r than its weakest link, the pacific
efforts of England, France, and Russia to adjust a purely justiciable
question by negotiation and mediation wholly failed because Austria
and Germany had determined to test the mastery of Europe by an appeal
to the sword. The fundamental cause of the conflict was their lack of
loyalty to civilization, due to a misguided and perverted spirit of
excessive nationalism.

Until with the slow-moving progress of mankind the greater unit of the
Universal State can be created, it should be the common and equal
concern of all nations, not merely to defeat this primitive appeal
to brute force but to make impossible the recurrence of such an
iniquitous reversion to barbarism. To do this, while any nation
unjustly appeals to force, force is unhappily necessary, but there
would be few occasions to repel force by force if there were
sufficient solidarity in mankind to make it the common concern of the
civilized world to suppress promptly and effectually any disturber of
its peace.

If the present wanton attack upon the very foundations of civilization
had been regarded as the common concern of all nations, it would
never have taken place and might never occur again. To prevent such
recurrence, thoughtful men of all nations should cooperate, so that
when the present titanic struggle is over, an earnest and universal
effort can be made to create such a compact between the civilized
nations as will insure cooperative effort when any nation attempts to
apply the torch of war to the stately edifice of civilization. May not
this great war prove the supreme travail of humanity, whereof this
nobler era will be born?

It should be the especial duty of the United States to lead in this
onward movement. It has been in no small measure the liberator of
mankind. Let it now be its pacificator! Can it do so in any better
spirit than that voiced by one of the noblest of its Presidents at the
close of another gigantic conflict, of which he was to be the last and
greatest martyr, when he said:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness
in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us
strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's
wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and
for his widow and orphan; _and to do all which may achieve
and cherish a just and lasting peace_.

INDEX

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Albert, King o