Whatever excellent reasons we may have for doubting the sincerity of the German peace overtures, and whatever grounds we may have for criticizing the unfortunate wording of the American Notes, it must be conceded that President Wilson has rendered a conspicuous service to the Allies by compelling them to face the formidable difficulties of the problem of peace. Henceforth it will be impossible for our rulers to shirk those difficulties. They will have to give us something more tangible than mere vague and solemn abstractions, than mere rhetorical phrases and catchwords: they will have to depend on the support of public opinion. The peace settlement will have to be made by the nations themselves, and not by a few diplomats. It will have to be made in the full light of day and not in the secret and murky and musty atmosphere of chancellories.

As a basis for any discussion on the peace settlement we would lay down the following propositions:

1. We must take good care to retain a firm hold of fundamental principles, and we must remain loyal to the conditions which have been proclaimed from the beginning by the statesmen of the Allies, and which are summed up in the primary aims, the “crushing of Prussian militarism and the liberation of small nationalities.”

2. We must see to it that none of the secret agreements which may have been entered into by the diplomats of the Allies shall be allowed to conflict with those fundamental principles.

3. We must realize that those principles are not particular principles applicable only to Germany and Austria. They are universal principles, applicable to all the Powers. “Prussian militarism” must be crushed everywhere, in Great Britain as well as in Germany, in Finland as well as in Alsace-Lorraine, in Italy as well as in Austria. Nationalities must be liberated everywhere, the Ruthenians as well as the Poles, the Jews as well as the Croatians.

4. We must realize the concrete and deeper meaning of the vague and somewhat confusing phraseology contained in the words “to crush Prussian militarism.” To “crush Prussian militarism” does not mean only to crush the German armies. It cannot mean to crush 100,000,000 German and Austrian people. It does not mean the repression of the legitimate expansion of the Teutonic nations. To “crush Prussian militarism” means to do away with a sinister political system. It means exorcising an evil spirit. And we must clearly understand that, in order to exorcise that evil spirit, we must have the co-operation of the German people themselves. We must help them to achieve their own salvation. We must take in the paradoxical and tragic fact that the awful sacrifice of twenty nations has been mainly a vicarious sacrifice, and that millions of our soldiers have died for the good of the enemy as well as for the good of Europe—that they have died to make Germany and Austria free.

5. We must realize that this war is a holy war and not a punitive expedition, much less a predatory war. Vengeance must be left to Almighty God. The punishment of the criminals must be left to the people themselves.

6. Peace, if it is to be real, and if it is to be permanent, cannot be achieved by any vindictive policy. From the moment they enter the peace congress the belligerents cease to be belligerents, and become allies in a sacred cause—the reconstruction of the world. From the moment the Central Powers are admitted to cross the threshold of the Temple of Peace they are readmitted to the community of nations, and they are admitted on equal terms.

7. A permanent peace excludes the very idea of any future economic war. We must prevent the Central Powers from entering into any offensive or defensive economic alliance. We must repudiate the sinister delusion of a “Mittel Europa” which is haunting the diseased brains of the Pan-Germanists. On the other hand, we must repudiate any offensive or defensive economic alliance between the Allied Powers. The terms of peace must be engraved on clean white marble.

8. If a permanent peace is to be attained we must remove the deeper causes which brought about the catastrophe. The Central Powers are immediately and directly responsible for the greatest crime of history, and they will bear the penalty for generations to come. They planned the war and forced it on Europe. But the megalomania of the Teutons has only been one of the contributory causes. The war could never have taken place but for the universally prevailing and universally accepted immorality of European foreign policy, which is writ large in Morocco and Persia, in China and Asia Minor.

9. The principle of nationality, however legitimate in the case of oppressed nationalities, is not a sufficient foundation for the new European order. The principle of nationality, which in the case of small nations leads to the vindication of freedom, on the contrary, in the case of great Powers, leads to an aggressive imperialism. The international principle must therefore take the place of the national principle. Federalism and solidarity must take the place of tribal rivalry and national isolation.

10. Any permanent peace settlement must involve the unreserved acceptance of a new political philosophy and the practice of a new political system. No peace is possible through the old methods of a balance of power, of alliances and counter-alliances, of assurance and reassurance treaties. Any balance of power is unstable and precarious and can only be maintained by a competition of armaments. The distinction between offensive and defensive alliances is essentially unreal. Under the old dispensation a defensive alliance became offensive as soon as it felt strong enough to assume the offensive. It is the system of alliances which led to armaments, and not the armaments which were responsible for the alliances. It is therefore futile to speak of disarmament as long as we do not repudiate the traditional European principle of the “balance of power.”

11. It also follows as a corollary that no peace is possible merely through a readjustment of boundaries, through compensations and annexations of territories. We might recast the whole map of Europe, we might dismember the German Empire, we might dismember the Austrian Empire, we might dismember the Turkish Empire, and yet entirely fail to achieve the objects for which we entered the war. On the other hand, we might achieve those objects without shifting one single milestone of the political boundaries of Europe.

12. We must clearly realize that the issue of peace and war is not a military issue, but a political issue, and that the political issue itself is a moral issue. It is not a Machtfrage, but a Rechtfrage. It is not a question to be settled by diplomats of the old school; it can only be solved by constructive and democratic statesmanship.

13. To say that “we must crush Prussian militarism” is only a vague and unsatisfactory way of stating that we must establish democratic government. Militarism is not a matter of foreign policy, but of domestic policy. Militarism is but the ultima ratio of reaction, and all nations are allies against the one common enemy, reactionary government.

14. It is therefore futile to say that the future congress must not interfere in the internal government of any belligerent Power. If any European Power after this war were still to be ruled by a reactionary government based on brute force and oppression, that government would still have to maintain a large army in order to keep down the liberties of its people, and such an army would sooner or later be used against the foreign enemy in the name of imperial national aspirations, in the name of a higher civilizing mission.

15. Therefore, the one problem before the European Congress is to establish government in Europe on a constitutional and democratic basis, and to grant a Magna Carta to all nations, great and small. The establishment of such a government, and not any annexations or compensations, would alone guarantee a permanent peace.

16. All civilized nations must be equally interested in the maintenance of peace and in the establishment of the new international order. Therefore, all neutral nations, including the United States of America, must join the congress as signatories and guarantors of the peace settlement.

17. The new democratic charter shall be placed under the guardianship of a Supreme Constitutional Court. Such a Court would not be a secret diplomatic Sanhedrin, but a democratic Tribunal. Such a Court would be essentially different from the Hague Tribunals of the past, and the democracies of the world would be directly interested in enforcing its decrees.

18. There is one immediate sanction to the constitutional settlement just outlined—namely, the Sovereign Will of the people of Europe. Revolution is knocking at the door. Unless a constitutional charter be granted, unless democratic government be firmly established in Europe, it will be wrested from their rulers by the nations themselves. All the signs of the times confirm us in the conviction that the only alternative to the establishment of democratic government for all the nations participating in the congress is universal civil war. The peacemakers of to-morrow have it in their power not only to crush “Prussian militarism,” but to prevent an appalling upheaval which would shake human society to its foundations.

APPENDIX