The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915: What Americans Say to EuropeVarious
Philosophy
The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915: What Americans Say to Europe
Various
World War, 1914-1918
The Dragon's hoard of royal gems
You'll win, with none to share it;
Hurrah! how bright the golden crown
Will sparkle when you wear it!
But it would not be stranger than many other things which have happened
in human history if the defeat of German military imperialism should
result in restoring to Europe and spreading more widely over the world
the beneficent influence of Germanic civilization. Certainly they are
not the same thing, and they do not stand or fall together.
GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD.
Yale University, Oct. 20, 1914.
Possible Profits From War
INTERVIEW WITH FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS.
Dr. Giddings is Professor of Sociology and the History of
Civilization at Columbia University; author of many works on
sociology and political economy; President of Institut
Internationale de Sociologie, 1913.
By Edward Marshall.
No man in the United States is better entitled to estimate the probable
social and economic outcome of the present European debacle than Prof.
Franklin H. Giddings of Columbia, one of the most distinguished
sociologists and political economists in the United States.
"Today all Europe fights," he said to me, "but, also, today all Europe
thinks."
That is an impressive sentence, with which he concluded our long talk,
and with which I begin my record of it.
He believes that this thinking of the men who crouch low in the drenched
trenches and of the women who tragically wait for news of them will
fashion a new Europe.
He agrees with the remarkable opinions of President Butler, that that
new Europe will be marked by the rise of democracy.
He sees the probability of broadened individual opportunity in it,
accompanied by the breaking down of international suspicions; and he
thinks that all these processes, which surely make for peace, will
surely bring a lasting peace.
In the following interview, which Prof. Giddings has carefully reread,
will be found one of the most interesting speculative utterances born of
the war.
"The immediate economic cause of the war," said Prof. Giddings, "lay in
the affairs of Servia and Austria. Servia had been shut in. She had been
able to get practically nothing from, and sell practically nothing to,
the outside world, save by Austria's permission, while Austria, with
Germany professing fear of Slavic development, for years had been taking
every care to prevent the Balkan peoples from having free access to the
Adriatic.
"Some financial profit arose from this interning of the little States,
but it is probable that the desire for this was all along entirely
secondary to the fear of Balkan, especially Servian, political and
economic development.
"In the larger economic question Germany felt especial interest.
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