New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915: April-September, 1915Various
History
New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915: April-September, 1915
Various
World War, 1914-1918
No use of military power, however complete and overwhelming, would
pretend to afford a protection anything like as complete as that
afforded by these moral forces. Sixty years ago Britain had as against
Greece a preponderance of power that made her the absolute dictator of
the latter's policy, yet all the British battleships and all the threats
of "consequences" could not prevent British travelers being murdered by
Greek brigands, though in Switzerland only moral forces--the recognition
by an astute people of the advantage of treating foreigners well--had
already made the lives and property of Britons as safe in that country
as in their own.
In the same way, no scheme of arming Protestants as against Catholics,
or Catholics as against Protestants (the method which gave us the wars
of religion and massacre of St. Bartholomew) could assure that general
security of spiritual and intellectual possessions which we now in large
measure enjoy. So indeed with the more material things, France, Great
Britain, and some of the older nations have sunk thousands of millions
in foreign investments, the real security of which is not in any
physical force which their Government could possibly exercise, but the
free recognition of foreigners that it is to their advantage to adhere
to financial obligations. Englishmen do not even pretend that the
security of their investments in a country like the United States or the
Argentine is dependent upon the coercion which the British Government is
able to exercise over these communities.
The reader will not, I think, misunderstand me. I am not pleading that
human nature has undergone or will undergo any radical transformation.
Rather am I asserting that it will not undergo any; that the intention
of the man of the tenth century in Europe was as good as that of the man
of the twentieth, that the man of the tenth century was as capable of
self-sacrifice--was, it may be, less self-seeking. But what I am trying
to hint is that the shrinking of the world by our developed
intercommunication has made us all more interdependent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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