and there will be no groups at all who will gain by war although their country loses.1

The second reason why it is necessary to end the reign of profiteering and to usher in the reign of social and economic justice and democracy may be regarded as religious. Even Lincoln, who has sometimes been thought a skeptic, gave to the Civil War a religious significance when, in his second inaugural, he spoke of it as being in the nature of retribution for the sin of slavery. Since one so emancipated as Lincoln could think of the Civil War as an expiation for the sin of enslaving black men in this country, may we not be justified in thinking of this war as expiatory for the sin of exploiting white men of the more unfortunate classes in Europe and America and black men in the backward regions of the world? It matters not, however, whether one is a religionist looking at the recent holocaust of blood as a divine punishment for sin, or a materialist regarding it as the effect of natural cause; if he is thoughtful, he will agree that the cause of the catastrophe must be removed. That is why those who would abolish war are called radicals. The term is used in its derivative sense and is applied to those who would go to the source of the trouble and destroy its root. The development of internationalism, then, is inseparably connected with the development of industrial as well as political democracy a fact that even President Wilson, the arch proponent of a league of nations, does not seem clearly to have perceived. According to this view, the test of a true internationalist is his agreement with some such purpose as that expressed by the British Labour Party in the following excerpt from its program :

The individualist system of capitalist production, based on the private ownership and competitive administration of land and capital, with its reckless "profiteering" and wage slavery; with its glorification of the unhampered struggle for the means of life and its hypocritical pretense of the "survival of the fittest; with the monstrous inequality of circumstances which it produces and the degradation and brutalization, both moral and spiritual, resulting therefrom, may, we hope, indeed have received a death blow. With it must go the political system and ideas in which it naturally found expression. We of the Labour party, whether in opposition or in due time called upon to form an administration, will certainly lend no hand to its revival. On the contrary, we shall do our utmost to see that it is buried

1 Ibid., p. 309. On the necessity for democratic control and socialization of wealth as a prerequisite to permanent peace, cf. also P. H. Drake, B. I. Bell and Morris Jastrow, Jr., op. cit.

with the millions whom it has done to death. If we are to escape from the decay of civilization itself, we must ensure that what is presently to be built up is a new social order, based not on fighting but on fraternity; not on the competitive struggle for the means of bare life, but on a deliberately planned cooperation in production and distribution for the benefit of all who participate by hand or by brain; not on the utmost inequality of riches, but on a systematic approach towards a healthy equality of material circumstances for every person born into the world; not on an enforced dominion over subject nations, subject races, subject colonies, subject classes, or a subject sex, but, in industry as well as in government, on that equal freedom, that general consciousness of consent, and that widest possible participation in power, both economic and political, which is characteristic of democracy.1

In conclusion the argument of the radicals may be summed up in some such way as this: We are living in a changing world and it is necessary, above all, for us to preserve an open mind; to welcome, not fear, change; to strive to adapt ourselves and our society to mutable conditions; to avoid the pitfalls of the cultivators of the irrational. Ever since the old order was disturbed by the revolutionary changes in politics, society and industry, individuals and nations have been longing for a sense of security, as is made evident by the manifestoes of discontented groups and the correspondence of diplomats during the past century. It is necessary, therefore, to create a world order that will guarantee to every nation the security which it desires, and to establish within each that industrial democracy which alone can bring to the individual the sense of security for which he longs.

For those who would establish permanent peace in the world and would look to history for guidance, these are its lessons. Incidentally, they square with common sense and Christianity. To teach these lessons, which is the task of the publicist and the educator, requires patience, tolerance, open-mindedness, vision and freedom from interference on the part of those who conceive it to be the teacher's duty to lend assistance in the cultivation of the irrational.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

B. B. KENDRICK.

'Towards a New World, Being the Reconstruction Programme of the British Labour Party.

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND A LEAGUE OF NATIONS1

I

T was evident almost immediately upon the outbreak of the European war that the conflict was one of political ideals and that its outcome would determine the future of widely different and irreconcilable conceptions of the state, of the rights of peoples and of international relations. Between Great Britain and Germany especially, there were really two issues. The first as to method-law or necessity, the sanctity of treaties or "scraps of paper "-was relatively unimportant in comparison with the second which was fundamental— Prussianism or the rights of peoples, Mittel-Europa or a league of nations. Russia was at first, as she is still, an anomaly among the Allies, while the entrance of the United States into the war did not change but simply clarified the issue. Machtpolitik, happily, has met decisive defeat; but though the world may be made safe for democracy, Bolshevism may make democracy unsafe for the individual. The enthronement and enforcement of public right as the guiding principle between states are within the power of the Allies, but the application of the ideals they profess will be extraordinarily difficult; disaster lurks in the conflict of rights and interests now taking place at Paris.

Some of these broad problems of political science and the war have recently been dealt with by four writers. Their volumes are alike in that they are composed in large part of essays previously published, and in that the subject matter is either the same or closely related. But of chief interest is the attitude of mind of these four specialists, since obviously a better and more stable world can be secured only by thinking through the political problems of the war and, it may be added, by discarding altogether the Realpolitik which, while not prostituted in the Prussian sense, may not be altogether absent in the peace settlement, just as it has not been absent from the individualistic, competitive processes of modern democracies. What sort of political

1 Prussian Political Philosophy. By Westel W. Willoughby. New York, D. Appleton and Company, 1918.-xi, 203 pp.

Government and the War. By Spenser Wilkinson. New York, R. M. McBride and Company, 1918.-xi, 268 pp.

Nationality and Government. By Alfred E. Zimmern.

McBride and Company, 1918.-xxiv, 364 pp.

New York, R. M.

Essays and Addresses in War Time. By James Bryce. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1918.-vi, 208 pp.

thinking, then, is represented by these volumes? Theorizing is necessary because it was a theory that made civilization totter and it is only by theorizing that any progress can be made.

Since the first

Professor Willoughby's argument is not unfamiliar. few weeks of the war we have had a stream of articles, pamphlets and books on Hegel, Treitschke, Bernhardi, and their teachings. The present indictment of the German system and the connection between the Prussian theory of the state and the Prussian theory of government, dispassionately but remorselessly established by the author, can well be the final word; the menace to democracy and to freedom is conclusively shown. Professor Willoughby's viewpoint, however, is largely that of the analytical philosopher, and his conception of the problem is, therefore, restricted. For, as Mr. Willoughby has elsewhere said, the analytical jurist envisages and studies the state simply as an instrumentality for the creation and enforcement of law." Analytical political theory is "purely formalistic." It does not endeavor to seek

substantive truth, but "to furnish an apparatus of thought by the employment of which public law thinking may be systematized and its various problems brought into legal harmony with one another." The present volume is, of course, not limited to this inquiry in connection with the German theory of the state; but half of it is devoted to the Prussian theory of monarchy, Prussian constitutional principles and system and ministerial responsibility in Germany. Other chapters deal with American political ideals and German propaganda. There is, therefore, not much space left for a consideration of political philosophy. One wonders whether Hegel's theories can properly be dismissed in half a dozen pages. "The philosophy which has made Germany a pariah among nations is not only political in nature but political in its origin and propagation," says Professor Willoughby; but may Hegel's political theory be separated from his metaphysics? And is it sufficient to treat solely the manifestations of the theory in the government of Germany, and its negation of international law and morality, without devoting some attention to the processes of thought by which the State God has been created and to the metaphysical dogmas that are relevant to politics? Is it not necessary to discuss how far such a theory of the state has been accepted and how far discarded by English philosophers like Green and Bosanquet, and how far Hegel has influenced modern social philosophers who, while softening his conceptions, are, nevertheless, sufficiently Hegelian (although they may not openly avow it) to do a great deal of harm? There is a well-known maxim to the effect that the wise should draw good

out of that which is evil; and although Professor Willoughby's inquiry is restricted to governmental theory-purposely, and perhaps wisely so-he has, by comparing American and German constitutional ideals, shown the iniquitous character of the latter and what should at all costs be avoided.

war,

The Prussian theory of the state has now been completely discredited, but, as has been said, we are by no means certain of being completely freed from some of its manifestations. In Government and the War Mr. Spenser Wilkinson gives us the fruits of his tenure for nine years of the Chichele professorship of military history at Oxford. A chapter on" England and Germany" shows great prescience in forecasting the and there are many acute observations on strategy with some references to military operations since August, 1914. Clausewitz, Jomini and Mahan are his oracles, and they are cited with few amendments or criticisms. But our concern is with Mr. Wilkinson's political philosophy. He discusses war as a natural and inevitable phenomenon, with not a word of its horrors or its possible prevention. In the past, nations have not attempted to secure peace but have sought for preponderance. "The truth cannot be too often repeated, that peace is never the object of policy; you cannot define peace except by reference to war, which is a means and never an end " (page 121). Perpetual peace is declared to be impossible.

We cannot think of two co-existent states in relation with one another without admitting that their relation involves equally the possibility of agreement and of disagreement; nor can we think of necessary agreement between them except as imposed upon both of them by some external authority; in other words, except as a result of the merging of their separate autonomies into a single sovereignty supreme over both [page 37].

Nor, if permanent peace were possible, would it be altogether desirable.

The experience of the ancient world suggests that the amalgamation of all existing States into one, which is the only imaginable mode in which the conception of universal peace could be attained, would change into monotony and uniformity, the diversity and variety of life, would be accompanied by stagnation, and would end in fresh divisions. The conception that peace can exist only on the basis of law or right, and that right can be established only through contest, has grown unfamiliar to our countrymen [page 59].

These words from an address in 1911 are allowed to stand un