Letters to Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler
By Baron d'Estournelles de Constant.
Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, has permitted THE NEW YORK TIMES to have the extracts printed herewith from letters sent to him since the beginning of the war by Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, Senator of France, and Member of the International Court at The Hague.
First Letter.
PARIS, Aug. 15, 1914.—* * * Today I am full of grief to feel myself impotent before the murderous conflicts now going on in Belgium and at a number of points on our northern and eastern frontiers, while awaiting the great battles and hecatombs which will follow; my thought is full of these terrible calamities willfully brought about; so many precious lives already wiped out or soon to be; so much avoidable mourning which one neither can nor wishes now to avoid!
In France there is not a single family which has not given without hesitation all its children of military age to fight for the repulse of the invader. All the men from Créans, of ages 20 to 48 years, have gone, with one exception, and he is now going; and meanwhile no work has ceased because of their absence. In all the communes, in all the hamlets of the whole of France, the women, the children, and the men over 48 have assumed all duties, in particular the gathering of the harvests, which I see already finished as in normal times. * * *
When one thinks that Servia alone, even though exhausted by two atrocious wars, is sufficient to hold in check imperial Austria; when one sees Italy remain neutral, and in reality hostile to Austria, and Russia open slowly, inexorably, her reservoir of men, resources, and infinite energy on the eastern frontier of Germany, one asks truly if the Pan-Germanists have not been the veritable plague of God for their country; the Fatherland, which men like Goethe, Kant, and Beethoven had made so cultured, so glorious, and which asked only to live and to prosper, the Pan-Germanists have isolated only to deliver it to the execration of the world. It was the same in France formerly, when she ceded to chauvinistic influences.
Second Letter.
PARIS, Sept. 3, 1914.
* * * May you never witness such calamities as have fallen upon Europe. The visions of horror, which formerly we evoked in order to terrify the world and to try to conjure them away, are now surpassed; and we are only at the commencement of the war! The trains, thronged with youth and enthusiasm, which I saw leave are now returning crowded with the wounded. They have filled all the hospitals, the barracks which had been left empty, the lyceums, and the schools throughout France. In but a few days they have arrived everywhere in the south, the west and the centre of the country. At La Flèche alone we have five improvised hospitals with 1,200 beds. Créans is a hospital annex, and so it is in all the villages and in the dwellings which can provide one or more beds. The wounded who occupy these beds are happy, very happy. One of them, who has only a broken leg, but who thinks of the thousands of his comrades who remain wounded upon the fields of battle, said to me, "I am in heaven." * * *
The worst of all, (I have always said it, but it is even worse than I had thought,) the worst is that each of the combatants, for the most part incapable of cruelty under ordinary conditions, is now devoted to the horrible work of hatred and of reprisal; and even more than the combatants, their children, their orphans, all those who are to remain in mourning. * * *
As far as France is concerned, our first reverses have served to exalt the national {147}spirit and to fortify the unanimous resolution to conquer or to die. It is important that this be well understood in the United States and that it be given due consideration if it is desired to intervene without irritating the most noble scruples. * * *
It is the Prussian military system of domination with its contagion which has done the harm and which ought to disappear, and that system itself is the fruit of Napoleonic imperialism. The struggle is always, and more now than ever, between imperialism and liberty, between force and right. May you in the United States profit by this lesson, so that you may avoid falling into the European error. * * * It is barbarity triumphant. But that triumph will be only momentary, and all agree at the conclusion of this terrible drama on having a United States of Europe with disarmament, or at least with armaments limited to a collective police force.
Third Letter.
PARIS, Sept. 8, 1914.
* * * You have comprehended that France is struggling for justice and peace. Be sure that she will resist even to the last man, with the certainty that she is defending not herself alone but also civilization. Never have I suspected to what degree of savagery man can be degraded by unrestrained violence. I had believed that the world could never again see the time of the Massacre of the Innocents; I deceived myself; we have returned to barbarity, and the Prussian Army leaves us no alternative between victory and extermination; should she become mistress of Paris, which I doubt, and of the half of France, she will find the other half which will bury her under its ruins. * * *
The English troops march on our roads, stop at Clermont-Créans! Oh, miracle! I see among my compatriots the worst chauvinists, those who openly desire for me the fate of Jaurès, those who fought me in 1902 with cries of "Fashoda" or "Chicago," hasten to meet the English soldiers in order to aid and acclaim them, in this country still full of the memories and the ruins of the hundred years' war! It is because the English troops are also defending the land of liberty, theirs as ours and as yours. Every one except the Prussians comprehend this, and this it is which exalts their souls! * * *
The whole misfortune, I repeat, is the result of the crime committed forty-three years ago, the crime which we accepted to avoid recommencing the war. Our resignation has not sufficed; it has not caused the trouble to disappear; the German Government has none the less been obliged to confirm it each day. The misfortune has been the forcible annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. For that the Germans are paying today; for that they will pay until they have made atonement for their fault. In this regard France is irreproachable; she has resisted the chauvinists; our general elections, the conferences of Berne and of Basle, have proved that, far from seeking revenge, she wished by mutual concessions to arrive worthily at reconciliation in peace.
The Germans are paying today for their fault of 1870-71, because that fault has corrupted and poisoned them. I have said it a thousand times. In order to keep those two unfortunate provinces under their domination it has been necessary for them to use force, to institute a régime of force. * * * It has been necessary to prevent revolts by repressive measures, as at Saverne, which have disgusted, and even disquieted, the whole world; that ignominious brutality become sovereign mistress, by the force of circumstances, even against the will of the Kaiser and against the protestation of all the élite of Germany, of such men as Zorn, Förster, Nippold, and Bebel, has ended by being a menace and a danger to Germany itself. All this is connected, and, whatever happens, Germany cannot emerge victorious from a war which is itself but the logical result of the abuse of her victories. She cannot conquer civilization; it is impossible. * * *
Comprehend this well, repeat it, publish it if you wish; France, Belgium, and England may suffer check after check; they are prepared for this, they expect it, but they will not be discouraged. The German armies may exhaust themselves {148}uselessly in killing, burning, and destroying. They will destroy themselves in the end. Our national policy is to take them in their own trap and to wear them out.
The day of reckoning is coming, when the inexorable advance of the Slavic race, always increasing in numbers—it little matters whether it is well or badly organized—will come from the rear to attack the Germans at the time when they are confident of victory and to drown them in the floods of blood which they have caused to flow; terrible punishment for a war which we and our friends have done everything to prevent. The victims of this punishment will be at least a half million of French, Belgians, and Englishmen, together with a whole nation which desired peace as we did, but which has allowed herself to be misled by a Government mad enough to wish to reconcile the irreconcilable, namely, the maintenance of peace and the spirit of conquest. May this punishment at least begin an era of new peace! Alas! how may we hope for this when we see the human beast awakening in a delirium of fury and getting beyond our control to destroy the masterpieces of human genius.
Fourth Letter.
PARIS, Sept. 11, 1914.
The Germans appear to have comprehended that the atrocities which have bitterly aggravated the remorseless violation of Belgian neutrality have only aroused general indignation, and have at the same time exasperated the opposing nations and armies. Contrary to the tales which appear in the sensational journals, which are naturally as eager today to embitter the war as they were formerly to bring it about, I am assured that the German armies in France are repudiating the unworthy excesses of the beginning of the campaign and are respecting life and private property. This will alleviate the horrors of the war, but France nevertheless will place no limit on the sacrifices which she will make. She will wear out the German Army and destroy it, day after day, in continuous battles. * * *
The Belgians with us at Clermont-Créans, instead of being a burden, as I had feared, are making themselves useful. They are very welcome. They are gradually recognized and appreciated as estimable people, and are employed in the homes and farms and fields. We should like to have more of them. How we shall regret them when they leave! * * *
The German Emperor must stand either as a pacifist or as a conqueror. He cannot pass as both. All the results which may follow this war could well have been obtained in peace by a general effort of good-will. On the other hand, the legacy of the war will be endless rancor, hatred, reprisal, and savagery. When it shall be understood that, in spite of Governments and Parliaments, the war has been, in large part, excited by the manoeuvres of an international band of the dealers in military supplies and by their all-powerful newspapers, when it shall be thoroughly comprehended that these dealers and these newspapers have played with rumors of war as with a scarecrow, for the purpose of keeping up a general condition of disquiet favorable to their sinister operations, then, too late, alas! there will be a revulsion of public opinion to sustain finally those men, like our friends, who have urged arbitration rather than war, and conciliation rather than arbitration.
* * * More than ever our motto, "Pro patria per orbis concordiam," will be that of every good patriot who wishes to develop the internal prosperity of his country through friendly foreign relations. * * * More than a century ago you Americans condemned and executed British imperialism; subsequently Europe condemned and executed Napoleonic imperialism; Europe is now going to condemn and execute Germanic imperialism; profit by this threefold lesson to make an end of imperialism in your country, and by your good example to render to Europe an incalculable service.
Such an example will be more efficacious than overhasty or superficial intervention, however well intentioned it might be. Above all, beware of offering {149}aid to Europe in a spirit of opportunism rather than of high principle. Especially, do not try to take advantage of some circumstances in order to urge a lame and ephemeral peace. Public opinion will be bitterly divided if the war is brought to an end merely by lassitude and a desire for comfort. Public opinion will accept only a peace inspired with high ideals, without needless humiliation for the conquered, and equally without sacrifice of any principles which have brought together the anti-German coalition.
The war itself, however atrocious it has been and still may be, will have been only a commencement, the beginning of continual wars into which the New World will be drawn, if we do not leave the desire of life and the means of living to Germany, conquered but still alive. It is possible to conquer and to exterminate armies, but it is not possible to exterminate a nation of 70,000,000 people. It will then be necessary to make a place for Germany which will permit the exercise of her fecund activity in the struggle of universal competition. If we yield to the temptation to make an end of German competition, we shall neither end the competition nor shall we end war.
For years I have repeated this to our English friends who were intoxicated with the theories of Chamberlain. I see without surprise but with sorrow that serious journals of London and Paris spread before the eyes of their readers the absurd idea that this war will kill the German foreign commerce, while the English and French production will be enriched without a rival, and consequently without effort. Place should be made for Germany from Berlin to Vienna in the organization of a general European confederation which will give full satisfaction to Italy at Trieste, will install the Turkish Government in Asia, will bring about an agreement between the Christian Balkan States, and give the free disposal of their destinies to Poland, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Rumania, and Alsace-Lorraine.
In this manner the worst problems on which general peace depends would be solved, and with these problems that of armaments, which it would no longer be dangerous nor humiliating to reduce if the general reduction, extending even to Japan and seconded by all the republics of the New World, were agreed to by all. Certainly such an agreement would be difficult to develop; it would terrify the diplomats, but outside of such an agreement I see in perspective nothing but perpetual war, internal revolution, and general ruin.
Fifth Letter.
PARIS, Sept. 18, 1914.
* * * The pride of an empire may not be crushed without a bitter struggle. The German Government has at its disposition the live force of a young and growing people. However, the day is coming when that people, aware that they have been deceived, will be able to repudiate their Government, just as the French people did after Sedan. Meanwhile the German armies have stopped their retreat in order to form a new line of resistance. But to what good? This line will be overthrown, and in the end the German Army will be obliged to retreat in disorder and again to cross the land which it has laid waste.
The true difficulties, in my opinion, are going to commence when the conquered Germans must submit to the conditions made by the conquerors. The victors will be able to agree, I believe, to stop the war and to dictate conditions. But will they agree to make these conditions moderate? That is the question. At that moment even France will be far from unanimous, as she has been unanimous in defending herself. France is of one opinion on these principal points:
1. Alsace-Lorraine ought to be liberated at last, free to return to France; her rights ought to be respected and recognized. Such liberation should extend as far as possible to every country in Europe whose right has been violated.
2. We must make an end of ruinous armed peace, invented, so it was said, to prevent war, but which has made war inevitable. German militarism must be crushed unless it is again to become a menace and give the signal for another {150}competition of armaments. This peace will be only a truce, a sinister comedy, unless it is crowned by a general convention of disarmament, to which Germany must subscribe with all the others and before all the others.
3. Arbitration, conciliation, all the means already provided for amicable adjustment, and if possible for the prevention of international conflicts, should be organized on a more solid and more definite basis than in the past, with the sanction, or at least the maximum of necessary precautions, of a federated Europe. All which we have done at The Hague, far from being lost, will serve as a foundation for the building of a pacific federation.
On these three points one may prophesy a unanimity almost complete; but the division will begin when it comes to distinguishing between Germany and the empire, between the German people who have a right to live and the German Empire which opposed the right to live; the division will begin when some demand the humiliation of Germany, others the ruin of her colonies, and of her very life. France, who has defended peace, will, I am sure, also defend justice; but justice will not triumph without difficulty. And it is here that the United States will render great service, if the United States has preserved, as one can see so clearly in the Mexican crisis, her moral authority and disinterestedness.
In the cuttings from the American papers which you have sent me I have read with great disquietude an article which says that, after all, the United States "will be the beneficiary of the European war." This article claims that the United States may profit very easily by this war to take away from Germany her commerce in the three Americas, &c. It is a dangerous form of reasoning, which, however, is not new.
If war has attracted ardent partisans it is because it appeals to the temperament of many people, it flatters their self-pride, but also it serves their interests. I have never understood it as I do at present. I see, for example, the town of Mons enriching itself through the war; cafés, restaurants, the hotels, are unable to accommodate all who come to them; the farmers are seen disputing about their products. There are also the military requisitions by which one can profit in getting rid of an old horse, of a wagon, an automobile, &c.; there are the butchers, the bakers, the dealers in cutlery, &c., who have never had so many purchasers; the furnishers of materials for the hospitals, pharmacists, orthopedists, &c.
Add to these an immense number of furnishers of military supplies, not only those who sell cannon, arms, and ammunition, but the accessories, the uniforms, material for the transports, and for the administrative work, &c. They are legion. Add to these all the combatants who have been promised positions as officers, Colonels, Generals. * * * Napoleon I. gave titles and honors. * * * You will understand that after the war, if there is an infinite number of unfortunates who mourn and who are ruined by the war, there are others, on the contrary, who have profited very well, who have enriched themselves and been raised to a privileged, fortunate class, who will find it quite natural to demand war or whose children will demand it later; while the mass of unfortunates, without strength, without resources, without protection, will need years to reconquer in peace the rights which they legally enjoyed before the war, and which the war suddenly took from them.
If to this class, more powerful than numerous, of natural partisans of the war in Europe you are going to add the American partisans of the European war, you will commit a grave fault, for the Americans have more than ever everything to gain by peace and all to lose in war, which they will not be able to limit if it breaks out again in the world.
The truth is that the Americans evidently gain in the war, but they lose more. Europe is something else to them than a market over which to dispute, she is a reservoir of experiences, good and bad, but of experiences which you cannot do without. To wish for the continuation of the war in Europe or even to take {151}sides with it as a sort of half evil is for the Americans a crime, a sort of suicide; that would be to applaud the destruction of models which civilization seems to have collected for your edification and for your development. Later, the United States can do without many of these lessons which she learns from Europe, but she will always have need of the inspiration of the masterpieces of our civilization. It is only a barbarous reasoning which allows one to see in the European war profit for the United States; it is a loss, a mourning, a shame for the whole world, and particularly for the free countries which are the guides of other peoples and which can only fulfill their mission in times of peace.
I have often heard the profits of war discussed. The undertakers of impressive funeral services can also congratulate themselves over catastrophes. A railroad accident which puts an entire country in mourning can enrich them. The most murderous battles bring profit in the final reckoning to somebody, if it is only to the jackals and the crows; but it is the whole of a country, and for the United States it is the whole world, which must be considered, and the more the whole world prospers the more will the United States find friends, collaborators, and clients. The more the world is troubled, on the contrary, the more commerce and general activities will suffer from it, without mention of the development of instruction and of the progress of human thought, which will be paralyzed.
I have been surprised to see a serious American paper bring up these old questions for discussion, and I conclude that we are going to feel in Europe the result of our errors. It is going to be necessary to find money to fill up the financial gulf which we dig each day under our feet without realizing it; a gulf twice made, by the billions which it has been necessary to spend for the war, by the billions of ordinary income which must now go by default. We cannot reasonably expect that Germany will be able to pay all the deficits in France, England, Russia, Belgium, and Japan; she will have no longer her foreign commerce; her misery is going to be frightful; it will be necessary then that each of the adversaries which she has so rashly provoked limit his demands; we must ourselves limit her ruin unless our own credit shall be ruined also.
In a word, there are two victories equally difficult for the Allies to win: the first over Germany, the second over themselves. Let us prepare ourselves to the uttermost and with all the authority which we can husband to facilitate the first here, and from your side as well as from ours, the second. To make war there is the first difficulty; but to finish well, that is what makes me anxious for the future.
Sixth Letter.
PARIS, Sept. 24, 1914.
In spite of all, unity of purpose is maintained among the Allies as well as among Frenchmen. I say in spite of all, because at Berlin this was hardly believed possible at the beginning of the war.
* * * All the men have left Créans; my farm is empty, and as I told you, the work is accomplished just the same. Means are found to feed the wounded English, becoming more and more numerous, the wounded Belgians and the prisoners. At the mill the miller's wife has four sons and a son-in-law in the army. I went to see her; not a tear, she looked straight before her absorbed in her work and said only "It is necessary." She continues her work as yesterday, as always, only with more energy and seriousness than formerly, with the purpose to accomplish double.
Meanwhile in spite of lack of news, we are beginning to learn that many sons, husbands, fathers, and brothers whom we saw go away will never return. Each day a few of the wounded are buried, and so it is in all the communities in the country which are not occupied by the Germans. In every town, village, home, and heart the national tribulations have their local echo.
If all France were victim of a catastrophe of nature, an earthquake, a conflagration, or a flood, the country would be crushed; but, no, the contrary is now {152}true, for the present catastrophe has been brought about by an evil will and each one comprehends that this will, if left free to act, will continue to do evil until it has been crushed. We have neither the time nor the wish to complain; we fight. * * *
The people, all those who are now devoted to my policy, to our policy, remain more faithful than ever. They keep silent awaiting the end of the war and knowing well that in fact it is not so much a question of Germany as of German reaction, German imperialism, and German militarism. They know also that if the German reaction might have been crushed sooner, the war would not have broken out. Thus, far from being blind, public opinion is alive to the truth. The grandeur, and to speak the whole truth, alas, the beauty of the atrocious war is that it is a war of liberation. * * *
It is impossible that the New World should remain a simple spectator before the gigantic struggle which is progressing in Europe. I do not ask that the New World intervene by armed force, but that it shall not conceal its opinion, its aversion for that horror which is called reaction and which truly is only death; that it shall not conceal its indignation for the abominable calculation of that reaction which is incapable of comprehending anything of the life, the work, the science and the art of human genius. I ask that the New World shall not remain skeptical before the senile attacks of those armies which respect nothing, neither women, children, old men, unfortified cities, museums, nor cathedrals. * * *
It is impossible that the free United States, born out of the sacred struggle against European domination, enlarged, enriched, and ennobled by that struggle, and now in the front rank among nations as the fruit of that struggle, should hesitate between revolution and reaction, between right and conquest, between peace and war.
Americans are too generous to hesitate, too wise, also, for Prussian reaction is cracking and is going to crumble; even Americans of German origin would be acting against their own fatherland if they, by their sympathies, should sustain the régime of caporalism which is now destroying it.
28.3. Save this (saved only for) for notes for Project on WWI. Louis Sheehan.
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