THE WAR AN ADDRESS BY HON. ARTHUR MEIGHEN, K.C., B.A., Before the Empire Club of Canada, Toronto, MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,—I think it is only about twelve days since this club was addressed on the subject of the war and Canada's part in it by the Prime Minister of Canada. Mindful of that fact, and knowing also how careful one has to be in addressing an audience in the city of Toronto, I have great doubts as to the wisdom of my venturing to speak to you on the same subject this afternoon. I deny to no other the same tribute when I say of the Prime Minister that he has good title at this time, in this the first real crisis of our nationhood, to speak to his countrymen. He derives that title not only from his exalted post, but from his high character long tried in the furnace of Canadian politics, but derives it perhaps more from his fidelity to the central purpose and unity of the Empire, both of which are now under the challenge of war. I speak of course with lesser authority, but I have no alternative; I could choose no other theme. The people of Canada now think of nothing else. I hope that remains true; I hope it is true in the fullest sense. We have other things to do, other tasks to perform, but all things must be done and all tasks performed with an eye to success in this struggle. I hope that the war absorbs the Canadian people till the war is over. Not that it may unsettle or terrorise any mind, but rather that it may arouse and concentrate all the people in this country. On that depends the safety of our cause and the deepest safety of the land we love. I desire to speak, with some diffidence indeed before the Empire Club, of the meaning of the struggle, of the stake that is going to pass one way or the other with the event. No one but a fool believes we are fighting for territory, the ordinary prize of war. We have all the territory we can take care of. It may be, and it may not be, that when all is over more territory may be added; if so it will be in order to make better our security; but the world knows we are not fighting for territory. The stake is a thousand times bigger than that. The stake is as big as the conflict, and the conflict is a world convulsion. The stake is the destiny of mankind. Thinking is the distinctive attribute of humans. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he; and if we can get at the philosophy of a country we have the key to its policy. If any people organise and centre themselves loyally around any system of thought, then we know where to find that people on any question. "Keep thy heart with all diligence," saith the wisdom of Solomon, "for out of it are the issues of life." Now picture to yourself 65,000,000 of the human race of advanced intelligence, who make the state their ideal, who make the power of the state the object of their worship, and who consequently believe that there can be no right either of their own subjects or of other powers or other interests antagonistic to the Fatherland. Picture that people and their satellites and slaves on one side, and then on the other an array of nations who still cling to the belief that the ordinary standards of rectitude apply or should apply to nations as to men, who still believe in public law, and who as a consequence believe that small nations, as small men, have a right to live and to be free; and you have a vision of the two camps that face each other in Europe. At bottom it is a conflict of two schools of thought. There is the German school of Frederick the Great, of Nietzsche, of Bismarck, of Treitschke, and of Jagow, fed on the doctrines of Nietzsche for the most part, who worshipped force, who hated the ordinary virtues, which applied, as he said, only to the herd and had no meaning when applied to the masters; in other words, when applied to the nations. Fed on that doctrine is that school. On the other side the British school of Bacon and Burke and of Pitt and Canning, of Asquith and Lincoln and Wilson, the school that pins its faith to public law and that directs the course of its policy with regard to public law; the school that believes that man is first after all, and that the state was made for man, and not man for the state, which believes that small nations have rights as well as large nations, not the same rights because they have not the same responsibilities, but in as far as the right to life, to freedom and the pursuit of happiness is concerned, the very same rights as the large. We proclaim now as we always have proclaimed our allegiance to that faith. We expose the course of our policy. It is a course marked with error, as every human enterprise is marked, at the same time with indelible proofs of our allegiance to international equity and good faith. We can afford to smile at taunts from Berlin. Our past is before the world. It is true, but it is a matter of regret and not of boast, that we have erred on the side of aggression; but that has not been the course of our policy. It is true that the ambitions of our leaders, perhaps the momentary passion of our people, has hurried us into errors of aggression, but we know this, that public opinion when informed of the facts in any British country, will stand for no wrong against another power. We say that wrong is not justified by success, that the triumph of might does not justify the issue. The other side say differently. They proclaim that international obligations have no meaning as applied to nations. Now I do not wish to be understood as making that statement and applying it only to what we call the German governing body, the German autocracy. If it applied there and there alone, we would not see the phenomenon we see to-day in Europe. I believe that what I ascribe now to German autocracy and German policy is a doctrine that has sunk deep and burned far among the German people. Austin Harrison, in a work just published after ten years' sojourn in that country as a journalist, states that beyond a doubt that people to the extent of over 90 per cent. sprang joyfully to this war, that they are behind the doctrines that are at the root of the war, openly, and as he says-and as doubtless is true-honestly behind them. I would be wasting time to go further into the conflicting ideals that are now for adjustment. There are those who say we are fighting the cause of right against might. I put it in no such form. If might and right are to be referred to the arbitrament of the sword, we know which B one would triumph; might always triumphs when it comes to war. The point is this: we are deciding now in the year of grace 1914 whether might is going to spring to the side of right or not, whether the world's muscle is going to be found on the side of justice and democracy or on the side of wrong and crime. Sovereignty they proclaim their ideal, their hope, and more than that it is the passion of their people. The state is power and power is everything, and the power of the state is represented in the army and the gunboat, and for the army and the gunboat they order their lives. Sovereignty, in as far as it relates to their own subjects, we cannot object to; that is their own domestic affair, but Deutschland über Alles means a lot more than that. It means release, at the demand of self-interest, from every international obligation. It means more still; it means that the power and the dominion of the State of Germany must be decided freely and for themselves and by themselves alone, and that power and that dominion means nothing fixed and nothing determinate, but simply all that the sword can carry. That power and that dominion, Prussian aggression and Prussian conquest, is justified, they say, by Prussian culture. That is Treitschke faithfully translated. Prussian culture is the justification, and no other justification is needed, even for organised brutality. Prussian culture is its own justification, and that is all you need to know about it; that is the beginning and the end of the argument. Clear the road for Prussia; we have our culture on board and that is all you need to know. When Frederick the Great said 150 years ago. that the nation which had a chance to humble its rival and did not do it was a fool, he was only the forerunner of Nietzsche and Treitschke of last century; he was the voice crying in the wilderness. And when Bismarck, following in his footsteps, proclaimed the doctrine of blood and iron he was the same. When Bernhardi preached in cold ink, or rather advanced the blasphemous doctrine, "Ye have heard it said in olden time that a good cause will justify even a war, but I say that war will sanctify any cause," he was only the echo of Nietzsche and Treitschke; he was only the exponent of the school, and he spoke in the main for the German people. And Jagow was no more and no less than a faithful disciple |