New-York tribune., 1919-01-26
In the
Vasfer Circle

In the social structure. tor the mantle
nance of an appearance OF ORDER there are
forms of rewards and punishments fixed
bv the opinions Of official arbiters more
or less skilfu They do their work, or
pretend to. by the sanction of force, which
is the ultimate reason Of things. In the
vaster circle of the nations-snce man
remains the same from whatever point OF
lew he is examined, and since the domain
of law is here much less precise-there
spring up at times crises of brute force
which up to our day the most lofty idealism
has tried in vain to repress even to
regulate.
1t is what we call war that is to say,
bloody encounters in which peoples engage
under various pretexts Of which the under
ying cause is usually the desire for ag-
grandizement at the expense of others
Ancient or modern, all wars are of the same
nature, sprung from the same native desires,
and they follow the same summary course
Of replacing a gracious manner of life by
IL devastation of the land and q frightfu
prostraton of humanity in the commissions
of death For although man has claimed
divine creation he has gone on destroying
what he can of his fellow creatures even
up to this moment of his high develop
ment.
Between the ignorant cannbal of prim-
i've days and the ninety-th intellectuals
Of Wilhelm II there is only a difference
Of degree, in the desire to increase the for
tunes Of certain people at the expense OF
others. Supreme argument of the big beast
against the little! Only, big or little, man
IS a kind of beast who, for good evil,
his wits to increase his means Of
attack and defence. 1t is thc philosophy
Of what is called ciyihzation-a general
evolution of all selfish desires or efforts
at accommodation | do not ask whittier
the fact is leading US, since at this very
hour the question is in contest on the
greatest battlehelds where men have ever
met-an astonishing paroxysm of human
unrest, marking possibly crisis out of
wnlch Will come men disposed to new
order.
Let us keep our eyes on the present mo-
mcnt In which we ripening the fruits
oi the labor Of the human mind during
several thousand years What impresses
me most, In the heinous event Of these
Gays, Is tins: that, deceived by words, we
have been, and probably arc still, the chief
dupes OF civilized verbalism which let,
us live on humanitarian phraseology in
cruel disaccord with reality
Where should we place the time when
war became different from peace, when man
came to distinguish between the reign Of
violence and state OF security more or
less durable, conditions which have been
but vaguely separated? Peace, at first.
was only q breathing-sps between con-
hicts, whereas it seems to US to-day that
var liz only an episode between periods Of
peace. It is ineligible that the theorist
mas thus been led to dream of a suppress
s'on Of the use OF force between human
societies, without pausng before the abyss
that separates the man of words from the
man Of action.
In his modesty, Frederick II was content
10 believe that everything was permitted
70 him. In the dcgeneracy Of cxtrsyaeant
brutality Wilhelm II came naivelv to the
point Of saying that everything was com
mended to him, imposed on him, even. by
know not what ancient German fetish Of
barbarism. In his madness he saw nothing
but the yellow race 10 stop him and ne
could not restrain himself from addressing
to them certain abusive remarks on this