Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Carnegie, I have two boys; I would not have them in the barracks." (Applause.) You know little of this when you sit in your studies and write from your own minds, but the man of affairs knows whether conscription in Germany is a burden or not; and I have said to myself what Bismarck said: "America is draining Germany of its best blood"; we were, and are, 57,000 on the average leave Germany every year, and 20,000 come under the Stars and Stripes. I wish there were as many millions of them.

I appreciate the German Emperor as much as Professor Münsterberg does. I have faith in the German Emperor, as he has, and I look to him to play a great part in the world; but it is too late in the day for any professor to tell me that conscription is not draining Germany of its best blood. I go against his theory and give you facts.

I will now call upon another German, the first man to organize a German-American Peace Society, Dr. Ernst Richard.

Germany and America

DR. ERNST RICHARD.

Professor Münsterberg has talked to you on behalf of his countrymen in Germany; he has described to you what is, unhappily but most decidedly, the attitude of many thinking Germans to-day in regard to the question of peace or war. If you will review the history of Germany for the last three hundred years and see the misery, the depredations on property, the humiliations Germany has had to suffer, when it was not strong enough to defend itself, you will understand why it is that Germans are not over-ready to trust in the peaceful assertions of their neighbors.

This feeling is not peculiar to the Germans, you may see from the fact that even those countries whose neutrality is guaranteed by all the great powers surrounding them, maintain a military establishment that burdens them to the extent of their economic capacity and beyond. But Kant, our great philosopher, has not been forgotten in Germany, and there are to-day an increasing number of Germans who know that better ways exist to secure peace than militarism; who know as well as we do, in spite of all possible assertions of military statesmen, that soldiers

[ocr errors]

are no instruments of peace. To speak with Elbert Hubbard, soldiers who do not like to fight are like preachers who do not like to preach, like musicians who do not care for the art of music.

I am talking to you in behalf of those Germans, and perhaps I may say of all those of foreign nationality who have come here and have forgotten their antagonism without giving up their national traditions. As far as they are in agreement with progressive and liberal institutions they are united as good citizens into one great nation of the United States of America. (Applause.) We who come from monarchical countries are wideawake to the fact that in countries of monarchical traditions the responsibilities of sovereignty rest on the shoulders of the administration; but in a democracy like ours they rest on the people, they rest on ourselves. If we go to war, we cannot blame our administration, we have to blame ourselves; and if this national congress has any meaning whatever it is to tell our mandatories in Washington that we feel the people of the United States are with us in demanding that our representatives to the Second Hague Conference shall be as they have been in the past, the leaders in the reforms of international relations. (Applause.)

I have been introduced to you as President of the GermanAmerican Peace Society, but I should like to tell you that the name "German-American" does not in this instance, even in an ethnological sense, mean a distinction from our fellow citizens, but a recognition of the fact that we who have descended from German stock are the natural bond of an ever-increasing friendship between America and Germany. We hope that our fellow citizens of other nationalities will follow our example, and that altogether we may point to this object lesson of the solidarity of the nations in our United States of America and ask: "Why are there not United States of Europe?" (Applause.)

When we started, we found the first thing to do in this American city was to have an American Peace Society right amongst us, a purely American Peace Society, and if we have done nothing else we have founded the Peace Society of the City of New York, which fathers this congress, and so we may very well call ourselves the grandparents of this National Arbitration and Peace Congress.

Perhaps it is not accidental that German-Americans should be the first to have entered this field, since Germany and America

have progressed arm in arm in the paths of peace since these United States have been recognized as one of the sovereign nations of the world.

Practically the first state that recognized the sovereignty of the United States, and gave expression to this recognition, was the state of Frederick the Great, from whose reign Germany took its new flight of progress and growth. At the same time the American eagle began to spread its wings, and it is very appropriate to recall on this occasion one clause of the treaty of 1785 which, as far as I know, is legally in force to-day; the clause which expresses the principle for which this nation has stood since its birth, and which, up to this time, has not been acknowledged as an integral part of international law. In this treaty of 1785 the United States and Prussia (which stands for the Germany of to-day) guaranteed mutually the inviolability of private property at sea. As the international law stands to-day, your house and its contents may be safe from the attacks of an army in time of war, if you are a private citizen, but it will not be safe against the shells of a warship, and your merchantmen, no matter how harmless are the goods they carry, may be destroyed or robbed by the enemy or his privateers at any time during the war. We hear so much of the question of national honor on the part of those who want to reserve at least a few cases in which they can legally fly at each other's throats. If there ever were a question of national honor for the United States it is to assert this principle which it has held up to the nations since the first days of its existence, and which stands again on the platform of the next Hague Conference. It seems to me that, above all, our delegates ought to be instructed to see that at last this principle shall be acknowledged by the agreement of the civilized nations.

I appeal to you, the representatives of the magnanimous nation, related both to Germany and to America, to the representatives of Great Britain, to raise your voice in the councils of your nation and take care that at the next Hague Conference the only great Power which has been in the way of the establishment of this great principle will at last give up its resistance and thus show to all the world that its will for peace is really "indomitable" and "invincible."

Our country and Germany have adhered to this rule since it was laid down in that treaty of 1785 and have acted accordingly throughout their history.

Let me tell you that there is only one way leading to disarmarent or to the limitation of armament, and that is to take away excuses for armament and to trust to the common sense of the German people and all the other peoples who show that they want to advance in the ways of peace and civilization, and to drop the military burden when they see that it is not necessary. The danger to private property affords the most frequent and the most dangerous excuse for the increase at least of naval armaments. But we must hurry that events shall not overtake our efforts at peaceful settlement. New ties of international friendship, of common interests are being formed. International institutions are in existence to-day supported by all or at least a great number of the great nations of the world which will lead inevitably to a World Organization such as we dream of as our ideal.

A few months ago there were unveiled two monuments over the graves of French soldiers who had died on German soil during the war of 1870, and it was on this occasion, speaking on behalf of the Emperor, that a German general, depositing a wreath on the grave, said: "What is the language of these monuments? That it is not by battles but by a pacific union that the peoples of Europe will after this accomplish their high mission of civilization and of progress, which calls them and claims all their efforts." I conclude with these words of the German Emperor, with this change, that we do not speak of the pacific union of the people of Europe alone, but of the pacific union of the whole civilized world.

Before I close let me refer to the part the German Emperor took in the g at work of concluding the Peace of Portsmouth, when President Roosevelt found it impossible to finish his task and the Russian representative had received orders to leave within three days. It was then that our President appealed to the German Emperor to help him with his influence, and through his successful intervention the baneful order was withdrawn. (Applause.)

Thus, you may say at the beginning of our national existence as well as at the present time, we find the United States and

Germany shoulder to shoulder in the task of promoting peace and diminishing the horrors of war; and as a testimony for the spirit of this so-called "War Lord," let me say to you that in spite of the dreadful military power behind which Germany tries to guard itself, our own ideals of the World's Federation are alive there as well as here.

MR. CARNEGIE:

There is some complaint from the gallery that they do not hear these speakers well. Now, we have an original in the gallery, Mr. Stead, and he suggests that he will speak from where he stands, and enable his neighbors to hear the weighty message he is going to deliver. I have great pleasure in introducing to you one of the most ardent spirits I know among all my friends. (Great Applause.)

MR. STEAD:

MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I don't know whether everyone in this great hall can hear my voice, speaking as I do, but if I should, by any accident, drop my voice so that you cannot hear it, will you be good enough to shout out quick and sharp "speak up." (Laughter.) I have ten minutes allotted to me in which to speak to you, so I beg you sincerely not to rob me of any of my ten minutes by any applause. Now, Mr. Chairman, will you kindly look at your watch and if they take any of my ten minutes, will you add that on? (Laughter.)

I am here, in a certain sense, not as the representative of the British government; I never represented a government in my life, and I hope sincerely I never shall (laughter), preferring, as I do, the position of much greater freedom than that which belongs to any representative of any government. No, I speak not for the government, I speak for the people. (Applause.) I stand here as an Englishman to appeal to you who are all or almost all English-speaking people, to join hand in hand with my countrymen to make this next Hague Conference even more memorable in the history of the world than the first Hague Conference, which owed its success, not its initiative, but its success to the fact that the United States and Great Britain stood together hand in hand as brothers true and tried before the nations of the world.

The first thing to be done is to have a program. Although

« AnteriorContinuar »