Dr. Butler is President of Columbia University; received
Republican electoral vote for Vice President of the United
States, 1913; President of American Branch of Conciliation
Internationale; President American Historical Association;
Trustee Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Commander
Order of the Red Eagle (with Star) of Prussia; Commandeur de
Legion d'Honneur of France.

By Edward Marshall.

The United States of Europe.

Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, firmly
believes that the organization of such a federation will be the outcome,
soon or late, of a situation built up through years of European failure
to adjust government to the growth of civilization.

He thinks it possible that the ending of the present war may see the
rising of the new sun of democracy to light a day of freedom for our
transatlantic neighbors.

He tells me that thinking men in all the contending nations are
beginning vividly to consider such a contingency, to argue for it or
against it; in other words, to regard it as an undoubted possibility.

Dr. Butler's acquaintance among those thinking men of all shades of
political belief is probably wider than that of any other American, and
it is significant of the startling importance of what he says that by
far the greater number of his European friends, the men upon whose views
he has largely, directly or indirectly, based his conclusions, are not
of the socialistic or of any other revolutionary or semi-revolutionary
groups, but are among the most conservative and most important figures
in European political, literary, and educational fields.

This being unquestionably true, it is by no means improbable that in the
interview which follows, fruit of two evenings in Dr. Butler's library,
may be found the most important speculative utterance yet to appear in
relation to the general European war.

Dr. Butler's estimate of the place which the United States now holds
upon the stage of the theatre of world progress and his forecast of the
tremendously momentous role which she is destined to play there must
make every American's heart first swell with pride and then thrill with
a realization of responsibility.

The United States of Europe, modeled after and instructed by the United
States of America! The thought is stimulating.

Said Dr. Butler:

"The European cataclysm puts the people of the United States in a unique
and