Page:Science and the Great War.djvu/42

36 have been hopelessly lost'. The immense majority of Americans would bitterly resent the imputation that their country was more readily stirred to action by a trade interest than by the cold-blooded murder of American women and children. America, as a whole, has high ideals: it is inconceivable that she could sink so low. Americans know, too, that, when they had their 'long row to hoe' in the sixties, Lincoln was not deflected to the smallest degree by our trade interest, and that he confronted a new situation by measures that were new. They know that in a situation more strange and more deadly it is not reasonable to tie us down closely to precedent. That such must be their opinion is indicated in the following extract, which exhibits in a striking manner the situation as it appears to an eminent man of science. It was written June 19, 1915, to a scientific friend, also an American, then resident in England. It is all the more interesting because the situation is regarded so entirely from the outside.

 'I was greatly interested in what you said regarding the war. We are all thinking seriously and deeply on the question here. With great reluctance I am forced to the conclusion that Germany is deliberately aiming at world dominion and proposes to use every available means to gain that end. Knowing Germany and Germans as well as I do, I was very doubtful of this at the beginning in spite of what the English said. It becomes every day increasingly clear, however, that Germany of deliberate intent proposes to wage the most effective kind of war that the human mind can conceive of, namely a combination of the highest scientific organization with pure barbarism. I very much doubt whether civilized means of warfare will ever win against this combination if relentlessly pushed to its logical and physical extreme, and so far as I can see Germany has every intention of pushing it just that far. We are unquestionably witnessing the most stupendously interesting step of human