of war. He took a people naturally great
— or at least it seemed so then — kindly, gentle, humane
and tractable, and taught them through discipline a
morality that kills the soul. He began the erection of
a Political Juggernaut that started out on August 1,
1914, to crush the world. It has already killed 6,000,000
men, wounded and maimed 7,000,000 more, and shut
up other millions in prison camps. It has bankrupted
itself and its associates and piled up a mountain of
debt which the world will not discharge in a century.
It has turned the world back to the Middle Ages and
still stands beaten but defiant and as always, remorseless.
Peace with such a monster cannot be made. Let us
not dodge that. Our boys can die — they are djdng.
Many more may die. We fight, but not merely for
peace. We could easily have kept that formality.
We fight for justice, for self-respect. We fight to keep
our souls in the same realm with Belgium. We fight
to keep the world from becoming a jungle.
Peace! 193
Civilized, self-respecting, self-governed, liberty-loving
men cannot live in the same atmosphere with this
Prussian Monster.
It is easy to think that perhaps we can. It is easy
to think that it is all a long way off. It is easy to think
it is none of our affair — that's the whisper of cowardice,
of fear, and of the secret — perhaps paid — agent of
Germany.
Christmas and the Red Cross call for men.
Christ was a man! He might have escaped the cross
if He had sought peace at any price.
Serbia, Belgium, Poland, Armenia, Roumania and
France have climbed their Calvaries and from their
crucified bodies there shines the light that redeems all
races — the light that tells the Hun he cannot rule
this world because self-respect still survives.
We in turn are now facing our Calvary. Let us
climb it without flinching.
A NEW CHARTER OF LIBERTY
FROM THE MARCH (1918)
NUMBER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
UR immediate duty is to \\dn this war.
Since the days just preceding the Battle
of the Marne disasters have been no
thicker, the outlook has been no blacker
than now.
The thicker the disasters, the darker the outlook,
the more imperative that duty becomes.
We have entered the conflict because we could stay
out no longer and retain our self-respect. We have
gone over-seas to meet a monster that planned later
on to attack us in our own homes. We fight to drive
from the world The Terror that slays, that debauches,
that violates, that knows no honor, and has no com-
passion; but we also fight in order that, for similar
reasons, the world may never have to fight again. If
this is to be a place fit for habitation by civilized men,
if it is to be a place in which hope and ambition and
unselfishness and human affection are to flourish, we
must win the war, and then make that victory effec-
tive through a change in the fundamental relations
between democratic states.
With \'ictory we shall face an unprecedented crisis,
out of which a new world should be born — a world
splendidly worth its fearful cost.
A New Charter of Liberty 195
In that crisis, and fighting against that rebirth, will
lie the deadly force of inertia, the paralyzing influence
of ancient prejudices and fears, and a natural longing
for the restoration of the old conditions.
Restoration of the status quo between the democra-
cies of the world, after Germany has been crushed,
means defeat; it means defeat not because the old
world will then be broken financially and shattered
morally, but because that new world cannot be born
under the old conditions.
When this war began we were utterly unprepared to
do our plain duty. We must not face the crisis that
will lie in after-war conditions still totally unprepared.
A comprehensive post-bellum program, thought out
in advance and agreed to in principle by the AUies, is
almost as important as victory itself.
To destroy this German Terror is necessary, but
that does not reflect our full purpose. The conditions
out of which this Terror was born, unchanged, will
later produce others hke it, possibly worse. We fight
not only to crush or change Germany, but so to change
the fundamentals of civilization that they shall no
longer naturally breed in part at least the ideals which
have made Germany the Monster that she is.
Neither the Anglo-Saxon, the Latin, the Jap nor the
Slav can understand the remorseless, senseless, brutish
savagery of the German. The chaos, the lawlessness
of international relations excuse and explain in part
the German attitude, but they do not explain or excuse
the monstrous crimes which beginning with Germany's
self-violated honor have proceeded through thickening
horrors to Ambassador Luxburg and his advice to sink
196 Let Us Have Peace
the ship of friendly powers but to do it in such a way
as to leave no trace.
The only immediate answer to these inhuman deeds
lies in the throat of cannon and machine guns; no
other answer is possible.
But there is another side to the problem which will
assert itself, as we hope, at no distant date. The great
majority of the peoples of the world is neither insane
with egotism nor drunk with the lust of power. The
majority of the world is to-day genuinelj^ democratic-
democratic not merely in its forms of governments,
but democratic in its sympathies, in its willingness to
concede to others the rights it demands for itself.
That majority was badly organized when this war
began; it was really so organized as to invite war. It
was democratic within the frontiers of those civic enti-
ties which we call Republics, but in the relations be-
tween those units it was autocratic. Those relations
must be changed; they must be reorganized. This
reorganization will include Germany if it then appears
that the word of a German in Germany can be taken for
anything, if it then appears that as a people they have
acquired a conscience ; otherwise the German State must
remain the Pariah amongst nations that it is to-day.
Outside the incomprehensible savagery exhibited by
Germany, I see little in her attitude toward other
nations or in her purposes as a sovereignty that is
really illogical or inconsistent with the present laws
governing national existence. It is even possible to
see how the doctrine of unconditioned sovereignty,
which was and still is the basis of world relations,
tended and tends to develop the amazing brutalities of
the German people.
A New Charter of Liberty 197
Each of the great sovereignties assumes that it is
uncontrolled and uncontrollable by any other state,
that in the last analysis it is itself the law. This is a
reversion to a primal instinct. It created as many
supreme authorities in this little world as there are
great sovereignties. It erected impenetrable barriers,
barriers called frontiers, between the sons of men. It
made civilization a powder magazine. On the first of
August, 1914, the magazine blew up.
Such havdng been the methods of unconditioned
sovereignty before the war and such its fruits, what
will happen if it is continued unmodified after the war?
War will happen, war, again and again, with the
ultimate dominance of one great military power.
It was as certain as the law of gravitation that both
soon and late sovereignty must fight with sovereignty
and that the strong only could survive. The \dolent
change in the relations between sovereignties that fol-
lowed the marvels of steam and electricity simply
hastened the day when the fight was to begin and
increased its horrors. It was logical — indeed who shall
now say it was not necessary? — for each sovereignty
to prepare for that day. Substantially all sovereign-
ties except our own did prepare. Germany simply saw
a little more clearly than others or realized with more
ruthlessness than others what the situation meant and
made corresponding preparation. It was logical, al-
though entirely unmoral, for any sovereignty to build
up out of this condition a fiction of superiority as
Germany did. The sovereignty that was perfectly
logical, and without moral sense could well argue, as
Germany did:
198 Let Us Have Peace
"This condition means war, there is no escape from it;
"Ultimately only one great power can survive;
"The power that survives will be the one that has
the will to survive;
"That will is God-given, it was born of the plans of
the Creator; therefore,
"Germany ha\ang that will is chosen of God to rule
the world; hence
"It becomes our duty, in order to carry out the
Divine Purpose, not only to equip ourselves by
every possible means, but to spy on other sover-
eignties in times of peace, to weaken them by any
possible process, to suborn their pubhc officers, to
bribe their generals, to buy their newspapers, to
pervert their pubhc opinion;
"Moreover it becomes our duty in order to obey the
Divine AYill to strike whenever it seems that we
are best prepared to strike and the rest of the
world is least prepared to defend itself; and
"As this will be the Supreme Fight, the one that is
to establish God's purpose on the earth we shall be
justified in hesitating at nothing, we shall have
warrant for any act that will terrify — the end will
justify the means."
In the doctrine of sovereignty, except as it may be
qualified by the principles of democracy, there is no
more morality than there is in the law of the jungle.
The logic of Germany was born of the morality of
that Doctrine, and therefore, always under pressure
from Germany, we had for years before this war began
constantly increasing armament by land and sea, the
so-called "balance of power" in Europe, and the inter-
national chaos of 1914. In that chaos Germany
A New Charter of Liberty 199
thought she saw her opportunit3\ She knew herself
prepared. Her spies told her that France was un-
ready. She knew that the Government of Russia was
rotten, that she could suborn Russia's rulers, bribe her
generals, and debauch her public opinion. She be-
lieved that Great Britain was decadent and would
enter on no quixotic enterprise. She assumed that
Italy would remain in the Dreibund. She expected
us to become involved only after she had crushed
Europe. It seemed to be "The Day". It would have
been but for the glorious soul of Belgium, the matchless
courage of France, and that gray, grim, silent line of
ships which rests somewhere in the North Sea.
For years Germany's preparation had been obvious,
its purpose confessed, the crisis inevitable. But the
Democracies of the world apparently could not see the
obvious, they preferred to ignore Germany's brazenly
confessed purpose. Thej' adhered to the doctrine of
sovereignty and at the same time they flinched from
the full measure of its fearful logic. They preserved
their frontiers, they waged economic wars on each
other through tariffs, but they did after a fashion
recognize the rights of other peoples and they did not
let the lust for power utterly consume their souls.
They built their railroads, for example, for commerce
and not for war. They risked their very existence, as
we now see, by not being entirely logical, — and they
have very nearly paid the price of their inconsistency.
It is clear, therefore, that the democracies of the world
must not permit that crisis to arise again. To pre-
vent that they must either deny their own faith and
become armed camps or they must formulate a post-
bellum plan which will remove that monstrous logic
200 Let Us Have Peace
from the democratic world, and they should formulate
that plan now.
Assume that Germany is so changed in the not dis-
tant future that civilized men can deal with her, or that
she is so crushed that she can be ignored, what then?
Are we still to follow the old program? Can the
world be reorganized for peace on those lines? It
never has been. For some centuries now Peace in
Europe has been merely a period of preparation for
the next war. Is the doctrine of unconditioned sov-
ereignty to be preserved with all its hideous signifi-
cance for the future? If so, what shall we have gained
by victory? Shall we have gained anything?
At the very threshold of all post-bellum discussion
this doctrine will stand and thrust its bloody history
into our councils. We cannot ignore it. We dare
not palter with it. What are we to do with it? It
cannot as yet be utterly abolished. Nationahty with
all its crimes was as inevitable a step in the evolution
of government as mammals were in the evolution of
man. It has played a great part, it must still play a
great part, but its role hereafter in the democratic
world must not be the leading part; humanity must
come first.
In general terms what does that involve? It will
not be easy to modify the doctrine of sovereignty or
to indicate a better plan; but whether the task be easy
or difficult, it is now time — ignoring details — to name
certain principles which must be adhered to in the
future relations of democracies if the \'ictory that mil
cost so much is not after all to be frittered away. If
the Allies having crushed Germany continue relations
between themselves such that in a generation or two
A New Charter of Liberty 201
it will be necessary for them to turn and crush each
other, what will victory in this conflict have been worth?
Let us put it as baldly and as offensively as possible.
The sovereignty of the United States as between
itself and the democracies, great and small, with which
we should be federated at the close of this war must
then be qualified. The sovereignty of Great Britain,
France, Italy and all the democratic peoples included
in that federation must be qualified in the same way.
That is the medicine the democracies of the world
must ultimately take. Few people ever like their first
whiff of it. Our forefathers did not like it, but it was
good for them and they took it.
Apart from the necessity for such action between
democracies after the war we are already committed
to the principle; so is Great Britain.
Great Britain has said that she fights, and we have
said that we fight to make the rights and privileges of
weak peoples and small states as secure against aggres-
sion in the future as are the rights and privileges of
great states. Even Germany has professed that pur-
pose, although her first act in this war was to \'iolate
Belgium, and the first act of her principal ally was to
attack a small state. President Wilson in his call for
a declaration of war said we must have a partnership
of democratic nations, a league of honor, a partnership
of opinion. "Partnership" is a strong word, but it is
not quite strong enough. A "league of honor" would
be fine — we have had such things in the world before
— but it will not solve this problem. A joinder of
democratic states in which weak peoples and small
states are to be fully protected must rest on clearly
defined rights, and not on privileges granted by the
14
202 Let Us Have Peace
grace of more powerful states. However sincere the
great states in a league or partnership might be when
it was formed, however perfectly they might intend
then to respect the rights of small states, the prece-
dents of history show clearly that they cannot be
trusted to that extent, neither can they long be trusted
to keep the peace between themselves. The history
of the Thirteen States between the Peace of Paris and
the adoption of the Constitution shows what would
happen. Small states in such an enterprise must have
as definite a place, their rights must be as clearly
assured, as are the rights and pri\'ileges of the small
states in the Federal Union. Safety that rests on
grace or favor will not do. The union of democratic
states after this war, to be effective, must be as indis-
soluble as the Federal Union itself.
Therefore out of the democracies of the world there
must be created, not a League of nations, not a
Partnership between states, but, by federation, a new
State, a new Power, whose authority shall be drawn
directly from the people — just as the authority of our
Federal Government is drawn from the people and not
from the states as such. The structure of that great
new Power should rest on these principles: It should
have the power to tax; it should act directly on the
individual; it should have a bicameral legislature; it
probably should have the three great divisions of our
Federal Plan — Executive, Legislative and Judicial ; and,
most important of all, it should have a great Court
whose verdicts, within fundamental limitations shall be
conclusive on all the States so federated.
These five great principles were never incorporated
into the government of federated states until our Con-
A New Charter of Liberty 203
stitution was adopted and ours is the first successful
government in the world's history based on federated
states.
Certain objections will immediately arise in the minds
of all patriotic men. All such objections — except per-
haps those that spring out of the problems of lan-
guage — were raised at Poughkeepsie in the summer of
1788 and were beaten to death by the logic and elo-
quence of Alexander Hamilton; they were raised that
same summer at Richmond by Patrick Henry and
were conclusively answered by John Marshall and
James Madison. By the power of superb leadership
the Federal Constitution was adopted. And what has
it wrought? What has it not wrought?
In the beginning it created a responsible State out
of political and commercial chaos.
It made this land the dream and the hope of the
plain people of all the earth.
It gave rule by the people a new significance and
power.
Its greatest achievement is one we as yet only dimly
comprehend; it created a new type of man.
The severest mental test that free men were ever
triumphant under was the adoption of our Constitu-
tion. The severest civic test in which free men have
triumphed was in our Civil War. The severest test
of their capacity as statesmen ever faced by free men
was formulated in President Wilson's call for men on
April 2, 1917. That was a test indeed. How big was
our average citizen? The President assumed almost
a super-man. How broad was his vision? The Presi-
dent assumed that it was as wide as the world. Did
he understand the real meaning of this war? Some of
204 Let Us Have Peace
our so-called great men did not understand it then and
some of them apparently do not understand it now.
Would this plain, peace-lo\'ing democrat give up his
property, his business, his sons, his daughters, in a
contest that seemed almost at the other end of the
earth? The splendid boys, bone of our bone and flesh
of our flesh, who without a word of complaint have
given up their careers in life and are now gathering in
our training camps and on our ships, the millions of
others waiting their turn, the Liberty Loans, the quick
response from all who can anywhere serve give the
President his answer.
American citizens, self-governed, free, are now rising
to heights never before trod by free men. They are
fighting in another hemisphere to help save the liber-
ties of mankind. Having done that, it follows that
the work will be but half done unless we formulate and
support a program by which those Uberties so dearly
preserved may certainly be perpetuated.
That calls for a new order, for a new world, for a new
and a greater Charter of Liberty. Under that charter
must ultimately come all the truly democratic and
self-governed peoples of the world. If we are to have
peace, then between these peoples there must be no
more questions of honor — the international code duello
is as much an anachronism as the individual code duello
and it must go. If we are to have peace, then be-
tween these peoples there must be no more non-
justiciable questions and therefore we shall need no
Councils of Concihation and no Arbitral Tribunals,
but we shall need that great Court whose decrees
under the hmitations of that charter shall be binding
on all.
A New Charter of Liberty 205
To achieve that or anything approaching it, the old
order must be abandoned.
This thought, the necessity of an adequate post-
bellum plan, is probably foremost in the minds of all
the thinkers of the democratic world. It has already
assumed a variety of forms. It has been nobly phrased
by President Wilson. It has been mouthed by the
German autocracy. Societies have been organized
here and in Europe to forward plans more or less
imperfectly thought out.
The League to Enforce Peace has attracted most
attention. In substance that organization has been
endorsed very widely. But the League does not pro-
pose really to change the basis of international rela-
tions, it does not go to the root of the difficulty. It
proposes to use both its military and economic forces
against any member that attacks another member,
not having first submitted the questions at issue to the
Judicial Tribunal of the League or to its Council of
Conciliation.
If such differences are first submitted and the parties
are still dissatisfied they may then fight without inter-
ference by the League, or if one is dissatisfied pre-
sumably it may then attack the other.
Under this plan questions of honor do not dis-
appear; sovereignty is shorn of little of its arrogance;
no effective process by which law shall take the place
of force in international relations is proposed.
And yet the League has done and is doing fine work.
It is leading the world up to the real problem. Let us
remember that the resolution of the Continental Con-
gress which called the Philadelphia Convention of 1787
did not direct the delegates to draft a new Constitu-
206 Let Us Have Peace
tion; no state gave its delegates any such authority.
All that Convention was expected to do was to formu-
late and submit amendments to the old and impotent
Articles of Confederation.
But when the great men who made up that body met
they tore up their instructions; under the inspiration
of Washington's opening address they erected a new
standard and, in his literal words left the issue "with
God". If it had been announced that the Convention
of 1787 would propose the abandonment of the Con-
federation, and would write a new Constitution — there
would have been no Convention, no Constitution then
and probably no United States of America now.
The Hague Tribunal was at best only a Confedera-
tion, feebler than ours; so feeble indeed that it never
really accomplished any great thing. It undertook to
create an International Court but failed because of
inherent impotence. It was impotent because its units
were sovereignties and, in the last analysis, sovereign-
ties can obey no law but their own.
Let there be no mistake. When \ictory comes we
cannot go back to any Hague Tribunal; that was a
device to meet conditions in a barbaric age. We shall
then have marched far past that. We shall be within
reach of a victory through which we can really utihze
Victory. We can win that larger \dctory, we can
banish international anarchy and the international code
duello if we tear up our instructions as our forefathers
did, erect a new standard and fight in a world arena
for the ideals of Hamilton and Washington.
President Wilson in his message of December 3, 1917,
raised that standard and rallied the democracies of the
world with words of rare courage. After referring to
A New Charter of Liberty 207
the "partnership of nations which must henceforth
guarantee the world's peace", he said:
"That partnership must be a partnership of
peoples, not a mere partnership of Govern-
ments."
Into that sentence the President has compressed
the whole philosophy of our Federal Government, the
whole philosophy of world democracy, the only process
by which we can possibly hope to achieve permanent
peace.
In his message of January 8th, in Article III of his
program he calls for the "removal as far as possible of
all economic barriers" between the nations associating
themselves to maintain peace. A partnership of peo-
ples as distinguished from a mere partnership of govern-
ments with economic barriers removed means Federa-
tion and nothing less.
Sir Frederick Smith, Attorney General of Great
Britain, speaking recently before the New York State
Bar Association, referred to the difficulties which would
attend the achievement of the President's program
and said that those difficulties by swiftly and unex-
pectedly merging would overwhelm the proposal, be-
cause they are so stupendous in their aggregate weight.
If a mere league of sovereignties, of governments is to
be entered into, and not a Partnership of Peoples, Sir
Frederick is right. The difficulties would overwhelm
the proposal. But if the responsible democracies of
the world should federate, it is perfectly clear that the
difficulties pointed out by this distinguished lawyer,
the very difficulties that made both our Confederation
and the Hague Tribunal impotent, would rapidly dis-
208 Let Us Have Peace
appear. They would disappear because they all, or
substantially all, spring out of conditions that exist
under a partnership of governments but do not exist
under a partnership of peoples.
To illustrate: Connecticut levied a tax on imports
from Massachusetts under the Confederation, as she
had a right to do. She was acting as a sovereignty.
All the thirteen States did similar things, as they
had a right to do. Difficulties arose; chaos followed;
civil war was narrowly averted. But when the Con-
federation became a Federation, when the partnership
between thirteen governments became a partnership
of peoples, these "rights" disappeared and most of the
difficulties went with them.
With the lapse of time we more and more realize
what a crisis in the development of democracy the
Convention in Independence Hall in 1787 was. Sup-
pose it had failed! Suppose it had followed instruc-
tions. Suppose Washington and Hamilton and ]\Iadi-
son and Franklin had listened to the fears and had
been influenced by the prejudices of the several states.
Suppose that later on Chnton and not Hamilton had
won in *New York and that New York had stayed
out of the Union. Suppose that Patrick Henry and
not John Marshall had won in Virginia and that
** Virginia had stayed out of the Union. Can we
measure the calamity-? Would Yorktown, where our
fathers had won the identical victory we are now
sending our boys to Europe to win, have had any
*0n the decisive ballot 57 votes were cast; 30 for, 27 against, Gov-
ernor Clinton not voting. The oflBcial majority for the Constitution
was 3; the actual majority was 2.
**The majority in Virginia was 10; the ballots cast totaled 168.
A New Charter of Liberty 209
further meaning for them? Would it have any mean-
ing for us now?
Nothing is more certain than the pohtical destruc-
tion of the Thirteen States if the Federal Constitution
had failed of adoption.
Nothing is more certain than a return to confusion,
chaos and war, and an ultimate recrudescence of
autocracy in some form, if democracy triumphant does
not redeem itself, does not abandon the old order and
federate.
None of the Thirteen States lost any dignity or
liberty or endangered its integrity by entering the
Federal Union. No democratic state would lose any
dignity or Uberty or imperil its integrity by entering
such a Federation.
On the contrary, each of the Thirteen States took on
added power and dignity and insured its integrity by
surrendering its separate sovereignty.
The surrender of separate sovereignty is the only
process by which the democratic States of the world
can severally insure their continued integrity.
War between the states of this Union — grown from
thirteen to forty-eight — is now" unthinkable. War be-
tween the democratic states of the world must be made
equally unthinkable, and that cannot be achieved
while the doctrine of unconditioned sovereignty survives.
In the history of this country from 1783 to 1789 we
have the history of a world democracy, in microcosm,
successfully worked out against problems as complex
as any which will exist at the close of this war. Seek-
ing a federation of democratic states after we have
achieved victory in battle we shall not be testing out a
theory, we shall be following historic precedents. To
210 Let Us Have Peace
the truth of that, the flag that floats over us bears
eloquent witness. Its thirteen stars have become
forty-eight, and in that development no star was lost —
not even when our foundations were re-tested and
re-estabhshed by the bloody verdicts of a great Civil War,
In planning to destroy democracy Germany has
unwittingly created an opportunity through which the
establishment of world democracy may be advanced
by centuries but by this very act she has raised supreme
issues which must be met and met now:
1st. Are democracies strong enough to sustain
themselves? Can they meet and hurl back
the desperate, physical challenge of auto-
cracy?
2d. Can they grasp and utiUze the opportunity
which victory will bring?
The answer to the first question is still incomplete,
largely because the Allies have fought as separate
sovereignties, as partners, as a confederation, and not
as a unit with one common and over-mastering pur-
pose. This method has been so ineffective and so
costly that the Prime Minister of England and the
Premier of France lately joined in utterances which
point out that weakness with brutal frankness. Not
unnaturally, indeed almost inevitably, the AUies are
repeating the confusion and the follies of the Thirteen
States in our Revolution. Worse than that. The
Thirteen States did unite in one supremely important
thing: they made George Washington Commander-in-
Chief of all their armies. The .lilies have failed as
yet to unite under a Common Leader in any department
of the war.
A New Charter of Liberty 211
The test of the second question — Can the Allies
wisely utiUze \dctory? — will follow hard on the heels
of victory. It will not wait long for a reply. If the
Allied Nations driven together by the centripetal force
of war co-operate with difficulty, what will happen
when that unifying force is withdrawn? What hap-
pened after our liberties were won in 1783, when the
common peril had been abated? A period of weak-
ness, of confusion and of folly unbelievable.
Liberty was saved and order restored only when the
Thirteen States swallowed their false pride and gave
up the barbaric right of separate sovereignty. The
lesson is plain.
The next great question will be — indeed it now
presses — to what extent have the democracies of the
world learned that lesson? Ob\dously they have not
learned it for war. The English Premier almost im-
periled his seat by his recent declaration in favor of a
War Council of the Allies. The mere suggestion that
an Enghsh Army might be directed by a body not
entirely British immediately aroused the barbaric in-
stincts of sovereignty and set all the politicians upon
the Premier's back. The people, however, sustained
him. May not that circumstance and the clear call
for unity of action recently issued by President Wilson
be an augury that with victory democracy will achieve
speedily what it took us eighty-two years to accom-
plish? Our fathers faced the problem when the Peace
of Paris was signed in 1783; we completed the task at
Appomattox in 18G5.
We shall indulge in sheer sophistry if we attempt to
argue that the Allies' problem will be essentially dif-
212 Let Us Have Peace
ferent from the one we have solved in this hemisphere.
It will be exactly the same problem.
It is therefore time, high time, ignoring details, to
examine fundamentals, to formulate principles, to ad-
mit facts, to recognize unavoidable conclusions — as the
basis of post-bellum discussions.
On these four Principles all sound discussion must rest :
First Principle. All men are created equal.
Sovereignty has compelled us practically to deny the
universahty of that principle.
Governmentally we assert that only Americans are
created equal.
Second Principle. All men are endowed by the Creator
with certain inalienable rights.
Our instinctive desire to apply this principle beyond
our own frontiers explains largely why we were so
pitifully unprepared when we entered this war.
Third Principle. Sovereignty is an attribute of the in-
dividual and not inherently an attri-
bute of the state.
That is the very essence of democracy, and is at
eternal war with all frontiers.
Fourth Principle. States are instrumentalities and not
ends.
Until that principle is recognized and enforced there
can be no lasting peace.
These three indisputable Facts must be recognized
in any effective discussion:
First Fact. None of these four principles, which express
universal truths, has yet been tested — except
between the States in this Republic — beyond the
limits set by national frontiers ; they have other-
wise never had any but a local application.
A New Charter of Liberty 213
Second Fact. To make the world safe for democracy and
democracy safe for the world these principles
must everywhere be applied, BETWEEN dem-
ocracies as well as WITHIN democracies.
Third Fact. The doctrine of unconditioned sovereignty
is the force that has prevented such an applica-
tion of these universal truths.
Therefore as between democracies the doctrine of uncon-
ditioned sovereignty must be abolished.
It is not too early for the AUies to agree on these
principles as the basis of their post-bellum plan.
It is not too early for them to recognize the truth
of these facts.
It is not too early to admit the great conclusion that
follows from those principles and facts.
But democracy can apply that conclusion only if
her hands are clean. There can be no federation of
democracies after peace comes if that peace is a cow-
ardly compromise with criminals. First there must be
bitter repentance in Germany — either through a re-
awakening or through sheer physical defeat.
Cities cannot compromise with gunmen and burglars
and remain cities : democracies cannot compromise with
forces that deny the very fundamentals of democratic
faith and remain democracies, and the Allies can never
compromise with the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs.
We fight to estabhsh liberty, to restore the good
order of the world ; but good order will not be restored,
liberty will not be established, merely by defeating
Germany. There can be no permanent world good
order if the relations between the nations now allied
are continued after the war as they were before the
214 Let Us Have Peace
war. If this conflict has not taught us that, it hasn't
taught us anything.
Autocracy was halted at the Marne. It was de-
feated at Verdun. It will be crushed only in Berlin.
Its menace will be ended when triumphant democracy
issues, and its units adopt a new Charter of Liberty,
based on the identical surrender made by the Thirteen
States when they adopted the fundamental law of this
Republic. By no other process can a peace be organ-
ized which shall be worth the crushing cost of this
conflict.
WOODROW WILSON AND
THE DOCTRINE OF SOVEREIGNTY
AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE
LIFE UNDERWRITERS OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
HOTEL ASTOR. NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 5, 1918
F IN the Summer of 1913 the people of
iJ^ France had reported that one of the great
Q Pterodactyls of the Mesozoic period had
suddenly winged its reptilian way over the
borders of that Republic, the rest of the
world would have smiled, shrugged its shoulders and
said that the excitable French were "seeing things".
If in the summer of 1914 the people of Belgium had
reported that a group of Dinosaurs had suddenly ap-
peared at the gates of that Kingdom and had begun
to kill as reptiles killed when reptiles ruled the earth,
the world would again have shrugged its shoulders and
gone about its business.
If in the Spring of 1915 we had been told that a
Plesiosaur, the Saurian that swam in the sea in the
age of Reptiles, had suddenly reared its awful front
off the Head of Old Kinsale and had killed twelve
hundred people amongst whom were scores of our
own citizens, including women and babies, we would
have been more than incredulous.
In each assumed happening the world outside those
who saw and suffered would have said the reports were
15 217
218 Lei Us Have Peace
absurd. Such animals did exist some millions of years
ago; they were reptiles; they did rule the land and the
sea and the air; but they long since passed away.
This is the twentieth century, such monsters no longer
exist and such things cannot happen.
But at the times and places indicated events actually
happened as sinister, as hideous, as pitiful, as un-
believable as they could have been if the Zeppelin had
been a Pterodactyl and the German war machine a
group of Dinosaurs and the submarine a Plesiosaur.
The reptilian bodies of the Saurians are dead, but
reptilian morals, reptilian faith, reptilian manners and
reptilian purposes, we now know have never died;
they flourish in the twentieth century; they have added
to the terrible beaks and claws and armor of their
physical forebears the power of trained intellect and all
the forces of scientific knowledge; they have found
lodgment in German bodies, minds and souls; they have
found expression in the unspeakable criminal record
that long since made Germany a Pariah amongst the
nations.
We have only just begun to appreciate these dreadful
facts. It has been almost impossible for us to grasp
the truth. It was in fact about as colossal a task for
us to dislocate, dismember and destroy our usual con-
ceptions of decency, in order, for ourselves and the
world, to resist the demands of Germany, as it would
be for us to breathe and survive if the atmosphere of
the age of Saurians were suddenly substituted for the
air of our usual habitat. We are temporarily wearing
moral gas masks while the boys over there fight the
great reptile similarly protected physically. We hate
it; but we've got to do it and we are going through it.
Woodrow Wilson and the Doctrine of Sovereignty 219
It seems to me that these reptihan quahties were
kept aUve and developed in Germany in this way:
Man is the only rational animal. Therefore man is
the only animal that can He or be deceived by lies.
Lying is a wicked and an unforgivable perversion of
man's loftiest powers. Lying can succeed only if the
person lied to is credulous and honest or if he is en-
tirely at the mercy of the har. Lying to another Har
is less effective and less dangerous.
The appalling crimes committed by Germany within
four years do not reach their climax in her perversion
of scientific achievements into implements of indis-
criminate murder, they do not reach their chmax in
rape officially condoned if not ordered, nor in forcing
people through hunger into slavery; her great crime
consists in systematic lying, lying first to her own
people and then to all other peoples. Von Papen's
characterization of the American people as idiots has
in it the sneer of Mephistopheles. To the German how
gullible we were; what children not to see the he and
its purpose! We were children by the German standard
of honor. But now we know, now we are keeping the
reckoning and we propose to make the great Liar pay
to the uttermost farthing.
What a welter of lying preceded and produced the
present mental and moral attitude of the people of the
German Empire. Assume if you like a certain natural
cruelty, brutahty and ruthlessness in the Teuton,
admit that he does not normally react to the standards
adhered to by the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin and you
have not explained the existing conditions. The
German people since 1848 have been transformed
through brutal philosophy and successful lying. They
220 Let Us Have Peace
are to-day high and low, educated and ignorant,
utterly and monstrously cruel.
Listen to a few of the things the German People were
taught in order to prepare them for this war:
Stirner said:
''WTiat does right matter to me? I have no need
of it. * * * I have the right to do what I have
the power to do."
The Kaiser said :
''Woe and death to all who shall oppose my will.
Woe and death to those who do not beheve in my
mission."
Von Gottherg said :
"War is the most august and sacred of human
activities."
And again:
"Let us laugh with all our lungs at the old women
in trousers who are afraid of war, and therefore
complain that it is cruel and hideous. No! war
is beautiful."
Pastor Lehmann said :
"Germany is the centre of God's plans for the
world."
Bernhardt said :
"Might is the supreme right."
Tannenberg said:
"War must leave nothing to the vanquished but
their eyes to weep with."
The German troops have bettered that instruction.
They have in many cases not left even eyes to weep
with.
And ha\^ng taught the people to accept those
standards, listen to this:
Woodrow Wilson and the Doctrine of Sovereignty 221
Kuhn said:
"Must culture build its cathedrals upon hills of
corpses, seas of tears, and the death rattle of the
vanquished? Yes, it must,"
Heine said:
''Not only Alsace-Lorraine but all France and all
Europe as well as the whole world will belong
to us."
Chamberlain, the renegade Englishman, said :
"He who does not believe in the Divine Mission
of Germany had better go hang himself, and
rather to-day than to-morrow."
Frederick said:
"All written Constitutions are scraps of paper."
And so we have this long list of crimes, not by any
means yet complete. The crimes began appropriately,
with self-\'iolated honor; nothing was difficult after
that. The people of Germany still think they know
what dishonor is, what murder is, what rape is, but
none of these things, within the good old German
world governed by the good old Pagan German God
and the Kaiser means what it means elsewhere. The
inhibition laid against all these crimes still nominally
holds as between Germans but has no significance in
their outside relations, indeed to commit these crimes
against outsiders is rather laid upon Germans and
accepted by them as a duty and an evidence of loyalty
and \irtue.
The blasting indictment that lies to-day against
the German people is not alone that they are guilty
of crimes indescribable but that the military caste
through a program deliberately adopted has made
222 Let Us Have Peace
them a nation of liars, cruel liars, the kind, as Ir\'ing
Bacheller puts it "that made Hell famous".
And why did the military caste believe it to be
necessary first to lie to their own people and then to
lie wholesale through their so-called Ambassadors who
as a matter of fact for years have been chiefs in an
unprecedented army of espionage, Captains in the
army of dishonor? Germany adopted this program in
part because of a kind of natural obsession which made
her leaders really believe in Teutonic superiority,
partly because the people would not follow the miUtary
caste if they were told the truth, and partly from what
seemed to be real necessity.
This war is the culmination of the German program
which was stimulated at least by the world's program.
And what has been the world program?
That brings us to the primary cause of the war.
The primary cause of this war is a condition, a
political condition inherited from previous centuries;
a condition which in its history records the struggles
of human society as certainly as the rocks tell the
storj^ of the evolution of the earth; a condition which
has qualified and largely controlled the ambitions, the
triumphs, the defeats, the aspirations of the human
race; a condition which has served mankind but has
also bound it and still binds it as with bands of steel.
We have now reached the age in politics when, if demo-
cratic civihzation is to sur\'ive, we must first slay
this reptile and then break these bonds. Vital as the
first duty is the second in due course will become even
more important.
The chief human agent in the perpetuation of that
political condition in relatively modern times, the man
Woodrow Wilson and the Doctrine of Sovereignty 223
who used it most effectively for the furtherance of
his own purposes and his own ambitions and therefore
the chief criminal is Frederick of Prussia, sometimes
miscalled the Great, and apotheosized in eight volumes
by Carlyle. The chief U\ing criminal, who after all is
merely carrying out Frederick's program, is WilHam
the Second, King of Prussia and German Emperor.
Back of WiUiam, back of Frederick, and still domi-
nant in the world lies this condition, brutal, bestial,
inhuman, monstrous, unintelhgent, but nevertheless
more powerful than all Kings and all Kaisers, the
chief source indeed of all their authority. That con-
dition expressed in terms of government we call the
Doctrine of Sovereignty. That Doctrine is the law of
the jungle; its morality is still the morality of the
jungle. It was born in the struggle for existence, begun
in the primeval ooze before either reason or conscience
had been developed. It has yielded httle to the reason
or conscience of any nation as such; in Germany it
has utterly overborne both.
It has persisted essentially unchanged against ad-
vancing intelligence and improved morality. It differs
in no respect from the law followed by the cave-man.
The cave-man evolved from his family a larger unit
called the tribe, and that unit evolved a still larger
unit called the clan, and that unit evolved a still
larger unit called the state. When any state after bloody
struggles became large enough or strong enough, it
took its place as a unit in a little group of equals, and
established what has been called a "balance of power".
Frequently with others and occasionally alone it then
forced smaller or weaker powers into a condition of
semi-vassalage. Whenever any unit has thought
224 Let Us Have Peace
itself strong enough to disregard the ''balance of
power" so created, it has tried, and naturally tried, to
dominate the entire world. The whole structure
rested and still rests on essential savagery. Frederick
saw that and taught Germany its brutal law. Frederick
saw that a supreme trial of strength between these
units was inevitable. The only doubtful questions
were when would it come, and what people would be
best prepared. Every citizen of every nation, demo-
cratic as well as autocratic, knew this in a hazy sort
of way; every citizen of every sort of country has for
centuries known in his heart that his life was forfeit
at a moment's notice — if the state called for it. Every
citizen for centuries has known that the call was sure
to come, if not for him then for his sons. For centuries
the governmental units of human society have either
been fighting or they have lived in that condition of
suspended hostility which we call peace. There was
no doubt about what would happen. Men talked about
permanent peace and deliberately perpetuated a con-
dition which meant war. As a people we lived for a
half-century on the theory that the brotherhood of
man had been achieved and therefore we made no
reasonable preparations for the struggle which was
sure to spring out of the international system of which
governmentally we were a part. Of all the great powers
we were the most utterly illogical.
We preserved the savage underlying condition as
completely in substance as Germany did. If a man
anywhere advanced a program that would avoid its
sinister perils, he was denounced as a theorist and a
dreamer; that is still true. If a man faced the facts
and demanded adequate provision for defense, he was
Woodrow Wilson and the Doctrine of Sovereignty 225
denounced as a "jingo," that is no longer true. If
nations attempted to solve the problem as they did at
The Hague they paltered and shuffled. Men have not
yet been able — except within limited areas — to take
the great step necessary to lift the world above the
operation of this savage law.
The great indi\idual criminals, li\dng and dead, were
both a product and a cause. They were the product of
the age-long hostility between the units of organized
society. They were a cause in that they not unnaturally
seized opportunity and gathered into their own hands
the power which society thrust at them. The Doctrine
of Rule b}^ Di\dne Right and the Doctrine of Sover-
eignty are very nearly expressions of the same idea in
different forms. When Louis XIV said that he was the
state he was only defining the Doctrine of Sovereignty
in personal terms.
Democracies have built society — not governments —
on the idea that all men can be trusted, that the average
man is not a savage, that he is walling to concede the
rights to others that he demands for himself. Through
the development of science time and distance were
annihilated; there are to-day no foreign lands except
governmentally. Governments are as far apart to-day
as they were before Watts and Morse and Bell and
Field and Marconi were born. Governments in their
relations are still unscientific, savage and medieval ; the
condition red in tooth and claw still remains.
The Reptilian age passed physically because con-
ditions on the earth changed physically. There were
upheavals from time to time. The land, the sea and
the air became less and less suited to Saurians. Count-
less new and apparently less efficient forms of life ap-
226 Let Us Have Peace
peared. Naturally the reptiles fought the newer forms
of life with increasing ferocity and slew them as they
could. But finally when the hour came there was a
vaster upheaval, conditions changed \'iolently, the
very atmosphere changed, and now all that physically
remains of these early lords of the land, the sea and
the air, is their impress in the clay or marl where they
died when the earth became tired of them.
The dominance of the Doctrine of Sovereignty in
the relations of nations makes this poUtically the age
of the Saurian. Sovereignty asserted by either a
democracy or an autocracy in the last analysis means
war, and perhaps the most inconsistent and absurd,
yet, under existing conditions, entirely necessary thing
in the world is a democracy asserting its sovereignty
against another democracy.
This war is that vaster upheaval, that violent change
which is either to embalm William along wdth Alex-
ander and Napoleon and all that tribe for the education
and edification of future generations or it is to crush
temporarily that form of political Ufe which found
expression in Magna Charta and the Declaration of
1776. Let us not deceive ourselves : either thing can
still happen : Right does not always win. Barbarians
conquered Rome ; Archimedes was slain by an ignorant
Roman soldier; Alexander Hamilton, the most luminous
inteUigence in our history, one of the greatest poUtical
thinkers of any age was killed by an adventurer.
As the evolution of the earth gradually drove away
the miasm and mists in which the saurian flourished,
so an increasing love of ordered Liberty has driven
away in part the political mists and the mysteries on
which Frederick and his kind have flourished. The
Woodrow WiUon and the Doctrine of Sovereignty 227
accumulation of public opinion like the accumulation of
sediment in the shallow seas of the Mesozoic period
has weakened the crust of the ancient order: there have
been through the centuries \'iolent upheavals, some
before and some within our knowledge and memory:
in 1776, 1792, 1848, 1861.
We can well imagine that when the earth began to
tremble and the air to freshen and the waters to shift,
the Saurians made a concerted assault upon all other
forms of hfe. WiUiam and Franz-Joseph, possessed of
reptilian morals, reptilian faith and reptilian purposes,
had been listening to the rumbhngs of democracy for
forty years. They smiled as they looked at their own
equipment : their huge claws and beaks and teeth and
armorplate and observed that the peoples who were
stirring had no means of offense and little of defense.
They laughed as they saw their enemy democracy,
di\dded into twenty or thirty hostile camps, each pro-
fessing a program of human brotherhood but inter-
nationally following the program of autocracy. They
saw a generation ago that either they or democracy
must go. They were logical. They did not palter.
When the time came they struck as the great reptiles
did.
The great criminal of this century, the man whose
name will go down in history with Caligula and Attila
is William the Second, German Emperor. But William
after all represents a system, an idea. He is true to his
class. He is morally a Saurian. The Great Reptiles
probably despised the hordes of birds and fish and
animals so indifferently equipped both for offense and
defense; They naturally assumed that they themselves
could not have been so wonderfully endowed except by
228 Let Us Have Peace
the wish of the Almighty. If they thought at all, they
doubtless believed they were the chosen of God.
There was no such thing as reforming a Saurian:
he had to go. There is apparently no such thing pos-
sible as reforming and humanizing a Hohenzollern or a
Hapsburg: they must go.
The particular in which Frederick was a criminal and
William is a criminal is this:
The people had begun to break down this ancient
superstition. They took a great step forward in ]\Iagna
Charta, another in the Declaration of 1776, another in
the French Revolution, another in our Federal Con-
stitution. The movement was so strong in recent
times that peace has reigned for more than a hundred
years between the two great branches of the Anglo-
Saxon race.
William's great crime — following the teaching of
Frederick — lies in his bitter opposition to that move-
ment resulting in a complete perversion of a great
people. He has dragged a whole race back and down
into the shme of medievalism. He must go. The
German people, of themselves, must crawl up out of
that slime and stand upright before men or be en-
gulfed in the moral damnation that waits for all who
stay there.
"WTiy did the allied nations allow Germany to build
up her terrible war machine? Why did they not stop
it? Why did Great Britain when she realized the
menace content herself merely with proposals that
both nations take a holiday in war preparation? Why
did Germany sneer at such proposals and immediately
speed up her preparations?
Again the Doctrine of Sovereignty.
Woodrow Wilson and the Doctrine of Sovereignty 229
Great Britain could only protest and protest politely;
to have done more would have meant war and would
have established a dangerous precedent. If Sovereign
Germany could be stopped in any program, however
wicked,' so might Great Britain be stopped in any
program however beneficent. Germany was protected
by this monstrous fiction and Great Britain and France
were paralyzed by it. As a result preparations to rape
and assassinate the world went on openly and shame-
lessly. That hideous folly controls the destinies of men
to-day.
The cause of this war, the source of this great crime,
is, therefore, the DOCTRINE OF SOVEREIGNTY.
The great li\'ing criminal is William.
\ATien William goes we shall have gained little if
Sovereignty, as now defined, does not go with him.
If the Doctrine sur\'ives, William will have successors
as bad as he, possibly worse.
The great question is can men preserve all that is
worth preser\'ing in nationality without war? Or is
there something in nationality that makes war neces-
sary? Could governments effectively function as
governments if they arranged their relations and set-
tled their differences as individuals do, as the States
of this Federal Union do?
Never has all the world been so nearly of one mind
on any one subject as now. THERE MUST BE NO
MORE SUCH WARS AS THIS. Everybody agrees.
Very well. How then to achieve it.
Suppose the people of Great Britain, France, the
United States, Italy, Germany and Austria-Hungary
had been in some sort of effective governmental touch
for a generation earlier than August 1, 1914. They had
230 Let Us Have Peace
been for longer than that in touch in business. They
had erected great international structures interwoven
by all the relations of commerce and banking. They
had no trouble in understanding each other. They did
not fear each other. They trusted each other. They
had in all those relations no desire to wrong each other.
But in their governmental relations all was quite differ-
ent. They all faced frontiers which were dead walls.
Here was a sharp line of demarcation: while the
people told each other the truth, diplomats lied to each
other; while the people dealt openly, diplomats spied
on each other; while the people through their com-
merce gave and received benefits, diplomats planned
ruin for each other. Out of the relation of the people
war would probably never have sprung. Out of the
relation of the diplomats war was certain, and con-
tinued, more wars are equally certain.
If, therefore, the people were able, in spite of the
handicap of frontiers, of tariffs, of races and rehgions,
to build up a vast peaceful fabric with which sover-
eignty had little to do except to embarass it, isn't it
likely that if allowed they could build up a like relation
governmentally and if they did what would result ?
Fortunately we have a concrete, a living, a con-
vincing example. The thing has been done. The
history of this country from the time when the Con-
federation of 1781 was seen to be a failure up to the
present hour records about all the struggles, all the
defeats and all the victories that will be recorded when
humankind has made an end of its Fredericks, its
Napoleons, and its Williams.
The same thing has been partly done in the British
Empire. After this war the task will be completed
Woodrow Wilson and the Doctrine of Sovereignty 231
there. But completed in that Empn-e it will still
leave the Anglo-Saxon world split in twain, it will
leave France and Italy defenseless.
The great duty of the hour therefore is not merely
to make an end of William but to make an end of the
causes that helped to produce William. There is in-
deed a tide in the affairs of men : it will be at the flood
when William fails. It will be the supreme opportunity.
This century will not see another such opportunity.
Immediately after William passes, the Allied nations
will begin to pull apart if they do not immediately come
nearer together. With each passing day the nations
will drift toward the old order: old feuds will revive,
what seem to be economic necessities will reassert
themselves, prejudices will be reborn — the call of
Sovereignty will sound and the allied Governments,
forced for a time by the perils of war into unified action
will return to the status quo. Once that is re-established
the great opportunity is lost.
There is abroad a curious feeling that while people
can be internationally just in business they cannot be so
in government. Men rated as wise sneer at inter-
nationaUsm, they tell you that a Federation of the
Democracies of the world is impracticable; that it
can't be done, and therefore why waste effort in trying
to achieve the impossible. That was one of the argu-
ments made by George Clinton and his followers in
1788 when he so nearly defeated the Federal Con-
stitution in New York; one of the arguments used by
Partick Henry in Richmond when he sought to keep
Virginia out of the Union. My answer is that such a
program is neither impracticable nor impossible, and
no man, and certainly no leader, has any right to say
232 Let Us Have Peace
that, unless he at the same time admits his beUef that
man is incapable of self-government, his belief that our
Declaration of 1776 was after all a fraud and our Great
Republic the product of an accident.
]\Ien are already talking about the war after the war.
Victory therefore over Germany is not expected to
settle many international questions. If this war is
lost it will settle many international questions — until
such time as Liberty can re-hght her extinguished
torch. If this war is won it should, although it may
not, settle the future relations of Nations. But why
should there be war after this war? What will cause
it? I answer: — The very conditions, in different form,
that caused this war: Sovereignty, the fiction that
human rights behind frontiers are different from and
are inherently in deadly hostility to identical human
rights just over the border. I call that a fiction — it is
unfortunately a terrible fact. It is a fact as real as
that one man is white and another is black and another
is brown and another is yellow. But while we can
understand the causes that made this variety of color,
and with color a variety of religions, and while we can
understand how these fundamental differences could
naturally create impenetrable barriers behind which
fear and hate and misunderstanding would intrench
themselves, it is not so easy to understand why this
the greatest of all wars should be controlled by no such
consideration. The amazing fact is that these, the most
fundamental and presumably most controlling of con-
ditions, are not controlling. The lines of division in
this war are neither racial nor religious. In the be-
ginning the division did not even follow lines which
put Liberty on one side and tyranny on the other.
Woodrow Wilson and the Doctrine of Sovereignty 233
Russia certainly did not consciously enter the war in
defense of human liberty and the reaction which has
followed the destruction of the House of RomanofT,
leaves Russia perhaps the greatest existing menace to
self-government. What determined the hues of de-
marcation? Primarily the Doctrine of Sovereignty.
It is not difficult, under that doctrine, to understand
how William persuaded himself that he was Vicegerent
of the good old German Pagan God. He took up in
statecraft the role of a political Torquemada. He
beheved, as Frederick did, that there must be an
ultimate clash, a final trial of strength. Germany had
been definitely preparing for forty years, Prussia for a
hundred years. On the first of August, 1914, William
believed that he had reached the hour of fate ; therefore
he struck. When Germany is beaten nothing funda-
mental will thereby have been decided. The war after
the war will come — perhaps very soon, if the peoples
of the world do not unite and put an end to the bar-
barism that now controls the relations of nations.
The preservation of nationality has long been the
supreme purpose of government because under the
bitter struggle for existence men saw safety only in the
state. Governmentally men have been taught and are
still taught to look upon men of other nations as their
potential enemies. Unless the state can now be made a
means to an end, unless the barriers that divide democ-
racy from democracy can be broken down, let us stop
chattering about world-peace; let us all become Prus-
sianized in our morals and manners and motives; let
us arm to the teeth and prepare for the battles that
shall finally allow, even compel William or some other
16
234 Let Us Have Peace
— perhaps an Anglo-Saxon — to set his foot on the neck
of the world.
If Democracy means anything it means everything.
It doesn't mean just the rights of the citizens of this
Republic. If all men are endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights, the relations of govern-
ments should not be such that men shall be forced to
rob other men of what God gave them. No civilized
man, as a citizen, wants to do that, and when the
Germans, who alone seem to have that conscious pur-
pose, have been beaten and reformed, if that be pos-
sible, governments must abandon a program by which
they are themselves compelled to force men to do that.
Thomas Jefferson and the early Fathers led us out
into a glorious dawn when they declared that Life and
Liberty were the inalienable rights of ALL men. We
have proudly and grimly assented to that truth. But
until we entered this war it was for us little more than
a dream beyond our own frontiers. We had been
bound by the law of self-preservation, by the Doctrine
of Sovereignty. When we entered this war we in effect
in\dted all Democracies to unite with us and again
break the chains that we broke in 1789. Can Democ-
racy do that? On the answer to that question hangs
the future of Liberty.
What democracy shall mean to our sons and daughters
and to their successors will be determined first in the
great battle now raging, in which Prussian autocracy
is to be defeated and finally driven from power, and
second in the success or failure of a federation of the
democracies of the world following that battle. If
Prussianism is victorious, democracy will for a long
time sur\dve only in poUtical huts and caves. If
Woodrow Wilson and the Doctrine of Sovereignty 235
Prussianism is crushed, Democracy may become as
splendid as its principles, as glorious as its professions.
But will it?
Not if the Doctrine of Sovereignty survives; not if
the state continues to be the supreme end and not a
means to an end.
Send William to another St. Helena, toss the Haps-
burgs onto the scrap-heap of history, and keep the
present program otherwise, and you will have made
little progress toward abiding peace. Why was Wash-
ington right when he said "In times of peace prepare
for war"? Why is that maxim just as true to-day as
it was a hundred years ago? Because democracy has
had and has now no comprehensive and sufficient pro-
gram; because liberty-loving men are divided into
strictly hmited and hostile camps ; because each democ-
racy is certain, under economic pressure, to develop
greed for land, for dominance at sea; because democ-
racies made up of fallible and ambitious men, ruled
by the laws of sovereignty, cannot be trusted to be just;
because the frontiers of democratic sovereignty mean
war almost as certainly as the frontiers of autocracy
mean war.
There are frontiers that do not mean war and we
who live under that unparalleled achievement are only
beginning to realize its prophetic power and its moral
obligation. There are frontiers that preserve local
self-government, the integrity of institutions and of
states, and yet do not breed war. Such frontiers delimit
the various States of this Union. That was not always
true. There was a time — about a hundred and thirty
years ago — when the frontiers of the American States
meant just what frontiers in Europe mean now.
236 Let Us Have Peace
The Original Thirteen States tried to Uve together
and at the same time preserve separate Sovereignty in
its full significance. They failed. It could not be
done. It will never be done.
The Confederation, a union between Sovereignties as
such, became a travesty on government. Our existing
Federal Union, a Federation, a union of peoples, is w4th
all its imperfections the fairest hope of the world.
In its inception, construction and history, the
Federal Union tells the Allies how they may organize
peace.
Men talk about the difficulties of such a program!
Go to Belgium, to Poland, to Serbia, to Armenia, and
to slaughtered France! Call the expanding roll of our
own beloved dead. Face the certainty that this is not
the end but the beginning and then talk of difficulties.
Away with those who quibble about tariffs, and
religions, and frontiers, and ancient prejudices. Of
what importance are they now? We shall soon come
to the hour of supreme crisis. WTiat are we to do?
Who shall then lead us? Not those who have been
saturated with the precedents of absolute nationality;
not those who have already reacted to the other ex-
treme, the Socialists, the Bolshevists w^ho know not
the meaning of ordered liberty.
In all the Babel of voices discussing the future re-
lations of nations the one great voice that is clear and
prophetic and powerful is the voice of Woodrow Wilson.
It takes us no whither to say that we should have
entered the war sooner. Most of us will regret so long
as we shall live our long period of hesitancy.
Our delay in getting into the war w^ill be costly.
How costly to you and to me in money and in hearts'
Woodrow Wilson and the Doctrine of Sovereignty 237
blood we do not yet know. But under the President's
leadership we have been through that travail of soul
which enables us now to say to the Government "Slay
the great reptile, no matter what it costs".
President Wilson in my opinion moved as rapidly as
public opinion moved; he led it, and finally crystallized
it by his timely and inspiring eloquence. We are all very
wise now. It is easy, alwa3's easy, to be wise afterwards.
But in his vision of a post-bellum program, in his
prophetic forecast of what must be done, if all this
precious blood is not to be spilled in vain, the President
stands above all other leaders of Nations and in really
constructive utterances, unhappily, almost alone.
He has said that after this war Democracies must
unite, not as States, not as Sovereignties, not as mere
governments, but as people. There sounds the pro-
phetic voice. In that lies the only process by which
victory can be made worth all its dreadful cost. Presi-
dent Wilson's program calls for no surrender of liberty,
no loss of political integrity, no weakening of local
self-government; on the contrary it points the way to
a larger world where lie the peace and the power that
the Thirteen States and their thirty-five fellows have
found under the Federal Constitution. A mere League
of States will not do. A Partnership of Sovereignties
will not do.
The key word is Federation.
Federation! Federation!!
"* * * : for there is none other name under
heaven given among men whereby we must be
saved."
That is the Great new Evangel and Woodrow Wilson
is its Prophet.
A POLITICAL SUPERSTITION
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED
NOVEMBER 3, 1918, AT THE NEW YORK AVENUE METHODIST
EPISCOPAL CHURCH, BROOKLYN, N. Y.
E ARE now waging two wars. To be
completely successful we must win both.
The first is against Germany ; the second
is against a political superstition. We
can win the first and lose the second. We
cannot win the second in this generation — perhaps not
in this century — unless we win the first. If we win
the first and lose the second — and we can readily lose
the second — our children's children may shout back at
our shades anathemas in the form of the old inter-
rogatory "What shall it profit a man if he gain the
whole world and lose his own soul?"
Some people have no patience with those who would
now discuss what we are to stand for after the war
against Germany has been won. What we are then to
stand for will be largely determined by what we are
thinking about now.
Men could be found as late as 1916 who became
impatient when far-sighted men cried out that we were
unready, that we must prepare. Earlier than that the
citizen who demanded preparation for war was smiled
at in private and liable to be hooted in public. As a
result, we really began to prepare for war after we
declared war.
238
A Political Superstition 239
The problems of nations like men's problems do not
often begin abruptly nor do they end abruptly; they
spring out of all that has gone before and the way they
are solved and the effect of their solution upon the
future is determined by the presence or absence of
pre-vision and preparation. We were not prepared for
war in April, 1917, because we had not grasped the
fact that we could be brought into it. The situation
was clear. The menace unmistakable. But we blinked
the facts.
When the great hour comes in which we are to decide
how the world is to be reconstructed after victory over
Germany, and how that victory can be wisely and
justly utihzed, we shall again be unprepared if we go
on bhnking other facts that are just as obvious and
just as sinister as Germany's war machine was before
August 1, 1914.
Our immediate task, irrespective of everything else,
is to win the first war through a complete military
victory over Germany and her allies. The time for
discussion about the completeness of that duty ended
when the Congress declared war.
The second war we are now waging without knowing
it, just as we were already waging war against Germany
long before April 1917. We were irrevocably in the
fight from the moment the torpedoes struck the "Lusi-
tania". Many of us did not know that we were at war
with Germany after that tragedy, but some of us knew
it because we knew that two pohtical ideals were then
locked in a death grapple, that one of those ideals was
ours, and we would not surrender it. It took two years
to bring us physically into the fight, but the soul of
this nation has been in the fight since the 7th of May,
240 Let Us Have Peace
1915, and the conscience of our people has been fighting
Germany since the day when she forced Belgium to
choose between death and dishonor.
For exactly the same reason we are now engaged
in the second — shall I say the greater? — war. Most of
us are unaware of the fact. We fight Germany and her
allies for reasons perfectly and inspiringly stated and
restated by President Wilson. Our reasons are both
positive and negative, and because of some historical
precedents the negative reasons are more remarkable
and impressive than the positive.
We do not seek territory; we do not ask indemnities
for ourselves. Such an attitude ought not perhaps to
be remarkable, but it is. The instances where a nation
has gone to war and really had no such motive have
been so few that the fact is startling. After two and
a half years of experience and observation we came to
see that the struggle in Europe — quite apart from the
wrongs inflicted on us — was a fight over an irrecon-
cilable issue: Divine Right vs. Democracy. So we
deliberately and after full discussion took our place in
the ranks of Democracy.
In the second war we fight a political superstition.
We see evidences of its beginning in the cry that there
must be no more wars like this, in leagues to promote
peace, in the proposed League of Nations, — an idea
which even Germany and her allies profess to approve.
All these movements are unconscious recognitions of
the existence of a fundamental fault in civihzation.
All of them seek to correct that fault, but all of them
are palliatives merely. Not one goes to the root of the
difficulty. All are skirmishes in the great struggle that
is coming.
A Political Superstition 241
It is easy to understand why the differences between
Divine Right and Democracy are irreconcilable; but
what many people, including most statesmen, do not
see is that the Doctrine of Sovereignty enforced by a
Democracy against another Democracy is only Di\'ine
Right in another garb. The King talks about his
sacred person. Democracy talks about its sacred soil.
That Autocracy should insist on Divine Right and
absolute sovereignty is logical and necessary; that
Republics — government through representation, gov-
ernments based on inalienable rights — should do the
same thing as against other Republics is deplorable,
and that they should do it and still believe themselves
to be Democratic is amazing.
The second war I call a war against a political
superstition. It will flame up into a blaze when the
Alhes have disposed of the Hun. Unless the AUied
Repubhcs then recognize that the wolf, Autocracy,
hides in the robes of Unconditioned Sovereignty, the
second war will be lost, and victory in the first war
will be frittered away. Unless we then smash the
frontiers that divide the United States and Great
Britain and France, no progress toward lasting peace
will have been made. War lies in those frontiers. Let
us not deceive ourselves. Great Britain is the only
nation with which during our existence we have had
two wars. In the last hundred years we have re-
peatedly escaped other wars with her only by an eye-
lash. And naturally. If two good men, peace-loving,
law-abiding, meet and have a difference in a frontier
town, where law is more or less uncertain and it is
known that the man who shoots first has the better
of the argument, one or the other is likely to shoot. If
242 Let Us Have Peace
those same men had a like difference where law not only
existed but was effectively administered, neither would
think of shooting, in fact neither would carry a gun.
Notwithstanding the close co-operation now between
the Allies, we have not forgotten the disasters that
befell up to a year subsequent to our entrance into the
war, chiefly because of confusion in council; council was
confused because each of the AUies fought as a separate
sovereignty. Victory is coming now because all the
AlHes finally subordinated sovereignty and created a
controlling authority. That condition is really more
necessary in peace than in war. When German}'- sur-
renders the danger is that all this will end. The Alhes
will immediately reassert their separate authority.
The barriers that were thrown down will be re-erected.
The dead-lines called frontiers will be re-drawn. IMen
who could fight together under one commander, ready
to die for a common cause, will refuse to live together
under a common government and work together for in-
terests that are substantially identical. Democracy will
separate from Democracy, not because it is necessary
but because of a superstition. War against this
superstition is now going on and will then take definite
form.
Germany's attempt to destroy Europe and finally
to conquer the world was not a new or a strange mad-
ness. France, glorious France, made the same attempt
a little more than a hundred years ago. France went
mad under the inspiring leadership of a great military
genius. Her aim was glory. Victor Hugo says that
Napoleon failed because he troubled God; that Waterloo
was not a battle, but a change of front on the part of
the Universe.
A Political Superstition 243
Germany went mad for quite different reasons.
Her madness began with Frederick who saw that in
the struggle for existence between nations force would
ultimately be the last word. He taught that beUef
to the Prussians. Then the world suddenly shrank
through scientific developments and the nations were
crowded together. Government ally the struggle for
existence became intense. Sovereignty, which admits
no law higher than its own, was thrust \dolently
against sovereignty, and forced to deal with problems
of increasing complexity. There was no real law.
There was a makeshift, a thing of shreds and patches,
called international law. The belief that only the
strong, the prepared, could sur\'ive, called for a philo-
sophy which would justify whatever procedure seemed
necessary to maintain a nation's integrity. How easy
from this to evolve the German creed: that Germans
were supermen; that their kultur was superior to all
other ci\4hzations ; that it was the will of God that it
should be imposed on all others ; that war the necessary
instrument was not only justifiable but noble and
beautiful. Professing to defend her existence but
really planning to assassinate the world, Germany
worked steadily and consistently for forty years.
She spread a system of espionage over all the earth;
she became an international burglar and through her
so-called ambassadors was admitted to the homes of
friendly governments where she proceeded to survey
the house and corrupt the servants. She became in-
sanely jealous because Great Britain was powerful at
sea; she raged at the Monroe Doctrine. She taught
her people to be hard. Lying herself to friendly powers,
the disease spread through the body politic. From
244 Let Us Have Peace
lying to cruelty is a short step and the German people
readily took it.
Then came August 1st, 1914, when the All Highest
thought the hour of fate had struck. Between that
hour and this lies the story of German blasphemy,
bestiality, cruelty and lying, together with amazing
efficiency and the brute courage of the jungle. That
Frederick, in his time, could see no issue but war out
of the struggle between states is perhaps not to be
wondered at: he was medieval though logical; but
William is more medieval than Frederick was. The
humanizing influence of modern life that made France
illogical and ci\'ilized, Great Britain tolerant and un-
suspicious, and the United States a political fools'
paradise, left Germany untouched. She never for a
moment forgot the law of the jungle. In the face of
all the world she built her war machine, at which in the
beginning Great Britain and the United States laughed.
Then when it began to look formidable Great Britain
mildly protested and proposed a holiday. Then
Germany showed her teeth and moved swiftly to the
cataclysm of the last four years.
My point is that back of the lying monster that the
German of to-day is, lies a cause, a cause that has
utterly transformed the German of 1848 or eliminated
him. That cause is the inherent savagery of the
Doctrine of Sovereignty; it means force, it means the
sur\dval of the strong, it means war. Germany was
logical. Democracies were not. That Doctrine as
between Democracies is clearly a superstition — but
also a present and a fearsome fact. The second war
will be fought — is now being fought — over what shall
be done with it.
A Political Superstition 245
Through the consciousness of the masses of the world
is now rushing the conviction that while this is a holy
war and must be won by the Allies, somebodj^ sometime
made a great mistake which must be corrected. They
cry ^A-ith St. Paul: ''Who shall dehver me from the
body of this death?" There is forming a deep reso-
lution that this awful tragedy must never be re-
peated. They look for leaders, unconsciously now,
because they are blinded by the dust and blood of the
struggle. But they will soon look consciously. And
what do the great leaders of the world offer as the
solution of this hideous problem?
A League of Nations.
Ci\'ihzation is not much more than a veneer any-
where. Scratch a ci\dhzed, self-governing citizen,
apply certain tests and you soon come to the savage.
I have read that American Indians, college-bred, who
have been and are with the boys ''over there", when
they go over the top bring back trophies but they do
not bring helmets, they bring scalps. We are all so
educated from infancy that when we think of our
country as really menaced by any other country,
civilization slips off like a cloak. As the world is
organized to-day that plan of education is perfectly
sound.
Of course the leadership that shall lift the democratic
world out of this international medievalism ought to
come from this country. And why? Because this
Federal Union in a world devasted and all but ruined
by war, stands as the great and single example of how
sovereignty can be smashed and at the same time
exalted, and war— or at least such wars as this —
avoided. It is as simple as making an egg stand on end.
246 Let Us Have Peace
Smash the poUtical fiction that educates Americans
to beheve that Canadians are their potential enemies
and vice versa. Smash the stupid prejudice which
makes us fear that we couldn't pohtically five with
France while to-day we glorify France and send our
boys to die for her. Stamp out forever the work of
that German-English King who spht the Anglo-Saxon
world one hundred and forty years ago.
The only remedy proposed for this fundamental
fault in civilization is a League of Nations. How the
old prejudices stick! Have we so soon forgotten the
farce and near-tragedy of our own Confederation —
which was a League of Nations? Are we, under the
Federal LTnion, like the shipwrecked men who in their
lifeboat drifted into the waters of the Amazon and were
dying of thirst with fresh water all about them? Who
should know as we do the difference between a League
and a Federation? What other people have been led
from political chaos into ordered liberty by an Alex-
ander Hamilton and a John Marshall? And yet in the
war against this ancient political superstition, already
on, what position we shall take when we become con-
scious of the struggle and formally enter it is in doubt.
Somebody says: "Your theory is all very well but be
practical. What about the tariff?" In the face of the
deadly cost of this war and the shame of permitting a
continuance of conditions that may not only allow but
force a repetition of it, to suggest the tariff as an
argument seems almost a joke. But let us consider
that. Put in one great pyramid all the money collected
at all the custom-houses of all the nations of the world
since the dark ages and it will not equal the pyramid of
debt contracted by the belhgerents since August 1,
A Political Superstition 247
1914. In a League of sovereign nations each would
reserve the right to fix its own tariff of course, and the
tariff would be one of the reasons why any such en-
terprise would fail. So long as Republics assert sov-
ereignty against other Republics the tariff is as proper
and necessary a weapon as machine guns are in actual
war. Between leagued political units the tariff would
remain. Between Federated political units there
could be no tariff; it would be as impossible as a tariff
between Massachusetts and New York, or between
Iowa and Illinois.
That means that not all the world, not even all of
the world that is republican in form, could be im-
mediately admitted to such a Federation. It should
include at first the United States, Great Britain and her
self-governing Dominions, France, Belgium and perhaps
Japan and Italy. These States should not form a
League; they should do in effect what the Thirteen
States did between 1787 and 1789: they should create
a new and greater state related to all member states as
our Federal Government is to our forty-eight States.
Other nations could be admitted as we admit States to
this Federal Union, — whenever they qualified and en-
abling acts were passed.
But again someone says: "Would you voluntarily
quahfy your citizenship in the United States?" To
which I reply: 'T would qualify and thereby glorify it,
just as the citizens of New York exalted their citizen-
ship and their State when they entered the Federal
Union."
The second war will progress to the point where a
long forecast can be made, at the peace table where the
first war is settled. Then the Allies will tell Germany
248 Let Us Have Peace
and her associate nations what their boundaries are
thereafter to be and what they must pay. Following
that the second war will begin to take form.
If the Allies are then so blind to the lessons of history
that they do not see the supreme opportunity and rise
to it; if they patch up a modus vivendi which takes the
form of a mere League in which the units are sovereign-
ties; if they follow as a model our Articles of Con-
federation and not our Federal Constitution; if they
follow the teachings of George Clinton and Patrick
Henry and not the teachings of John Marshall and
Alexander Hamilton, then victory in the first war won
at such fearful cost will be frittered away and the
second war will advance to the condition of physical
combat as soon as the several sovereign allies have
sufficiently recovered in physical strength and resources.
Unquestionably the people of the allied countries are
ready for a great forward step. What of the leaders?
In President Wilson's message to Congress, delivered
December 4, 1917, I thought I heard the voice of
Alexander Hamilton. He then declared directly for a
Union of Peoples and distinguished that from a mere
union of governments; he declared for a Federation as
distinguished from a League.
In his address in New York on September 27, 1918,
he went no farther than a League. In a later utterance*
he apparently abandons all idea of federation and says:
''I, of course, meant to suggest no restriction upon
the free determination of any nation of its own
economic policy, but only that whatever tariff
any nation might deem necessary for its economic
service, be that tariff high or low, it should apply
equa lly to all foreign nations."
*Letter to Senator Simmons.
A Political Superstition 249
Any tariff determined solely by the seeming necessities
of a nation means economic war, means absolute
sovereignty, means international anarchy, means phy-
sical war ultimately.
Ex-President Taft proposes the League to Enforce
Peace. This League would be only our old Confedera-
tion in another form. It is merely a proposal to in-
augurate a program which will inevitably lead to
confusion. It is a proposal to do what the Thirteen
States did and then repudiated as inadequate. It is a
proposal to coerce states admitted to be sovereign.
That was the supreme issue in our Civil War. The
Southern States never admitted that they had really
surrendered sovereignty. If they were still sovereign,
then the Union could be dissolved. Therefore it is that
Lincoln was so utterly right when he said the issue was
not slavery but the preservation of the Union. The
Essence of the League to Enforce Peace is a very old
idea. It has been repeatedly tried; has repeatedly
failed; and has repeatedly been abandoned.
Ex-President Roosevelt rages at all Leagues and
advocates the principles that powerfully influenced
Germany and drove her toward madness. He calls for
universal mihtary training, a great navy, a great army
and defiance to all the world.
As against the later ideas of President Wilson and
the suggestions of Mr. Taft, Mr. Roosevelt is at least
logical; they are not. Mr. Roosevelt accepts the brutal
doctrine of sovereignty, would not apparently abandon
it for any other suggestion, and then frankly faces the
inevitable consequences. Unless we make a funda-
mental change in the relations of states Mr. Roosevelt
is right.
17
250 Let Us Have Peace
Of the three President Wilson alone seems for a
moment to have seen the light, but it quickly faded.
In other nations great names are associated with
approval of a League of Nations. Not one, however,
has definitely stated what the League he has in mind
exactly should be. None dares seemingly to declare
for the necessary order of a new world. None sees,
apparently, that world-democracy will soon face a
crisis as great as that which faced the democracies of
America in 1789. The crisis of 1789 was gloriously
passed under the leadership of George Washington,
Alexander Hamilton and John jMarshall. They led
the people up out of the slough of unconditioned sov-
ereignty, tariffs, suspicion and fear into the rational
democracy of our Federal Union.
Where are the men who are to lead us, and other
democracies, as we face the supreme opportunity which
peace will bring? The crisis will be singularly like that
which followed the Peace of Paris. But with this
difference: in 1783 the Confederation — a League of
Nations — had already been created. It took years to
demonstrate its impotence. When peace comes we
shall have no existing confederation to get rid of. We
shall have a clean blank page on which to write. What
shall we write there?
Within five years the world has lost in money and
manhood more than it ever lost in any pre\ious century,
in any previous two centuries. The appalhng cost and
demoralization are alone sufficient to show that the
fault is fundamental and not personal; it Hes behind
the Kaiser; it is not even national; it reaches back of
Germany to the structure of civihzation itself.
With Germany beaten and a League of Nations
A Political Superstition 251
formed, nothing fundamental has been changed, no
real corrective has been appUed, no assurance has been
given the people of the world that their splendid fight
and unselfish sacrifices have been made worth while.
We need leaders now who will do for the aUied powers
what John Marshall and Alexander Hamilton did for
the Thirteen States. The Federal Constitution was a
revolution in democracy. Never before is there a re-
corded instance where thirteen states which considered
themselves sovereign, voluntarily surrendered their
petty ambitions and merged their sovereignty into a
larger power charged with responsibility for all inter-
state questions — and yet directly representative of the
people. Will the second and greater revolution come?
Thus far our leaders do not lead ; they do not see the
light, or, if they see it, they are afraid of it.
The second war is on, the great political superstition
is approaching the bar of public opinion. If it is found
guilty and condemned, then for the first time the
political faith formulated in our Declaration of In-
dependence will be the faith of Democracy, not merely
of this Democracy, but of Democracy — the right to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will really
inhere in all responsible men and not, as now, only in
those who are prepared, always prepared for war.
Viscount Grey tells a story of a native chief in
Africa, who protested to a British official against
having to pay any taxes at all. The British official
explained that these taxes were used to keep order in
the country, with the result that men and women and
the flocks and herds and possessions of every tribe were
safe, and each could live in its own territory without
fear or disturbance, and that the payment of taxes was
252 Let Us Have Peace
for the good of all. The effect of this explanation was
to make the chief very angry. Before the British came,
he said, he could raid a neighbor, return with captives
and captures of all sorts and be received in triumph by
the women and the rest of his tribe. The need
for protecting his own tribe from similar raids he
was willing to undertake himself. "Now", he said,
"you come here and tell me that I ought to like
to pay taxes to be prevented from doing this, and that
makes me mad".
How much of the frank confession of this simple
African lies concealed in the instinctive objection made
by the average citizen when asked to support a Federa-
tion rather than a League of Nations? I wonder — how
much. The average man approves of a League because
in his deepest heart under that program he reserves
always the right to raid his neighbors; he doesn't think
of it in just that way but that is what it means — that
is what complete sovereignty means.
Already Great Britain and the United States are
preparing for industrial war on each other. The
battle will soon shift from the Marne to the sea, from
the trenches to the Custom Houses. The weapons will
chiefly be those of economic machine guns called tariffs.
The struggle will go on if we form a mere League and
not a Federation, until the nations are healed of this
war, financially and physically, until one nation be-
lieves itself strong enough to stand alone. Then on
some pretext of necessity or of so-called "honor", like
the otherwise peaceful citizen of a frontier town, some-
one will shoot, and the horrors of the last four and a
half years will return.
WHAT SHALL WE DO
WITH VICTORY?
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH VICTORY?
AN ADDRESS, 1918
E HAVE helped to win a complete vic-
tory over the enemies of ordered liberty.
WTiat are we and the Allies — to-
gether the responsible, liberty-lo\ing,
self-governing nations of the world, —
now to do with victory?
By that question I do not mean how shall we dispose
of the immediate problems of territory, of reparation
and restoration, of self-determination and all that.
We can, indeed we must assume that at the peace
table all these matters will be dealt with effectively,
perhaps sternlj^, certainly justly. I mean something
more far-reaching, something that will give the justice
which we assume in all those decisions a wider applica-
tion and a new significance.
This war has been an earth shaker. It has applied
the acid test to ci\'ilization. It has made some things
clear — so clear that we shall fail to understand them
only if we forget our own history, only if we become
morally and socially deaf and bUnd,
As yet we get only a confused impression of all the
mighty forces that make up the panorama — beginning
in that little town in Bosnia in June, 1914, and ending
on the eleventh of November, 1918, with that skulk-
ing, huddled figure in Holland. But that is enough to
18 253
254 Let Us Have Peace
show that the movements in this war were funda-
mental, elemental, and that no one man was wholly''
at fault. It is clear also, I think, that no single people
was wholly at fault. One man must pay the price.
One people must pay the price. You remember what
Christ said:
"Woe unto the world because of offenses * * *
but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."
The primary fault that led to this war hes in the
very structure of civilization.
Kings talk — or did talk — about their sacred persons;
nations, even democracies, talk about their sacred soil.
Both mean practically the same thing. Both are the
product of a condition evolved through centuries, under
which the surface of the earth has been di\dded into
curiously shaped areas around which dead-lines are
drawn and between which is an intangible strip where
there is no law, except that thing of shreds and patches
which we call international law. Every nation, free
or otherwise, is surrounded by potential anarchy. No
Man's Land Hes in the very heart of democracy wait-
ing for the day when it shall be plowed with shells and
drenched with human blood: it Hes, to be specific, on
our northern border and stretches across more than
3,000 miles of mutually unguarded frontier; it Hes on
the sea and lurks in that cryptic phrase "the freedom
of the seas". If I understand what President Wilson
means by freedom of the seas — and I sometimes wonder
whether anyone understands it — Great Britain wiU
ne^er agree to it, and as a matter of fact never could
agree to it. As a consequence the basis of grave differ-
ences between Britain and ourselves is Hkely to be
What Shall We Do With Victory? 255
laid down at the peace table. Already the question
of the relative size of the British Navy and our Xavy
is being mooted. We shall probably soon have a larger
merchant fleet than Great Britain has. Necessarily we
shall plan to protect it. On the other hand the British
Empire from its very nature cannot let her Navy be
less than the Navy of any other nation. The contest
in sea-power that went on so long between Great
Britain and Germany and finally culminated in this
war is apparently about to be transferred to the
British Empire and the United States. Could any-
thing be more stupid — not to say criminal?
That sinister condition springs out of the demands
of sovereignty, which is at once the controlling fact
and the controUing fault in civihzation.
Sovereignty is the supreme law not only over a
nation's people but over its relations with other peoples.
Sovereignties make treaties with other Sovereignties,
it is true, but the interpreters of such treaties are the
nations that make them, each for itself, and some-
times the nations disagree and sometimes they are
interpreted by military necessity and sometimes they
are held to be only "scraps of paper". This has been
the rule of civilization for a long time and is the rule
to-day. Therefore we have between states so-called
questions of ''honor", issues that we admit are non-
justiciable. When we say that a question is non-
justiciable we mean that civilization has no court in
which that question can be adjudicated. Self-respect-
ing, liberty-loving men know that the greatest issues
that can arise in the world, issues that are certain to
arise, can be settled only by the arbitrament of war.
That condition is not the fault of any man or of any
256 Let Us Have Peace
people. It grew out of the evolution of society. But
woe be to liberty-lo\dng men if they fail to correct that
fault when the hour strikes. I hold that the hour has
struck.
Since sovereignty was evolved out of necessity and
semi-savagery, humanity has progressed. Knowledge
has grown. Morals have improved. Science has de-
veloped and abolished the vast spaces and the time
that eailier di\dded nations and justified their fears.
As a result the nations in recent years have been
forced to deal with the problems of modern life while
bound by medieval rules.
The law of national existence still says "Be ready;
you are surrounded by enemies; safety lies only in
3^our own good right arm." That is the voice of
medievalism. The Kaiser heard that voice and heeded
it. The law of national existence says that only the
strong, the ready, the ruthless may sur\dve. That again
is the voice of medievalism. The Kaiser heard that
voice also and heeded it literallj'. How easy from this,
indeed how logical — I had almost said necessary — to
evolve the German philosophy. If a man believes his
life is in danger and sees a way by which he thinks he
can escape, he is certain to evolve reasons and plenty
of them that will justify anj^ act that seems necessary
to his safety. The German leaders taught by Freder-
ick accepted the Doctrine of Sovereignty in its entirety.
They therefore needed a philosophy that would justify
and glorify war, and the German philosophers quickly
pro\ided it. From that to f rightfulness and bestiahty
and lying and unbeUevable cruelty was, for the German,
a short and an easy step, and for those inhuman crimes
Germany must pay.
What Shall We Do With Victoryf 257
The Doctrine has reaped many grim harvests; but
it has now reaped its greatest harvest: eight milHon
men dead; twenty million more maimed in some way;
two hundred and twenty billion dollars of debt. An
unprecedented sacrifice! An unparalleled price paid!
For what? The masses of mankind now mute will
ultimately put that question to the leaders of the
world and to the institutions of the w^orld: FOR WHAT?
Primarily of course for victory. Victory that can
be made greater than all the calamity, worth more
than all the loss, — victory that for the first time in all
the tides of life has placed liberty-loving men in con-
trol of the destinies of mankind.
What shall we do with victory^ In what we do with
\'ictory Hes the answer to the peoples' interrogatory:
FOR WHAT?
Our boys went into this war not merely to defeat
Germany; they went into this war after being swept
by the flame of a righteous wrath; they fought as
crusaders; they conquered as crusaders; they want the
crusader's reward. The people won this war and they
demand relief from an intolerable condition. They
want leaders who will lead, not so-called statesmen
who only dicker and trade. If our leaders do not
soundly use this dearly-bought victory, if they go on
tinkering with worn-out machinery, and sovereignty
as between liberty-loving men is a bit of worn-out
machinery, if they fail to give a satisfactory answer
to that imperative FOR, WHAT?, there will come
here and in all democratic countries a bitter day of
reckoning.
Therefore, and because it lies in the very heart of
the problem, I hold that sovereignty as now enforced
258 Let Us Have Peace
is a greater issue than the specific questions of the
peace table.
We have sovereignty with us always, even though
we do not recognize it, in peace as well as in war.
Do you know for example, of anything quite as
agonizing as the usual ambassadorial speech — post-
prandial or official? Why does your Ambassador —
who is not infrequentlj' a man of parts, even of elo-
quence — indulge only in harmless and stupid plati-
tudes? Why does he verbally pick his way along after
dinner as gingerly as though he were inspecting a
TNT factory? The reason is ob\'ious; he represents
sovereignt}'. There is gunpowder even in times of
peace in the relations of friendly powers. The rela-
tions of one absolute authoritj^ with another absolute
authority create a No Man's Land between, which
may already be full of old shell holes and your
Ambassador must watch his steps.
If we admit that the fault which led to this war
cannot be charged wholly to one man or to one nation
but is fundamental, let us beware of assuming that
victory corrects that fault. It does nothing of the
sort. Neither is the fault corrected merely because
Uberty-loving men now control the destinies of the
world. Liberty-loving men can correct the fault.
But will they?
PoUtical leaders everj'where know that there is a
widespread demand for a fundamental corrective.
The response to that demand has taken the form of a
powerful movement which aims to establish a League
between the United States and the Allied Powers.
A proposal of that sort will hold the centre of the
stage at the Peace Congress. Can any mere League of
What Shall We Do With Victory? 259
Sovereign States discharge the present duty and meet
the present obUgations of free men? Will it correct
the fundamental Fault? I think it may rather em-
phasize the fault; and for that conviction I believe I
can give substantial reasons.
Perhaps the frankest concrete statement of what a
League of Nations is and must be, fundamentally,
ever put out is contained in the London Spectator of
October 26.
After sajdng that the fate of the ci\'ilized world and
of all human progress hangs on whether we take the
right or the wrong path in dealing with the problem of
a League of Nations, it submits a sketch of a Con-
stitution for such a League.
It then makes the amazing statement that the basis
of its suggestion is "the extraordinarily able, far-seeing,
and well-drawn document which, to the great credit of
the English-speaking race, was produced by the Inde-
pendent American Colonies directly after they had
freed themselves from the control of the British Parlia-
ment".
By this the Spectator means not our Federal Con-
stitution, but the Articles of Confederation drawn in
1777, adopted in 1781 and abandoned in 1789.
At first blush this statement is a facer. An Ameri-
can can hardly read without anger the suggestion that
we can now save the world by a plan which we have
already tried out, a plan which was so impotent in
practice that the government created by it lost first
the respect of the nations of Europe, then the respect
of the constituent states, and then its own self-respect.
Our fathers had to abandon it to preserve their liberties.
But while the suggestion is shocking, it is useful. It
260 Let Us Have Peace
flashes upon our consciousness as almost no other
illustration could just what is meant by a League of
Sovereignties, and drives home the insufficiency and
danger of any such plan.
Observe the first paragraph in the Spectator's pro-
posed Constitution: ,
Only sovereign states are entitled to be members
of the League and each member retains its sover-
eignty, freedom and independence.
That is the essence of our old Articles of Confedera-
tion, and the chief cause of the Confederation's failure.
Observe now the opening words in the Preamble of
our Federal Constitution:
"We, the people."
Here you have two great systems under which states
may unite: the first is Confederation, the second is
Federation. It has been our high pri\'ilege to test both.
In the first system the units are states, under the
Spectator's plan sovereign states; as the thirteen
states claimed to be under our Confederation;
In the second the units are individuals on whom the
government acts directly;
In the first no effective court for the adjudication of
questions now non- justiciable is possible;
In the second effective courts are at once created and
non-justiciable questions disappear;
From a government formed under the first a partici-
pating state may retire;
From a government formed under the second no
state may retire except by successful rebelHon;
Government under the first can have no real power
of taxation ;
What Shall We Do With Victory? 261
Government under the second must have full power
of taxation;
All governments formed under the first have been
impotent and ephemeral;
This government, founded under the second, is one
hundred and twenty-nine years old and never so
strong as now.
To ask free men who know history, when faced with
problems singularly like the problems our fathers faced
in 1788 and 1789, to adopt as the basis of world sanity
and peace, the principles of the Confederation rather
than the principles of our Constitution is almost as
grotesque and reactionary as it would be to ask us now
to tear up the Federal Constitution itself.
Having slain autocracy shall free men now destroy
the system that gave irresponsible authority its oppor-
tunity, its incentive? Or shall the free nations of the
world enter into the same old competition in a different
form? Shall w'e separate from our Allies; re-erect the
old barriers; reconstruct the economic machine-gun
nests called tariffs; call up all the old prejudices; re-
habilitate the old fears; limp off each to its own bit of
earth; reassert the doctrine of unconditioned sover-
eignty and proceed to get ready for the next war?
"Ah", says the advocate of a League, "that is just
what we propose to prevent." I answer that a League
of Sovereignties not only will not prevent all that;
it will compel it. To qualify as a member of such a
League a state must be sovereign and must act as a
sovereignty; that means the dead-line of frontiers, and
tariffs, and all the ancient fears and prejudices, and
continued preparation for war. With or without a
League the United States and the Allies by the sheer
262 Let Us Have Peace
centrifugal force of Sovereignty will rapidly revert to
the status quo. The only alternative is the alternative
that our fathers faced and accepted in 1789: Federa-
tion,
It is clear, if we would save ourselves alive, that we
must do one of two things : either arm to the teeth and
be ready by land and by sea and in the air — and every
other considerable power must do the same thing; or
as between ourselves and Great Britain at least, we
must qualify the Doctrine of Sovereignty. As long as
the great nations preserve full sovereignty none can
disarm. None would dare to.
Already a semi-official statement has been made that
in any event Great Britain will not surrender control
of the seas. Who under existing proposals will say
that she could safely take any other position? If she
surrenders control of the seas to a mere loose League,
the members of which retain their full sovereignty, she
imperils the liberties of the world. If she alone main-
tains supremacy of the seas, that ought to end all dis-
cussion of any proposed League, because a compact
preceded by a concession of overwhelming power to
one of the contracting parties would be no compact at
all. If Great Britain and the United States were
federated, the questions that lie on the seas would
disappear as between them and would substantially
disappear from the world, because that federation
w^ould easily be master of war.
The nations of the earth, even the free nations, are
now exactly like a group of naturally peaceable, law-
abiding men in a frontier town where there is no real
law. Each walks about armed, with his gun-hand
free. He has no desire to shoot, but he knows that
What Shall We Do With Victory? 263
someone will shoot sooner or later, and when he hears
that there is an outlaw around he puts on another gun.
He knows that the man who shoots first has an advan-
tage. The pistol shot that shall set that town aflame,
as the pistol shot in Sarajevo set the world on fire,
may come from a perfectly respectable man over some
question of honor, or someone may have a fit of nerves
and shoot, or a gun may accidentally be discharged —
in any one of these contingencies each knows that the
shooting will instantly become general.
Put those same men in relation where law rules, where
no questions of "honor" are tolerated, where no differ-
ences can arise that are non-justiciable, and none of
them would think of shooting, indeed none could be-
cause none would carry a gun. The outlaw would
automatically disappear from that community.
Government under the Articles of Confederation —
which was a true League of Nations — gives us a perfect
historic background; here were thirteen states more or
less armed, eyeing each other sharply, with their gun-
hands free. Each state claimed to be sovereign, each
levied tariffs, each robbed its neighbors as it could,
each cordially hated all the others and did just what a
Sovereign State might be expected to do as a member
of a Confederation. Under those conditions as soon
as the unifying pressure of war was removed govern-
ment became a travesty and narrowly escaped being a
tragedy.
These same States, when they ceased to be a League,
when they became a Federation, give us another
historic background and a startling contrast. Govern-
ment at once became effective; questions of ''honor"
disappeared; national credit was established, and in-
264 Let Us Have Peace
side of two years the thirteen original commonwealths
began that expansion which has since added thirty-five
stars to the original flag.
Here you have the problem and its solution. Here
you have the necessary fundamental change. Here
you have the fundamental fault corrected. The people
everj^vhere demand a program which will banish such
wars as this. It is indeed time to ask:
What shall we do with victory?
Shall we go on carrying guns? Or within the Anglo-
Saxon world at least — and why not within the Anglo-
Latin world — -shall we institute the reign of law?
Shall we go on regarding Canadians, for example, as
potential enemies? Or shall we smash the barriers that
divide the Anglo-Saxon world? We w^ere di\'ided one
hundred and forty-two years ago by the act of a mad
German King. If another mad German King should be
instrumental in reuniting us it might go far to rescue
the reputation of both Kings from utter infamy.
What does the widespread movement for a League
rather than for a Federation of Nations really mean?
Its advocates are patriots. Some of them are great
patriots. They include William H. Taft, Lloyd George,
Viscounts Grey and Bryce and President Wilson. Once
and once only has the President sounded the prophetic
note, once and once only, has he advocated federation.
That was in his address to the Congress, December 4,
1917. None of the others named, within my know-
ledge, has ever risen to the height touched by ]Mr.
Wilson in that address.
Does not this movement reveal a consciousness on
the part of its advocates that unqualified nationality
is now a menace? Isn't it an admission that Sover-
What Shall We Do With Victory? 265
eignty is the old bottle into which we are otherwise
obliged to pour the new wine of modern life? Isn't it
also a confession, a less than frank confession, that we
know what ought to be done and are afraid to do it?
Isn't it a compromise, a bit of patchwork? Will it not
certainly fail now as it failed when we tried it earlier?
This is the hour for action. Not again in a century
unless we grasp this opportunity will the United States
and the British Empire be so near each other. Not
again in a century shall we otherwise see Britain and
ourselves even temporarily yielding sovereignty to
France.
A Military League of Nations gave us the confusion
and disaster that so cruelly punished the Allies up to
the hour when President Wilson insisted on a unified
command under Foch. A temporary Federation of
military power quickly gave us victory.
vSince Alexander Hamilton thundered for the Con-
stitution in Poughkeepsie, since INIarshall and Madison
pleaded for the Constitution in Richmond, liberty-
loving men have faced no such crisis and opportunity
as this.
What shall we do with victory?
Shall we make German}^ pay? Yes.
But there are crimes that cannot be punished ade-
quately and Germany has committed them. There
are losses that are absolute.
Shall we restore Alsace and Lorraine to France and
end the ambitions of irresponsible power? Yes.
But having done that and having established all the
points on which the armistice was based, what have
we really achieved?
Have we satisfied the demands of our crusaders?
266 Let Us Have Peace
Have we answered the imperative FOR WHAT?
of the people?
Have we corrected any fundamental fault in the
relations of nations?
Have w^e eliminated non- justiciable questions?
Have we created any competent court where issues
that otherwise mean war can be judicially determined?
Have we been true to our own great traditions?
I think not.
Let us hope that President Wilson at the peace table
or afterwards will return to his great utterance of
December 4, 1917, and insist as he then did that the
post-bellum partnership of free nations, to use his
exact words: " * * * must be a partnership of
peoples, not a mere partnership of governments", — a
Federation in other words, and not a Confederation.
. A post-bellum League of Sovereign States would
lead us back and not forw^ard, it would lead toward
confusion and not toward order. Before we join
another Confederation we must forget or repudiate
about the brightest page in our history.
A post-bellum Federation, of the Anglo-Saxon world
at least, — and why not of the Anglo-Latin w^orld? —
would take its inspiration from Independence Hall and
not from Potsdam; it would react to the philosophy of
the Federalist and not to the philosophy of Bernhardi ;
it would within that w^orld correct the fundamental
fault; it would solve their problems on the seas; it
would create between the federated states a court
in which issues that otherwise mean war could be
adjudicated; it would move the world away from the
shambles of sovereignty and hasten the coming of the
day when "the war drum throbs no longer and the
battle flags are furled".
THANKSGIVING:
A RELIGIOUS FESTIVAL
FROM THE NYLIC AGENTS' BULLETIN, NOV. 23, 1918.
N THE twenty-eighth day of this month, as
indicated by President Wilson, the citizens
of the United States, in accordance with
their reUgious faith, each group in its own
place and way will render thanks for the
speedy ending of the great war.
It is difficult to make our thank-offering seem un-
selfish. We have relatively suffered so little.
We are thankful for the happy circumstance that
placed us in the Western world so far away from the
ambitions of Czars and Kaisers. We are thankful for
our great forebears, who so wisely laid the foundations
of the Repubhc that we were a united and liberty-
loving people when the great crisis came.
We are thankful that for a hundred years hberty-
lo\dng men and women had come to us from all the
earth and swelled our man-power and our material
wealth to unmatched figures.
We are thankful that a tempest of righteous wrath
swept over us when the Lusitania was sunk, when
Edith Cavell was shot.
We are thankful that when after infinite forbearance
our President called us to arms, the response was so
complete and so undivided.
207
268 Let Us Have Peace
We are thankful that we are the fathers and mothers
and brothers and sisters of the boys who stopped the
Hun at Chateau-Thierrj^ and through the Argonne
Forest drove back the Kaiser's picked troops and broke
his Une.
We are proud that half-trained boys coming from
the homes of free men are able to hold and beat back
the trained troops of militarism.
We are thankful that our boj^s were clean fighters,
that the children love them, that women were safe
with them.
We are thankful because in a supreme test all our
fondest beliefs as to what makes a sound citizenry were
sustained, because the descendants of the men who
fought at Lexington and Yorktown showed themselves
worthy of their great sires.
We are proud that we entered the war for no selfish
motive, glad that bestiality and cruelty and lying and
sordid aims could rouse us to righteous wrath and send
us across three thousand miles of water to stand in
defense of human rights.
We mourn with those who mourn in our own and in
all lands.
But chiefly we are thankful because of this:
Men who love liberty are for the first time in
control of the destinies of the world.
This creates a great opportunity and we are thankful
that we, at a critical time, were able to strike one of
the decisive blows that created this unprecedented
condition.
We have paid a heavy price, but very little when
compared with what France and Belgium and Serbia
Thanksgiving: A Religious Festival 269
and Poland and Armenia have paid — vastly less than
Italy and the British Empire have paid.
We have tried to express our obligation to those who
have suffered in our stead, through the Red Cross and
the other relief organizations. As a country we have
given privately several hundred million dollars for re-
lief, and through our Government we have fed the
hungry and clothed the naked. All this is a form of
thanks, inadequate, but something.
Let us hope that a year hence when the nations have
faced their duty and opportunity, when they have at
least begun the reorganization of the world, we may
be even more thankful because the people of the earth
have been so united that neither militarism nor the
foolish pride of republics can ever again sow the earth
with death.
THE PROPOSED LEAGUE OF NATIONS
AN ADDRESS AT THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE FOUNDING OF ALPHA OF NEW JERSEY, PHI BETA KAPPA
RUTGERS COLLEGE, FEBRUARY 22, 1919
CONSTITUTION for a League of Nations
has at last been submitted to the world.
The New York Sun in its issue of
February 15 stated in a paragraph the
problem which the proposed constitution
undertakes to solve and the reaction of the average
man to the solution proposed. It said:
". . . . every right-minded man or woman in this re-
pubUc would hail with joy and support with eagerness any
workable plan for the prevention of the horrors of war not
involving the surrender of that which to the American heart
is dearer and more desirable even than world peace itself,
namely, our unimpaired national sovereignty, our com-
plete independence of supergovernment of any sort, our
freedom of initiative in all matters affecting our national
interests, our right to consider America first."
Unimpaired national sovereignty, complete inde-
pendence of any sort of supergovernment, freedom of
initiative in all matters of national interest, the right
to consider one's country first are no dearer to Amer-
icans than they are to Englishmen, to Frenchmen, to
Italians and to the Japanese. Let it be stated at the
outset that neither we nor the EngHsh nor the French
nor the Italians nor the Japs can preserve these pre-
rogatives in their entirety and at the same time avoid
270
The Proposed League of Nations 271
the horrors of war. That is a very brief statement of
the whole case. Conversely" the price of peace is
supposed to be the entire loss of these prerogatives.
On that fiction — because it is a fiction — militarism has
flourished, sovereignty has became a fetish. Peace
demands no such price. The things that must be
surrendered to achieve lasting peace, are false pride,
fear, intolerance, selfishness.
Let me give a simple but concrete illustration. At
the corner of 42d Street and Fifth Avenue in New York
City there is at most hours of the day tremendous
pressure of traffic. Traffic is controlled and expedited,
accidents and confusion are avoided by a traffic police-
man. He controls traffic with a wave of his hand or
by blowing a whistle; he controls it because the men
who are crowding to get past that corner know that
behind the wave of the hand stands the power of the
municipality, the City of New York, a corporation
created by the people who use the streets, and con-
trolled by them sometvnes. No driver of a car
surrenders his self-respect or his individual initiative
by obeying that wave of the hand. In order to keep
traffic moving the driver, through the policeman,
simply recognizes the rights of others. Remove that
control at almost any time of the day for a period of
ten minutes and we all know what would happen.
There would be confusion, collision,, probable loss of
life and an utter congestion and stoppage of traffic.
The great thoroughfares of the world are in these days
as crowded as is the intersection of these two great
streets. The nations that increasingly use these high-
ways are naturally as indifferent to the rights of others
as the ordinary chauffeur is. Each is thinking first
272 Let Us Have Peace
of its own rights and needs and ambitions and sov-
ereignty. International crossroads which are now
substantially uncontrolled must be controlled for
exactly the same reason that New York traffic must be
controlled. Any plan which aims to avoid war but
does not control these highways is certain to fail.
By the highways of the world, I mean the con-
tact of nation with nation, of people with people.
These highways are crowded because the ends of the
earth have fallen together. There are no foreign lands.
War, wherever it begins hereafter, will almost certainly
sweep over the whole earth. The days of isolation are
over. Between states there are no dreamy sunlit
spaces, no great dividing rivers, no towering mountain
ranges, no impassable deserts, no vast mysterious
oceans. Whether we will or no we are forced onto
these highways; our duty and destiny place us there.
We take with us when we fare forth our prejudices, our
fears, our ignorance, our superciliousness, our national
vanities. The other travelers who jostle us carry the
same sort of luggage. Each has been taught to believe
that the preservation of the prerogatives named by
the Sun is the first duty of every nation. Only a
hermit people could preserve these prerogatives now.
The day of hermit states and hermit statesmanship
has passed. Take that message to Washington! Proper
control of these highways will no more invade the
essential prerogatives of states than the policeman
when he controls street traffic endangers or invades
the natural rights of chauffeurs.
Because of the elemental fears voiced by the Su?},
the United States Senate will probably reject or refuse
to concur in this Constitution as now offered. It will
The Proposed League of Nations 273
be rejected amongst other reasons because of the belief
that it violates the provisions of the Federal Con-
stitution.
A charter under which the self-governing nations of
the world are to live in peace must necessarily involve
modifications of the present fundamental laws of sig-
natory states having written constitutions. There is
already a sharp difference of opinion here as to whether
the document worked out by President Wilson and his
associates in Paris calls for modifications in our funda-
mental law. If it doesn't, then it will achieve nothing.
If it does, it cannot be adopted on our behalf by a
two-thirds vote of the Senate. The Constitution of
the United States cannot be changed in that way. To
me it is clear that President Wilson and his associates
sought to avoid the necessities of any change in the
constitutions of signatory countries, and in doing this
they have avoided the real issue. They have under-
taken to place a policeman at the crossroads of the
world; but without such constitutional changes in the
signatory countries that the policeman can trace his
authority back to the people, all those who use the
world highways will quickly recognize that there is no
sufficient power back of the wave of his hand, and
after a little his signal will be entirely disregarded.
These reflections do not lead to any very optimistic
conclusion. They imply that the plan submitted while
probably insufficient is nevertheless so radical that our
people through their representatives in the Senate will
not accept even that. People sometimes will accept a
very radical idea, if it clearly solves a perplexing prob-
lem; and again will reject a less radical idea on the plea
that it is too radical, because it does not clearly give
274 Let Us Have Peace
something desirable in the place of the errors it pro-
poses to correct. If the members of the Constitu-
tional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia had hmited
themselves to the things which they were commissioned
to do, if they had patched up the old Articles of Con-
federation and presented to the Thirteen States for
ratification, not an obviously sufficient plan, but merely
more weak compromises, it is altogether probable that
their work would have been rejected because it was too
radical, and the confusion that preceded that Congress
would have gone on into disaster.
But with a courage so splendid that men have ever
since wondered at it, they threw aside entirelj^ the old
instrument of government and presented a new one
which did not modify the sovereignty of the people
but did gravely modify the sovereignty of the several
states. They offered a new government of which the
people were nevertheless to be masters. They did not
destroy either sovereignty or freedom of initiative; they
transferred both to a larger world. They did not de-
stroy the states ; they created a greater state. For the
limited opportunities of weak and quarreling states
they offered the unhmited opportunities of a great
nation. This was radical, very radical; but it appealed
to the imagination of men ; it brought out a reaction of
a new sort. That new instrument of government was
not free from compromise, in fact it was based on
compromise, without which it probably could not have
been adopted. But fundamentally it struck a new
and a great note. There isn't a principle in this pro-
posed charter that wasn't old when the Congress of
1787 met. Every process in it has been tested and
long since found wanting.
The Pro-posed League of Nations 275
The great thing in our Federal Constitution, which
distinguishes it from all other charters, which struck
the imagination of men and has been the prime cause
of its success, is entirely absent from the proposed
Constitution of the League of Nations. The Federal
Constitution created a government which acts directly
on the individual and only incidentally on the states,
and is, therefore, the individual's government and
not a supergovernment at all. The proposed Con-
stitution of the League does not attempt to do this.
The units of this League are to be sovereignties,
acting as sovereignties, each preserving unimpaired its
national prerogatives, its complete independence; and
notwithstanding certain stipulations about delaying
war, economic pressure, etc., each in the last analysis
will preserve its freedom of initiative. Any body of
men which controlled sovereignties as such would be a
real supergovernment and that would be intolerable.
The stipulations in this proposed charter which require
certain seeming concessions and binding agreements
between sovereign states are sufficiently radical to
create alarm but not strong enough to bring assurance.
This will undoubtedly cause it to be modified and
perhaps finally rejected; whereas if the instrument were
stronger, if it clearly and with justice between the
signatories controlled the forces that now mean war
the people of the self-governing nations might readily
force its adoption. In other words if it is finally
rejected the real reason for that action will be that the
instrument is too weak.
The conclusion from all this is that the agony and
suffering of this unprecedented war have taught our
leaders and the leaders of other nations very little,
276 Let Us Have Peace
The elemental appeal of sovereignty is still paramount
here and probably in all the nations. Woodrow Wilson
is obviously not a George Washington, Lloyd George
is clearly not an Alexander Hamilton, and Clemenceau
is neither a James Aladison nor a John Marshall. At
this great crisis of affairs the world has no leaders com-
parable to those who led the Thirteen States in 1787.
Then the leadership came from the top. It looks now
as though the leadership that is to save the world and
human Hberty will ultimately come from the masses.
Meantime the tragedy of war will be repeated and
again repeated with ever-increasing horrors.
The outstanding fact of the hour is this:
In the second great crisis of representative and free
government — the first having been reached in 1787,
and successfully passed in 1789 — the self-governing
people of the world lack leaders. The great opportunity
is passing. Where we expected bold and constructive
leadership we have only methods that have already
been tested and rejected. The League proposed will
achieve little if any more than the Hague Tribunal
achieved. Fundamentally it is the same idea; funda-
mentally it is our old Articles of Confederation and
utterly fails to satisfy the demands of the hour.
The people of the world have waited patiently, not
more for the details of what is to be done to the twin
criminals, Germany and Turkey, than for the details
of the New Plan that shall end war. The people have
understood all along that whatever the punishment
meted out to Germany, little in the long run would be
gained unless the fundamental conditions which gave
Germany her opportunity and incentive were changed.
This charter changes nothing fundamental. We might
The Proposed League of Nations 277
#
have anticipated that from such reports as previously
came to us. The methods of the Paris Congress of 1919
seem not greatly different from the methods of the
Congress of Vienna in 1815. There have been fewer
state carriages, less gold lace, possibly a little more
freedom of speech, but no real advance. Consider in
how many ways these two Congresses are strikingly
alike and at the same time what strange contradictions
have been brought about through the whirligig of time :
They deal now with the Kaiser and his works; their
predecessors dealt with Napoleon and his works. Both
approached their tasks bound by the medieval rules
of sovereignty. The groupings of the nations are
different. Now the great offender is a German; then
he was a Frenchman. The decisive blow at Waterloo
was struck by a German. The Bliicher of this war was
an American named Pershing, who also arrived just
in time.
Because of his speech to the Congress on the fourth
of December, 1917, it is only justice to President Wilson
to assume that in his struggle for a charter he tried to
get something adequate. In that address he demanded
"a partnership of peoples, not a mere partnership of
governments", — a Federation not a Confederation. In
this Charter he does not offer us a Federation ; whether
or not he advocated that plan will probably be known
only when the records of this Peace Congress are un-
locked.
Can two solid bodies occupy the same space at the
same time? Can five great and forty odd smaller
absolute authorities exist on this little globe without
war? The answer to the last question must be as
unequivocal as the answer to the first. As well have
278 Let Us Have Peace
two or three laws of gravitation and then hope not to
wreck the universe. If two sohd bodies cannot occupy
the same space at the same time then the peace dele-
gates in trying at once to preserve existing sovereignties
and secure peace were merely fussing with worn-out
machinery'. As a matter of fact the peace delegates in
this charter propose that two (perhaps five) solid bodies
shall hereafter occupy the same space at the same time.
Of course it can't be done. Naturally no sovereignty
will put itself and its future either politically or
economically in the power of another sovereignty;
that would be to jump into space.
But while no people will yield their sovereignty to
another nation, it does not follow that they will not
yield something to a new authority in whose creation
and control they have a just part. The code duello
ended when men handed their duelling pistols not to
each other but to a court which they themselves
created, whose authority they themselves supported,
a court behind which stood their own sheriff.
The people of New York did not surrender sov-
ereignty to the people of ^^irginia, nor did the people
of Virginia surrender sovereignty to the people of New
York, vrhen both joined in the creation of the Federal
Government.
When President Wilson closed the reading to the
Congress of the terms of the armistice, he di'amatically
said : " The war thus comes to an end. " He should have
added: ''And here beginneth the industrial war — in
preparation for the greater war that is to come."
The law of self-preservation, misapplied it is true,
perverted, selfishly twisted, but dominant and in-
exorable, was the cause of the great military struggle
The Proposed League of Nations 279
now closing. The same law blindly followed is con-
fusing the men who are attempting to create better
international relations and is even now inaugurating
an economic war the end of which no man can foresee.
TMiile we are planning the end of wars and expecting
the birth of a new world, we read such matter as this
in the editorial page of the New York Sim on Feb-
ruary seventh:
"But the plain truth is it is no business of ours if Great
Britain needs or wishes to shut foreign goods out of its home
markets; it is the business of the people of the United King-
dom. The same holds as to France. It holds as to Itah'.
It holds as to any nation whether it fought alongside us in
the war or fought against us."
And again the Sun says :
"Big Power or Little Power, military' foe or miUtary friend,
Orient or Occident, the nation's first duty is to itself. The
first need is to feed its own. The first law is to survive."
And further the Sun says :
"Nothing that can be spoken out of the mouth of a super-
lative visionary, nothing that can be wTitten into the
articles of the Peace Conference, nothing that can be in-
jected into the vaporings of a League of Nations, will ever
nullify the supreme law of self-preservation. Nothing can."
Was it then "no business of ours" or of Great Brit-
ain's that Germany was plainly building a colossal
war machine? Was it no business of ours that the
Kaiser was more medieval than Attila; no business of
ours that German leaders everywhere justified and
glorified war and drank always to "The Day"? We
found out that it was our business after all. To settle
that business we sent 2,000,000 men over seas, lost
100,000 of our 3^outh, and contracted a debt that our
grand-children may not see wholly liquidated. But
280 Let Us Have Peace
under the existing relations of sovereign states the
German menace was held to be no business of ours.
Because of Germany's unimpaired sovereignty^, her
complete independence of any control, her freedom of
initiative in all matters affecting her national in-
terests, her right to consider Germany first, (the Sun's
sacred prerogatives although made in Germany) no
other nation could interfere while she openly made
these preparations. It became our business only when
the tragedy moved on to the Fifth Act and filled the
world with mourning.
In the light of this terrible experience shall we con-
tinue to say that nothing can be spoken or wTitten into
the articles of the Peace Conference or injected into
the relations of states that will ever nullify the supreme
law of self-preservation? That is what the cave man
once believed, but he found after a while that life was
better and safer when he had joined his family with
other families, and he found a larger opportunity still
by creating a clan, and still greater surety by creating
a tribe, and an existence that was still fairer and more
worth while by creating a nation.
The economic philosophy of the New York Sun is as
savage as the political philosophy of the Kaiser. It
starts with the same premiss and ends with the same
conclusion : WAR ; but it unquestionably reflects a large
body of public opinion.
Shocked by the horrors of the recent struggle, pa-
triots and statesmen have been trying to formulate
plans through which there shall hereafter be no recur-
rence of those conditions. It would not be fair to say
that their discussions have been futile even though
they have not been bold, even though they have
The Proposed League of Nations 281
brought forth a Plan which is more redolent of the
Eighteenth Century than of the Twentieth. They have
had a very large educational effect. There is no ex-
planation of the welcome which President Wilson re-
ceived from the masses of the people of Europe except
that they believed he represented some plan by
which the nations shall hereafter be so related to
each other that the horrors which they have just en-
dured can never be repeated.
The agony of the war itself and the peace discus-
sions that have grown out of it have created a longing
which President Wilson at times seemed to interpret
as no other national leader did.
Leagues and peace societies have been active and
numerous since the war began. Most of the pro-
moters of these leagues or societies, if squarely faced
with the charge that their plan was inadequate, that it
did not modify the law of sovereignty, which is the
great cause of war, that it did not change the law of
the jungle, which is about all there is of international
law, would admit the charge. "But" they answered
"we must take what we can get; a post-bellum pro-
gram which asks the great nations to qualify their
sovereignty could never be adopted, and therefore we
are fighting for something that we feel is attainable."
The charter before us is clearly the product of that
philosophy. The lessons of a thousand years of gov-
ernment seem to have made little impression. The
Peace Commissioners have looked at facts and appar-
ently have not understood them. The unprecedented
action of the thirteen American States in 1789 seems to
convey no object lesson to the world leaders in 1919.
It is undoubtedly a calamity that no group of strong
282 Let Us Have Peace
men came forward months ago with a clear declara-
tion that a new power (not a super-government) must
be created by Great Britain, the United States and
France at least, containing wdthin its authority and
organization a court before which certain differences
called non-justiciable, and rarely settled except on the
field of battle, could be soundly disposed of. That
would involve exactly such a transfer of sovereignty
as New York made when it entered the Federal Union.
If such an arrangement was made between Great
Britain, France, the United States and the Dominions
of Great Britain, each would have to make a like
transfer. No outstanding Society or Peace organiza-
tion has stood clearly for that idea.
The proposed charter would settle these problems
by arbitration and councils of conciliation. But arbi-
tration and conciliation are not sufficient. Differences
between New York and Massachusetts are not arbi-
trated neither are they settled through boards of con-
ciliation; they go in the first instance before the Su-
preme Court of the United States and its judgment is
final.
WTien the Kaiser, his military and naval com-
manders and his bankers, decided on the 5th of July,
1914, to bring on a European war, they were perfectly
consistent; they merely translated the philosophy of
sovereignty and self-preservation into action. In re-
verting economically to the law of the jungle, as we
and all nations are preparing to do, we and they are
only accepting the logical consequences of our medieval
international politics.
The immediate calamity of all this may not instantly
be clear. It does not lie wholly in this too weak
The Proposed League of Nations 283
instrument which will probably make little impression
on the world; it comes closer home. We like to say
that the hope of the world rests with the United States
and Great Britain. And beyond question that state-
ment is true. But a new menace arises. Through
the demands of the law of self-preservation, a law
which England in declaring an embargo has already
invoked, the contest between the pohtical ideals of
Germany and the rest of the world which culminated
on November 1 1 last is likely to be shifted and become
an industrial and economic as w^ell as a political con-
test, with no one knows what results, between the two
great branches of the Anglo-Saxon world. The two
great aggressive, creative, constructive and dominant
nations of the world are hereafter to be the United
States and the British Empire. In the economic strug-
gle that is coming they will be face to face everywhere.
They will have between them more points of contact,
more causes of friction, more rivalries, both on sea and
land, in manufacturing and in finance, than all the
other nations of the world combined.
To say that good will, a common speech, a common
literature, and a common inheritance of law and tra-
ditions, is a sufficient safeguard against that friction
and rivalry is sheer folly. The League proposed
changes nothing fundamental and will not meet these
perils. We ought to know that without discussion.
This, therefore, is the immediate calamity-: the two
great liberty-loving nations which should co-operate
are about to enter on a program of strong, perhaps
bitter competition. If we are not to ignore all that
history teaches we know what that means sooner or
later.
284 Let Us Have Peace
At no distant date we shall have passed the time
(and discussion of this charter will help the time to
pass), when the co-operation that leads to federation
is possible. Through the rivalries of commerce and
the demands of sovereignty, it is fairly certain that the
relations between Great Britain and the United States
will soon be such that the great opportunity created
by the war will have been utterly frittered away.
People are apt to underestimate the power of a
written instrumentality of government. Men say that
after all the efficiency of government in a republic
depends almost wholly on the character and the intelli-
gence of the people. They point to some of the South
American republics as evidence that the written instru-
ment doesn't mean much and that a government isn't
necessarily republican because it claims to be. Which
proves that a good instrumentality may be badly
used — that is all.
On the other hand men say that in such countries as
Great Britain and the United States where the people
are generally educated and understand the obUgations
of citizenship, everything would be all right an3n\'ay.
And to confirm that they tell us that Great Britain is
more democratic than our own country, although it
has a King and a Court and an hereditary legislative
body. It isn't true that Great Britain is more demo-
cratic than we are. With King and Court and primo-
geniture and a House of Lords, Great Britain is a
republic only in part. The body of traditions and
precedents which make up what is known as the Eng-
lish Constitution cannot be called an instrumentality
of government similar to our written Constitution or
to any written Constitution. It is the product of
The Proposed League of Nations 285
hundreds of years of struggle. It was not struck from
the brains of men at a dozen sittings as the proposed
Constitution for a League of Nations was, and as any
Constitution for anything Uke the purpose proposed
must be.
The form of the Constitution of any League is there-
fore \'ital. Our own history proves this contention to
the hilt. The Thirteen States claimed severally to be
sovereign. They had no body of precedents under
which they could unite. They had to write out an
instrument, and the instrument they created was called
"Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union".
In the government created by that instrument the
units were states, states which yielded little to the
central government. The Continental Congress had
no power to raise revenue by taxation and so really
had no power at all. Government under this instru-
ment was a failure and after 1783 became a farce. The
United States as a power became a jest amongst the
nations.
Then the Federal Constitution was drafted. After
a notable struggle it was adopted. The Articles of
Confederation were entirely abandoned. The trans-
formation which followed is one of the most striking
facts in the history of governments. The people were
the same, the states were the same, the problem was
the same. But how amazingly different the result.
From confusion and impotence the United States
passed to a condition of order and power; from no
public credit to sound public credit; from the con-
tempt of the world to its respect.
The written instrument of government was all
powerful in that transformation. It was a great in-
20
286 Let Us Have Peace
strument; it is still, notwithstanding the drift of recent
years away from the representative form which was
the secret of its success.
The problem now facing the free, self-governing
states of the world is not new ; it has been solved. We
need make no great experiment as our fathers did.
Apply this acid test to the instrument proposed:
Will it, if adopted, transform the relations of the
free states of the world as our Federal Constitution
transformed the relations of the thirteen states, or
anything like it? I think not.
We went into the war to slay the Blond Beast. We
were swept in by our self-respect. We were hot with
righteous wrath.
Now we are called on to furnish the most powerful
navy in the world and a large standing army. WTiy?
Is it because we helped to slay the Beast? That should
have made such preparations unnecessary. Is it
because we are still stirred by wrath? No; the crisis
of wrath is passing. Why then?
Because we now face not the Beast but the con-
ditions that gave the Beast its opportunity. Because
we see that the real causes of war exist constantly
even between nations whose people would hke to be
friends. Because under the rules of sovereigntj^ we
must now arm against our friends. A great navy means
what? Little except fear of Great Britain. There is
no one else to fear. A great navy means that we in-
tend ultimately to dispute the control of the seas with
Great Britain. Criminal folly as that is, the law of
sovereignty, of self-preservation demands it. And it
will continue to demand it with all the horrible pos-
sibihties involved until the Anglo-Saxon world is re-
The Proposed League of Nations 287
united — not by surrender of one nation to another,
but by the creation of a new power made up of all the
English-speaking world.
The League of Nations proposed would probably
lead us back and not forward, it might lead toward
confusion rather than toward order. What it proposes
is a Confederation and before we join another Confed-
eration we must forget or repudiate about the brightest
page in our history. T\Tiat it proposes to create is a
supergovernment and that we will not tolerate.
A post-bellum Federation, of the Anglo-Saxon world
at least — and we could not ignore France — would take
its inspiration from Independence Hall and not from easily
(and may) revert to a condition of social and economic
chaos that will ultimately involve all the world.
This country and this country alone can bring Europe
salvation. That we must do. We must do it not as a
work of altruism but to save ourselves.
There is a widespread demand in England that we
forgive the over $4,300,000,000 loaned her during the
war. The London Times vigorously denies that any
such desire exists, but the evidence is conclusive.
France thinks we ought to do the same thing in her case.
Italy is of the same mind. We may not wonder so
much at France whose wounds are so desperate, or at
Italy with her unfortunate industrial condition, but
that proud Albion should even discuss such a situa-
tion is a disturbing even an alarming circumstance.
To save ourselves we must help the world industrially.
We can no more escape that than we could Escape
war when Germany ordered us off the seven seas.
Let the Trumpet Sound 299
We must help Europe to help herself; we must
help her people to go to work. Her people are not
working now and the alarming fact is that their ci^•il
morale is so shattered that they apparently do not
want to work. A million people in Great Britain
mostly able to work are not only idle but are receiving
a weekly dole from the Treasurj^ In Belgium eight
hundred thousand are in the same condition. In a
population of less than 8,000,000 this represents about
the whole industrial section. No amount of money
advanced, no amount of debts forgiven can save
Europe. She must go to work, and we must help her
to go to work.
It is sheer follj" to think that we can stand aloof in
our splendid isolation and let Europe revert to chaos.
On what tenable ground can we abandon Europe
now with our work half done. From the beginning
the problem involved more than crushing the Hun.
Up to the present hour our work outranks that of
the good Samaritan. We helped to drive the thieves
off. The problem now is: Shall we leave the victim
to bleed to death? The Priest and the Levite seeing
the victim of the thieves passed by on the other side,
but the good Samaritan went to him, bound up his
wounds pouring in wine and oil, set him upon his own
beast, took him to an inn and promised to pay the
innkeeper's bills. A certain lawyer you will recall had
sneeringly asked Jesus "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus
recited this parable by way of answer, and then in
turn asked the lawyer "Which of the three, the Priest,
the Levite or the good Samaritan was neighbor to him
that fell amongst thieves?" Even the lawyer needed no
prompting. He said: "He that showed mercy on him".
300 Let Us Have Peace
Whether or not the RepubUcan reactionaries in the
United States Senate delay peace because they object
to the so-called League of Nations Covenant, con-
tained in the treaty, we must at once enter an economic
and industrial league of nations or Europe perishes.
That League will be made by commercial necessity, a
power which does not act by or with the advice and
consent of the United States Senate: a body, by the
way, composed largely of lawyers amongst whom the
parable of the Good Samaritan, originally delivered
to a lawyer, seems to be unknown.
John Fiske points out that the impulse which led
to the Annapolis Convention and to the immortal
Congress in Independence Hall which wrote our great
Charter, was primarily commercial. Here too the
movement which may ultimately lead to a union of
democratic peoples promises to take effective origin in
commerce. But a political as well as a commercial
union of peoples must come if the relations of nations
are to be stabilized and civilized.
That Union of Peoples, symbolized by our Federal
Constitution, is coming. Yes; it is coming or more
and worse wars are coming and chaos is coming. I be-
lieve that sort of union is as certain to come ultimately
as the laws of gravitation are certain to be constant in
their operation. It will not include all the world for
many centuries; only a part of the world is ready for it.
But while its organization could not soon include all
peoples, it could soundly include so large a portion of
humanity that its physical and moral power would
mightily mould all nations.
As we hesitated and dilly-dallied and tried not to see
our duty prior to April 6, 1917, so some of our leaders
Let the Trumpet Sound 301
now hesitate and shilly-shally over the League of Na-
tions proposed — and a poor thing it is at best — and so
they will hesitate and shilly-shally over our part in
the economic and reconstruction problems which face
Europe. Those problems involve us just as certainh^ as
the sinking of the Lusitania meant that we must fight.
Food production in Europe and in Russia has
largely ceased. Europe is hungry. It will probably
become hungrier. Before they starve men become
savages. The danger now is that the very foundations
of European society may crumble; that even Great
Britain may not escape. He is a fool who thinks all
that can happen and leave us safe — safe and smug in
what he is pleased to call our splendid isolation.
As France has been the pohtical frontier of civihzation
for a hundred years and its fighting front for five years,
even so the United States and Great Britain now
become the industrial and social frontiers of civilization.
Our splendid isolation will protect us if we fail to act
just about as much as German Faith protected Bel-
gium. The assault will come however, from real
necessity, and not from a lying pretense. If we do not
direct those conditions, those conditions will direct us.
There is no escape, — just as there is no escape from
other wars so long as the relations of nations are
controlled by the rules of pure savagery as they are
to-day.
This therefore is the cause, greater than democracy,
greater than country, for which these sons of the
University died:
They died that Edith Cavell's vision might become
reality; that men should come to understand why
Patriotism is not enough.
302 Let Us Have Peace
They died that human servitude which the Hohen-
zollerns and Hapsburgs under the guise of efficiency-
sought to fasten on the world might be forever ended.
They died that the brutal law of sovereignty, which
now divides men into hostile camps and directly or
indirectly breeds war, might be softened.
They died that international savagery might also die.
They died that international justice might be
born.
They died to create the unprecedented opportunity
which faces us to-day.
Therefore we pay our poor tribute to these heroes:
sons of Vermont, most of them; beloved children of the
Universit}^ all of them. We enthrone them in our
history and traditions in these words of the Immortal
Bard:'
"When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonrj',
Nor Marsis' sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memorj\
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth ; your praise shall still find room
Even in the ej-es of all posterity."
OTHER ADDRESSES
SHAKESPEARIANA
A PAPER READ AT THE
THIRD DINNER OF THE HOBBY CLUB. N. Y., APRIL 18, 1912
;0 the student of history the Roman Forum
and the Colosseum are centres of over-
powering interest. The appeal of the
Forum, when under direct observation, be-
comes almost painful in its intensity. The
Colosseum holds one with a grip which cannot be
shaken off. This appeal springs not from what these
pathetic ruins are, but from what they suggest. Like
a setting sun they flash through the gathering night of
time, reveaUng earlier heights of human achievement
and vanishing evidences of human power. The three
remaining pillars of the Temple of Castor and Pollux
are like a long streamer of light from the Western sky.
Defying the ages, in the midst of a pitiful ruin they
inflame the imagination. They awaken longings for a
fuller knowledge of an age whose greatness they reflect,
a fuller knowledge of a people who created such sur-
passing beauty and left evidences of such colossal
power. Of what the Forum was in the time of Julius
Caesar, we know something, but of what it meant we
know httle. The antiquarian and the archaeologist
theorize, generalize, and frequently dogmatize before
they reconstruct. They read forward from scattered
fragments, from broken columns and foundation stones
305
306 Other Addresses
to the pages of written history; but even if they could
v/ith assurance place before us the Roman Forum as it
was and the Colosseum as it was, they could not re-
create the life that surged over the pavements of the
Forum, and crowded the seats of the Colosseum with a
hundred thousand spectators when some great combat
was on "between savage beasts or still more savage
men". Something vital would be lacking if every arch
were rebuilt, every temple and palace restored, every
statue replaced, every marble and brick by some magic
renewed. There was a period — indeed there were long
periods — when all was in order. There was a meridian
of glory to which the present ruins point, and, putting
aside the quest for evidences of what part humanity
itself played from day to day while these splendors
were at their full, we long for an adequate picture of
these structures as they stood before the Goths dese-
crated and despoiled them, before the Christians shat-
tered their glorious statuary and stole their gold,
their ivories and their marbles.
The so-called works of Shakespeare are a ruin more
complete, more pathetic, more powerful in their appeal
than the ruins of the Roman Forum, more beyond the
power of restoration than the Colosseum. The Folio of
1623, which is measurably the beginning and the end of
all Shakespeariana, does not contain the works of
Shakespeare. The works of Shakespeare, properly
speaking, do not exist, and, complete, never existed.
The First Folio is merely a congeries of masterpieces,
which were created during a period of some twenty odd
years, and, each in turn, marred as it was completed.
What Shakespeare built out of the limitless wealth
of his genius no one fully knows. With the exception
Shakespeariana 307
of his two long poems and the sonnets, no part even of
his creations at any time stood rounded and complete
as the Forum did, as the Colosseum did. He built a
literary pile as noble as the Colosseum, as wonderful in
its beauty as the Forum, but no eye save his ever saw
it, and he never saw it as a completed whole. If he
had, he would not have seen it understandingly, be-
cause he had no conception himself of what he had
done.
The Folio of 1623 is the Colosseum, the Forum, of
Shakespeare's empire. It is at best a restoration, but
a restoration which aimed at no ideal, which followed
no model. Its editors could follow no model, because
they had none. They might have been diligent, care-
ful and truthful, but they failed in all three respects.
Like the broken columns and the fallen arches of Rome,
these shattered masterpieces inflame the imagination.
They tell of exquisite beauty and marvelous harmony,
of overwhelming power ; but in their completeness these
qualities are marred and while not as utterly ruined as
are The Temple of Janus and the Golden House of
Nero, they are more beyond the reach of reproduction.
Shakespeare was an actor. Acting was his business.
He wrote not for the sake of writing, not because he
supposed himself a great literary genius, or because he
thought he could write better than other men; but in
order that the company to which he belonged might
have the wherewith to command patronage, and in
that way make profitable the theatres in which he was
part owner. We know that he accumulated a com-
petence out of his earnings as an actor and out of his
interest in certain theatres, but we do not certainly
know that he ever received a farthing for his immortal
308 Other Addresses
Tragedies, or a shilling for his matchless Comedies and
Histories.
Up to about the time when Shakespeare ceased writ-
ing, few people read plays. Plays were written to be
acted, not to be read. There was no public demand
for them in that form. When Shakespeare wrote, he
wrote for actors not for readers; he wrote for a prac-
tical purpose, not for immortality. Moreover when
he wrote, his was not the last word. His product be-
longed to the theatre. It was taken by the manager
and by the actors and rebuilt to meet the demands of
the public and the hmitations of the people who were
to speak the lines: As Carlyle says: "Alas! Shakes-
peare had to write for the Globe Playhouse; his great
soul had to crush itself, as it could, into that and no
other mould." What Shakespeare wrote, therefore,
passed quickly out of the form he gave it into the
prompt books of the theatres. How much what he
wrote was changed, how much it was marred, is, of
course, beyond the reach of knowledge. That it was
materially altered is certain. These prompt books
were themselves in manuscript, and as such had, in
1623, never been printed. They were sometimes
"pirated", and the Shakespearian plays which had
appeared in quarto form prior to 1623 were prac-
tically all set up from copy which was obtained sur-
reptitiously. The variation in the texts of the early
quartos of Hamlet, and their variation again from the
text of Hamlet in the First FoUo, show that the text of
the quartos was derived from different sources. How
much of Hamlet in the quartos is Shakespeare, and how
much is the product of someone else, can, of course,
never be ascertained. As there is abundant internal
Shakespeariana 309
evidence to show that much of the First FoUo was
based on the quartos then in existence, and as all of
these had been pirated from the prompt books of the
theatres or otherwise, there is no assurance that the
Hamlet printed in the FoHo itself is as Shakespeare
wrote it, indeed every presumption is to the contrary.
Soon after Shakespeare died, a demand sprang up
for plays to be read as well as acted, in other words,
for plays in printed form. It was to meet this demand
that Heminge and Condell, with their associates, de-
cided to assemble under one cover the plays which
bore Shakespeare's name. The enterprise was en-
tirely commercial in its character. That their work
would become the most stupendous fact in the history
of English literature never entered their minds; that
these mangled children of Shakespeare's brain would
become — in spite of mutilation and in spite of their
own stupid and slatternly work as editors — the wonder
of all time, was as completely beyond their ken as it
was probably beyond the dreams of Shakespeare him-
self.
Where did they get the "copy" from which the Folio
was set up? There is abundant evidence to show that
when they undertook the work they did not know
whence the copy was to come. There was no clear
line of demarcation between what was wholly Shakes-
peare's and what was not. Several quartos existed
with his name on the title page in which there was no
line that Shakespeare penned. Some works which were
clearly his were thirty years old, and some had passed
out of the files of the theatres into private hands. The
claim which the editors set up in their address "To the
Great Variety of Readers", that they had received the
310 Other Addresses
plays from Shakespeare himself with scarcely a blot in
the manuscript is, therefore, clearly a fabrication.
Thej^ made that plea not because they were anxious
over the textual accuracy of the Folio, but because
they thought it would help to sell the book. Shakes-
peare's reputation was well established. There was a
demand for what he had created. It was necessarj' to
reassure probable purchasers that the Foho contained
what Shakespeare had actually written. The editors'
real anxiety, however, was set forth in the exhortation
''But, Whatever you Do, Buy." The foho of 1623
was published to sell, not to serve literature, not to
perpetuate Shakespeare's fame. The book is so
crammed with evidences of haste and incompetence,
and worse, that it is impossible to credit its editors
with any literary ideals or with any serious literary
purpose. Within our meaning of the word, the book
had no editor; it apparently had no proof-reader.
Volumes have been written on these facts, and other
volumes will be written hereafter. Both Heminge and
Condell spelled their own names differently within the
first half dozen pages of the volume.
I shall venture to point out only one of the many
internal evidences of their haste and carelessness, and
of the fact that the editors got copy wherever they
could, and probably none of it was in Shakespeare's
handwriting. In this I shall follow the analysis made
by jMr. Sidney Lee. The Folio is divided into three
parts: the Comedies, the Histories, and the Trage-
dies. A catalogue precedes the text. In the cata-
logue of the Tragedies, the first play named is Corio-
lanus, which is stated to cover folios one to thirty
inclusive. When we turn to the text of the Tragedies,
Shakespeariana 311
we find that the first one printed is not Coriolanus, as
the catalogue states, but Troihis and Cressida. Turn-
ing back again to the catalogue of the Tragedies, we
find that Troilus and Cressida is omitted altogether.
How could this happen? Inspection of the text of
this play shows that the first page is unnumbered,
while the second page is numbered 79, the third 80,
and the succeeding pages of the entire text are without
any pagination whatever. Coriolanus, which follows
Troilus, begins as the catalogue indicates with folio one
and carries pagination in regular order. Titus Andro-
nicus succeeds, then Romeo and Juliet, and then Timon
of Athens, which carries the text to page 98. Follow-
ing this is a list of the actors who appeared in Timon.
This list scantily occupies an entire page, which is
unnumbered, and is followed by a blank page. Then
follows Julius Caesar, but the first page is numbered
109, leaving a hiatus of nine pages. What happened
was this : The original plan was to have the Tragedies
in this order: 1st — Coriolanus; 2d — Titus Andronicus;
3d — Romeo and Juliet; 4th — Troilus; but for some
reason after the first three tragedies had been set up
and three pages of Troilus were in type, the work on
Troilus was stopped. It stopped at page 80 of the
Tragedies. There is a strong probability that the
source from which the text of Troilus was to be derived
failed the editors. Mr. Lee thinks these three pages
were set aside, but the curious blunder which followed
rather indicates that they were left standing following
the last page of Romeo and Juliet. A guess was then
made as to which quire would be reached by the last
page of Troilus when it was all in type, and Julius
Caesar, which was to follow, was begun at page 109.
312 Other Addresses
When they had printed and began to assemble the
printed sheets of the text, they discovered the hiatus
between Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. Then
the trouble over the copy of Troilus not having been
cleared up, Timon of Athens — a short play — was set
up and put in the blank space; but it was too short,
and so it was patched out with a list of actors and a
blank page. But it still fell short by nine pages.
Then the difficulty over the text of Troilus apparently
having been cleared up, it was all put in type. \^Tiere
to put it was the next problem. There was no place
in the regular pagination of the Tragedies to insert it.
Apparently the others had all been printed. Troilus
is one of the three plays which are certainly Shakes-
peare's which reflect least credit on him. If we com-
pare it with a plaj'" like Macbeth or Jidius Caesar and
take into account what always happened when Shakes-
peare turned his handiwork over to the manager, we
might easily conclude that there is very little of Shakes-
peare in it. How little the editors of the Folio appre-
ciated this is shown by the fact that they finally de-
cided to print it at the head of all the Tragedies. Then
occurred the curious confusion and the blunder to
which I have referred. When the first three pages of
Troilus were set up following Romeo and Juliet, the
quire so fell that the last page of Romeo and Juliet
would occupy the back of the first leaf of Troilus. It
is certain that some of the edition was printed in that
order, which indicates that Mr. Lee is wrong in as-
suming that the first three pages of Troilus, after they
were set in type, were lifted out and set aside. \\'Tien
the printed leaves were assembled under the plan
which put Troilus first of the Tragedies the first page
Shakespeariana 313
of the first leaf of Troilus was the last page of Romeo
and Juliet. The difficulty was apparently not imme-
diately discovered. It is probable that the absence
from its proper place of the last page of Romeo and
Juliet was discovered when the printed sheets were
assembled, and this page must have been re-set when
Timon was put in type; but the incongruity of having
the last page of Romeo and Juliet the first page that
the reader would find in turning to the Tragedies, was
not discovered until a few copies at least of the Folio
had been completed and sold. Then the first leaf at
east of Troilus must have been re-set and re-printed.
To fill the place occupied by the last page of Romeo
and Juliet a prologue which was probably composed
for the occasion was printed as the first page of the
first leaf of Troilus. But the original pagination,
which placed the numbers 79 on the second page and
80 on the third page of Troilus was never corrected,
and stands in all copies to this day. A copy of the
Folio in which the last page of Romeo appears on the
front of the first leaf of Troilus — where the prologue
appears in nearly all copies — is owned by Mr. J. Pier-
pont Morgan.
There are abundant evidences that the editors were
in trouble not only over the circumstance which I
have described, as soon as the first copies were put
out, but over many other blunders of an almost equally
serious nature. Loud complaints were undoubtedly
made over errors which the most casual reader could
easily discover. There must have been some interesting
scenes in the printing office of Blount and Jaggard
before the last copy was delivered. Many sections of
the book must have been re-set and re-printed. This
314 Other Addresses
is evident from the fact that the texts of the extant
Folios vary in many particulars. For example, there
are important variations between the First Folio which
lies before you and the text of the Folio which was
used bj' Air. Sidney Lee in his fac simile edition issued
to accompany his census of the existing copies of the
First Folio.
I have sometimes wondered if it would not be worth
while — to someone who could afford it — to dissect a
Folio, taking it apart section by section and leaf by
leaf, in order to learn just how the quires were broken
into by changes subsequent to the first typographical
plan and by changes made after the printing had first
been completed.
The "copy" which the editors used was taken from
the quartos, the existing prompt books of the theatres
and from private hands. Shakespeare's ]\ISS., like the
MSS. of all writers of plays in his age, had long since
entirely disappeared. No one considered them impor-
tant. The available copy had been marred by the
managers of the theatres and maimed by the actors.
The editors then proceeded to mutilate it further, but
they could not destroy the vital thing. What would
be lacking if the Forum and the Colosseum were re-
stored lives in the text of the FoHo of 1623. Hamlet
and Lear, Falstajf and Malvolio, Desdemona and Rosa-
lind, rise superior to mutilated texts and blundering
editors. They have not lost, they will never lose the
vitality which Shakespeare gave them when they
sprang into being at his command. If they should
ultimately fall into disfavor on the stage — as some of
Shakespeare's creations had as' early as 1623 — they
will nevertheless live, because his vogue upon the stage
Shakespeariana 315
has come to be the smallest part of his immortality.
The truest picture of ancient Rome to be had to-day
is not born of a study of the ruins that lie between the
Palatine and the Quirinal Hills; it springs into being
when the Cassius, the Antony, the Brutus and the
Caesar of Shakespeare speak to us. The material form
of the Forum might be restored; its life could not be.
The exact form of the Shakespeare text can never be
restored, but the life that spoke through its lines lives
and is still eloquent.
Grant White says of the errors in the First Folio:
"Besides minor errors, the correction of which is ob-
vious, words are in some cases so transformed as to be
past recognition, even with the aid of the context ; lines
are transposed; sentences are sometimes broken by a
full point followed by a capital letter, and at other
times have their members displaced and mingled in
incomprehensible confusion; verse is printed as prose,
and prose as verse ; speeches belonging to one character
are given to another; and, in brief, all possible varieties
of typographical derangement may be found in this
volume, in the careful printing of which the after world
had so deep an interest."
The First Folio contains — in addition to the plays —
the advertisement of the publishers, already referred
to; a print of Shakespeare engraved by Martin Droe-
shout; dedicatory verses by Ben Jonson, Leonard Diggs,
Hugh Holland, and an unknown author who signs him-
self 'T. M."; also a list of twenty-six persons, with
Shakespeare at the head, who are described as "the
principal actors in all these plays." The poetical trib-
utes, except Ben Jonson's, are each followed by a blank
316 Other Addresses
page ; indicating that they were after-thoughts prepared
after the book had been assembled.
The Second FoHo was printed in 1632, and is almost
an exact reproduction of the First, but few errors being
corrected and others introduced. It contains three
additional poetical tributes to Shakespeare, one by
Milton and two by unknown writers. These tributes
show the increased supremacy which Shakespeare's
plays had attained since the First Folio was issued.
In 1664, after the Puritan fury against plays and
play-goers had spent itself, a Third Folio edition was
issued, containing, in addition to the contents of the
other two, Pericles and six spurious plays which had
been published under Shakespeare's name or initials
during his lifetime. A reprint of this appeared as the
Fourth Folio in 1685.
Of the First Folio there is a record of one hundred
and fifty-eight* copies — one of which was lost on the
steamship "Arctic", in 1854, and one was burned in the
Chicago fire, in 1872. Their unique relation to the
Elizabethan age and to all English literature, as well
as the small number of copies in existence, make them
the especial quest of all collectors. As Bernard Qua-
ritch said to me seventeen years ago: "A library which
contains the four Shakespeare Folios at once takes
imperial rank." Existing copies are classed as I, Per-
fect, of which there are fifty-four, twenty-nine of them
being owned in the United States; II, Imperfect, but
in fairly good condition, sixty-eight; III, Defective,
sections and leaves missing, or supplied from later
folios — eighteen; IV, worse than defective — eighteen.
The two lost copies were of the latter class.
*Mr. Sidney Lee's census.
Shakespeariana 317
The first attempt at editing Shakespeare's plays was
not made until nearly a century after his death. In
1709 Nicholas Rowe published all the authentic plays
(and six others) in a seven volume edition, in which
many of the typographical errors of the folios were cor-
rected, all the plays were for the first time divided into
Acts and Scenes, full stage directions inserted, and lists
of Dramatis Personae given. From this time on
editions multiplied. The editors may be di\dded into
two — perhaps three — classes. First, those who had a
profound reverence for Shakespeare, and who made a
sufficient studj' of his plays to bring themselves into
sj^mpathy with him; second those who diligently
gathered up the best emendations and elucidations of
the first class and published variorum editions; third,
those who sought to make over the text to suit their
own conceptions and conceits of what Shakespeare
should have said. The labors of the first two classes
of editors have been invaluable, those of the third for
the most part useless and sometimes detrimental. In
the first class we may place Rowe, Theobald, Malone,
Knight, Collier, and Richard Grant White. The sec-
ond class includes Reed, who published a variorum
edition based chiefly upon the labors of Johnson and
Steevens; James Boswell, Jr., who completed a vari-
orum for Malone; Singer, whose Chiswick edition is an
abridged variorum; the Furnesses — father and son —
whose variorum edition begun in 1871 is now well
advanced; and Morgan, whose Bankside edition in-
cludes the players' text and the revised text in parallel
columns. The third class is a large one, but names
are superfluous.
22
318 Other Addresses
A second, and much narrower field for the Shakes-
pearian hobbyist, is Shakespearian portraits. The only-
representations of Shakespeare known to have had the
approval of his contemporaries are the Droeshout
print, published in the First Folio, only seven years
after Shakespeare's death, and the life size bust in
Stratford church which is referred to in the same
publication in the memorial verses of Leonard Diggs.
Seven other portraits engraved by Martin Droeshout
have come down to us. The Droeshout print of
Shakespeare is indirectly but strongly commended by
Ben Jonson in lines printed with it, when he says of
the engraver —
"O, could he but have drawn his wit
As well in brass, as he has hit
His face; the Print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in brass."
The Stratford bust is supposed to be the work of a
Flemish artist, Geratt Johnson, a resident of London,
but of no special reputation. It has the individuality
of a portrait, and may have been made from a mask,
but between the bust and the so-called "Kesselstadt
Death Mask", the differences are more significant than
the resemblances.
Both the print and the bust represent a man beyond
the prime of life — a man about as old as Shakespeare
was at the time of his death. Of the two the bust
presents the more noble, and more poetic face. Of
the print there are two proofs differing somewhat from
the finished portrait, and evidently taken while the
plate was in preparation. These proofs indicate that
the engraver worked from a drawing of the head only,
rather than from a portrait in oil, and this has an
Shakespeariana 319
important bearing upon certain alleged portraits of
Shakespeare.
The Droeshout print and the Stratford bust stand in
somewhat the same relation to other representations of
Shakespeare as the First FoHo does to other texts of
Shakespeare's plays. Neither is probably a good hke-
ness, but they were not "pirated" or faked and must
for all time give us the nearest approach to Shakes-
peare's lineaments, as the First Folio will for all time
give the world the nearest approach to the real product
of his genius.
In Washington, D. C, if you know where to look,
you can find the derringer with which Wilkes Booth
killed Abraham Lincoln. The authorities know it is
the veritable pistol used by Booth, because it has never
been out of responsible hands since Booth leaped to the
stage crying "Sic semper tyrannisJ^ Once at least,
another derringer almost exactly like the real one, with
abundant certificates of genuineness attached, has been
offered, at a price, to the government.
Similar happenings, as we all know, are not uncom-
mon where the subject is one of profound interest.
The temptation to imitate, to plagiarize Shakespeare
has been tremendous. The temptation to produce
something that Shakespeare had touched, something
that penetrated in some way the mystery that sur-
rounds him, and to a degree all writers of his period,
has been almost irresistible.
I shall refer to only one instance, and I select this
because it illustrates how even the educated, the stu-
dious and the reputable have fallen victims.
In 1852 Mr. John Payne Collier, then favorably
known as a student of Elizabethan literature and
320 Other Addresses
author of an edition of Shakespeare's works, pubUshed
nine years before, announced that there had fallen into
his hands a copy of the second folio, the margins of
which contained manuscript corrections of the text, of
great interest and value. The next year Mr, Collier
published a volume entitled "Notes and Emendations
to the Text of Shakespeare from Early Manuscript
Corrections in a Copy of the Folio of 1632." in which
he included and upheld various new readings, and
expressed the conviction that "far the greater body"
of them were "the restored language of Shakespeare".
He also published a new edition of the plays with the
new readings, and what was asserted to be "A List of
Every Manuscript Note and Emendation in Mr. Col-
lier's Copy of Shakespeare's Works, Folio, 1632". Four
years later Mr. Collier announced that he was "con-
vinced that the great majority of the corrections were
made, not from better manuscripts, still less from
unknown printed copies of the plays, but from the
recitations of old actors while the play was proceeding",
and that they did "not represent the authentic lan-
guage of Shakespeare".
Mr. Collier's alleged discoveries had meantime be-
come the subject of sharp criticism. He had never
submitted his Folio to the examination of Shakespearian
scholars, but gave it to the father of the Duke of
Devonshire, and in 1859 the latter presented it to the
British Museum. When the Museum authorities ex-
amined the volume in order to make an accurate de-
scription of it, they found its condition so at variance
with Mr. Collier's printed statements that an investi-
gation was instituted which lasted two years, both
sides being heard. It was found — that the volume
Shakespeariana 321
contained nearly three times as many marginal read-
ings, etc., as were enumerated in Mr. Collier's alleged
"complete list"; that these included erasures and
restorations, changes in punctuation, speUing and stage
directions, and were written in a modern cursive hand ;
that many of the corrections had been tampered with,
touched up or painted over, a modern character being
dexterously altered by a pen into a more antique form ;
that what appeared to be corrections in antique writing
in ink had been made wdth paint which resembled ink
faded by time; that of some penciled memorandums
there were no corresponding changes in ink, one of
which was in a system of shorthand that did not come
into use until 1774; that similar modern pencil writing,
underlying antique-seeming words in ink, appeared in
the Bridgewater Folio, and had first been brought to
notice by Mr. Collier; that some of the pencil memo-
randums in Mr. Collier's folio seemed to be unmis-
takably in his own handwriting; that several manu-
scripts purporting to be contemporary with Shakes-
peare, which Mr. Collier had professed to discover,
and which contained similar pen and ink changes had
been pronounced spurious by the highest authorities.
Mr. Richard Grant White, who early pointed out
the weakness of Mr. Collier's claims, expresses the
opinion that the penciled readings were entered upon
the folio in the seventeenth century, after the Restora-
tion; that the erasures were first made with the pur-
pose of preparing the plays for the stage; that this
purpose was abandoned, the erased portions restored
and the spelling, punctuation and stage directions
changed with the purpose of publishing a revised
edition. As to what happened to the Folio after it
322 ■ Other Addresses
came into Mr. Collier's hands, Mr. White declines
to advance an opinion, but his opinion is indicated
by the expression of a "hope that facts yet undis-
covered, or explanations not yet made, may preserve
this page of letters from the dark stain of im-
posture".
The Ireland forgeries I will not take time to discuss.
Of real Shakespeariana there is Uttle outside the
folios and quartos. I own but one item which was
printed before the Foho of 1623. It is known as "The
Whole Contention" and while attributed to Shakes-
peare was certainly not written by him. It was, how-
ever, undoubtedly the basis of his II and III Parts of
King Henry VI, and is rated as Shakespeariana.
Heywood's Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels is rated
as Shakespeariana because there are plates in it by
Martin Droeshout, and a reference to Shakespeare in
the text. Fuller's Worthies of England and Dugdale's
Warwickshire are both so rated because of references
to vShakespeare.
The search for facts pertaining to Shakespeare's life
did not begin until after his death and the death of all
his contemporaries. The only authentic data is there-
fore that embodied in documents of the time, and upon
these, as they have been brought to light from time to
time, scholars have constructed an outline life of
Shakespeare. Shakespearian scholars had long de-
spaired of any increase in the store of facts concerning
him, when an American, Professor Charles William
Wallace, of the University of Nebraska, entered the
field. Shakespeare's frequent use of legal terms has
given rise to the supposition that he may have studied
law during the period 1585-1592 when we practically
Shakespeariana 323
lose sight of him. Whether Professor Wallace's in-
vestigations are made with this in mind, or not, the
two finds which he has reported are both of them
records of lawsuits. The first — of which an account
was published in the London Times in October, 1909 —
was a lawsuit brought by the daughter of John Hem-
inge, one of the publishers of the First Folio, against
her father, on a charge of misappropriation of funds
held in trust for her. These funds were certain shares
of the Globe and Blackfriars theatres where her hus-
band was an actor. The Shakespeare interest in the
suit lies in the fact that it deals with the profits of these
theatres where Shakespeare's plays were presented,
and in which he had an interest as playwright, actor
and owner of shares. The profits on his shares, as
shown in the Osteler-Heminge suit, amounted to about
£600 a year, and accounts for the investments which
he was able to make in Stratford, the restoration of
the fortunes of his father and the grant to his father of
a coat of arms.
In March, 1910, Professor Wallace published in
Harper's Magazine an account of the discovery of still
more remarkable documents. Apparently still follow-
ing up legal clues, he discovered in the Public Record
Office of England the records of a lawsuit tried in 1612
in which Shakespeare was a witness. Not only was he
a witness but the records show that, for at least six
years and probably much longer, he had lodgings in the
house of the defendant. The lawsuit was a sordid
enough affair — between one Bellott and his father-in-
law Mount joy — concerning the dower promised the
former prior to his marriage. But Shakespeare's part
in it gives this family quarrel that touch of nature
324 Other Addresses
to which the universal human heart responds. For he
it was who brought about the marriage.
Mount] oy was a Frenchman hving in London, a
maker of wigs and head-dresses, to whom was appren-
ticed, in 1598, the French youth Bellott. When his
time expired, in 1604, the old folks found that their
daughter Mary, who had worked at his side learning
the trade, had become fond of him. He had served
them faithfully, and they were not only not averse to
the match but greatly desired it. But the young man
was slow, and the mother asked Shakespeare to give
him to understand that if he wished to marry the
daughter the marriage would be agreeable to her
parents, and that they would give her a handsome
dower. Shakespeare accomplished his mission and the
couple were married, as the parish records show, on
November 19, 1604. At first they lived with the
Mount joys, but within less than a year they took
lodgings with George Wilkins, an inn-keeper and
dramatist, who shortly afterwards collaborated with
Shakespeare in the production of two plays. Upon
the death of Mrs. Mount joy in October, 1606, the
Bellots returned to the parental roof; but at the
end of a year and a half there was a disagreement
over business matters and the lawsuit followed.
The records of the case consist of twenty-six docu-
ments in which Shakespeare's name is mentioned
twenty-four times, and his testimony is signed by his
own hand. He deposes that he is of Stratford-on-Avon,
county of Warwick, of the age of 48 years or there-
abouts; that he has known the parties to the suit for
about ten years; that he knew Bellott during the time
of his service with Mount joy, and that to his knowledge
Shakespeariana 325
Bellott behaved himself well and honestly; and he
thinks he was a very good and industrious servant;
that it appeared Mountjoy did, all the time of Bellott's
service, show great good will and affection toward
him; that he had heard Mountjoy and his wife at
divers and sundry times say and report that Bellott
was a very honest fellow; that Mountjoy did make a
motion unto Bellott of a marriage with his daughter
Mary; that Mountjoy's wife did solicit and entreat
the deponent to move and persuade Bellott to effect
the said marriage, and accordingly the deponent did
move and persuade Bellott thereto; that Mountjoy
promised to give Bellott a portion in marriage with
his daughter, but what certain portion he does not
remember nor when it has to be paid, nor whether
Mountjoy promised Bellott £200 at his own decease;
but he says Bellott was dwelling with Mountjoy in
his house, and they had among themselves many
conferences about the marriage which was afterward
consummated.
Shakespeare's testimony taken by itself does not es-
tabhsh the fact of his residence in the Mountjoy house;
but another witness — Mrs. Johnson — testifies that she
was a servant in the Mountjoy household when Bellott
was an apprentice and she remembered Mountjoy did
send and persuade one Mr. Shakespeare that lay in the
house to persuade Bellott to the marriage with his
daughter. Another witness, Daniel Nicholas, also
testified that he heard one Wm. Shakespeare say that
Mountjoy did move Bellott by him the said Shakes-
peare, to have a marriage between his daughter and
Bellott and for this purpose sent him, the said Shakes-
peare, to Bellott to persuade him to the same, as
326 Other Addresses
Shakespeare told him, which marriage was effected
upon promise of a portion with her; that Bellott re-
quested the witness to go with his wife to Shakespeare
to ascertain how much and what Mountjoy promised
to bestow on his daughter in marriage; and that he did
so, and that upon asking Shakespeare thereof, he an-
swered that as he remembered, he would give her in
marriage about £50 in money and certain household
stuff. An apprentice of Bellott, one WiUiam Eaton,
also testified that he had heard one Mr, Shakespeare say
he was sent by Mountjoy to Bellott to have a mar-
riage between Bellott and Mount joy's daughter, and
that he had heard Mr, Shakespeare say that he was
wished bj^ Mountjoy to make proffer of a certain sum
that Mountjoy said he would give Bellott with his
daughter in marriage.
The dramatist, George Wilkins, testified as to the
goods the Bellotts brought with them when they came
to sojourn with him. The testimony of other wit-
nesses showed that Mountjoy had two houses which
netted him an income of about £17 to £20 a year,
besides his own rent and the rent of a "sojourner"
with him. The houses are described "the one wherein
he dwelleth, divided into two tenements, and a lease
of a house in Brainford". The house he dwelt in is
described as a "house in Muggle Street and in Silver
Street" — that is on the corner. As there were but
two corners, and other documents show that "Neville's
Inn" was on the west side of the street, the Mountjoy
house is definitely located. Here, then, Shakespeare
seems to have lived during all the time of Bellott 's
apprenticeship, from 1598 to 1604, and in 1612 Mount-
joy still had a "sojourner in his house with him".
Shakespeariana 327
This house was burned in 1666, and the building now
occupying the site belongs to New College, Oxford
University, and is an inn known as "Coopers Arms".
The location was described in 1603 by John Stowe
as one "in which there be divers faire houses", and by
Ben Jonson as "the region of money, a good seat for an
usurer". Shakespeare must have been a prosperous
man to live there. In the parish on the North lived
Ben Jonson, Nathaniel Field, Thomas Dekker, An-
thony Munday, and William Johnson; to the east and
south were the homes of John Heminge and Henry
Condell, and Shakespeare's way to the theatre would
take him by their doors, and past the Mermaid Tavern.
It would also take him past the house in Bread Street
where John Milton was born, and where he was a boy
eight years of age at Shakespeare's death. Shakes-
peare was already a man to be pointed out as he
walked the street, and Milton's poetic taste mani-
fested itself early. Shakespeare's only son died at the
age of eleven; John Milton, as we know from an early
portrait, was a handsome boy. Was it of a stranger,
or of a man who had been pointed out to him as "the
great poet" and who often gave him kindly greeting
as he passed, that Milton afterward wrote
"MY Shakespeare" —
"Dear son of memory, great heir of fame."
The discoveries of Professor Wallace have added one
more to the authentic autographs of Shakespeare,- and
this one being abbreviated has confirmed the authen-
ticity of another which was before doubted because it
was abbreviated. He has shown us Shakespeare as a
"sojourner" in the house of a Frenchman and on such
intimate terms with the family that he is appealed to
328 Other Addresses
in an affair that was about equally love and business.
One of these plays written during this sojourn was
King Henry V , in which we have the amusing attempt
of Katherine to learn English from her maid Alice; the
bluster and threats of Pistol to his French prisoner,
which are put into French by a boy; the love-making
of King Henry to Katherine, of which she understands
a little and guesses the rest; and finally Shakespeare
has immortalized his host in the French herald Mont-
joy, who pronounces his defiance and craves favor
for the conquered, in good English.
That no really new and authentic information con-
cerning Shakespeare should have been discovered for
over two hundred years and until Professor Wallace
uncovered these old Court records may be a bit dis-
couraging to the Hobbyist; but this clear location of
the man during a period which has hitherto been a
period of mystery is a great comfort to the Shakes-
pearian devotee. It leaves less room for those mys-
teries out of which theories Baconian and others may
be hatched.
It seems to me that Shakespearian students and
Hobbyists have never given sufficient study to Richard
Burbage. Few men reahze what a part he played in
the development of Shakespeare's genius. He was
the leading tragic actor of the time and the leading
man of Shakespeare's company. Undoubtedly Shakes-
peare wrote some of his greatest pieces with Burbage
in mind. They were fitted to a degree to Burbage's
equipment. Burbage probably played Hamlet and
Lear and Macbeth and Othello and other great roles,
the first time they were ever presented. This alone
ought to give him a kind of Godship amongst actors,
Shakespeariana 329
but I have never observed the existence of such a
sentiment.
The Alpha and Omega of Shakespeariana is, and
probably always will be, the Folio of 1623. I have
criticised its editors. They deserve it. But the ser-
vice to literature which lies in what they did is so vast
that criticism is after all a work of supererogation.
Admitting that they were the blind tools of fate, still
the editors did this great thing. For what would our
literature be if they had not done it? What fame
indeed would Shakespeare have otherwise? The doors
of obli\ion had all but closed on much that Shakespeare
had done when this book came from the press. The
plays already published in the quartos, like the two
long poems and the sonnets, would have survived
probably, but without the work of Heminge and
Condell and their associates, there is small probability
that we should to-day know that such a play as The
Tempest ever existed, or Julius Caesar, or Macbeth, or
Antony and Cleopatra, or As You Like It, or Coriolanus,
and others.
From the day the First Folio w^as issued, Shakes-
peare's fame steadily advanced to the conquest of the
world.
The time is not very far off when substantially every
extant copy of the First Folio and every quarto issued
prior to 1650 will be located in the great public, or Uni-
versity, libraries of the Anglo-Saxon world. They
will ultimately come to be items having such a uni-
versal interest that private ownership would be as
anomalous as private ownership now would be of the
Last Judgment or the Night Watch or the Last Supper.
We who collect and preserve these sacred reUcs do
330 Other Addresses
more than gratify our tastes and educate our own souls :
we help to project through the darkness that inevi-
tably falls over the track of the centuries, a ray of
light which will tell the coming generations of the
veritable existence of that supreme genius who took
the EngHsh language when it was crude and made it so
flexible and sonorous that it is like to become "the
common speech of the world, — who sprang from
parents not far removed from illiteracy to become the
wonder, "the study and the admiration of di\ines and
philosophers, of soldiers and statesmen * * * • who
has touched many spirits finely to fine issues, and has
been for three centuries a source of dehght and under-
standing, of wisdom and consolation."
SOME JEFFERSONIAN MAXIMS
AN AFTER-DIN'NER RESPONSE
DELIVERED JANUARY 15, 1912, AT THE ANNUAL BANQUET OF THE
NEW YORK STATE BANKER'S ASSOCIATION (GROUP
VIIJ) WALDORF-ASTORIA, NEW YORK
HOMAS JEFFERSON wrote at the top of
our political credo two maxims, the truth
of which he declared was self-evident. (1)
That all men are created equal. (2) That
they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness.
In order to sustain the first declaration, political
writers have indulged in more exegetical flip-flaps than
would be necessary to prove that the world was made
in six days. The world was not made in six days,
whatever the meaning of the first chapter of Genesis
may be; and men are not created equal, whatever
Jefferson may have meant by his immortal dictum.
The difference between nien at birth, congenital
differences, are as great as those between two tender
shps just pushing their tops into the sunlight,— one
to become a primrose pale, the other a towering sequoia.
There are only a few sequoias on earth now, just as
there are at any given time only a few really great
and strong men on earth. In order that we may
properly admire our sequoias, we put them on a reser-
vation ; if I were to describe the sort of reservation into
331
332 Other Addresses
which a considerable section of society would like to
place some of our great men, I might be charged with
an attempt to impede the orderly enforcement of the
criminal law.
We began to disprove Jefferson's first "self-evident"
truth politically when we wrote our fundamental law;
we began to disprove it industrially as soon as we went
to work under the impulse of a national consciousness,
as soon as our congenital differences felt the quickening
power of opportunity. We were a little slow in com-
prehending our opportunities; we were a little late in
getting to work. But at the close of the Civil War
the stage was finally set for the presentation of the
industrial drama for which all previous history had
been in a sense a preparation. The tragedy was over.
The question of where sovereignty resided had been
settled. Some — not all — of the conflicting theories
which created the Confederation, which threatened the
Colonies with chaos and ruin, which lived insidiously
in the compromises of the Constitution, had been
reconciled by the arbitrament of war. Nation building
industrially and commercially then began.
If Jefferson's first maxim had been true, the inter-
vening years would not be filled, as they are, with a
record of glorious and imperishable achievement; they
would record the futile and hopeless efforts of medio-
crity. But Jefferson in his first dictum was WTong,
utterly, eternally wrong. Every fact in the situation
after Appomattox was potentiallj" a denial of the first
of Jefferson's self-evident truths. The hunger of the
centuries was ours, and before us lay the Garden of
Promise. The hope of all the millions who had sought
opportunity and found httle was in our souls; and
Some Jeffersonian Maxims 333
before us lay a continent which could keep the promise
both to the ear and to the hope. The imagination of
all the men and women who had dreamed and died
dreaming, burst into activitj- in us. We seized op-
portunity with a determination which infused into
action the ecstasy of battle. Courage, energy, fore-
sight, capacity, swept on to their logical, if sometimes
ruthless and cruel triumphs. Cowardice, sloth, im-
providence, and incapacity, bore fruit that was perhaps
more than ordinarily bitter. The unequal powers and
qualities of men not only asserted themselves, but were
emphasized. The sequoias began to rear their splendid
tops even over the great pines, the cedars and the oaks :
they in turn overshadowed the trees of smaller growth.
Industrial and commercial development went on
stupendously, and without overmuch thought of either
the written or the unwritten law. We traveled so fast
that it took nearly twenty years to discover that we had
been engaging in business practices prohibited and
made crimes by law. Out of this condition have
sprung the problems of the day.
They assume three phases:
1st. — Problems caused by fear — fear inspired by the
activities and size of modern corporations.
This fear is merely a reincarnation of the feel-
ing which led the farmers of England to attack
Stephenson when he built the first railroad; a
reincarnation of the fear which caused such
vehement opposition to the Constitution in
1789; a reincarnation of the feeling which has
so frequently caused riot and murder when
labor-saving machinery has been introduced.
23
334 Other Addresses
2d. — Problems following the wrongs committed by
these corporations, first under the barbarism of
ruthless competition, and second under the
cruelty of monopoly to which competition
automatically and logically leads.
3d. — Problems growing out of the civic demoraliza-
tion which followed when the best brains and
character of the country abandoned statecraft
for business.
Now as to the remedy. Every after-dinner speaker
has a remedy. Else why have after-dinner speakers!
It is certain that a condition created by twenty-five
years of almost unchecked industrial growth on the one
side and civic atrophy on the other, cannot be cured by
any quackery, by any specific, by any cure-all legisla-
tion. The chief trouble is fear. General business is
now in an unusually sound condition, but it is disturbed.
It isn't greatly menaced by the amazing attitude of the
Department of Justice in Washington — but it thinks
it is. The people are also disturbed. They are not
menaced by the mere size of corporations, but they
think they are. Capital is afraid; the people are afraid.
You can't banish fear by legislation. If you legislate
hurriedly, you will probably increase it, and at the
same time you may destroy the beneficent power of
certain natural processes in w^hich, after all, the real
remedy lies.
When general business comes to realize, as it will
after vens nor the microscope nor
the laboratory, but in the processes of government and
society it finds large and vital problems the solution
of which lies entirely within the responsibihties of
society itself.
At the present time men seek social justice, a larger
liberty, protection against the buffetings of circum-
stance and an expanding knowledge.
As a people we are apt to assume that social unrest
indicates progress, to say that expressions of dis-
satisfaction at least indicate intellectual and moral
vigor. Social unrest doesn't necessarily mean that.
The evil in the world is so real that I don't wonder
men long found no explanation of it except in the
doctrine of a personal Devil. Agitation may mean
Life Insurance and the Supreme Purpose 345
progress and it may mean reaction; it may mean
patriotism and it may mean ambition or envy or malice.
The overthrow of Rome wasn't the last effort of bar-
barism. And the decay of Rome which made her
overthrow easy wasn't the end of national decadence.
I do not believe that national decadence is going on
in any considerable people to-day and I know it is not
going on here. But the very character of our citizen-
ship makes the demagogue's opportunity, and the out-
working of a demand for justice and a larger oppor-
tunity gives the agitator his chance. Not every
agitator is a safe leader and his outpourings do not
always represent real grievances.
What the world constantly seeks is that most difficult
thing, a better process. The historj^ of the world is
largely a record of abandoned processes. A process of
government has been good one daj^ and bad the next,
good in one country and a failure elsewhere, good for
one people and ruinous to another, good in one age and
productive of injury and wrongs in a later time. Still
the struggle has gone on and for the average man the
quest has always been the same — what process will give
justice, a larger opportunity, certainty and expanding
knowledge?
Seventeen Hundred Seventy-Six as an historic date
has come to be so familiar to us that we sometimes
forget its significance. Earlier than that there had been
no real democracy, no real freedom in the world.
And what is the essence of the process then adopted?
Clearly the doctrine that all power emanates from the
individual and that every process in government and
society is either the direct exercise of that power or
its exercise through an agent to whom it has been
346 Other Addresses
temporarily entrusted. How has it worked? Wonder-
fully well.
And 3^et we are now vexed by uncounted orators
who are telling us why existing processes are wrong and
how we can get a fuller social justice. The machine
does creak. That frightens some people. Justice has
advanced mightily within a century, and so have men's
ideas of what justice is. That complicates the whole
problem. What men would earlier have taken thank-
fully they now reject scornfully. The established order
is again attacked and there is a large demand that even
our Federal Constitution be dumped on the scrap heap
of history. If that Constitution long fails to give
justice, certainty, a wider opportunity and advancing
knowledge, then onto the scrap heap it should go. If
it is clearly not sufficient as a process, then it is likely
to be abandoned even when no better process has been
evolved.
The discovery of really universal laws is a slow pro-
cess. W^e have discovered very few. We have had to
abandon entirely some of those which claimed the
authority of revelation and we have had to modify
some and abandon some that came through experience
and research. Only a few great principles are estab-
lished beyond reasonable question.
In society and in government we are still groping,
still experimenting, and we shall continue to do so to
the end of time. We are advancing we trust; but
leaders loudly disagree and the new road which one
says leads to social justice, another affirms leads to
reaction and ruin.
The fact is there have been times when substantial
justice has been had and rapid progress made under a
Life Insurance and the Supreme Purpose 347
monarchical form of government, under the sway of the
Divine Right doctrine. There have been times when
only injustice and chaos have resulted under govern-
ments democratic in form. The King has sometimes
done well. Demos has sometimes done ill. What did
the King do when he did well? He recognized the
paramount rights of his subjects. He did not treat
all alike, because their powers, duties and rights were
not alike. He protected the weak, but gave them only
what they deserved. He encouraged the strong but
restrained them from taking more than they deserved.
In all such instances the King really exercised sover-
eignty. What did Demos do when it did ill? It rated
all men as equal, because sovereign. But when these
sovereigns neglected to exercise sovereignty, when
men's natural inecjualities asserted themselves the
strong oppressed and robbed the weak until the weak
revolted and through force of numbers took frightful
revenge.
The weakness of democracy lies in its first and most
attractive appeal. It asserts men's equality. ]Men are
not equal. Because of his sovereignty man has certain
inalienable rights, but these rights are limited and
beyond them man is entitled only to what he wins by
his energy, his capacity and his honesty. Some men
can in the nature of things win little, and they should
be protected. Some men can win much, and they
should be controlled. What social idea suggests a plan
which will give men their just and proper rewards?
What Plan gives us the latest, the most advanced,
the most certain index to what we call the Supreme
Purpose? What plan, starting with the doctrine that
all power emanates from the individual, and clinging
348 Other Addresses
logically to the principle in its outworking that men
are not created equal finally achieves the largest
measure of social justice along with distinct success?
I answer: The Idea and the Plan of Life Insurance.
The New York Life is in its condition to-day a com-
plete illustration of the weakness and of the immeasur-
able strength of democracy. I am referring now not to
the methods by which the policy-holders govern the
Company, but to the philosophy of the business itself.
Here at bottom is true democracy. But it doesn't
stand on any foolish doctrine that all men are created
equal. It stands on the doctrine that all men are
created unequal, so unequal that some are not eligible
to its membership on any terms, some are eligible on
special terms, and most on the same terms; but equality
means an equal return for whatever the indi\-idual is
and does and nothing more. Any other doctrine would
be — and has been — in life insurance as deadly as is
that practice to-day which makes the vote of a hobo
equal to the vote of a President Taft or a Woodrow
Wilson.
To establish the folly of that practice needs no
argument. The vv'eakness and danger of this doctrine
of equality has at least one startling and almost gro-
tesque illustration in our own time. The Southern
negro is protected in his right of franchise by the solemn
covenants of the Federal Constitution, but he doesn't
vote and few people anywhere feel deeply aggrieved on
that account. The trouble is not that the Southern
negro has no natural rights, but that this doctrine of
equality, this franchise guaranteed by the Federal Con-
stitution gives him rights to which he is not entitled,
rights which he abused when he had them, rights
Life Insurance and the Supreme Purpose 349
which the carpet-bagger quickly learned how to use.
The negro — yes, even the Southern negro — should have
a voice in governmental affairs. It is wrong and
dangerous that he has none; only less wrong and
dangerous than it would be for him again to have full
rights. It is just as wrong for the gun-man, the loafer,
the gambler, the white-slaver to have a power in
elections equal to the power of the best citizens.
The fact is we run society and the government at
Washington on what in life insurance we call the assess-
ment plan. This plan is unscientific from its very
inception. It has always failed and it always must fail.
The early years of an assessment Company are very like
the early years of this Republic. Everything is lovely.
Everything was lovely at first with us under the Con-
stitution. Expenses were low because nationality had
only been born and it made few demands; but an un-
measured deficit was accumulating just as it does in
an assessment company. That deficit took its fearful
toll in 1861 to 1865. It is the same civic deficit which
has led to the social unrest and almost social revolution
which we now face.
Suppose the New York Life was to-day fully liable
under all the contracts it ever issued on which default
in premiums has occurred, what would be its con-
dition? Isn't that relatively our condition under our
form of government — or rather under our practice?
Our government guaranties never decrease, through a
mass of half-baked legislation they constantly increase ;
but the civic revenue by which alone these guaranties
can be made good, the patriotic attention to civic duty
called for by our theory of government, constantly
lapses. Default follows that lapse, and while that
350 Other Addresses
default does not operate as quickly as it does on a bond,
it operates just as certainly. A balance is finally
struck. In business this balance sometimes represents
full payment, but usually at a heavy cost to some one;
frequently it represents partial repudiation, which of
course means shame as well as loss. In government
and society it always means both shame and loss;
it means bitterness, discontent, civic inefficiency and
that general sense of social wrong which blossoms in
the red flag of anarchy.
Constantly increasing ci^-ic obligations and a steadily
decreasing civic revenue explain the whole political
situation to-day. Civic obligations increase inevitably.
The functions of government naturally and properly
widen. Education, transportation, heating, lighting,
the care of the socially inefficient — all these functions
expand constantly and every citizen is their bene-
ficiary. We go on the theory that these benefits can
be denied to none. In educational matters they are
compulsory.
But the civic revenue, the patriotic attention of each
citizen to his duties, constantly fails — sometimes from
sheer neglect, sometimes from selfishness, sometimes
from crookedness. The sovereign fails to act. It is
well to face the truth. We are following a practice in
government which followed by any business would ruin
it, and followed much farther will ruin us. That sounds
pessimistic, but isn't it true?
Can we pay our civic debts by optimism, by good
crops, by hard work, by business success? Can we
depend on fiat citizenship any more safely than we
could on fiat money? Can we assume that all will
come right on the asset side of the account with no
Life Insurance and the Supreme Purpose 351
real business program to see that it is right? I am not
now referring to the material assets raised by the crude
and unjust systems of taxation which we rely on. I
don't know what the limit of our power to raise revenue
may be. It seems almost unlimited. I am referring
to something which underlies even that, which is the
essence of the idea that distinguishes this government
from all governments that have preceded it. Back of
the material and financial benefits of our expanding
system lie the blessings of free speech, of a free press,
of religious liberty and of free men. These are the real
things — these in their widening application include the
inspiring possibilities of our future. We are contracting
almost unlimited liabilities on these accounts, assuming
obligations which can be met only if there is a corre-
sponding civic income. What are the indications as
to that income? Is it holding up? Is it expanding
as our liabilities pile up? He would be a bold man
who answered in the affirmative. Are we doing any-
thing effective to increase that income? Or are we
piling up obligations with no sure source of revenue
out of which to meet them? It is easy to contract
obligations in government: that is only another ex-
pression for conferring benefits. Men feel like philan-
thropists when they do it. Moreover it makes votes.
The pork barrel is always popular.
But the other side of the problem is not so simple.
Most of 3"ou would perhaps be shocked by a suggestion
that you ought to be punished every time you neglect
a civic duty. That sort of legislation wouldn't be
popular; it wouldn't make votes. Statesmen shun it.
But can anyone make a good argument against it?
If we spend money it must be paid. If we expand civic
352 Other Addresses
rights we should do so only if we know that our drafts
on civic obligation will be honored. If they are not
honored, we, having already contracted the obligation,
certainly face dishonor.
In business generally the wise man enters into no
contract unless he has reasonable assurance that he
will be able to meet that contract's demands. The
business man may fail; his calculations may have been
erroneous, his assumptions wrong, but he has a plan
and he struggles desperately to carry it through. In
government and society there is a plan, a beautiful
plan, but in the light of what we know about human
nature many assumptions that are fundamental are
wrong and many calculations erroneous and there is
no business program for its execution.
In life insurance there is also a plan, a perfect plan.
There is no error in the calculation, there is no fault
in the assumptions; assets and obligations, benefits
and duties, power and promise automatically adjust
themselves and a man gets all he pays for but no more.
At the same time every member of that republic is
certain that whatever is true of him is true of all his
associates.
Would there be anything unwise or unreasonable or
illogical in a program which treated government and
its obligations in the same way? Would it be in any
respect unsound, for example, if, w^hen we give men the
benefit of free schools, we at the same time laid specific
civic — not merely financial — obligations upon them
and to those obligations attached suitable penalties?
That uiSLj seem a bit startling, but is it at all unreason-
able? Isn't it logical and necessary?
Life Insurance and the Supreme Pur-pose 353
Let us brush aside the sort of superstition which
assumes that a free government means unhmited
giving; that a free government means only individual
freedom to act or not to act as one sees fit.
Free government means in theory an assumption of
personal responsibilities of the highest order, larger
obligations than attach to the citizen under any other
form of government. If the sovereign neglects or re-
fuses to act, why not coerce that particular sovereign?
Why not enforce his responsibilities? ^\Tiy not enforce
them by statute? Are we not now face to face with
conditions which indicate that there is really no other
recourse and that there really never was any other safe
and sound program?
''But" you ask, "how shall we do this?" I answer
just as we do it in life insurance. If a man lapses in
life insurance his rights and benefits are reduced ac-
cordingly. We take nothing away from him; we simply
refuse to give him what he hasn't paid for. We can't
compel a man to pay his premium, but we can and do
protect ourselves on the other side of the account.
Why should not a civic as well as a financial account
be kept by the State with every citizen? A regular
debit and credit? The credits the State must give;
the debits the State should enforce.
If the State has charged against the citizen the duty
of voting, why shouldn't that be checked up and en-
forced? If the citizen fails to do his duty and can't
justify his failure, why shouldn't he be fined? And if
he fails again, why shouldn't he be jailed? And if he
fails a third time, why shouldn't he be classed civically
with other incompetents — the insane, the criminal,
the feeble-minded? By that process we should blow
354 Other Addresses
away a lot of fog, we should cease to depend on him
for the civic income which we never get.
If a citizen sells his vote, we are supposed to have a
way to deal with him now though we seldom use it
effectively; but if a man sells his vote isn't he in reality
a traitor and should he receive any less drastic punish-
ment than we deal out to traitors?
The debit side presents the serious problems when we
face the facts; the credit side is where most of our
statesmen are busy. It's easy to give money and pri-
vilege away. But nothing is more certain than this:
we must face the facts. We must do in government
what we do in life insurance. Can anyone overstate
the benefits to all if this government were as solvent
civically as the New York Life is financially? If its
civic debits were certainly equal to the civic benefits
it has pledged?
Parties may clamor about social injustice, about
tariffs and State Rights, about trusts and big business;
but these questions would not exist, or would be re-
latively simple if the citizen was not ci\dcally in default.
Their solution lies not in loud promises and protesta-
tions, but in the simple and effective and equitable
processes by which this Company has come to be not
merely a great storehouse of social power, but a great
exemplar of how to get and to give social justice.
The Supreme Purpose whatever else it may involve,
must involve social justice. A demand for social
justice lies back of all the political turmoil of to-day.
But no program advanced by any political party does
anything more than talk about it, talk around it. The
Socialists go beyond it; all the others go astray. Can
you imagine a political leader really facing the music,
Life Insurance and the Supreme Purpose 355
really telling the people the truth? Can you see a
party making the citizens' civic obligations a part of
its platform and solemnly declaring for a jail sentence
for men who persistently neglect their civic duties?
Crying out against the Bosses is all right. But how
busy with civic duties have you seen most of those who
cry loudest? Has the Boss done anything but appro-
priate in a perfectly natural way the property of the
good citizen who has been so busy that he left his civic
heritage to grow up to weeds?
Indeed I am not sure which element of society' in the
long run is more to be condemned: the Bosses who
merely seize their opportunities or the Business Men
who let things go to the dogs for years and then rise up
in rage and upset for the moment the Bosses' program.
Having upset the Bosses, the Good Citizen struts
around for a time looking virtuous, passes a lot of laws
which further extend civic privileges, and then back
he goes again to the old condition. He lapses, but his
claim on general society does not correspondingly de-
crease and the deficit which follows ultimately results
in another civic outburst. The Bosses never would
have a chance if the good people would just be honest
with their own form of government. Tammany Hall
has never had at any one time a membership of over
15,000, but that was enough because there was no real
opposition.
Government isn't a joke; society isn't a joke. All
values, all certainty, all business, all justice, all pro-
gress, sooner or later question both, and the answer
received fixes values and measures progress. This
sovereign citizen of ours unquestionably asserts his
sovereignty in business, but repudiates his sovereignty
356 Other Addresses
in most of the things which ultimately control business.
In business he insists on the rule of law and he himself
makes and enforces that law. The man who dis-
regards the laws of business may be haled into an
ordinary court and punished or he may be convicted
and punished before any statute law becomes operative.
Most business failures are the result of lawlessness
which the written statute does not reach.
In civic affairs our sovereign exhibits no such effi-
ciency. He is not a lawmaker; he is a lawbreaker.
Acting on a plan of government which is the product
of thousands of years of struggle, we assert a sovereignty
which we in a large measure neglect, and have thereby
become a nation of lawbreakers. The penalties of . that
lawlessness are ultimately visited not alone upon the
guilty but upon the whole body of society. Then the
demagogue gets busy. Then the Constitution is as-
sailed. Then every political nostrum known in the
laboratory of quackery is brought out and our ears
are furiously assaulted. One man shrieks about the
high cost of living; another shrieks about the Bosses;
another shrieks about the Tariff; all suggest a lot of
new things which will give us something more. But
not a party or a man gets down to real business; not
a party or a man touches the real trouble — which is
that civically we are not business men. We are flying
kites, depending on fiat civic virtue. We are pursuing
a program which would wreck any business enterprise,
and we ought not to expect anj- real relief until we rise
to the level of our civic professions and pay our ci\ic
debts.
The road that leads to the land of the Supreme
Purpose runs through the dominions of justice, where
Life Insurance and the Supreme Purpose 357
certainty lives, where there is an expanding opportunity
and a larger knowledge. On that road no idea has
traveled so fast or so far as life insurance. In its train
are justice, liberty, certainty and a knowledge which
illumines the mind and unfetters the soul.
I suppose if any of us in some future state of exis-
tence comes to know the riddle of the universe and the
processes by w^hich man solved it, we shall see as we
cannot see now the great points in history, we shall
note the birth of ideas that w^ere really decisive and
advanced the consummation of the Supreme Purpose.
I can imagine a meeting of the S200,000 Club in that
state of existence, at which thankfulness will be our
mastering sentiment — thankfulness for a shining part in
the w^ork, and with it will be mingled a feehng of pride
because of our consciousness that when we met an
opportunity which seemed to illuminate the Supreme
Purpose we pursued it mightily; we worked and never
dawdled.
THE TAXATION OF ORGANIZED
BENEFICENCE
AN ADDRESS
TO THE EXECUTIVE OFFICERS, STAFF AND GUESTS OF THE UNION
CENTRAL LIFE. AT THE OPENING OF ITS HOME OFFICE.
NOVEMBER 7. 1913, CINCINNATI, OHIO
TANDING within the precincts of this noble
structure, surrounded not only by the men
who guide the destinies of this great in-
stitution but also by the traditions which
always cluster about a really great human
enterprise, I realize that congratulations from me, or
from any one, to be adequate must represent something
more than merely happily chosen words.
The facts speak for themselves. Achievement stands
all about us. Dreams have been made realities. Ideals
have been nobly pursued and splendidly attained.
Nothing that any of us says to-day can adequately
describe the high purpose, the wise methods, the patient
labors, and the moral steadfastness by which a hfe in-
surance organization has been here so administered
that a great life insurance company has been built up.
That such an institution exists is proof that a high
purpose has ruled it, is proof that wise methods have
been followed by it, and that patient labor has marked
its whole existence; the Company itself is the rich
reward of a moral steadfastness without which such
success may not be achieved. Words, therefore, count
358
The Taxation of Organized Beneficence 359
for little, and for nothing unless they are sympathet-
ically uttered.
When I offer, in the name of the Company I have
the honor to serve, sincere congratulations upon your
entrance into this beautiful Home, I offer not merely
words, but an appreciation born of intimate acquaint-
ance with similar purposes, methods and labors, and
a profound sympathy and daily experience with a like
moral steadfastness.
I rejoice with you in your success. I know what suc-
cess costs. I venerate the names of those who first
set your feet in the right way and estabhshed your
goings. My veneration is born of the pride I feel in the
great names which adorn the history of my own
institution. I greet most sympathetically those who
to-day manage your affairs. That sympathy is born
of experience in facing kindred problems, of efforts to
uphold the best traditions of a great business, of a
determination not to neglect any new processes or new
standard which our larger experience demands that
we should adopt.
The Union Central, like all life companies of similar
age, has passed the experimental stages and has a
history and an experience of its own. It has withstood
those economic crises which, especially in this country,
periodically depress business and disturb the value of
securities. It has gained wisdom from the failures of
other organizations less soundly organized. It has
learned how circumspect a corporation and the officers
of a corporation must be in order not to arouse public
prejudice. It has seen how necessary it is to guard
against the wiles of those who thrive upon denuncia-
tion. On the affirmative side, it has learned the in-
360 Other Addresses
estimable value of integrity and courgage. It has seen
that those who build upon sure foundations need not
fear the storm; that public opinion in the long run will
follow the rules of common sense and fair-play.
Life insurance has now come to years of manhood,
to years of strength, and, except in New York State,
to a period of unlimited opportunity. In all the
struggles that have preceded that condition, the Union
Central has been a factor. In the organized forces
which promise most for the future of general society,
this Company has a definite place, and, in the great
territory where it is located, the leading place.
If there were any really unchangeable and irrevo-
cable canons of society and government, I should be
disposed to complete my congratulations by sug-
gesting that the Union Central's problems are all
solved and its troubles are all over. But unfortunately
— or perhaps I should say fortunately — your problems
are not all solved and your troubles are not all over.
It is true that your organization rests solidly on ac-
cepted tables of mortality and conservative assump-
tions as to rates of interest ; it is true that your invest-
ments are soundly made; it is true that you are organ-
izing society against its own weakness; that you are
daily assembling unrelated and otherwise hostile money
and impressing it with a social efficiency which the
world as yet only faintly comprehends. It is true that
your work is entirely creative, that it is in sj^mpathy
with every force that builds up and is hostile to every
factor that disintegrates and destroys. )»\Tien I say
that of all the organized factors of society only a few
can truthfully claim to possess these qualities, I assert
only what every well-informed man knows to be a
The Taxation of Organized Beneficence 361
fact; and yet I cannot congratulate you on that ac-
count over immunity from unjust attacks in the future.
Indeed, so preverse are some of the forces of a demo-
cratic society that your virtues and your usefulness and
your success are almost certain to be the source of
some of your gravest problems, the cause of some of
your most serious troubles.
One of the many problems that face j^ou and me and
all men charged with any considerable responsibilit}^ in
this great field of work is taxation.
If I proceed now to discuss problems of taxation
merely, I shall not have discussed the real problem
which I have in mind, and yet the problem I have in
mind finds its most concrete expression in terms of
taxation. The real problem goes deeper. It is this:
How shall we make the people understand that a life
insurance company is a pure democracy; that it is the
most successful expression of democratic principles
actually at work; that in it there is the justice which
democracy aims to accomplish and otherwise largely
fails to achieve; that it is a brother to all those who,
from the beginning of time, have sought to assert the
divinity that dwells in man, who have sought some
process by which the sovereignty of the individual
could be established and at the same time the im-
measurable strength of men working together could be
realized?
That this is what life insurance really means, society
at large does not begin to comprehend. Indignant
over their exploitation by the strong and the rich, men
are disposed to classify the successful life insurance
company along with the great trust, and to view it
with the suspicion and fear with which they view — and
362 Other Addresses
view not altogether unjustly — accumulated wealth and
great business success. I do not claim that life insur-
ance is entirely without fault. It has made some
serious mistakes which have given some color of justifi-
cation to such public opinion. But the real causes
which have led to the misconceptions which exist are
to be found in the imperfections of human nature
and in some of those weaknesses which always have
and always will be inherent in a democratic society.
One great weakness of a democratic society is that
its beneficent forces are unorganized. Selfishness is
organized, politics is organized, business is organized,
even crime is organized. But the people, through lack
of organization, frequently are unable to know when
and how and where they have really achieved a triumph.
The politician easily fools them; business not infre-
quently fools them. For this reason they sometimes
find that the fruits of an apparent victory are at the
last merely Apples of Sodom. On the other hand, and
for the same reason, they sometimes fail to recognize
a really democratic movement, a really democratic
achievement.
That life insurance is organized beneficence, that it
is democratic, that its money is the money of the
people, that its extent is so great as to make any exist-
ing private fortune a matter of relative unimportance,
that its billions of accumulations are more potent than
any other money assembled for any purpose because
of the social efficiency with which they are impressed, —
in short, that it answers to a large degree the longings
of the individual for a definite place in the wealth of
the world, and for definite power against the organized
selfishness of the world, — all these seem to be truths
i
The Taxation of Organized Beneficence 363
that the people comprehend with great difficulty.
Indeed, comprehension comes so slowly that the people
themselves, through their accredited representatives,
unwittingly harass and handicap and burden what are
really their own best and dearest achievements.
I can at this time touch only upon one or two of the
forms which this lack of understanding takes with re-
gard to life insurance. One form is taxation.
We have, as a nation, recently been re-examining the
bases and the principles of taxation in the matter of
imported goods and of incomes. Congress has pro-
claimed its intention to strike the shackles from trade
and industry and to lift the burden of the high cost of
living from the consumer, or at least from the poor.
There are shackles which bind life insurance and there
is a high cost to the consumer in this field which is the
direct product of unwise legislation, which in turn is
a direct product of misconception by the insured them-
selves. Whatever life insurance costs beyond what it
should is chiefly chargeable now to unwise legislation.
I shall not stop to review what may be called the
shackles pure and simple which still exist in hfe insur-
ance regulation. As a matter of fact, such shackles do
not exist outside of the States of New York and Texas,
and as originally forged they have been mostly broken.
In New York they remain to-day in only two par-
ticulars: Limitation on the volume of business which
a company may legally produce annually; and limita-
tion on a company's margins of safety.
But as re-examination of processes of taxation is in
order let us review concretely some facts with regard
to the processes by which life insurance is now taxed:
The legal reserve life insurance companies of the United
364 Other Addresses
States paid in 1912, in addition to taxes on real estate,
nearly $13,000,000 on a total premium income of over
8666,000,000. That is to say, for every $1,000 of
capital which the insured paid in 1912 for the protec-
tion of their families through life insurance, the state
took, in one form or another, about $20. This is a
heavier tax than the property tax in New York,
Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston or San Fran-
cisco. Every dollar's worth of property upon the
security of which the companies had invested their
funds paid taxes where it was situated; but, in addition
to that, for the mere privilege of existing and doing
business, the States first and last took this fearful toll.
This is not only taxation of capital but excessive
taxation from any point of \'iew. It can perhaps be
made more impressive if, for purposes of illustration, we
apply the burden to some other phases of the business.
The ultimate purpose of life insurance, of course, is
protection, and that finds expression in the money that
is finally paid to the insured or to their beneficiaries.
If now we assume that the policy-holder was taxed
upon what he received rather than upon what he paid,
we find that for every $1,000 paid to policy-holders in
1912 the state exacted in taxes almost $29.
x\gain, if we assume that the chief benefit of life in-
surance is the amount paid in death claims, then we
find that for every $1,000 so paid the state exacted
death duties to the amount of over $63.
If it be said that expenses of life insurance are too
high, managements may very well retort that the item
of state taxes in every $1,000 expenses amounts to $72,
and unlike ordinary expenses is a factor entirely beyond
their control.
The Taxation of Organized Beneficence 365
If people complain that dividends are too small,
that condition is in part at least explained by taxes,
because for every $1,000 paid in di^^dends in 1912 the
companies were obhged to pay S140 in taxes; in other
words, dividends on the average would have been 14%
higher but for the moneys taken by the State for the
privilege of doing business.
The latest development in our various forms of
taxation in the country at large is the Income Tax.
This tax reaches life insurance, as it did in the cor-
poration tax which it supersedes, by levying \% upon
net income. If the Company which I have the honor
to serve had paid to the Federal Government in 1912
as a tax on its net income what it paid to the States,
the rate of taxation on that income would have been
four and four-tenths per cent. This rate approximates
the rate le\^ed by the Income Tax on so much of
private incomes as exceeds 8250,000 and does not
exceed $500,000; in other words, it equals the rate
applied by the existing law to those whom some
people call "the criminal rich".
The indictment against such taxation is not com-
plete when I recite merely the size of the burden.
Another clause of the indictment must tell how the
States destroy equity as between policy-holders.
Neither in the rate, in the amounts paid, nor in the
principle underlying the system of taxation, do the
States agree.
Twenty-seven States levy a tax upon gross premiums
without deductions.
In one State the rate is six-tenths of 1 % ;
In two States it is 1 % ;
In one State it is 1.44%;
25
366 Other Addresses
In one it is 1.75%;
In two it is l}/i%;
In eleven it is 2%;
In one it is 23^% on the first S5,000 and 2% on the
excess ;
In one it is 234%;
In six it is 23^%;
And in one it is 3%.
Nineteen States and the District of Columbia levy a
tax upon premiums after certain deductions:
In four States and in the District of Columbia the
basis of the tax is premiums less dividends;
In nine States it is premiums less annual di\'idends;
In one State it is premiums less death losses;
In one State it is premiums less death losses not to
exceed 25% of the premiums;
In two States it is premiums less policy claims;
In one State it is premiums less death losses, endow-
ments and commissions;
In one State it is premiums less re-insurance pre-
miums paid to domestic companies.
In two States only are premiums not taxed — Nevada
and Massachusetts; but ^Massachusetts levies a tax
upon the reserves of Massachusetts policy-holders,
which is the most indefensible of all forms of hfe in-
surance taxation.
Among the lesser taxes imposed are some of the
following in every State: state license tax, state fees,
state and county license fees, city and county taxes,
personal property tax.
Here are nineteen different rates of taxation, even if
licenses and fees were the same in every State — which
they are not. And yet the United States are supposed
The Taxation of Organized Beneficence 367
to be a nation in which the citizens of each State are
"entitled to all pri\'ileges and immunities of citizens
of the several States", where commercial intercourse
between the citizens of the different states is free and
untrammelled.
If any one of these rates of taxation is right, then
eighteen of them are wrong.
The absurdity and injustice of the present situation
will be illustrated if we assume that Congress were
legislating upon the subject and that nineteen different
rates of taxation were presented by representatives of
nineteen different States, and, as the sponsors of each
plan insisted upon their own, Congress should enact
them all!
All this, notwithstanding the frequently repeated
statute which forbids any company to "make or permit
any discrimination between indi\dduals of the same
class or of equal expectation of life, in the amount or
payment or return of premiums or rates charged for
policies of insurance, or in the dividends or other
benefits payable thereon, or in any of the terms and
conditions of the policy". The first to violate these
statutes are the States that have passed them. The
companies could hardly have any object in violating
them, and, so far as I know, no company ever volun-
tarily did. It would be difficult, however, to conceive
of a greater travesty on justice in the matter of taxation
than a program by which the States in one statute
prohibit discriminations and in another enforce a
program which compels discriminations.
We are, in a word, faced by this anomalous condition :
Life insurance, using words in their ordinary signifi-
cance, is not an investment at all. The money that
3G8 Other Addresses
pro\'ides it represents, substantially in its entirety,
unselfish sacrifice; and yet, no capital going into any
ordinary business enterprise is anywhere in this country
taxed as heavily as life insurance premiums are taxed.
Taxation is one of the oldest problems of government.
Indeed it lies at the foundation of all government. The
disposition on the part of the representatives of the
people to get money for governmental purposes in the
easiest, rather than in the right, way is in part at least
a product of their resentment against the encroachment
of organized wealth, against the inhumanity of or-
ganized ability. Responsible life insurance companies
have money; they must have it. But the people as a
whole do not understand that necessity, they do not
appreciate its significance, and they do not realize that
that rnonej' is their money, that it is beneficent and
not malevolent in character, that it is really the fine
product of an ideal democracy. It is even difficult
for them to understand that the project itself should be
encouraged; but that much they do faintly admit.
Broadl}^ speaking, the man in the street will generally
say that life insurance is a good thing. Concretely
speaking, when he comes face to face with the fact that
it has great accumulations of money, he acts as though
he thought it were a bad thing.
And yet, I thoroughly beheve that we are making
progress. There are two principal reasons why I think
so; the first is that the day of strike legislation is gone
and gone forever. This dates from the moral upheaval
which perhaps found its most definite form in the in-
surance investigation in the State of New York in
1905-6. It is easy to be wise after the event, easy now
to condemn the men who, in most instances at least,
The Taxation of Organized Beneficence 369
dickered with the blackmailing legislator from the best
of motives and from a desire to protect the interests
of their poUcy-holders ; but that condition has passed,
passed not only for life insurance, but, as I see it, for
all corporations. The second reason is that when the
Income Tax was under discussion in Congress, genuine
progress was made. The case was presented as it
probably was never presented before to any legislative
body in this country. The result is that the tax exacted
from life insurance companies under the Corporation
Tax law will be materially reduced under the existing
Income Tax law. That is progress; and no incon-
siderable progress has been made by the several States
as well.
Twelve States, within seven years, have reduced tax-
ation on life insurance by percentages varying from one-
tenth of one per cent, in Colorado, to one per cent, in
Rhode Island. In the same period thirteen States have
increased taxation. While, therefore, the States, as a
whole, appear not to have made progress, as a matter
of fact they have, because prior to seven years ago no
State ever made any reduction under any circumstances.
That within seven years twelve States should have made
reductions is significant, and is rendered more signifi-
cant by the recent action of the Federal Congress.
But the misunderstanding still exists. That Con-
gressmen and Senators fail to understand the part that
life insurance plays in the economy of the state is
shown in the text of the Income Tax law as it now
stands, and was strikingly shown by the measure in
its first draft. It is hardly worth while now to discuss
the provisions of the bill as originally presented; it is
enough to say that into that first draft some enemy of
370 Other Addresses
responsible life insurance had injected an unusual
amount of venom. Who that enemy was I do not know,
although he probably was not a member of either
House. But even now the bill clearly shows this lack
of understanding, this fear of accumulated money,
this disposition to put a penalty upon success.
The bill, for example, exempts all fraternal, bene-
ficial and religious orders. Why? Ostensibly because
they are mutual. But is that the real reason? They
are no more mutual than certain well-known life com-
panies, and broadly speaking no more mutual than the
so-called stock companies. But they accumulate little
money, they present the plea of poverty ; the successful
companies accumulate money and do not present the
plea of poverty. It is true that these orders are un-
scientifically founded, that they are to a large degree
irresponsible, that their contracts cannot be depended
on, that their record through a period of time is one
of failure and financial default, social inefficiency and
general incompetence; but they have the seeming
virtue of poverty. On the other hand, it is true that
the responsible life companies are dependable, that
their contracts are as certain as anything in human
society, that what they agree to do they do, and the
extent of what they beneficently do is almost beyond
calculation; but in doing it and in order that they may
do it, they commit the offence — or what is seemingly
an offence— of having large accumulations of money.
Moreover they never make the plea of poverty. So
the inefficient and the irresponsible go untaxed; the
efficient and the responsible are taxed. The feeble
attempt at democracy is encouraged; the effective
achievement of real democracy is discouraged.
The Taxation of Organized Beneficence 371
And yet I insist that we have progressed. During the
recent discussion of the Income Tax law Congress really
responded to the plea of the companies. Most of us
presented arguments; which arguments went home it
is not easy to say. That some of them went home is
certain. It may not be out of order for me to repeat
in substance some of the arguments which I used with
the Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Senate,
and, so far as I was allowed, with the Sub-Committee
of that body.
I called the Committee's attention to the socially
inefficient, what we call the dependent class, and re-
viewed some of the causes which constantly swell the
ranks of that class. That one of the great problems
confronting every statesman is how to provide through
taxation for the support of this class was a matter
that I did not need to emphasize. My plea for life
insurance was that beyond every other organized force
in human society it helps the state and aids the states-
man by keeping people out of the dependent class ; and
if we can successfully establish a social program which
keeps people from becoming dependent, a great problem
in statecraft will speedily become simplified. We pay
to war pensioners over $165,000,000 a year, every dol-
lar of which is raised by taxation. The life companies
pay twice that sum annually in cash to beneficiaries
and policy-holders, every dollar of which is raised by
private taxation. Pensions are remedial. Life in-
surance is preventive. Pensions are the price the
people pay in order to soften the pitiful after effects of
a conflict too hideous to be ameliorated when in prog-
ress. The proceeds of life insurance are provided by
the people to protect the defenceless, to educate the
372 Other Addresses
young, to open the door of opportunity. But it is a
tax, and to tax it is to commit the economic barbarism
of levying a tax on a tax.
This was the argument which I sought to drive home.
It seems to me it is the consideration which must appeal
to every intelligent statesman. If that be a fact, if
life insurance in the great interplay of the forces in-
volved in our sociology is direct, powerful and efficient
in keeping people out of the dependent class, should it,
beyond the cost of administration, be taxed at all?
Should it not rather be encouraged — encouraged as an
enterprise which in the long run solves the problem
of taxation by reducing the burdens on society which
ultimately find expression in terms of taxation?
In knowledge of the economic meaning and value of
life insurance, we are far behind most of the enhghtened
countries of the world. I happen to be associated with
a company which does business with substantially all
the civilized countries of the globe. In only a few are
we taxed in the same way that we are taxed in the
United States. I refrain from naming those countries
because the catalogue might appear in^^dious. In most
of the great countries of Europe, whenever a tax is
laid upon premiums it is assessed directly against the
policy-holder and turned over to the government.
This has at least the virtue of directness and the
policy-holder knows what the government is doing.
A great objection to our system is its indirection. Few
policy-holders know that they are being mulcted by
the government. In France, Spain, Denmark, Ger-
many and Russia, the premium tax is for the main-
tenance of the Insurance Department and substan-
tially nothing more. In Great Britain the tax that the
The Taxation of Organized Beneficence 373
company pays is about one-fourteenth of the average
rate in the United States. In Germany the rate is
about one-twentieth of the rate exacted in the United
States.
But that is not the whole story. In Great Britain
and Germany the government not only refrains from
lajdng more than a nominal tax upon life insurance
when voluntarily taken, but they compel certain classes
to insure against death, accidents and sickness, and
provide at the public charge for old age pensions.
The cost of this is assessed partly on the insured,
partly upon the employer, and partly upon public
funds. The attitude of these governments toward the
idea of life insurance is so far in advance of the attitude
maintained by our various legislatures that the con-
trast is painful. They have learned what we must
learn; they have learned under autocratic forms of
government what we are learning very slowly under a
democratic form of government.
I have said that we are making progress. I wish I
could say that we shall ultimately get justice under the
super\dsion to which all insurance is now subjected.
What would the attainment of justice in taxation in-
volve? It would mean that forty-eight separate State
legislatures and the legislatures of all the Territories,
as well as the Congress of the United States, must
reduce taxation on insurance of all kinds to a basis
which would represent merely the cost of efficient
state administration. It would mean the surrender of
over $16,000,000 in annual revenue. Some of you may
beheve that can be done; I am frank to say that I do not.
And yet I believe we shall ultimately get justice.
Europe has learned the lesson; but the people did not
374 Other Addresses
learn the lesson and then enforce it ; the lesson was first
learned by authority. The value of hfe insurance was
first appreciated in Europe and is being imposed on the
people, by authority. The one great authority in the
United States which can enforce justice is the Federal
Supreme Court.
That Court went wrong economically in 1869 in
the case of Paul vs. Virginia. It has generally been
assumed, in that case, and in some subsequent cases
where the doctrine of that case was reaffirmed, that the
Court irrevocably declared insurance in all its forms
and however practiced not to be commerce. The
language used in some later decisions, however, implies
that the decision then made applied only to insurance
as ordinarily practiced, and later writers have re-
peatedly intimated that in the case of Paul vs. Virginia
the Supreme Court has not disposed of the whole
subject of insurance nor settled the question as to
w^hether or not it is commerce as practiced now, es-
pecially in Ufe insurance. The practical effect of that
decision, however, was to leave the whole matter to
the tender mercies of the States and they are taking
out of insurance as a whole annually about 817,500,000.
To expect the States voluntarily to give that up is to
expect too much. You might as well expect the bene-
ficiary of a monopoly voluntarily to come forward and
renounce his pri\'ileges. Human nature is not made
that way.
What the Supreme Court of the United States may
do when insurance and especially Hfe insurance as it
is now practiced is fully presented and discussed, is
another matter. Good lawyers believe that if the
Supreme Court should enter a decree declaring that
i
The Taxation of Organized Beneficence 375
insurance and especially life insurance as now practiced
is commerce, it would simply be recognizing what has
always been true, and would not be reversing the
controlling case of Paul vs. Virginia. The effect of such
an opinion would be magical. I firmly believe that
sooner or later such an opinion must be rendered.
When that times comes not only will the great body
of this taxation fall away, but an opportunity will be
created for the expansion of a great democratic idea,
one which applies the principles of democracy to labor
and the products of labor, to society and the problems
of society, as effectually as manhood suffrage, in theory
at least, enforces the rights of humanity in the pro-
cesses of a democratic government. Through the
expansion of that idea, under the control of one central
authority as against some fifty authorities which now
control, we shall hasten enormously the time when
the people will understand that a life insurance com-
pany is indeed a pure democracy, that it is a brother
to all who have long sought some process by which
the sovereignty of the individual may be established,
and at the same time the immeasurable strength of
men working together may be realized.
AN OPEN LETTER
TO THE COMMISSIONER OF
THE WORLD'S INSURANCE CONGRESS. SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
NEW YORK, MAY 15, I9I4
May 15, 1914.
Mr. W. L. HATHAWAY,
Commissioner, World's Insurance Congress,
San Francisco, California.
.EAR SIR: San Francisco is one of the
l\ necessary cities of the world, but that the
Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915 is to
be held within her gates is attributable in
very large measure to insurance and its
singular service.
I do not say that San Francisco would not have been
rebuilt in any event, but the difference between San
Francisco as it is and San Francisco as it would have
been if insurance had not almost immediately provided
its stricken people with $190,000,000 after calamity
fell, is something so considerable that, while we may
not exactly measure it, everybody must recognize it.
Of this $190,000,000 nearly $60,000,000 came from
across the Atlantic. In other words, the foundations
of insurance were wider than the nation, wider than
the continent, and the means thus provided for recon-
structing San Francisco were adequate because of a sub-
stantially unrestricted operation of the insurance idea.
376
An Open Letter 377
No idea, therefore, of the many which will be dis-
cussed and advanced during this Exposition will so
well harmonize with its environment as insurance.
A great fact with which the coming World's Insur-
ance Congress will be faced — indeed the greatest fact
— is that insurance of all types in the United States is
seriously menaced at the present time by conflicting
and hostile governmental regulations which threaten
— indeed have already begun — to impair its usefulness.
We all know that the Constitution of the United
States was the outgrowth of commercial necessity.
The original colonies did not form the Union because
they wanted to. In commercial matters they hated
each other cordially. After they had won indepen-
dence, they indulged in acts of commercial reprisal
which seem to us at this distance almost unbelievable.
In order to vent their spleen, some of the colonies dis-
criminated in favor of European nations as against
their sister colonies. The menace of outside interfer-
ence finally became so real and the danger so imminent
that the colonies were compelled to put aside some of
their animosities in order to get together for the com-
mon defence. The Constitution of the United States
adopted in 1789 was the result of this movement. If
at that time the people of the various colonies had
understood how flexible the instrument was, how
nationality would spring up under it, how the central
government would gradually develop a real sovereignty
in place of the spurious sovereignty with which they
deluded themselves — they would not have adopted it.
The notion that the colonies were severally sovereign
— which was never true — survived the birth of the new
nation and has plagued it ever since. Nationality has
378 Other Addresses
slowly but surely evolved in the intervening years,
but the old prejudices and the old animosities have
steadily fought that development.
Chief Justice Marshall had a clear vision of nation-
ality and in some of his great decisions did as much to
give the Constitution its present meaning as the men
who fashioned it in that immortal convention in Phila-
delphia. IMarshall's definition of the relation between
the general government and the States was substan-
tially this:
"The action of the general government should be
apphed to all the external concerns of the nation,
and to those internal concerns which affect the States
generally; while to the States is reserved the con-
trol of those matters which are completely within a
particular State, w^hich do not affect other States,
and with which it is not necessary to interfere
for the purpose of executing some of the general
powers of government."
If the Supreme Court had adhered to that doctrine,
the conditions which threaten the usefulness and
efficiency of all kinds of insurance would not to-day
exist, but unfortunately in 1868 the Court fell into a
great economic error in declaring that insurance was
not commerce. It repeated the error, as Courts are
all prone to do, from time to time; but as the question
in its modern relations, had never been fully presented
to the Court, it was hoped when a fresh case, invoh-ing
no other issue, was presented, the Court might — as it
has done many times in other matters — reverse its
earlier decisions and declare, as the interests of the
public clearly demand, that insurance is commerce.
Those who hoped for that result perhaps overlooked
An Open Letter 379
the force of inertia. They did not properly appreciate
the restraining power of estabUshed practices and ac-
cumulated precedents. If insurance were declared to
be commerce, down would go the whole fabric of State
supervision, and away would go something hke $17,-
000,000 or S18,000,000 taken annually by politics from
the prudent people who through insurance protect
their business and their families. Supervision by forty-
eight separate States involves political patronage and
great political power. To annihilate by a single de-
cree a system so entrenched required courage of the
highest order. When the issue was at last squarely
made up two of the Court faced the facts and stood
for the doctrine (N. Y. Life Ins. Co. vs. Deer Lodge
County, Montana) that insurance is commerce; but
the majority adhered to the precedents and by so
doing shut the door to any relief under the commerce
clause of the Constitution as it now stands.
This was a heavy blow to insurance, and served to
emphasize an increasing peril. To be supervised by
forty-eight separate masters, each of whom claims sub-
stantial control over all transactions wherever had,
means, for that business, a recurrence of the hostilities,
the animosities and the commercial impotence which
menaced the colonies prior to the adoption of the
Constitution.
Under such conditions it is rather remarkable that
companies were able, up to within a few years, to
comply with the conflicting requirements of all these
masters and do business in all the States. Some seven
years ago, substantially all the life companies were
driven out of Texas because of drastic, local legislation.
Since that time fire companies have had serious trou-
380 Other Addresses
bles in Missouri and are now ha\-ing great difficulties
in Kentucky.
With our highest Court explicitlj^ denjdng to the
Federal government any jurisdiction whatever over
insurance (except the power to tax), the notable thing
is not that we are now having trouble but that we did
not have it earlier.
Insurance long ago began an agitation looking to-
w^ard an amendment to the Constitution, — an amend-
ment which would clearly place amongst the enumerated
powers of Congress the authority to control insurance
within the States, Territories and possessions of the
United States. Since the Supreme Court has again
and finally declared that insurance is not commerce,
the agitation has been renewed.
The agitation has taken on new life because of a
decision by the Supreme Court, handed down recently,
in which a statute of Kansas is upheld which gives the
Superintendent of Insurance of that State authority to
fix fire insurance rates. Of course if the Legislature of
Kansas can fix fire insurance rates, it can fix life insur-
ance rates, and the rates for every type of insurance.
Indeed, one of the Justices, in dissenting, said of the
opinion, that it
a* * * ^g j^Q^ ^ mere entering wedge, but
reaches the end from the beginning and announces
a principle which points inevitably to the conclu-
sion that the price of every article sold and the
price of every service offered can be regulated by
statute."
Insurance, therefore, finds itself in this position:
It seeks to do business in all the States; indeed it
must if it works efficiently and successfully.
An Open Letter 381
The basis of the structure must be broad, — broader,
much broader than any State, broader than any half
dozen States; indeed added strength comes if the basis
is broader than any nation.
But it is told by the Supreme Court, first, that it can
operate in the various States only by their permission,
and on such terms as they severally establish; and,
second, that, operating in that fashion, it is subject
not merely to regulation in the ordinary meaning of
that word, but to the exercise of an authority which
may fix the price at which it shall sell its wares — in
other words, to the same authority under which a
person's property may be taken for the public good.
To the doctrine that States may fix insurance rates
two Justices dissented strongly, and as evidence that
the insurance contract had always been considered a
private contract and not impressed with any public
necessity, they cited the fact that no State had earlier
attempted to exercise such authority. The distin-
guished dissenters overlooked the fact that the State
of Wisconsin some years ago fixed a maximum basis
for the premiums of life insurance, not only for that
State but incidentally and necessarily for all the
States. For a life insurance company to charge a
different rate in different States would be so imprac-
ticable that business would be impossible. The dis-
senting Justices overlooked this precedent because it
has not since happened that any other State has
been moved to do a similar thing, and no test of the
validity of the statute has been made. But since the
Wisconsin statute was passed, 4ife insurance has been
keenly alive to what would happen if other States
26
382 Other Addresses
should take like action. Our highest Court now says
that all the States have authority so to act.
In these circumstances insurance is as certainly men-
aced by the animosities inevitably and always pro-
voked by the doctrine of States' Rights as the com-
merce of the colonies was before the birth of the na-
tion. Relief must be had. The great problem before
all insurance is:
Along what Unes shall reUef be sought?
Encouraged by the dissent in the Deer Lodge case,
many strong men believe that if Congress could be
induced to pass a statute taking charge of insurance
when it involves the citizens of more than one State,
the Supreme Court — notwithstanding its earlier de-
cisions — would sustain such a statute. In other words,
it is one thing for the Court to pass on an abstraction
and another to pass upon a Federal statute. Two of
the Court in passing on an abstraction said that insur-
ance is commerce. It is altogether probable that
others hesitated, and that hesitation would have been
resolved in favor of the co-ordinate branch of govern-
ment if that co-ordinate branch, in the exercise of its
discretion, had assumed control of insurance.
But upon the whole and in order to reach a conclu-
sion that will be unequivocal, insurance opinion rather
leans toward an effort to secure an amendment to the
Federal Constitution which will specifically put all
insurance done in an interstate way under the control
of Congress.
In justifying the Court's action in upholding the
validity of the Kansas statute, Mr. Justice McKenna
draws a striking picture of the character and usefulness
of fire insurance, seeking to drive home its great im-
An Open Letter 383
portance and enforce its public relations. His word
painting may or may not justify the doctrine that a
State may fix rates, but it clearly proves that if any
power is to fix rates in this country, it must be the
Federal pow^r and not the power of the separate States.
He says:
"The effect of insurance — indeed, it has been
said its fundamental object — is to distribute the
loss over as wide an area as possible. In other
words, the loss is spread over the country, the
disaster to an indi\'idual is shared by many, the
disaster to a community is shared by other com-
munities; great catastrophes are thereby lessened,
and, it may be, repaired. In assimilation of in-
sm^ance to a tax, the companies have been said to
be the mere machinery by which the inevitable
losses by fire are distributed so as to fall as
lightly as possible on the public at large, the body
of the insured, not the companies, paying the tax.
Their efficiency, therefore, and solvency are of
great concern. The other objects, direct and in-
direct, of insurance we need not mention. In-
deed, it may be enough to say, without stating
other effects of insurance, that a large part of the
country's wealth, subject to uncertainty of loss
through fire, is protected by insurance. This
demonstrates the interest of the public in it and
we need not dispute with the economists that this
is the result of the "substitution of certain for
uncertain loss" or the diffusion of positive loss over
a large group of persons, as we have already said
to be certainly one of its effects. We can see,
therefore, how it has come to be considered a
matter of public concern to regulate it, and, gov-
ernmental insurance has its advocates and even
examples. Contracts of insurance, therefore, have
greater public consequence than contracts between
individuals to do or not to do a particular thing
whose effect stops with the individuals."
384 Other Addresses
The distinguished Justice, in this impressive de-
scription of the service to business and society ren-
dered by fire insurance, described at the same time the
service and the nature of every considerable kind of
insurance; but he apparently did not perceive that
what he described existed and was being justiced only
because the State powers, which the Court then con-
firmed, had not hitherto been exercised. The Justice,
in other words, based his decree on the existence of a
service and a relation which will hereafter be gravely
limited and embarrassed, if not largely destroyed, by
that self-same decree. If the States had from the
beginning exercised the rate-making power, in addition
to current regulations, we should now have in this
country no great fire insurance companies, no great
life insurance companies, no great fidelity or surety
companies, — just as we should now not be a nation if
the Confederation had not been abandoned and the
Union created.
Where the exercise of a named authority will cer-
tainly diminish, if not substantially destroy, the mat-
ter on which it operates, either the thing to be so
governed is not entirely useful or the authority to be
so exercised is not entirely wholesome. For our high-
est Court to find in the wide usefulness of an idea
warrant for the confirmation of an authority which
will destroy that usefulness is a curious judicial devel-
opment. The majority opinion leaves no doubt as to
the entire usefulness of insurance, while the strong
minority opinion leaves no doubt as to the unwhole-
some character of an authority which will establish
forty-eight separate rate-making powers.
An Open Letter 385
What other thing, therefore, so distinctive, what
other topic so \dtal, what other matter so certainly
related to the future of business can your coming
Congress so well deal with?
Merely to meet and discuss old topics — such as man-
agement and taxation — will have a limited interest.
To seize boldly on this situation, to speak in no uncer-
tain tones with regard to it, to pledge, so far as you
properly can, all the powers of insurance in its various
forms and through all its vast organization to a cam-
paign in favor of a Constitutional amendment of the
character indicated, would be at once an act of leader-
ship and of statesmanship.
I commend such action to your careful consideration.
Yours truly.
President.
THE SIN OF THE CHURCH
DELIVERED AT A DINNER TO
RT. REV. WILLIAM LAWRENCE. BISHOP OF MASSACHUSETTS,
AS PRESIDENT OF THE CHURCH PENSION FUND OF THE PROTESTANT
EPISCOPAL CHURCH, WALDORF-ASTORIA, NEW YORK,
FEBRUARY 5. I9I7
0-NIGHT I shall shake the spreading
chestnut tree very gently, only enough to
protest that I am not quaUfied to speak
here because my business is Ufe insurance
and that isn't the kind of insurance that
naturally interests a gathering of churchmen.
I was persuaded to accept your invitation because I
hold that business men should encourage every e\'idence
that a sense of business and business sense are ger-
minating in the Church.
When the Church, faced with a problem of salvation,
stops discussing the mysterious ways of Pro\ddence
and turns to the Actuary, a new era is clearly dawning.
If this goes on the business man will begin to go to
church again.
The problem this Committee is seeking to solve is a
problem in salvation, — nothing less. But in this case
the one ostensibly to be saved is not a sinner. This
creates sufficient confusion to lift the whole question
into the realm of theology. To bring salvation to one
who is not a sinner is of course foolishness to the
dogmatic mind. At first blush the puzzle is as com-
386
The Sin of the Church 387
plex as the one St. Thomas Aquinas attacked when
he sought to Christianize Aristotle.
It is so natural and so easy for the Churchman to
charge everything to sin and locate the sinner! As a
dogmatist that is his chief business. Faced with a
problem in salvation we may safely agree with the
dogmatist and assume that sin has been committed
by someone. If then those to be saved are not sinners,
who are?
Directly stated the situation is this : Certain devoted
and loyal servants have grown old. If that be a fault,
then are we all damned, or soon will be. They have
grown old and in addition have not now the where-
withal to live. That rasps on our nerves and disturbs
our complacency. Why have they not the where-
withal to live? What have they been doing? Who
controlled their productive years? They have worked
hard enough and long enough and faithfully enough and
yet they are in a parlous state. Under the conditions
which hedge them about could they as a body have
put aside something for their old age? We know they
could not. Where then does the fault lie? As good
dogmatists if we acquit them we must damn somebody.
When we acquit them — as we must and do — we auto-
matically point out the sinner.
The man who expiates a sin is always and properly
humble. He is paying a debt, making up a deficit,
covering a default. He emerges from his closet strength-
ened in his soul but not boastful.
This Fund of $5,000,000 primarily pays a debt, makes
up a deficit, covers in part a default. It is a fund for
the future protection of servants, already old, from
whom the Church has received an immeasurable
388 Other Addresses
service and to whom the Church has hitherto financially
defaulted ; it is all that and something finer — it is in its
spirit and purpose a moral ofifering to be placed on the
altar of the God of Eternal Justice in the hope that
thereby the Church may be purged of a great sin.
From her closet the Church emerges to-night not
boastful, but nevertheless with uplifted and shining
face.
When Church and State were finally separated in this
country — and that didn't happen until Congrega-
tionalism ceased to be statute law in Massachusetts —
the responsibihty of the State toward the Preacher
naturally disappeared along with its controlhng autho-
rity.
Unable longer to tell a Priest or Preacher what he
should say or what he should believe, the State naturally
lost interest in how he lived or whether he lived at all.
It is true that the State still exercises a paternal dis-
cretion, under which it neglects to levy and collect
taxes on some very valuable real estate which you own,
but that beneficent attitude is justified on the ground
that no one can imagine how wicked we would all be
but for your presence amongst us. Moreover it is not
so difficult beneficially to tickle the pubhc purse if you
do it negatively. The State is sometimes willing to
forgive if it is thereby relieved from paying out the
coin of the realm. In other words the State may
forgive some of your taxes but it will never pay your
pensions.
This Church was caught up in the enthusiasm for
indi\'idual liberty which was crystallized into Con-
stitutional form in Philadelphia in the Summer of 1787.
In order that no Church should indulge in illusory
The Sin of the Church 389
hopes the people in the first amendment to the Con-
stitution denied to Congress the right to make any
law respecting an establishment of religion or pro-
hibiting the free exercise thereof.
Under the doctrine of indi\ddual liberty the citizen
and especially the citizen in business was of necessity
projected into a struggle about as merciless as a charge
on the field of battle. He might emerge a leader or a
cripple, or he might not emerge at all. That was his
lookout. It still is. The Priest without the business
man's freedom had substantially to emulate the busi-
ness man's example. There was however this dif-
ference. The business man could go in or not as he
saw fit. If he was knocked out he could begin again.
He could fail and "come back" as we put it. Not so
with the Preacher or the Priest. He could not "come
back". The Church in\4ted him in; the Church used
him, demanding all his time; the Church with the
authority of the apostolic succession back of it sent
him hither and j^on, and when smitten by failure or
age he turned to her for protection she denied the
responsibility that should always go with such authority.
That has been her great sin.
Business began to see its duty in this matter long
ago : partly from pressure applied by labor, partly from
humanitarian impulses, but chiefly from business con-
siderations. Nearly every great business enterprise
in this country long since adopted some plan which
recognized an obligation not expressed or expressible
in the terms of hiring. Business soon discovered that
recognition of this obligation was not only sound
socially and morally but that it paid substantial
dividends.
390 Other Addresses
The Church lagged behind, as it usually does. There
is still a Methodist Church North and a Methodist
Church South, although the Ci\'il War ended fifty
years ago and its bitternesses are largely forgotten by
the people. The reproach involved in that reflection
does not apply to the Protestant Episcopal Church,
but as a historic fact it had a narrow escape. Sub-
stantially every American Protestant and Anghcan
Church has in its neglect of its aged servants shamed
the faith of Cardinal Wolsey, who when trapped by
his ambitions and about to fall from power is made
by Shakespeare to say:
"********* my robe
And my integrity to Heaven is all
I dare now call my own. O Cromwell! Cromwell!
Had I but served mj' God with half the zeal
I served my King, He would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies."
Whether Wolsey believed that the State which was
rejecting him as a Minister would take care of him as
a Bishop (as it did) or whether his words expressed a
general faith in Providence is not material. No Priest
here can get any help from the State in his old age,
help from the Church has been very unreUable, and
it is safe to assume that the majority of aged Priests
having thoroughly tried out what is looseh^ called
Providence, will gladly welcome the Pension Fund as
a material improvement on that. Hitherto his robe
and his integrity to Heaven have indeed been all the
aged Priest dared call his own.
This is one of the few considerable countries in the
world where there is real religious freedom. But
Priests grow old just as quickly here as they do in
The Sin of the Church 391
countries where the State makes provision for their
decUning years; they break from work and worry as
readily; they devote their hves to the Church as un-
selfishly. In its willingness to take to the full the
benefits of freedom and in its neglect to assume the
responsibihties which authority previously carried, the
Church has done only what every American citizen
has been doing since the foundation of the government.
In that respect it has imitated the morals of business
and has imitated them badly. In some particulars
it has not responded to the moral standards of business,
and even the great achievement we celebrate to-night
leaves something still undone. Neither in his age nor
in his youth has the Church put the Priest in the
proper attitude before the pubUc. You have sent him
into a competitive world, where men must be men to
win the respect of men, and you have made it almost
impossible for him to win and hold that respect; I
mean the respect of men not already bound to him by
some Church connection.
Naturally our general public is disposed to judge the
Priest by the ordinary standards of business and the
Church makes it difficult for him to rise to that stan-
dard. It still allows him to win the contempt of the
unthinking by accepting railroad tickets intended for
children, and a rake-off on goods bought, which is
saved from being graft because it is supposed in some
mysterious way to be justified. You have forced your
Priests to seem something less than responsible men,
a,nd when they have earned the lack of respect which
not infrequently has emptied your pews and forced
their resignations, you have shown that whatever the
source of Wolsey's faith he was wrong, because after
392 Other Addresses
ser\dce that was zealous to a degree these servants in
their age have been left naked to their enemies.
This movement to create a fund wdth which to right
in part the wrong done these aged and devoted servants
is a statesman-like undertaking. When consummated
it will immediately make these men stronger, — stronger
in their own consciousness and stronger before the
public. Apart from its power to meet what has always
been a just obligation it will bring its best results in
the increased respect with which all thoughtful men
will hereafter regard the Church itself.
WiUiam Lawrence is a great Bishop; but I consider
him far greater as a statesman. This Pension Fund
morally is a constructive, soul-healing undertaking;
it will powerfully support your sermons and your
services. It commands respect because it will restore
and re-establish the responsibiUty which the State
abandoned and which you did not assume when Church
and State happily parted company.
The statesman who conceived this plan for dis-
charging a debt due to men who are finishing their
labors will doubtless later on propose another plan
which will appeal to similar men who are about to
begin their labors; a plan which will attract the young
and the strong, men who in the relentless competition
of American life will win and at all times keep the
respect of other strong men.
Until I had some personal experience as a Vestrj-man
I had no idea of the helplessness of the aged clergy,
no idea of the wickedness of what I call the sin of the
Church. But now the Protestant Episcopal Church
is about to expiate her sin.
The Sin of the Church 393
Like Sir Launfal she went out in shining armor in
Quest of the Grail and seeing a leper at her gates she
"****** tossed him a piece of gold."
Returning like Sir Launfal after many and vain
wanderings she has met the leper again. To-night she
does not toss him a piece of gold, she di\'ides a crust
with him and gives him to drink from a wooden bowl.
The light that Sir Launfal then saw now shines in the
Soul of this Church and the voice that Sir Launfal
heard is ringing in her ears, Lowell puts it thus:
"A light shone round about the place
The leper no longer crouched by his side
But stood before him glorified.
**********
And the voice that was calmer than silence said:
'Lo it is I, be not afraid !
In many climes, without avail,
Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail:
Behold it is here, — this cup which thou
Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now;
This crust is my body broken for thee.
This water His blood that died on the tree;
The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,
In whatso we share with another's need;
Not what we give, but what we share, —
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, —
Himself, his hungering neighbor and Me.' "
THE RELATION BETWEEN
AMERICAN LIFE INSURANCE AND
AMERICAN RAILROADS
REMARKS BEFORE THE
INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION, WASHINGTON, D. C, IN
BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF OWNERS
OF RAILROAD SECURITIES, JUNE 8. 1917
Gentlemen of the Commission:
The Life Companies of the United States have a
total of what we call "outstanding insurance" — that
is the face of their promises to pay — aggregating
$25,000,000,000.
At their face these contracts considerably exceed the
present bonded debt of Great Britain, they are equal to
about one-eighth the present estimated wealth of this
Nation. The integrity of the enterprise therefore is a
matter of capital importance. Because the invest-
ments of this enterprise in Railroad securities are now so
large its problems can be complicated and its efficiency
powerfully influenced by the future prosperity or
otherwise of the properties you supervise and regulate.
To show how profoundly the future of American Life
Insurance may be affected by the future prosperity or
otherwise of American Railroads it is not enough
merely to point to the great totals of Railroad securi-
ties held by the Life Companies. The total as of
January 1, 1916, is so large, however, approximating at
394
American Life Insurance and Railroads 395
book value $1,583,000,000 (of which stocks amount to
$39,000,000), that it requires no expert knowledge to
recognize a vital relation here, viewing these invest-
ments merely as ordinary investments.
But the relation between these two great enterprises
has an importance and carries an obligation which a
mere statement of the gross investment does not con-
vey. In order to show this, I shall have to state briefly
what the Life Insurance contract is, how it has to be
made, and its relation to these securities: Life Insur-
ance contracts are in reality a type of serial non-interest
bearing bonds. They mature daily through drawings.
The drawing is done by Death, but the process is
essentially the same as that followed in serial bond
issues where the drawings are made from an urn.
Bonds of States, Counties and Municipalities, running
for a definite period, or due serially, usually have a
sinking fund provision, and the sinking fund and
interest are provided for by public taxation. These
life insurance bonds also have a sinking fund pro-
vision, a very strict one, and these provisions are also
met by taxation, by private taxation.
The Life Insurance Premium, outside the factor
which represents endowment insurance, is a tax as
clearly and unequivocally as that form of contribution
to the public exchequer which we call the Income Tax.
Here, however, the analogy between Government
bonds and the Life Insurance contract ends.
These civic subdivisions of the nation have prac-
tically unlimited capacity to meet their bond obhga-
tions through taxation. If the rate of tax fails to
produce the annual interest charge and the proper
annual addition to sinking funds, the rate can be raised
396 Other Addresses
and new sources of revenue created through new and
different taxation. Not so with the Life Companies.
Their obUgations are fixed except as they are increased
by forces beyond their control while their power to tax
is strictly limited. They are obliged to state in ad-
vance in contracts that may mature to-morrow or in
sixty years or more, just what the purchaser is to pay
yearly, or half-yearly, or even weekly. That figure
cannot under any circumstances be increased, not even
in times of war. Within recent weeks hundreds of
inquiries have come to the Home Offices of the Com-
panies asking whether the Companies would now put
a war clause in outstanding policies. The Companies
cannot cross a "t" or dot an "i" in contracts out-
standing. The extra mortality of war and the in-
creased cost of labor and supplies must be covered by
the premiums fixed when the contracts were made.
In fixing this premium the Life Companies have to
make very broad and far-reaching assumptions as to
what will happen in the world of business to-morrow
and the next day and so on during the life of the con-
tracts, some of which will run for many years. In
fixing the annual charge the Companies first adopt a
table of mortality. That with relative definiteness
declares how many of these bonds will be drawn
yearly, and experience now pretty conclusively shows
that these maturities do not even in war-times exceed
the provisions of the mortality tables. These are mat-
ters with which we have nothing to do here, and are
stated because they are a part of the general plan.
The mortality tables are now confirmed by vast experi-
ence, are used by all the Companies, and are sound.*
*The recent influenza epidemic perhaps indicates that these tables
may yet need revision.
American Life Insurance and Railroads 397
The Companies next assume a rate of interest, and
that brings the pecuUar relation between the Railroads
and the Life Companies directly into this discussion.
They assume that the proceeds of these private taxes, or
premiums, can be invested to earn a minimum rate of
interest through long periods of time. In doing this
the Companies are obliged to assume that public faith
will be kept and private credit will be sound. Starting
with these assumptions it is not difficult for an Actuary
to tell just what sums must be set aside annually, if
increased by the rate of interest assumed, to provide
the funds to redeem these serial maturities. The
Companies then add to this percentage for expenses
and other contingencies. But the mortahty tables
show that the number of drawings increases rapidly
with advancing age of the bondholder, and as the Com-
panies, in all the types of insurance involved in this
discussion, propose to tax the man the same amount
annually per $1,000 at age 80 that was required at
age 15, if he entered then, the reserve, or sinking funds,
must be sufficient to cover that period of the contract
when by reason of increased age the demands on the
Companies through maturities outrun the premiums.
In short the bondholder in youth pays more than the
mortality of youth requires in order to provide funds
against the time when on account of age his annual
contribution will be inadequate. This explains in part
why the reserves of the Companies run into such large
figures. But total assets of $5,700,000,000 against face
obligations of $25,000,000,000 does not look dispro-
portionate even to a layman. The two factors which
make it possible for that $5,700,000,000 ultimately to
meet obligations aggregating $25,000,000,000, are fu-
27
398 Other Addresses
ture premiums and interest. The report of the Insur-
ance Department of the State of New York at the
close of 1915 shows that the Life Companies reporting
there, which of course does not include all the Life
Companies in the United States, collected in the cal-
endar year $212,000,000 in interest and di\4dends, ex-
clusive of rents. Since organization American Life
Companies had collected up to the close of 1915, in
interest, dividends and rents, over $3,500,000,000.
This is approximately 60% of their present assets
Broadly speaking, it was all necessary to make good
the original assumptions as to interest, although
there has been always a margin and there always
must be.
Here then are two factors which lie at the basis of
the structure of Life Insurance, factors that must be
cardinal considerations in this discussion :
1st. Future obhgations that are to be met by a level
premium fixed in advance and as against all
contingencies.
2d. An assumed rate of interest running far into the
future.
Of these two, the second, for our discussion to-day, is
much the more important because while the Companies
cannot in any circumstances raise their premium, or
rate of tax, as soon as the bondholder fails to make his
annual, or semi-annual, or weekly contribution, the
Company's liabilitj- on that particular contract changes
and it is automatically protected. Not so with the
interest factor; that must be earned or the whole struc-
ture is threatened. Interest is assumed to be constant
on all the money in the sinking fund. No allowance
American Life Insurance and Railroads 399
is made for any default. Acting within the law the
reserves of most of the Companies reporting to the
New York Department are calculated on the assump-
tion they will earn 33^% and the State will compel a
Company to cease issuing new contracts whenever its
assets do not cover its liabilities, assuming that it will
earn 4K%. It would appear that here is margin
enough, and that is true if certain other assumptions
made by the Companies do not fail. The Companies
have to assume not merely the factors that enter into
its premium rate, but, equally vital, that securities can
always be had so sound and dependable that they wall
yield the rate of interest assumed and in addition will
produce the principal invested whenever desired, or at
maturity if bearing a fixed maturity date. The Com-
panies' obligations do not shift with time and circum-
stance, except as premium payments fail or contracts
mature or are surrendered ; but its invested funds from
which it is largely to meet those liabilities are open to
all the assaults that lie in shifting economic conditions.
Securities rated by experts as sound to-day are some-
times valueless in a few years. The Life Companies
buy and must buy what every careful investor buys.
In adopting a level tax, or premium, for long periods
the Companies are obliged to assume that through all
that time commercial faith will be kept, that sound
and necessary enterprises will be fostered bj' society, and
that the State which so sternly supervises the Companies, so
strictly measures their liabilities, and so carefidly values
their assets, ivill use the same power to see that the faith
that lies back of these securities is also kept.
In two particulars the state, meaning the Federal
Government, and the states, meaning the members of
400 Other Addresses
the Federal Union, have taken action that directly
affects the fundamental assumptions of the Companies:
1st. Through taxation which weakens the assump-
tions.
2d. Through supervisory bodies Uke this, having the
power to regulate and limit the earnings of
public carriers which would strengthen the as-
sumptions.
Consider the matter of taxation. Of course every
dollar taken from Life Insurance Companies by the
state, or the states, is an expense not covered by the
Companies' fundamental assumption and therefore must
come out of the loading for contingencies which is also
unchangeable or out of other savings which are about
as likely to decrease as to increase. It is a tax on a tax,
and while I appreciate that this is not a body having
to do with taxes, it is a co-ordinate branch of Govern-
ment and is bound to take cognizance of other Govern-
mental action. These taxes now total $15,000,000
more or less a year and are steadily rising. Recent leg-
islation has put mutual insurance, which is not a busi-
ness enterprise at all, has no profits and in the nature
of things can have none, in the category with munition
makers. Taxation is an increasingly serious factor in
the Companies' balance sheets. It is quite within the
realm of things possible that this tax will rise to $30,-
000,000 a year at no distant date. Against this extra-
ordinary and increasing demand the Companies have
no protection. They constantly eat into the margins
saved by economies in management, savings in mor-
tality, and savings in interest.
American Life Insurance and Railroads 401
Life Insurance in a word faces increasing obligations
which it does not create, which it cannot control.
These demands are additional to those named in the
life contract itself and must be met from revenues that
are substantially fixed. The situation obviously be-
comes at once extremely uncomfortable if we add to
these expenditures any failure in the Companies'
fundamental assumptions.
This body has the power to fix the rates charged by
the Railroads having to do with Interstate Commerce.
The greater part. of the investments under discussion
was made before your honorable bod^^ was granted, or at
least before it exercised, its present powers. You there-
fore inherit a condition which makes the integrity of
these 46,000,000 contracts a part of your duty.
// a denial of the prayer of the roads for an increase in
rates at this time will carry the relation between the rail-
roads and the Life Insurance companies into a doubtful
zone and even remotely assail the assumptions as to in-
terest which the Companies have made and imperil the
capital which they have invested, then we assume that
this body is as clearly bound to grant that request in the
interest of public faith and commercial integrity as it is
bound to end exorbitant or discriminatory charges.
It is not my part to go into the statistics of this
problem. The facts and figures are all before you
now. I know no more about that than any other non-
railroad man. I am here to reflect, and I think I do
reflect, the deliberate judgment of the men who are
responsible as Trustees for investments aggregating
nearly $6,000,000,000, of which Railroad securities
represent 2b%.
402 Other Addresses
I speak directly, and by authority, on behalf of five
great Companies which together own 75% of the total
railroad holdings of all the Companies. They have
steadily lost faith in what was at one time a favorite
investment. The per cent, which expresses the rela-
tion between their holding of railroad secm-ities and
their ledger assets has declined within ten years. In
the case of the largest single holder this per cent, in the
year 1904 was 55.1% and in 1916 it was 38%.
"\^Tlat conditions explain this attitude?
Into the judgment which has made these investors
draw away from Railroad secm-ities the product of
three tests or conditions have entered. These are:
The Factor of Safety;
The mean market price of a selected group of bonds;
and
Defaults.
The Finance or Investing Committees generally
apply to a Railroad bond offering, the test of Safety.
What is the bond's Factor of Safety? If it is unsatis-
factory, the offering is not considered further.
In addition the Companies — most of them I think —
periodically apply this test to their entire holdings.
Applied through a period of years to the holdings of
one Company, the largest single holder of Railroad
bonds, the test 3'ields these results:
FACTOR OF SAFETY
Close of 1912 204 issues..
Close of 1913 217 issues..
Close of 1914 236 issues. .
Close of 1915 238 issues..
Close of 1916 2.32 issues..
average factor 73
" 70.8
" 65.1
American Life Insurance and Railroads 403
It is not difficult therefore to understand why this
particular Company, which in 1902 invested 117.3%
of its entire increase in assets that year in Railroad
bonds, invested in long time bonds only 33^% of such
increase in 1913.
This test runs parallel with what is common know-
ledge.
Nineteen sixteen is generally known to have been an
abnormally good year with nearly all the Roads. The
improved net earnings of the j^ear lifted this Companj^'s
Factor of Safety nearly sixteen points above 1914.
For a period of years the second test has yielded
similar results.
The mean market price of twenty-five selected bond
issues decHned steadily from 97.25 in 1909 to 86.92 in
1915. The price improved materially in 1916 but is
now lower than the mean price of 1915.
By itself a considerable fall in the market price of
these bonds may mean little. The earning power of
money fluctuates and market prices vary correspond-
ingly. The bonds are bought to yield a rate of interest
and are usually carried to maturity. Unless the mar-
ket price meantime reflects weakness in the security, it
is of little importance in the Companies' calculations.
But when along with faUing market prices and a
shrinking Factor of Safety come such defaults as are
recorded in the story of the last nine years the attitude
of these and other investors is easily understood.
The Directors of a Life Company may have to face
problems here before default occurs. Under the laws
of New York the Companies must value any par-
ticular issue at market, in making its return to the
State, whenever the Superintendent of Insurance de-
404 Other Addresses
cides that it is inadequately secured. The difference
is charged to profit and loss and increases the cost of
insurance for the whole Company to that extent.
On January 1, 1916, the market value of the group
of Railroad bonds under consideration was $107,000,000
below amortized value.
Taking up the third test, we find that within nine
years Railroad bonds of a par value of S844,534,000
have defaulted their interest and that the amount of
interest in cumulative default July 1, 1916, was
$82,000,000. The year 1916 seemed to forecast a
complete and permanent change in the situation.
But now the Roads — many of them at least — face
new and what seem to be even graver problems. Like
the increasing taxes on Life Insurance there now comes
to the Roads an almost perpendicular raise in the cost
of labor, material and equipment, and in addition the
as yet indeterminable costs of war.
Recent monthly returns from some of the great
systems indicate that the margins of 1916 \vill not be
maintained or approached in 1917. Except in your
discretion rates are inflexible as against these rising
demands.
The factor of safety which was none too high at the
close of 1916 is already receding and will continue to
recede unless the Roads have relief. Standing at 65
the Factor applied to these seasoned and carefully
selected bonds obviously indicated great danger to
Railroad securities as a whole. In the first six months
of that year — 1914 — Railroad bonds aggregating at
par over .$291,636,000 defaulted on nearly $11,000,000
of interest. Some of the defaulting bonds were in the
vaults of the Life Companies, but not many.
American Life Insurance and Railroads 405
Look through the Life Companies' sworn reports to
the State of New York at the close of 1916 and you
will find that they now buy few junior bonds except
where the road is paying substantial returns on its
stock. The law of New York State no longer allows
them to buy stocks or debentures, or collateral trust
bonds except under certain conditions. They confine
themselves, and largely from choice, to underlying
bonds, which of course means that in any new financing
of the Roads the old market for the securities which
represent that financing, is gone. It does not take a
railroad expert to understand that an equipment trust
to-day representing 80% of cost, when that cost is
nearly twice what it was a few years ago is not a good
investment unless it appears that there has been a
corresponding increase in the earning power of the
equipment itself. An inevitable question springing
from that conclusion is: What effect will the present
startling advance in cost not only of equipment, but
of labor and coal and other items of upkeep have on
the outstanding securities of the Roads unless their
rates which are now about as rigid as Life Insurance
premiums, can be modified to meet changed or emer-
gency conditions?
If a Road is to serve the country effectively it must
be able to finance itself. To sell its securities to Life
Insurance Companies hereafter a Railroad must show
that its revenues are sufficient to cover depreciation,
upkeep, interest, amortization, and a reasonable sur-
plus after paying the stockholder a fair return on his
money. When the present holdings of the Life Com-
panies were purchased, barring possibly the under-
lying obligations of some Roads, these conditions gen-
406 Other Addresses
erally existed. What is the condition now? How
many roads can finance themselves to any consider-
able extent through the sale of stock? How many
indeed from their present indicated net earnings will
be able to pay any return to stockholders in 1918 if
the properties are well kept up?
Having spoken so frankly, it seems wise, to avoid
misunderstanding, that I should say a word more.
The facts are as I have stated them, but while, unless
remedied, they threaten loss to the Companies they
do not threaten disaster. It is in part to avoid the
future possibility of that I have spoken so freely to-day.
These Companies for which I speak not only seek safety
but as they furnish this mutual protection at cost they
aim to reach the lowest net cost. That they are
bound to do. Every million dollars paid in taxes,
every million dollars in defaulted interest, every million
dollars shrinkage in principal, goes into profit and loss
and by that much increases the cost of insurance.
Life Insurance Directors do not expect to invest
billions and keep them invested for long periods with-
out some losses. But they do believe that when the
Federal Government placed — and properly placed — in
your hands the power to regulate and supervise these
Roads and the power to fix their rates, it assumed a
responsibility toward the people we serve, so clear and
compeUing that our losses in this group of securities
ought to be less than in any other group of securities
outside Government and State bonds.
One word on the strictly human side.
I speak for about 33,000,000 investors; and here
again we must discriminate. Ninety per cent.. of that
vast number are in such financial condition that they
American Life Insurance and Railroads 407
do not know that they have a dollar invested in any-
thing. Acting separately few of that great number
would to-day own or have an interest in any security.
In its usual significance therefore the word "investor"
does not apply to any of these people. The real in-
vestor has money otherwise idle; he buys a bond, or
shares of stock, or a farm, or an interest in a business.
He invests and takes the risk of gain or loss. These
33,000,000 people (even those having means) do noth-
ing of that kind when they insure their lives. They
mutually agree to submit to a tax for a definite social
purpose; they are not seeking profits; they are not in
business; they are mutually capitalizing the future
earning power of their lives, the capital to become
available as drawings are made by the grim laws of
mortality. To do that scientifically these reserves are
necessary and the reserves must be invested, but the
men who pay the taxes agreed to are scarcely more
investors than are the men who donate funds to col-
leges, hospitals and orphan asylums. Such funds must
be invested, but the beneficiaries of these donations
are not investors unless perchance a man who founds a
hospital and goes there to die may be called an investor.
The insured pays his tax because of the strong prob-
ability that his family otherwise may be left defence-
less. The man who pays the tax wins nothing for
himself even if his bond is drawn early — except a
sense of self-respect and comfort meantime.
By this device 33,000,000 people have erected a
great sociological plant which in turn has become a
great investor. They have mobilized the single dollars
and the ten cent pieces. They have assembled money
otherwise naturally ineffective, unrelated, possibly even
408 Other Addresses
hostile, and thereby, and properly as a by-product,
they now indirectly own one-tenth of all the financial
obligations of all the Railroads; they have helped to
build up great cities through mortgage loans; they
have financed public improvements through municipal
bonds; they have financed the farmer through farm
loans; and are now about to pour millions into the
United States Treasury in the purchase of Government
bonds.
These 33,000,000 people have trusted the Directors
of their enterprises completely. That is a very im-
portant economic fact. That faith must be kept. The
Directors in turn have founded their structure on
certain assumptions that are absolutely sound, if pubhc
faith is kept.
I am here, therefore, not to plead for the private
investor, although I know of no good reason why an
honest investor, a holder of Railroad bonds, even a
holder of Railroad stocks, is not entitled to a fair
return on a naturally sound investment.
The people for whom I speak had no money to
invest, sought no investment, and, as insurants, have
now no title to any specific bond or share of stock.
They have contractual rights and that is all.
Having been granted and having assumed the power
to regulate these public carriers and to fix their rates,
it follows that in all cases where Insurance Directors
have bought Railroad Securities with sound judgment,
your duty to use your power to protect the integrity
of these securities is akin at least to the duty of the
Government to protect the fives and liberties of the
people.
PRESIDENT KINGSLEY'S STEWARDSHIP
MEMORANDUM TO THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
ON THE 10th ANNIVERSARY OF HIS ELECTION AS PRESIDENT OF THE
NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, JUNE 17. 1917.
TEN YEARS AGAINST SIXTY-TWO. A SOLID
FOUNDATION AND A TOWERING
SUPERSTRUCTURE
T SEEMS to me appropriate to-day for a
number of reasons that, in expressing the
appreciation felt by my associate officers
and myself over this renewed e\'idence of
your confidence, I should point out some
significant facts which have developed during the ten
years of the existence of what may be called the pres-
ent administration.
When this Board ten years ago, within a few
days, chose me as President of the New York Life,
I re\'iewed the situation of the Company and of life
insurance as I saw it and stated that I believed that
size in life insurance would ultimately prove to be an
advantage, not merely because size means strength
and permanency but size means economy.
On the intervening occasions on which you have
re-elected my associates and myself, I have touched on
some of these facts so that it will not be necessary to
repeat them now. But you will probably be surprised
yourselves when I tell you that in fundamentals as
much work has been done, and as much has been
accomplished, in those ten years as was done and
409
410 Other Addresses
accomplished in the previous sixty-two years of the
Company's life.
Divide the history of the Company into two periods;
include in the first the work and the accomplishments
from 1845 to 1906 inclusive, and in the second the
record and work from 1907 to 1916 inclusive, and we
get some rather startling results:
The Company's total receipts from 1845 to
1906 inclusive, were in round figures .... §1,250,000,000
The Company's total receipts from 1907 to
1916 inclusive, were in round figures .... 1,177,000,000
Total disbursements in the first period 783,000,000
Total disbursements in the second period . . . 768,000,000
Total payments to policv-holders in the first
period ": 540,000,000
This includes §89,000,000 in dividends.
Total pavments to policy-holders in the
second" period 616,000,000
Of which 8120,000,000 were dividends.
Total expenses and taxes of the Company
1845-1906 inclusive 236,000,000
Total expenses and taxes of the Company
1907-1916 inclusive 127,000,000
Less in the second period by
over .§100,000,000.
The total of taxes, hcenses and fees paid in
the first 62 years was 12,386,000
The total of taxes, licenses and fees paid in
the last ten years was 12,697,000
The excess of §300,000 is accounted for
in large part by the constantly increas-
ing rate of taxation.
At the close of 1906 the ledger assets of the
Company at book value (which is the
value used for dividends) amounted to . . 466,000,000
The earning power of which was 4.299c-
That earning power without anj^ serious fluctuation
rose up to the close of 1913, fell off a Httle in 1914 and
1915, and at the close of 1916 stood at 4.54%.
On the first of May, 1917, it was 4.54%.
The ledger assets of the Company on the first of
May, 1917, were $899,000,000, almost exactly double
President Kingsley's Stewardship 411
what they were at the end of sixty-two years, and
their earning power was still 4.54%. The difference
between the earning power of the Company's assets at
the close of 1906 and their earning power at the close
of 1916 is exactly one-quarter of one per cent. Ap-
plied to the ledger assets of the Company on the first
of May, the interest earnings for the year ending
May 1, 1918, if that rate is maintained, will be
$2,224,000 more than they would have been at the
rate recorded at the close of 1906.
During the past ten years, counting from the begin-
ning of 1907, the Company invested in bonds and in
loans on real estate $461,000,000 to pay an average of
4.81%. In 1913 the investments were $41,000,000 to
pay 5.07%, in 1915 $36,000,000 to pay 5.13%, and in
1916 $70,000,000 to pay 5.26%: the largest sum, so
far as I can find from our records, ever invested by
the Company in a single year, with the largest rate of
return, within any time of which we have authentic
information.
The rate of mortalitj- in 1916 was 71% of the ex-
pected, the lowest rate experienced by the Company
since it began the preparation of a gain and loss ac-
count about twenty years ago.
During the past ten years the Company has gained
from the three great sources of surplus: interest, mor-
tality and loading, as follows:
From interest $114,000,000
From mortality 56,000,000
From loading 64,000,000
The gain in the year 1916 was $30,000,000.
The limitation on new business fixed by the statutes
of New York still rested heavily upon us when I was
412 Other Addresses
first elected President, so much so that the outstand-
ing business of the Company, then decreasing, con-
tinued to decrease and reached its lowest point in the year
1908. Since then we have succeeded in getting modi-
fications of the law so that for the last half-dozen
years we have been able to write all the business we
cared to write. The European war cut off about
$35,000,000 new business a year. Notwithstanding all
these handicaps, the business paid for in these ten
years is one-third of all the business the Company has
paid for in seventy-two years. It totals approximately
$2,000,000,000.
A curious fact which has come out from the study of
these figures is that the total income of the Company
during its existence is just a little less than its present
total outstanding insurance. So far as I know there is
no natural relation between the two facts, but that the
Company has received nearly $2,500,000,000 since
organization and has in securities now less than
$900,000,000 goes far toward answering the not un-
natural question that people sometimes ask about
what the Company does with all the money.
There are few types of institutions in which money
is more fluid and active than in a life insurance com-
pany aggressively conducted. The securities in the
Company's vault may seem to be, and in fact may be,
static in their character. But in the lives of the people
throughout the organization of the institution all over
the world, the transactions of the Company keep its
money through payments to policy-holders, interest
and other avenues, in a constant condition of activity.
In fact referring to the usefulness of money as a circu-
lating medium, I question whether any money held by
President Kingsley's Stewardship 413
any type of institution is more completely fluid and
active. The nearly nine hundred millions in the Com-
pany's vault are represented merely by instruments
recording obligations and promises to pay. There is
never any considerable sum of actual cash in the Com-
pany's vaults, and the actual cash in the Company's
depositories is only such as is necessary in the process
of investment for the Company to maintain itself in a
stable condition.
Four days ago I reached my sixtieth j^ar. I have
served the Company for nearly twenty-nine years.
Vice-President Weeks has served the Company fifty
years; Vice-President Buckner, thirty-seven years;
Treasurer Shipman, twenty-four years; Second Vice-
President McCall, eighteen years; Second Vice-Presi-
dent Buckner, thirty-two years; Secretary Ballard,
twenty-four years. Your Executive Officers com-
bined represent two hundred and fourteen years of
ser\'ice.
Time will not be denied, yet none of us concedes
that he is old. Serving in so worthy a cause, under
such confidence and sympathy as you extend to us not
only adds to the joy of service but robs age of its
terrors.
On the occasion of my first election as President, I
think I stated that I was one of the few men who had
had the rare experience of reaching the very height of
his ambition. I have enjoyed that peculiar sensation
for ten years. It is a sensation that not very many
men are ever privileged to feel. That may be because
most men are never satisfied, but most men I think
would be satisfied with the Presidency of the New
York Life.
28
MEMORIAL TO
MAJOR JOHN PURROY MITCHEL, U. S. R.
ADOPTED BY THE
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE STATE
OF NEW YORK. JULY 18, 1918
HE outstanding quality in the personality
of Alexander Hamilton was youth — aggres-
sive, invincible youth.
The outstanding quality that distin-
guished the personality of John Purroy
Mitchel, to whose memory this Minute is a tribute,
was youth — youth unafraid, unconquerable.
Dead before thirty-nine, John Purroy Mitchel had
lived more than most men whose years span the Biblical
measure. His public service, which covered substan-
tially all his adult hfe, was given almost exclusively to
this City, and was so distinguished that it will stand
out masterfully in New York's history: he had, in fact,
become a national figure. Nevertheless, he was young
— younger than his years. There was about him alwaj- s
the spirit of sheer youth. His triumphs were the
triumphs of youth. His failures were the failures of
youth. He inherited from some great ancestor certain
knightly qualities which made him at all times a gal-
lant figure — a personality of which the City was proud.
The war is brought very near to all of us when we
realize that the two great Americans who, for us and
for New York, spoke so eloquently when Jofifre was
Memorial to Major John Purroy Mitchel 415
our guest, when Balfour was our guest — Joseph H.
Choate and John Purroy Mitchel — are both dead:
Choate, the old man eloquent; Mitchel, the young man
militant.
When Mayor Mitchel spoke at the great dinner
given by the City at the Waldorf-Astoria, jointly to
the French and British Commissions, did he sub-
consciously foresee his own tragic end? He said:
"Gentlemen of England and of France: Our
President, speaking for every loyal citizen of the
United States, has pledged to you the resources
of the United States. Money, ships, munitions,
food — these things we give you freely and esteem
the giving but a light tax upon our unbounded
wealth. It is not enough. There lacks the critical
contribution of manhood service, and blood sacri-
fice. This, too, must be ours. Our duty will be
done, our debts discharged, our destiny achieved,
only when the hosts of American democracy take
their place beside the hosts of England and of
France, resolved to fight and fight and still to
fight, until victory rescues the world from autocracy
and barbarism."
It is not our part to discuss the forces that buffeted
John Purroy Mitchel until that July morning when he
fell from the sky to instant death. Nothing could
break his spirit. To his last breath he was the embodi-
ment of youth; he died doing the work that youth
only may undertake. To his last breath he was a
patriot; he died in the uniform of a Major. The Fates
were kind and granted him the death that heroic men
pray for when they go into battle.
416 Other Addresses
He meant and still means something personal to
every member of this Chamber. He was for us the
militant embodiment of our civic ideals, the splendid
expression of our civic pride. We followed him gladly
in Hfe. The Chamber was honored by a place in the
great procession of soldiers, sailors and citizens which
followed his remains to their last resting place.
Death has bereft us and the Nation, but not even
death can take from us the inspiration that will always
quicken and inspire the citizens of New York when
they recall this gentle, fearless, knightly man.
The Chairman of the Committee is hereby directed
to make this Minute the subject of a Special Report
to the Chamber at its next regular meeting; the Secre-
tary of the Chamber is directed to spread the Minute
on the records of the Committee and to send a copy,
duly engrossed and attested, to Mrs. Mitchel.
THE JAPAN SOCIETY
INTRODUCTIONS— DECEMBER 11 1917
^F THE citizens of New York here present
had been born in the Middle Ages and by
some physical and spiritual miracle had
lived through all the intervening centuries
and been a part of them, and by some other
miracle found themselves now in their sixties, just in
the meridian of life, they could perhaps claim to have
lived as long, to have seen as much, to be as young, and
to be as wise as our two chief guests of honor Ambas-
sador Sato and Baron Megata.
Both of these distinguished representatives of the
Japanese Empire were born in feudal times. Their
lives have spanned all that lies between medieval con-
ditions and the most modern and up-to-date program.
Neither of them can have any personal memory of the
arrival of Commodore Perry and the excitement that
prevailed the day his ship sailed into Yedo Bay. But
both must have very vivid recollections of the end of
the Shogunate and of the restoration which made the
Mikado the head of the Japanese Empire in fact as well
as in theory. They were both in the vigor of young
manhood in the troublous days of the seventies, and
they witnessed the violent changes of the eighties when
Japan with a rush adopted Western ideas. Western
dress. Western customs, and indeed any thing and
417
418 Other Addresses
everything Western. They took part in all the mar-
velous changes by which Japan quickly emerged from
the life of hermit into the activities, the responsibilities
and publicities of a great modern nation.
They were, as I understand it, friends and associates
of Prince Ito — whose son is a member of this Com-
mission and one of our guests — who so largely drafted
the Constitution proclaimed by the Mikado in 1889,
whose writings afterwards did so much to interpret
it. They have in short been potent influences in that
unprecedented evolution which has changed Japan
almost within a generation from a narrow seclusiveness,
which feared and hated all foreigners, into a broad-
visioned, efficient, generous and humane nation.
Facts can be recited ver^^ quickly, but the miracle
remains unexplained. How did they do it? We are
fond of referring to the ''unchanging East". We think
of the Orient as the land where eternity dwells, where
nothing changes. But in Japan an evolution has taken
place within thirty years that makes an Anglo-Saxon
dizzy. It goes without saying that under our system,
controlled by our sources of authority, nothing like
this could peacefully happen. If anything approaching
it happened, it would be the result of revolution. We
adopted our Constitution in 1789. Beyond the twelve
amendments which followed speedily afterwards and
were mostly agreed on in advance, we did not, except
through the amendments adopted in the Civil War,
change the text of the Constitution for more than a
hundred years.
Again the question arises. How did Japan do all
this? I suppose none of us has a very clear knowledge
of that. But certain broad facts are obvious. Japan
The Japan Society 419
must have had wise and far-sighted leaders who
reaUzed that whether Japan Uked it or not, the period
of her isolation was past; who saw not only that her
hermit-life must be given up but that if she was to be
worthy of her genius, Japan must affirmatively take her
place as a rival and a competitor of those who were
making the modern world. In addition to that it is
clear that she must have had a people who were tract-
able and loyal, who profoundly believed in their
leaders, who were willing to follow them in almost
anything they did and adopt almost any program they
laid down. When however we consider the antiquity
of Japan, the deep-seated fear the people had of for-
eigners, their devotion to the theory, not uncommon
amongst all races, that they were the "chosen people",
and then when we consider the extent and violence of
the change, it must have been true at times that faith
in their leaders was strained to the limit. Could any
Occidental people have been changed from their
condition in the feudal ages to their present condition
in a generation? Certainly not. It is not thinkable.
It would be eas}^ to point out a hundred reasons why
that could not happen, I don't mean by that to say
that it couldn't happen because it didn't happen, but
it just couldn't have happened. In Japan it did happen,
and our chief guests saw it all.
I sometimes wonder how much of the illusion with
which Japan viewed the Western world in 1853, when
the black hulk of Commodore Perry's steamer and its
funnel belching black smoke terrified the Japanese
people, has been lost.
It would be a reflection on Japan to say that she did
not abandon her old ways and adopt Western ways
420 Other Addresses
because she believed they were better than her own.
Of course that was her motive. But facing present day
reaUties Japan must now reahze either that she under-
estimated herself or that she overestimated us, —
perhaps a little of both.
In the intervening period she has tried her war
strength with at least one great Occidental, or at least
semi-Occidental Power. She has pitted the quality
of her intellectual powers against the men of the West
in many of our Universities and Colleges, and in many
of the Universities of Europe; she has developed a
degree of generosity and humanity toward her enemies
in battle never surpassed by any Anglo-Saxon and
utterly beyond the comprehension of the Teuton.
She knows to-day that in all these prime essentials,
physical, mental and moral, she is the peer of any.
It is the privilege of the Japan Society to have as
its guests to-night men who were powerful factors in
the whole of this transformation; others who were a
creative part of modern Japan only. Our guests were
not spectators; they did not stand by and wonder at
what was happening. They were amongst the trans-
formers of old Japan, amongst the creators of new
Japan.
It is my high privilege now to present one of these
two chief guests of honor, a graduate of De Pauw
University, barely in his sixties, so old in what he has
seen, so young in what he has done, so ancient in his
traditions and in his inspirations, so modern in his
spirit and in his point of view, the representative in
the United States of His Imperial Majesty, the Em-
peror of Japan, His Excellency,
AMBASSADOR SATO.
The Japan Society 421
The second of these wise and wonderful men into
whose Ufe centuries have been packed, is a graduate
of Harvard University, and may justly be called the
financial and economic creator of Korea. His work in
reforming the currency system of Korea was notable;
he brought order out of chaos, effective administration
and a system of responsible credits out of an appalling
condition of inefficiency and graft.
In some respects Baron Megata reminds me of
Viscount Ishii, who so lately visited us and left so
pleasant and so profound an impression everywhere.
Ladies and Gentlemen — the head of the Japanese
Financial Commission, one of the creators of modern
Japan,
BARON MEGATA.
WE ARE, TOO, IN THAT OTHER SUNLIGHT
WHICH FLOODS OUR SOULS
AND TEACHES US TO
LAUGH AT TIME
ON TAKING THE CHAIR AS PRESIDENT
OF THE SENIORS' GOLF ASSOCIATION
DELMONICO'S, NEW YORK. JANUARY 29 1917
ELLOW PHILOSOPHERS: When the
Committee in charge of America's classic
golfing event, held annually at Apawamis,
looked at the entries in recent years and
noticed the swelling totals they must have
been reminded of Lincoln's remark about plain people.
God must love the seniors because he made so many
of them.
To be a senior is not to be old; it is merely to have
been longer in service than someone else. To be a
member of the Senior Class in college — apart from the
dignities and pri\dleges that go with it — is merely
evidence that a man is wiser and sounder than the
unripe and uneducated bunch that make up the lower
classes.
In the great college to which we belong this is the
Senior Class. It's a very unusual university — this
institution of ours. There are seldom any "dead ones"
in it; they matriculate with difficulty.
Most people are apt to think of a certain age — which
I will not mention — as the only qualification for
membership in this body. That's a very great error.
Fools and liars and men with yellow streaks in them
425
426 Other Addresses
achieve the requisite years, but by a process of self-
ehmination they never enter here, or if by chance they
do, their stay is short, they are plucked early. Above
the question of a certain age stand these tests —
Is the candidate a gentleman?
Does he love the smell of the soil?
Has he satisfactorily passed the severe tests apphed
in the lower forms?
Is he a good fellow?
Is his mind young?
Does the song of the lark make his blood tingle?
Does he stop playing, lean on his putter and smile
if a bob-o-hnk happens to be swaying and singing
in the reeds hard by?
Does he instinctively know just what and where the
"Fair way" is?
Has he a sound philosophy?
Above everything else does he know that time is a
liar?
Il he can pass these tests he may be advanced to the
dignity of membership in this class and not otherwise.
It is my great honor to-night to have been elected
first President of the first properly constituted Senior
Class in this great University. I do not need to remind
most of you what a signal honor it is and has always
been to be President of the Senior Class. But my dis-
tinction is unique. This is the first group of tliis sort
of men evolved in a billion or two of years. It took
golfers, as such, some four hundred years to evolve you,
and it took the Roman Empire, the Dark Ages and the
Renaissance to evolve the first golfer. Not until these
days in which we Uve have men developed the keenness
of soul that, challenged by the metaphysics of golf.
President of the Seniors' Golf Association 427
has made instant counter-challenge, and yearly now
sends in deep discussion wandering over the hills and
valleys thousands of eager faced men, whose dis-
quisitions make Socrates seem but a piker.
The first grave-digger in Hamlet says that the only
"ancient gentlemen" left are "gardeners, ditchers and
grave-makers; they hold up Adam's profession". In
the construction of a modern golf course the ditcher
finds occupation, the grave-maker finds a consolation
that is bottomless, the gardener completes and beau-
tifies all. Together they make the Paradise through
which wisdom and experience wander. Old Omar was
there before us and he would be ehgible to membership
if he had not so long ago become our Prophet. Listen
to him — with no change in the thought —
Here with a little Bread beneath the Bough,
A high-ball and a book of verse — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
In the fines of the old Tentmaker I find this toast to
you — fellow lovers of the open, fellow golfers, fellow
philosophers, fellow seniors :
Ah, my Beloved, play the game that clears
To-day of Past Regrets and Future Fears;
TO-MORROW!— Why To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's sev'n thousand years.
FALSTAFF'S DEFENSE OF AGE
SENIORS' GOLF ASSOCIATION DINNER,
APAWAMIS, SEPTEMBER 19, 1917
ENIORS: I speak not Spanish but plain
United States when I thus address you.
Seniors! At a time when titles are all
about I merely recognize the rank con-
ferred on you, not by age, but by your
own philosophy and straight thinking, — I said "think-
ing", not driving.
You may verj' properly insist on this title which
discriminates, which affirms, which denies. You con-
fess you are not young; j'ou deny that you are old.
I can think of no more perfect description of the
present condition and appearance of this band of sports
than one contained in these words of the Duke in
"Measure for Measure":
"Thou hast nor youth nor age,
But, as it were, an after dinner sleep,
Dreaming on both."
In such few indications of decay as are observable
at this distance Falstaff, that beloved old blatherskite,
fixed your age when he confessed his own in the First
Part of Henry VI, in these words :
As I think, his age some fifty, or,
by're lady inclining to three score."
42S
Falstaff's Defense of Age 429
Falstaff had a dislike for definiteness in the matter of
age which makes him dehghtful. But it was in his
defiance of time that Falstaff most perfectlj^ fore-
shadowed your condition. If in your callow days you
committed any faults, which God forbid, you ob-
viously repent of them to-night as Falstaff did —
"Not in ashes and sackcloth
but in new silk and old sack."
In this exalted condition, physically, mentally and
spiritually, we celebrate the first meet of the Seniors'
Golf Association at hospitable Apawamis.
I shall in a moment through the words of others
describe and defend this company collectively.
Individually I could — indeed in my mind I do — se-
lect individuals and insist that Oliver in "As You Like
If describes them with cruel realism when he says:
" * * an oak whose boughs were mossed with age,
And high top bald."
Collectively the Chief Justice in the Second Part of
Henrj^ IV describes you better than any other in all
literature and Falstaff makes valiant defense. The
indictment and the defense run thus:
Chief Justice —
"Do you set down your name on the scroll of j-outh, that are
written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not
a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a de-
creasing leg? an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken? your
wind short? your chin double? your wit single? and every part
about you blasted with antiquity?"
To which Falstaff in his own and our defense replies —
"My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon,
with a white head, and a something round belly. For my voice, —
I have lost it with hollaing, and singing of anthems. To prove
29
430 Other Addresses
my youth further, I will not: the truth is, I am only old in judg-
ment and understanding; and he that will caper with me for a
thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him."
In creating this organization we have probably
builded a monument and in so doing we are only
observing the reflections of Benedick in ''Much Ado" —
"If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies, he
shall live no longer in monuments than the bell rings and the
widow weeps."
There is something uncannily suggestive too in what
the melancholy Jacques calls the sixth age, but we
deny that any of us are candidates for "the lean and
slippered pantaloon". Knickerbockers had then been
invented and therefore I wonder that gloomy philoso-
pher did not more cruelly inveigh against the shrunk
shank.
We admit that youth has certain seeming advan-
tages, but young men after all belong to what we may
properly call the dependent class. Some of them may
insolently offer us three bisques and make us wish we
had taken four, but all such performers miss the ecstasy
we feel in scoring an eighty, because in doing that we
have triumphed over time. But that is only a sug-
gestion of our real triumph.
What brings us together?
We come from many States from many vocations.
As the world wags we have various faiths and as many
points of view as five hundred men who have played
the game hard well can have.
We have been young, as youth goes. We have paid
that debt by raising up sons and daughters to take our
places. We have played our part in the fierce con-
tests of middle life, — and, I think, played it honorably.
Falstaff's Defense of Age 431
Now we come together as men like us have never
before assembled. Why? Because we have discov-
ered as alas! thousands of others have not, how to meet
advancing age merrily. By this game of golf and this
fellowship we vanquish time even as the boy scores a
79. Neither of us knows just how we do it, but we
do it.
We have learned what King Henry meant when in
wooing Katherine he said:
"But in faith Kate, the elder I wax, the better I shall appear, my
comfort is that old age, that ill-layer up of beauty, can do no more
spoil upon my face."
We are in truth no group of fools drawing dials from
our pokes or watches from our pockets, nor do we look
at these instruments for recording time with lack-
lustre eyes, as Jacques's fool did, nor do we say with
him:
"It is ten o'clock:
Thus we may see * * * how the world wags;
'Tis but one hour ago since it was nine,
And after an hour more 'twill be eleven;
And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale."
By this glorious game and this gracious fellowship
'tis true we ripe and ripe; but we are "too much i' the
sun" to rot — the sun that browns our bodies and
clears our brains. We are, too, in that other sunlight
that floods our souls and teaches us to laugh at time,
the fearless sunlight of philosophy which makes our
western sky more glorious than any sky of youth.
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF GOLFING
ANTIQUITIES
DINNER OF THE SENIORS' GOLF ASSOCIATION,
APAWAMIS, SEPTEMBER 12, 1918
HAVE on one or two occasions made at-
tempts to convince this venerable Bunch
that it was anticipated and appreciated by
the Bard of Avon, and to-night I propose
to show you how, in a cunningly concealed
cipher, more subtle than any discovered by the Baco-
nians, Shakespeare discussed golf, had a keen appre-
ciation of all its shots, its inspiration and its despairs.
There has been a good deal of discussion about the
antiquity of Golf. The man who had the bug so
badly that it drove him in his ethnic investigations
across the North Sea into the dunes of Holland,
thought he had said the last word. That man wasn't
familiar with his Shakespeare. William gives Golf an
antiquity of at least two thousand j-ears. He clearly
and definitely shows that Julius Caesar was a bum
putter and he paints a familiar picture of the crowd of
friends gathered around the home green when the
match is level and the sympathy they always show
when a man putts past a hole three or four times.
Shakespeare expresses this in Casca's description of
what happened one day at the Lupercal when Caesar re-
fused the crown: " * * * he put it by thrice every time
432
American Museum of Golfing Antiquities 433
gentler than other : and at each putting-by mine honest
neighbor shouted." Caesar ha\dng missed it thrice,
Casca's dagger found the hole.
In the same play, Brutus, the original Bolshevist,
says: '^Good words are better than bad strokes."
And Antonj^ reminds Brutus of ''the hole he made in
Caesar's heart".
In "All's Well" Shakespeare draws the picture of a
familiar friend, the man who haggles on the first tee
about how the match shall be made up: the man who
in the distant past got a handicap of eighteen and has
never played in a Club Tournament since for fear
that he might win something and get his handicap
lowered. Shakespeare had his measure when he said
"Half won, is match well made".
The gentle Bard had a keen appreciation too of the
foolish competitor to whom you have conceded bisques,
who is plajdng fairly well and thinks as he is only one
down that he will keep two or three bisques for the
last hole, and then loses his ball on the last tee shot.
Sebastian describes him in "The Tempest", when he
says: "I think he will carrj^ this Island home in his
pocket."
Shakespeare knew the difference in golf courses. It
wasn't Apawamis, but I think I know what course he
had in mind when he makes Quintus in his "Titus
Andronicus" after he has led Martins into the pit, say:
"What subtle hole is this whose mouth is covered with
rude-growing briers?"
It is perfectly clear, although the Rules of Golf
Committee of St. Andrews have evolved no rules gov-
erning it, that our Bard knew all about the Four-Ball-
Match. You have seen the expression on the face of
434 Other Addresses
your partner when one of the opposing players pitched
his ball stone dead from a hundred yards away. In
"The Two Gentlemen of Verona" Sylvia says to Pro-
teus: "By thy approach thou makest me most un-
happy."
And you know the glow of satisfaction that spreads
over your frame when in a Four-Ball-]\Iatch your
partner does the same thing. All this was expressed
in "As You Like It", by the First Lord who when
ordered to find the melancholy Jacques replies: "He
saves my labor by his own approach." The Fool in
"Timon" was no fool in Golf matters when he accu-
rately describes the man who plays to the green and
then goes down in one. He tells us of the men who
"approach sadly and go away merry".
The Prince of Monaco in the Casket Scene of "The
Merchant of Venice" typifies the bold plaj'-er and ex-
presses his philosophy when he says: "Men that
hazard all, do it in hope of fair advantages."
Hotspur's outburst in "Henry IV" when the King
charges Mortimer with treason, could as well be the
language of a man who has been hit on the bean by a
careless player: "I will ease my heart albeit I make a
hazard of my head."
Having fairly established the antiquity of Golf and
noticed its place in literature, it becomes my duty to
report to this museum what progress we have made in
the past year, in adding to our rare specimens.
You know how we classify ourselves — 55 to 59 inclu-
sive, 60 to 64 inclusive, 65 to 69 inclusive, and 70 over
the top.
During the year we have dug up two rare specimens :
one from the New Haven shales which are placed in
American Museum of Golfing Antiquities 435
the upper Jurassic or Juristic. We call this specimen
''Big Bill" Taft. The other from auriferous deposits
of lower Manhattan. We call this specimen "Charlie"
Hughes.
The first is a very rare and valuable specimen. He
is really "a" if not "the" missing link in golf. The
persistence with which we take our eye off the ball
even after years of play has made it clear to many of
us that there must have been a time when keeping the
eye glued to the ball wasn't necessary. Until this
specimen was placed in the museum we were not quite
sure. Now we are. He has shown us that looking at
the ball is entirely unnecessary, because he hits it
when it is entirely below the line of his horizon.
The second specimen out-Caesars Caesar. I have
told you that Julius was a bum putter, but "Charlie"
is bummer. Competing in the 1916 Presidential sweep-
stakes he played his opponent level to the eighteenth
green, putted past the hole not three times but for a
week and never got down at all.
We are, therefore, progressing in the number and
rarity of our specimens. The museum is already
national and threatens to become international in its
activities. We now venture to predict that it will in
time overcome the natural effervescence of the early
sixties and achieve the robust youth that lies in the
seventies and beyond.
IN PRAISE OF AGE
IN CELEBRATIOX OF THE 77th BIRTHDAY (MARCH 27, 1919)
OF HORACE L. HOTCHKISS
HONORARY PRESIDENT OF THE SENIORS' GOLF ASSOCIATION
DELMONICO'S, NEW YORK, APRIL, 1919
Our Honorary and Greatly Honored President, Canadian
Guests, and Plain Members —
Cicero had in mind the type of which our guest is a
shining example, when he penned his noble essay on
old age, and especially when he wrote the sentiment*
printed on the evening's program. Further on Cicero
says :
"But whatever the extent of our present duration
may prove, a wise and good man ought to be con-
tented with the allotted measure, remembering that
it is in life as on the stage, where it is not necessary
in order to be approved, that the actor's part
should continue to the conclusion of the drama;
it is sufficient, in whatever scene he shall make his
final exit, that he support the character assigned
to him w4th deserved applause. The truth is a
small portion of time is abundantly adequate to
the purposes of honor and virtue. But should
our years continue to be multiplied a wise man will
no more lament his entrance into old age than the
husbandman regrets, w^hen the bloom and fra-
grance of spring is passed away, that summer or
autumn is arrived."
It has long been the custom of men to honor those
who have borne themselves heroically in war. Honors
* "He alone shall taste this sweet fruit of revered age, whose former years have
been distinguished by an uniform series of laudable and meritorious actions."
436
In Praise of Age 437
take a great variety of forms. The survivors of
a great war are usually given a distinctive medal;
sometimes Congress or Parliament votes a special
medal. Titles are invented to fit the occasion and the
service. Sometimes a victorious General or Admiral
is given public receptions and banquets.
The Romans gave a triumph to the Generals who
had added territory to the Empire. When the Senate
had voted a triumph to a General he entered the city
through the Portal of Triumph and rode over the via
sacra to the Capitol. He was dressed in gold and
purple, crowned with laurel and carried a laurel branch
in his right hand. His troops and the people followed
him shouting
'' 10 TRIUMPHS ! 10 TRIUMPHS ! "
The ceremonies by which we honor our heroes resemble
these even in form; in spirit and purpose the Roman
triumph still survives.
Of the famous Canadian Regiment known as the
"Princess Pats" onlj'- a handful survive. Of our 69th,
of the original Seventh, only a handful remain. In a
crowded hour death claimed and took from them a toll
that otherwise would have been as certainly but almost
imperceptibly taken by the inexorable demands of the
years.
Life is a battle. Its contests are less crowded, ap-
parently less cruel, seemingly less deadly than were the
Somme and Verdun and the Argonne. But in reality
life's battles are as deadly as those of any war that has
been or shall be.
Those who survive in the longer and less crowded
battles of every-day life are almost invariably they who
438 Other Addi-esses
were wise and just and fearless of soul. ]\Ien who
reach nearly four score years are truly veterans
of a long fight in which they have been constantly
under fire.
The attack begins with the cry of fear that ushers
a new life into the world, and every hfe begins with a crj-
of fear. The attack never ceases; it is deadhest when
life is most intense — in its middle period. It measurably
diminishes when a handful out of every thousand
emerges into the serene airs of golden days. That hand-
ful, those sur\'ivors are as truly veterans, as certainh'
heroes, as the defenders of Thermopylae or the victors
of \>rdun. But alas, the world does not always so
regard them. The sur\'ivors of the battles of life are
seldom cheered on that account, and it is rather the
waj' of the world to hustle them to one side.
But now and again comes a veteran so wise, so
gentle, so young in his mind and soul, that in his honor
men pause in the conflict that never ceases, in which
every man in a very real sense has his back to the wall.
Therefore it is that we have paused to-night.
We are gathered to honor a man who is a veteran be-
cause he has fought a clean, long fight, a hero
because he has fought through the Argonne Forest of
the October of life and rests a victor in its November.
We have expressed to him appreciation before, but
not this kind of appreciation. We have loved him
because of his lovable qualities, and we have told him
that. We have been grateful because he happily
founded our organization, and we have told him of our
gratitude. To-night we have aroused in ourselves a
bit of the mysticism of the East, a sentiment that vener-
ates age and makes Gods of worthy ancestors. On all
In Praise of Age 439
occasions we hail our guest as Founder and Friend, but
to-night we greet him as the Hero who has survived
at least seventy-seven battles, who bears the scars of
clean and honorable combat, who is now emerging
into the serene airs of that Beatitude which is re-
served for the pure in heart, for the plain men who
have fought through every battle of life and have kept
the faith.
We fill our glasses but we do not say "long life to
you," because you have had that already, and Cicero
elsewhere in his famous essay saj^s that no portion of
time can be justly deemed long that will necessarily
have an end. We do not say "may you prosper" —
you have prospered. We do not say "vasiy you have
friends" — you have troops of friends. We drink no
usual toast because you have achieved all that standard
toasts hope for. We drink to your triumph. This is
your triumph.
It is yours because in compliance with the Roman
law you have added territory to the empire of ripened
years, to the things that make the November of life
even more beautiful than its June; you have brought
many captives home to Apawamis. You have come
here, as the Roman Generals did, through the Portal
of Triumph, which, in j^our case, swung open because
you could give the magic pass-word — seventy-seven.
The laurel is on your brow; you are clad in the gold
and purple of our reverence and affection. We follow
you advancing over the via sacra that leads from the
first to the nineteenth hole. Having reached the nine-
teenth hole we drink, and as we drink we shout as the
Romans did when following a hero to the Capitol:
"10 TRIUMPHE! 10 TRIUMPHE!"
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