INTERNATIONALISM

The cure for the world's ills, according to Dr. John Mez, Washington correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung, may be found in the substitution of nationalism for internationalism. This is an opinion which more than one political writer of the day holds and it is an opinion which on its face is well founded. Nationalism, biologists now believe, is the result of environment and not of heredity, and since nationalism is the cause of war, the elimination, of war depends on altering the environment.

The great practical difficulty, however, lies in the fact that any such alteration is a matter of education. If we can begin at the bottom and bring up the next generation of the world's millions in an internationalistic atmosphere in the course of a few generations wars will no longer be possible. It may result in a further substitution of class for nationalistic conflict but we must run the risk of that. In the meantime, however, war will continue to be as imminent as ever.

Frankly utilitarian, we believe that honesty is the best policy because it pays. And it does pay for the individual because there is an organized society to make dishonesty unprofitable. But what is there to make national dishonesty--or aggression or whatever--unprofitable? Nothing that is evident to the eyes of the majority; therefore when, in the crisis of war, nationalism comes rampant to the fore, we say "A fig for rules!"

If we are to abolish war forever we must do it by means of educating the coming generations out of their materialistic viewpoint. If we are to abolish war in the immediate future we must also devise some scheme for making it worth while the sacrifice of a nation's interests for those of the world. This, in our opinion, constitutes the argument in favor of some sort of a superstate whether in the form of a league or an association of nations.