Page:Armistice Day.djvu/337

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UNITED STATES OF EUROPE
315

consfield and even those of Bismarck, which were far more powerful.

"When the war ends, conditions will be such that a new kind of imagination and a new kind of statesmanship will be required. This war will prove to be the most effective education of 500,000,000 people which could possibly have been thought of, although it is the most costly and most terrible means which could have been chosen. The results of this education will be shown, I think, in the process of general reconstruction which will follow.

"All the talk of which we hear so much about the peril from the Slav or from the Teuton or from the Celt is unworthy of serious attention. It would be quite as reasonable to discuss seriously the red-headed peril or the six-footer peril.

"There is no peril to the world in the Slav, the Teuton, the Celt or any other race, provided the people of that race have an opportunity to develop as social and economic units, and are not bottled up so that an explosion must come.

"It is my firm belief that nowhere in the world, from this time on, will any form of government be tolerated which does not set men free to develop in this fashion."

I asked Dr. Butler to make some prognostication of what the United States of Europe, which he so confidently expects, will be. He answered: