New-York tribune., 1918-04-16
TT is the gift of prescience which diff

fercntiates the statesman from the
mere politicians; the statesman's vision
ranges beyond the horizon which has closed
in about his less favored or more time-serv-
ing colleague, and his policies are in con-
sequence both more farreaching and more
discerning.
Though less in the public eye and with
out such large direct control over the course
of events the scholar has even better oppor-
tunities to survey what for those below his
vantage point is hidden beyond the horizon.
The ability to make out the remoter out
lines, blurred as they are by distance, and
to reproduce them for the benefit Of those
less fortunately placed should belong par
ticularly, it would seem, to the historian
and to the trained student of political sci
cnce and economies. Through having trav-
ersed the long journey to our present posi-
tion these students have again and again
been privileged to observe how special
racial characteristics dominant national
ideals and ambitions have borne fruit in
consequences of vast Importance, and ac-
cording as these have been foreseen and
provided for or have been overlooked and
neglected they have brought about the tri-
umph OF the downfall of nations.
Its UnQUoreness
VI pOllCICaI ana social science IL is as
true as it is of physical science that given
certain conditions definite results must fol-
low. The occasion and the time as we'll as
many of the details of the consummation
it may not be possible to forecast, but the
general result will hardly admit of doubt.
To one who would examine into condi-
tions in Europe q full decade before the
outbreak Of this world war it must have
been revealed that Germany was making her
preparations for vast conquests, and there
could be little doubt as to her intended vic
tins. In one of the most indiscreet but
also illuminating and damnng of autobi-
ographies in all history the Iron Chancel-
lor revealed in their essential outlines the
mansprngs of Prussian policy. The
brutally frank speeches of William II when
read in connection with German official and
semi official publications, notably General
Bernhardi's Germany and the Next War;"
should have convinced any unbiased in
quirer that the ideals Of Frederick the
Great and Bismarck were those of Prussian-
lied Germany to-day.
No Sentinel
The failure of our intcllectuals to visu-
alize this alarming situation and to send
out warning in time to meet it with
adequate preparation will ever remain
one of the most amazing, as it is one of
the most tragic, Of all the facts connected
with this terrible war. Yet it may fairly
be said that; if we except professors of the
German language and literature no classes
among American scholars have been so
blinded to actual conditions or include
among their numbers more pacifsts and
pro Germans than the trained students of
history and economies Schooled in the
,to,.o fot1 Of %c Il.
was upon them to sound warning which,
though it might go unhecdcd, could not
be misunderstood.
Some there were in England who COR
rectly read the signs of the times Speak
ing in Albert Hall in 1900, Lord Salisbury
called upon the British people to arm and
prepare themselves for war, for war
which might be on them at any hour a
war for their very existence as nation
and as race. For eight years before the
storm broke that great British soldier
Lord Roberts went up and down the land
sounding n clarion call to the nation to
arm or perish, even though the Minister
of State for War in the British Cabinet
was joining in the general condemnation
and threatening him with loss of his PEN
sion. Roberts's faithful .aid in this cam
palgn was the intellectual Frederick Scott
Oliver, author of the "I,ife of Hamilton"
and as a call to arms he wrote his "Or-
deal by Battle" perhaps the greatest book
of the ante-bellum preparedness period.
One representative of the universities. the
historian and erstwhile student of Won
Tretschke at Berlin, to rouse the nation
to it's peril delivered to a small but dis,
tinguished audience those remarkable
lectures which, published soon after his
death as Cramb's Germany and England"
will long remain both a literary classic
and an historical landmark.
Soft Voice
Ac was perhaps to be expected the feeble
voice Of tho dying Cramb was drowned in
the clamor Of the British pacifists, and the
books cmbodying the fallaccs of the arch
pacitist Norman Angel, were sold in ed;-
tions seldom before equalled and trans
lated and rcpubished in almost everv Ian.
guagc Of the known world. They set forth
with much specious reasoning that wars
could not again be wnged because of in
ability to finance them, and attention was
directed to the envable position of Bel
gium-rich, prosperous and unprepared for
defence
While the British nation was thus being
put to sleep by this powerful soporifc. tho
American people were being drurged vet