New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1915-08-01
The First Anniversary.

world will naturally pass IN review the
events of what has been the most momen-
tous year in a century.
For many the anniversary Will be re-
minder of the terribleness of strife and
the statistics of human destruction will be
arrayed to demonstrate again the folly of
war and the blessings Of peace Millions
of casualties, provinces ravaged, cities in
ruins, a whole nation held to ransom,
these are impressive arguments for the
paciist and potent reasons for peace.
Yet with every recognition of the extent
of the disaster which is the Great War, is
it not equally essential to realize how much
he conflict has added to the relatively
slender stock of monuments to human
grandeur. devotion, sef-sacrifice?
AS long as the written page endures, as
long as legend transmits the story of the
past. men will read and hear Of the Bel
gian resistance with unfailing admiration.
Thousands of years have not timmed nor
lessened the interest and the admiration
with which we turn to the story Of Mara
thon. to the first resistance which we
know of made by civilization to barbarism
and sweetness and light to the gospel Of
tyranny and frightfuness.
The men who defended Liege, the in
habitants of the little villages on the
route, once smiling and happy, now des-
ert of wasted homes, between the German
frontier posts and the Walloon capital,
-hese have already taken their place with
the ether Minute Men of Concord and
Lexington. the men of HARLEM and Mara
hon. In our own time, within our own
vision. as clear and unmistakable as the
sunrise itself. there has come one more
authentic revelation Of the greatness which
there is hid beneath the common in all
men: the resistance of Belgium trans
.'ormed a conflict Of ambitions into a war
Of ideas.
IN all mems minds since last August
there has grown the realization that the
struggle that has broken was a war of
IDEAS more than of nations, that what the
American Revolution had begun, what the
French Revolution had carried forward,
was being pressed to completion in one
more stupendous struggle.
Clearly now the world perceives that
there is being fought one more war of lib
Grafton, a war of Liberation Of the Bel
gians newly onslayed, of the Slavic people
,ong subjected to Austrian and Osmanli
slavery, war for the liberation of Europe
shacklod for more than generation by
the German miitarism which found its
expression in the annexation Of Schleswig
and Alsace-Lorraine.
The German idea denied and denies to
individual the right to choose his own
aIegiance and his own language. In the
German scheme of world-reorganiz
lhcre is TO be allotted to Germany that
which she can conquer without regard to
he will Of the individual, and Belgium is
but the great sacrifice to a genius that has
for generation been marking with leu
tonic coloring all the places desired by
Germany in sun which had itself to the
German mind become primarily an acces-
sorry to the gliding of German greatness.
Against the German idea Europe is in
arms. Against the sham Napoleonism OF
the twentieth century Europe is fighting
with the same unanimity it fought the real
Napoeonism. Against the sham "Kultur'
of the Teuton the west is fighting as the
west of the Hellenic beginnings fought the
Kultur Of the Persians. Against the
tyranny of the German idea France is
fighting in the spirit and with the devo-
lion which France displayed in the days of
the Revolution, when the combined forces
Of the past sought to eXtinguish the great
light of the French Revolution, which had
suddenly blazed up and was destined to
give permanent illumination to mankind.
If Germany IS beaten in the Great War
hen and then only will there be promise of
he persistence of the things that we Amer
leans hold dearest-liberty and the right to
i've under laws fixed by the will of the
majority. If Germany conquers, the
Flemings and the Waloons of Belgium, the
Slavs of Austria. the Serbs of the Balkans.
The Italians of the Tyrol, will be gathered
under the rule of that German world en-
pre which has won its place in the litera-
'ure of modern Germany and in the dreams
If contemporary TeutOns.
But if Germany is beaten there will
Emerge from bondage half a dozen Slavic
races, Belgium will be again liberated, the
Danes of Schleswig may be returned 20
their Danish allegiance. The notion of a
superior race will be extinguished, let US
nope for all time. AS the French Revo-
luton established the gospel of the equal
'.y of men, the storm of the present strug-
gle will fix the doctrine of the equality of
nations and forever refute the German
notion that weak nations have no right to
exist, small nations no rights that the