"What Did the World Gain?"

The American Legion Weekly decided to mark the passing of the first decade since the Great War flung the world into the Maelstrom of Mars*. It wrote to various individuals in various countries, asked them to reply to the question: "What did the World Gain by the World War?" Excerpts from the answers: Newton D. Baker, U. S. Secretary of War during the Wilson Administration: "I believe it is possible now to say that the world is at last convinced that the balance of power theory is an unstable basis for world peace and that international cooperation is the only other plan to be tried. This is a great gain." Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University: "The World War destroyed the huge Russian, German and Austrian autocracies, revived several freer nations which those autocracies had crushed or cut into pieces, strengthened the three great Powers in which democratic principles have made good progress, and brought them nearer to effective union for promoting Liberty, Justice and Peace throughout the world." Gen. John J. Pershing, ex-Commander-in-Chief of the A. E. F.: "While we are probably too close to the events of the World War definitely to judge of its general benefits to mankind, yet the victory did result in preventing domination by autocracy, with all of its disastrous effects upon civilization, and the evidence is clear that the free peoples of the world will unite in resisting such domination." Upton Sinclair, "U. S. Bolshevik": "The world gained by the World War an opportunity to learn thoroughly that capitalist governments are incompetent to manage civilized communities, and that national competition for raw materials and foreign markets will wreck civilization during the present generation, if it is not checked by a system of international coooeperation."

Maj. Gen. Henry T. Allen, quondam Commander of the American Occupation Force: "The world has learned much more of the interdependence of States. It has learned that Europe cannot proceed properly along the road of moral and physical restoration without our participation in the great unsettled post-bellum measures."

Samuel Gompers, famed U. S. Laborite: "The world gained as a result of the Great War a freedom from the menace of organized militarist imperialism without which all peoples sooner or later would have been enchained in bondage and vassalage. Democracy is in the ascendancy, thai dominant form of government. The tremendous meaning of that achievement will be more understood as time passes. The victory was magnificent, the cause worthy of all that we gave and more."

Gen. Sir Arthur W. Currie, ex-Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian Ex- peditionary Force, now Principal of McGill University: "By the World War we gained a truer appreciation and a better realization of war's unspeakable waste, its dreadful hardships, its cruel slaughter and its aftermath of loneliness, sorrow and broken hearts. We now know that as a means of solving the world's problems and removing international discord war is a delusion and a lie. We know that no matter how much a nation may desire to hold itself aloof and to keep apart from the struggle it cannot escape war's terrible effects." Hilaire Belloc, British historian: "The world gained by the Great War a demonstration in practice that the atheist doctrine and tradition of which Prussia had been the increasingly successful exponent for 150 years would ultimately prove weaker than the culture of Christendom." John Maynard Keynes, famed British economist: "I don't know!" Wilhelm Hohenzollern* apparently instructed his Secretary, Admiral H. von Rebeur-Paschwitz, to write the following letter, of which the Legion Weekly produced a fac- simile: "In answer to your letter dated May 31st, His Majesty the Emperor tells me to let you know that he regrets not being able to comply with your request. As to the question: 'What did the World gain by the World War?' I would think the only possible answer could be: 'Nothing! It lost everything!' "Very truly yours, "W. VON REBEUR-PASCHWITZ." Friedrich Wilhelm Hohenzollern, eldest son of the above: "The United States entered the War believing to destroy militarism and to make the world free for democracy. The result of the War was that all nations are arming as hard as they can, and what about democracy?--just look at the cables from over the whole world. Dictatorship of some sort or other is the favorite idea. The only good the War did is to show that a nation, not well armed, is powerless, and that such a nation gets no help from anybody." Maximilian Harden, German editor, intractable enemy of the Hohen- zollerns: "The certainty that war has lost its last glowing charm of romantic chivalry or knighthood, that it has lost the manly nobility of a fight to be decided by personal valor, and has become an endless war of industrial masses of matter and physical and chemical devils' work."

*Dates of declaration of War by principal countries: Austria-Hungary on Serbia, July 28, 1914; Germany on Russia, Aug. 1, 1914; Germany on France, Aug. 3, 1914; Britain on Germany, Aug. 4, 1914; France on Austria-Hungary, Aug. 11, 1914; Britain on Austria-Hungary, Aug. 12, 1914; Italy on Austria, May 23, 1915; Bulgaria on Serbia, Oct 14, 1915; Britain on Bulgaria, Oct. 15, 1915; Italy on Bulgaria, Oct. 19, 1914; Germany on Portugal, Mar. 9, 1916; Italy on Germany, Aug. 27, 1916; Rumania on Austria-Hungary, Aug. 27, 1916; Germany on Rumania, Aug. 29, 1916; Turkey on Rumania Aug. 30, 1916; Bulgaria on Rumania, Sept. 1, 1916; Greece (Provisional Govern- ment) on Germany and Bulgaria, Nov. 23, 1916; U. S. on Germany, Apr. 6, 1917; U. S. on Austria-Hungary, Dec. 7, 1917. *The Legion Weekly had written to the ex-Kaiser and had addressed the envelope: WILHELM HOHENZOLLERN, ESQ., DOOBN, HOLLAND.