The Man of Letters as a Man of Business

politically united-of a world securely and permanently at peace. And I want to say what I have to say, so far

s. It is a Project and not a Utopia. It may be a vast and impossible project. It may be a hopeless project. But if it fails our civilization fails. And so I have called this paper not the Utopia but The Project of a World State. There are some things that it is almost impossible to tell without seeming to scream and exaggerate, and yet these things may be in reality the soberest matter of fact. I want to say that this civilizati

bitants, dying, and dying with incredible rapidity. In 1914 I was in the city of St. Petersburg and it seemed as safe and orderly a great city as yours. I went thither in comfortable and punctual trains. I stayed in an hotel as well equipped and managed as any Americ

ng had been torn for firewood. Lampposts that had been knocked over lying as they were left, without an attempt to set them up again. Shops and markets deserted and decayed and ruinous. Not closed shops but abandoned shops, as abandoned-looking as an old boot

ed organization needs some more comprehensive explanation than that a little man named Lenin was able to get from Geneva to Russia at a particular crisis in Russian history. And particularly is it to be noted that this immense destruction of civilized life has not been confined to Russia or to regions under Bolshevik rule. Austria and Hungary pr

ward or moving back-they are certainly not going ahead as they were before 1913-14. The feeling in England is rather like the feel

re you, and what it is that we are up against. I want to put before you for your judgment the view that this overstrain and breaking down and stoppage of the great uprush of civilization that has gone on for the past three centuries is due to the same fo

nowledge, and that this scientific knowledge has altered the material scale of human affairs and enormously enlarged the phys

stment depends the issue whether the ebb of civilizing energy, the actual smashing and breaking down of modern civilization, which has

ion in the facilities of locomotion and communication that has occurred to the world and the consequences of that revolution. For the international problem to-day is essentially dependent upon the questi

m, and how inevitable it is that America and Europe should approach international problems from a different angle and in a different spirit. Both

community of the United States are things different politically and mentally from those of the states of the old world, and that the r?le they are destined to play in the development of a world state of mankind is essentially a distinctive one. And I shall try to show cause for regarding the very noble and splendid pr

greater and more difficult project, is, in the

inconceivable a hundred years ago. This is particularly the case with locomotion and methods of communication generally. I will not remind you in any detail of facts with which you are familiar; how that in the time of Napoleon the most rapid travel possible of the great conqueror himself did not average all over as much as four and a

resent practicable, to fly from London to Australia, half way round the earth, in about eight days. I say possible, but not practicable, because at present properly surveyed routes, landing grounds and adequate supplies of petrol and spare parts do not exist. Gi

nity. The United States of to-day were made first by the river steamboat, and then by the railway. Without these things, the present United States, this vast continental nation, would have been altogether impossible. The westward flow of population would have been far more sluggish. It might never have crossed the great central p

America year by year from 1600 onward, with little dots to represent hundreds of pe

Kentucky, and so forth. Then somewhere about 1810 would come a change. Things would get more lively along the river courses. The dots would be multiplying and spr

so rapidly, it would be almost as though they were being put on by some sort of spraying machine. And suddenly here and then there would appear the first stars t

es long before now. Without railways or telegraph it would be far easier to administer California from Pekin than from Washington. But this great population of the United States of America has not only grown outrageously; it has kept uniform. Nay, it has become more uniform. The man of San Francisco is more like the man of New Yo

new term for this new thing. We call the United States a country, just as we call France or Holland a country. But really the two things are as different as an automobile and a one-horse shay. They are the creations of different periods and different conditions; they are going to work at a diff

omotion and have felt it least. Europe on the other hand owes least to the revolution in locomotion and has felt it most. The revolution in locomotion found the United States of America a fringe of population on the sea margins of a great rich virgin em

the last two thousand years, you will see that there has evidently been a definite limit to the size of sovereign states through all that time, due to the impossibility of keeping them together because of the difficulty of intercommunication if they grew bigger. And this was in spite of the fact that there were two great unifying ideas present in men's minds in Europe throughout that period, namely, the unifying idea of the Roman Empire, and the unifying idea of Christendom. Both these ideas tended to make Europe one, but the difficulties of communication defeated that tendency. It is quite interesting to

opportunity; the effect of it in Europe was congestion. It is as if some rather careless worker of miracles had decided suddenly to make giants of a score of ord

ch must be solved if we are to live. All the European boundaries of to-day are impossibly small for modern condit

f the new age and the local feeling of an earlier period. But Union triumphed. Americans live now in a generation that has almost forgotten that there once seemed a possibility that the map of North America might be broken up at last into as m

ourney of a little over a thousand miles. They are in themselves petty inconveniences, but they wil

ork to St. Louis. He looks up the next train, packs his bag, gets ab

He will have to get a passport, and getting a passport involves all sorts of tiresome little errands. One has to go to a photographer, for example, to get photographs to stick on the passport. The good European has then to take his passport to the Fre

e delays. The other day I had occasion to go to Moscow, and I learnt that it takes three weeks to get a visa for Finland and three weeks to get a visa for Esthonia. You see you can't travel about Europe at

n. Also he will need to change some of his money into francs. His English money will be no good in France. The exchange in Europe is always fluctuating, and

Then he will be handed over to the Germans. He will go through the same business with the customs and the same business with the money. His French money is no further use to him and he must get German. A few mo

is luggage three or four times. The trains may be ingeniously contrived not to connect so as to force him to take some

d a permit to stay there, and he will c

n to Warsaw are infinitesimal in comparison with the bookings from New York to St. Louis? But what I have noted

ges. Each of these European sovereign states turns out paper money at its own sweet will. Last summer I went to Prague and exchanged pounds for kroners. They ought to have been 25 to the pound. On Monday they were 180 to the pound: on Friday 169. They jump about b

f national tariffs and independent national coinages at every few score miles, Europe is extraordinarily crippled by its want of any central authority to mana

ort is going to be strangled in Europe by international difficulties. One can fly comfortably and safel

They explained that they had no power to fly beyond Amsterdam in Holland; thence it might be possible to get a German plane to Hamburg, and thence again a Danish plane to Copenhagen-leaving about 500 miles which were too complicated politically to fly. Each stoppage would involve passpo

ited effort can effect that. But along each of the ridiculously restricted frontiers into which the European countries are packed, lies also the possibility of war. National independence means the right to declare war. A

n country against the threat of war, and nothing will be done, and nothing can be done to lif

ind accustomed to American conditions, to r

declaration of war. We can fly from London to Paris in two or three hours. And the aerial bombs of to-day, I can assure you, will make the biggest bombs of 1918 seem like little crackers. Over all these European countries broods this immediate threat of a warfare that w

olve an absolute difference in outlook towards world peace projects, towards leag

of immediate warfare close to his domestic life. He believes by experience in peace, but he feels under no passionate urgency to organize it. So far as he himself is concerned, he has got peace organized for

y language differences, by bitter national traditions, by bad political habits and the like, are no doubt stupendous. But stupendous though they are, they have to be faced. Unless they are overcome, and overcome in a very few years, Europe-entangled in this

ly different spirit. To the American in the blessed ease of his great unbroken territory, it seems a matter simply of making his own ample securities world-w

the American. Europe needs not treaties but a profound change in its political ideas and habits. Europe is saturated with nar

I am convinced of the impossibility of any common political co-operation

tor and the ox cannot plough this furrow together. American thought, American individuals, may no doubt play a very great part in

world state. Patriotism and the national idea in America is a different thing and

rid of at any cost. Before Europe can get on to a level and on to equal terms with the United States, the European communities have to go through a process that America went through-under much easier conditions-a

eople of Virginia, the people of Georgia, and so forth-thirteen distinct and separate sovereign peoples. They made a Union so lax and feeble that it could neither keep order at home nor maintain respect abroad. Then they produc

and, the people of Germany, the French, the British, the Germans, and so forth. Europe has to think at least of the people of Europe, if not of the civilized people of the world. If we Europeans cannot bring

nder modern conditions for some considerable time. They think that the British Empire can, as it were, stand out of the rest of the Old World as a self-sufficient system. They think

a wrong idea, and one that may be very disastrous to our co

tates a new growth. The present British Empire is indeed a newer growth than the United States. But while the United States constitute a homogeneous system and grow more homogeneous, the British Empire is heterogeneous and shows little or no assim

r of transport and communications. They grow to a limit strictly determined by these considera

the river steamboat and the railway. Quite as much so is the present Britis

is one thing, upon the steamship remaining the dominant and secure means of world transport in the future. If the British Empire is to remain sovereign and secure and inde

nd upon that invulnerability. One is air transport; the other the submarine. The possibilities of the ocean-going su

the coming of the submarine. The sea ways can no longer be taken and possessed complete

the same conclusion, that the security of the British Empire must rest in the future not

on that committee convinced me that in the near future the air may be the chief if not the only highway for long-distance mails, for long-distance passenger traf

l be neither by sea nor land but through the air. Moreover, it was borne in upon me that the chief air routes of the world will

ou cannot get out of Britain to any other parts of the Empire, unless perhaps it is Canada, without crossing foreign territory. That is a fact that British people have to face and digest, and the sooner they grasp it the better for them. Britain cannot use air w

hat (apart from all other questions) the scale and form of the European states are out of harmony with contemporary and developing transport conditions, and that all these powers are, if only on this