James M. Beck

“ It marked, on the part of millions of men, a portentous decay of belief in representative government and its chosen organ—the ballot box. Great and powerful groups had suddenly discovered—and it may be the most portentous political discovery of the twentieth century—that the power involved in their control over the necessaries of life, as compared with the power of the voting franchise, was as a forty-two centimetre cannon to the bow and arrow. ”

“ Zimmermann had no occasion on the accepted theory of Prussian militarism to justify the secret trial and midnight execution of Edith Cavell. Indeed, he freely intimates that his Government will not spare women, no matter how high and noble the motive may have been which inspires any infraction of military law, and to this sweeping statement he makes but one exception, namely, that women "in a delicate condition may not be executed." But why the exception? If it be permitted to destroy one life for the welfare of the military administration of Belgium, why stop at two? ”

“ In reaching its conclusion our imaginary Court would pay little attention to mere professions of a desire for peace. A nation, like an individual, can covertly stab the peace of another while saying, “Art thou in health, my brother?” and even the peace of civilization can be betrayed by a Judas-kiss. Professions of peace belong to the cant of diplomacy and have always characterized the most bellicose of nations.
No war in modern times has been begun without the aggressor pretending that his nation wished nothing but peace, and invoking divine aid for its murderous policy. ”

“ Less and less he relied upon the initiative of his own brain and muscle, and more and more he put his faith in the power of machinery to relieve him of labour. The evil of our age is that its values are all false. It overrates speed, it underrates sureness; it overrates the new, it underrates the old; it overrates automatic efficiency, it underrates individual craftsmanship; it overrates rights, it underrates duties; it overrates political institutions, it underrates individual responsibility. ”

“ The Belgian people lived happily in their corner of the earth, confident in their dream of independence. They saw this dream dispelled, they saw their country ruined and devastated, its ancient hospitable soil has been sown with thousands of tombs where our own sleep; the war has made tears flow which no hand can dry. No, the murdered soul of Belgium will never forget. ”

“ The moral responsibility for this war is too great for any nation to accept it unnecessarily. Least of all could Austria—which on the face of the record commenced the controversy by its ultimatum to Servia—leave anything undone to acquit itself at the bar of public opinion of any responsibility for the great crime that is now drenching Europe with blood. The time is past when any nation [Pg 26] can ignore the opinions of mankind or needlessly outrage its conscience. ”

“ What admirable self-restraint! Possibly single opinions of the Supreme Court could be cited which are as long as the whole document of which they are interpreting a single phrase. This does not argue that the Constitution is an obscure document, for it would be difficult to cite any political document in the annals of mankind that was so simple and lucid in expression. There is nothing Johnsonese about its style. Every word is a word of plain speech, the ordinary meaning of which even the man in the street knows. No tautology is to be found and no attempt at ornate expression. ”

“ One can to some extent understand the Berserker fury which caused von Bissing to say in effect to this gentle-faced English nurse, "You are in our way. You menace our security. You must die, as countless thousands have already died, to secure the results of our seizure of Belgium"; but can we understand or in any way palliate the attempt to hide the stains of blood on that prison floor of Brussels with a cobweb of self-evident falsehoods? ”

“ In spite of this, I have continued it, and now I receive reliable news that serious preparations for war are going on on my eastern frontier. The responsibility for the security of my country forces me to measures of defense. I have gone to the extreme limit of the possible in my efforts for the preservation of the peace of the world. It is not I who bear the responsibility for the misfortune which now threatens the entire civilized world. It rests in Your hand to avert it. No one threatens the honor and peace of Russia which might well have awaited the success of my mediation. ”

“ In other governments, these fundamental decencies of liberty rest upon the conscience of the legislature. Under the American Constitution, they are part of the fundamental law, and, as such, enforceable by judges sworn to defend the integrity of the individual as fully as the integrity of the State.
When did a nobler "vision" inspire men in the political annals of mankind? Without that vision to restrain each succeeding generation of Americans from the tempting excesses of political power, the American Commonwealth, with its great heterogeneous democracy, would probably perish. ”

“ Should the judgment of the civilized world turn from the terrible fate of Belgium and consider the wrong that was done to Luxemburg, then the German Chancellor may, unless better advised, frame further maladroit excuses with reference to that country.
All these explanations, as senseless as they are false, and savoring more of the tone of a criminal court then that of an imperial chancellery, should shock those who admire historic Germany. They are unworthy of so great a nation. Bismarck would never have stooped to such pitiful and transparent deception. ”

“ As to the subtler and more insidious crimes against the political state, it is enough to say that graft has become a science in city, state and nation. Losses by such misapplication of public funds—piled Pelion on Ossa—no longer run in the millions but the hundreds of millions. Our city governments are, in many instances, foul cancers on the body politic; and for us to boast of having solved the problem of local self-government is as fatuous as for a strong man to exult in his health when his body is covered with running sores. ”

“ Nothing as to how the best hopes of humanity would have been shattered if the American Republic—that “pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night” to struggling humanity—had been brought to cureless ruin. All these considerations are completely disregarded, and all Bernhardi can see in the situation, as it presented itself to England in 1861, was its opportunity, by a cowardly stab in the back, to remove forever from its path a great and growing nation. ”

“ If England and America are to act together in the coming time—and the destinies of the world are, to a very large extent, in their keeping, then they must know each other better, and, to this end, they must take a greater interest in each other's history and political institutions. My principal purpose in these lectures is to deepen the interest of this great nation in one of the very greatest and far-reaching achievements of our common race.
Americans have never lacked interest in English history; for however broad the stream of our national life, how could we ignore its chief source? ”

“ If it were true that France intended to invade Belgium, then of all the blunders that the German Foreign Office has made, the greatest was that it did not permit France to carry out this step, for it would have palliated the action of Germany in meeting such violation by a similar invasion, and it would thus have been an immeasurable gain for Germany and a greater injury to France.
Germany’s greatest weakness to-day is its moral isolation. It stands condemned by the judgment of the civilized world. No physical power it can exercise can compensate for this loss of moral power. ”

“ We, who belong to the British Empire, are at this moment engaged, under very different circumstances, in welding slowly and gradually the scattered fragments of the British Empire into an organic whole, which must, from the very nature of its geographical situation, have a Constitution as different from that of the British Isles, as the Constitution of the British Isles is different from that of the American States. But all three spring from one root; all three are carried out by men of like political ideals; all three are destined to promote the cause of ordered liberty throughout the world. ”

“ Nothing can be more amazing than that not only leading militarists of Germany but many of its foremost philosophers and teachers have become so intoxicated with the dream of Pan-Germanism that in the utmost sincerity they have espoused and with a certain pride proclaimed the vicious principles of Machiavelli in all their moral nudity. There is an emotional and mystical element in the advanced German thinker, which makes him capable of accepting in full sincerity intellectual and moral absurdities of which the more robust common sense of other nations would be incapable. ”

“ But when in the history of American business was there such a volume of broken faith as in the drastic deflation of 1920?
In the greater sphere of social life, we find the same revolt against the institutions which have the sanction of the past. Social laws, which mark the decent restraints of print, speech and dress, have in recent decades been increasingly disregarded. The very foundations of the great and primitive institutions of mankind—like the family, the Church, and the State—have been shaken. Nature itself is defied. ”

“ An ignominious war has been declared against a weak country, and in Russia the indignation, which I fully share, is tremendous. I fear that very soon I shall be unable to resist the pressure exercised upon me and that I shall be forced to take measures which will lead to war. To prevent such a calamity as a European war would be, I urge You in the name of our old friendship to do all in Your power to restrain Your ally from going too far. ”

“ I have faith in the inextinguishable spark of the Divine, which is in the human soul and which our complex mechanical civilization has not extinguished. Of this, the world war was in itself a proof. All the horrible resources of mechanics and chemistry were utilized to coerce the human soul, and all proved ineffectual. Never did men rise to greater heights of self-sacrifice or show a greater fidelity "even unto death." ”

“ Luther’s famous saying, already quoted, and Bismarck’s blustering speech to the Reichstag measure the difference between the Germany of the Reformation and the Prussia of to-day.
I refuse to believe that this Bismarckian attitude is that of the German people. If a censored press permitted them to know the real truth with respect to the present crisis, that people, still sound in heart and steadfast in soul, would repudiate a policy of duplicity, cunning, and arrogance, which has precipitated their great nation into an abyss of disaster. ”

“ It may be doubted whether such a convention, if called to-day, either in your country or mine, could achieve like results, for in this day of unlimited publicity, when men divide not as individuals but in powerful and organized groups, a constitutional convention would, I fear, prove a witches' cauldron of class legislation and demagoguery. Is it not possible that modern democracy is in danger of strangulation by its present-day methods and ideals? ”

“ Unless our boasted civilization is the thinnest veneering of barbarism; unless the law of the world is in fact only the ethics of the rifle and the conscience of the cannon; unless mankind, after uncounted centuries, has made no real advance in political morality beyond that of the cave dweller, then this answer of Germany cannot satisfy the “decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” ”

“ If a parliamentary form of government, immediately responsive to current opinion as registered in elections, is the great desideratum, then the fixed tenure of offices is the vulnerable Achilles-heel of our form of government. In other countries the Executive cannot survive a vote of want of confidence by the legislature. In America, the President, who is merely the Executive of the legislative will, continues for his prescribed term, though he may have wholly lost the confidence of the representatives of the people in Congress. ”

“ Germany stands as the supreme arbiter of her own methods, which in the time of war must be dictated to the world....
They call us barbarians. What of it? We scorn them and their abuse. For my part I hope that in this war we have merited the title of barbarians. Let neutral peoples and our enemies cease their empty chatter, which may well be compared to the twitter of birds. Let them cease their talk of the Cathedral at Rheims and of all the churches and all the castles in France which have shared its fate. These things do not interest us. Our troops must achieve victory. ”

“ The career of the new nation thus formed has hitherto been a rising and not a setting sun. He had in his sixty years of conspicuously useful citizenship—and perhaps no nation ever had a more untiring and unselfish servant—done more than any American to develop the American Commonwealth, but like Moses, he was destined to see the promised land only from afar, for the new Government had hardly been inaugurated, before Franklin died, as full of years as honours. ”

“ In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people, if well administered, and I believe further that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other. ”