New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2: Who Began the War, and Why?Various
History
New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2: Who Began the War, and Why?
Various
World War, 1914-1918
[_Note--Gen. von Bernhardi's knowledge of current history may be
estimated by the fact that he assumes_ (1) _that trade rivalry
makes war probable between Great Britain and the United States;_
(2) _that he believes that the Indian princes and peoples are
likely to revolt against Great Britain should she be involved in
war, and_ (3) _that he expects her self-governing colonies to take
such an opportunity of severing their connection with her._]
The world is already too uniform and is becoming more uniform every day.
A few leading languages, a few forms of civilization, a few types of
character, are spreading out from the seven or eight greatest States and
extinguishing weaker languages, forms, and types. Although great States
are stronger and more populous, their peoples are not necessarily more
gifted, and the extinction of the minor languages and types would be a
misfortune for the world's future development.
We may not be able to arrest the forces which seem to be making for that
extinction, but we certainly ought not strengthen them. Rather we ought
to maintain and defend the smaller States and to favor the rise and
growth of new peoples. Not merely because they were delivered from the
tyranny of Sultans like Abdul Hamid did the intellect of Europe welcome
the successively won liberations of Greece, Servia, Bulgaria, and
Montenegro; it was also in the hope that those countries would in time
develop out of their present crude conditions new types of culture, new
centres of productive intellectual life.
Gen. von Bernhardi invokes history as the ultimate court of appeal. He
appeals to Caesar; to Caesar let him go. "Die Weltgeschichte ist das
Weltgericht", ("World history is world tribunal.") History declares that
no nation, however great, is entitled to try to impose its type of
civilization on others. No race, not even the Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon,
is entitled to claim the leadership of humanity. Each people has in its
time contributed something that was distinctively its own, and the world
is far richer thereby than if any one race, however gifted, had
established its permanent ascendency.
We of the Anglo-Saxon race do not claim for ourselves, any more than we
admit in others, any right to dominate by force or to impose our own
type of civilization on less powerful races. Perhaps we have not that
assured conviction of its superiority which the school of von Bernhardi
expressed for the Teutons of North Germany. We know how much we owe,
even within our own islands, to the Celtic race; and, though we must
admit that peoples of Anglo-Saxon stock have, like others, made some
mistakes and sometimes abused their strength, let it be remembered what
have been the latest acts they have done abroad.
Praises American Altruism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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