KOHN CALLS ENFORCED LAW BETWEEN NATIONS 'THE ALTERNATIVE TO CHAOS'

Along and tough war lies before us, a period trying and testing us; the peace will be shaped by the events of the war and by each one's sacrifices for victory. Victory in itself will be a tremendous achievement; survival in freedom, unachievable without complete concentration of united nations on it, will be a cause for grateful rejoicing. But beyond that, victory will offer the opportunity for building an international order of law and peace.

Once before, in 1918, America reaped the fruit of victory: the menace of German arrogant military power, controlling Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, was removed and democratic ideals triumphed in the fall of the Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Romanov empires, in the liberation of nationalities, in social and political gains everywhere.

Grapes Fermented

Yet the fruit of victory turned bitter; within twenty years Germany was again on the march to establish domination over the peoples "between Germany and Persia," America was soon to fight again in self-defense, and the progress in liberty, won in 1918, seemed lost. In his memorable Western speeches in September 1919 Woodrow Wilson predicted that outcome "with absolute certainty" in case America should not enter the League and the Treaty of Versailles be not enforced.

In 1913 a premature armistice allowed the Germans to believe that they had not been defeated on the battlefield, but tricked by allied promises not kept and stabbed in the back by unpatriotic elements within Germany. Faith in the invincibility of the German army remained and the incubus of Prussian militarism on the German mind was not broken. In face of this the victors did not cooperate, to enforce the peace, to prevent aggression, and to solve the problem of the security of France and of the small nations.

Entangling Distrusts

Great Britain whose policy has been characterized as treating the French as if they were Germans, and the Germans as if they were English, helped Germany against France, America distrusted Britain and France, and all of them feared Russia. Thus the Germans received the psychological and military opportunity to resume war, this time better prepared, against France, England, Russia, and the United States, hoping to defeat them one by one. German plans and preparations had long been watched and followed by Japan. By 1936 the Axis was on the march.

Its defeat will offer a second opportunity for peace, made possible by the unconditional surrender of the Azis armies, discrediting their military traditions and leadership. Yet if disillusionment and frustration, and new wars, are to be avoided, no "perfect" peace can be expected to solve problems which no peace treaty, taking into account the many conflicting interests and interpretations of "perfection," can ever solve.

Myth of Versailles

Nothing has helped the aggressors more than the myths and misunderstandings about the nature of war and the Treaty of Versailles, propagated for twenty years, a confusion, created by directing attention to incidental rather than to central points. Mankind suffers from many moral and economic ills, but no peace treaty can establish economic justice or moral perfection, or wait for them. Peace can create favorable conditions for social progress and spiritual life, in itself it does not depend upon them. It depends upon the enforcement of law by the united force of law-abiding nations.

This is the task before the organization of the United Nations, held together by the sense of responsibility of a strong nucleus. If--as an indispensable minimum--the British Empire, the Soviet Union and the United States cooperate, they are strong enough to maintain peace; if they fail to cooperate, there will be war. The Axis, in 1940-41, triumphantly proclaimed the disintegration of the British Empire and of the Soviet Union.

Britain Gained in Trial

But the British Empire, which stood as the lonely and glorious bulwark of freedom in the critical days of 1940 and which has set the world the example of a community of different peoples held together by a system of unparalleled flexibility and by an uninterrupted growth of liberty and respect for law, emerges from the trial in new strength. And events have proven that the ruthless process of the revolution has released the creative abilities of the Soviet masses and awakened them from age-old lethargy to unexpected vigor. The United States will be strong, yet not strong enough to tell everybody what to do and to have bases all over the world, as its super-imperialists desire. This is the first in a series of articles by members of the Faculty and other authorities on problems to be met in the coming peacetime world.

The maintenance of peace must be a joint responsibility. We do not wish British or Soviet interference with our affairs, nor should the Russians fear that we wish to impose our democracy upon them, nor the British, that we wish to dismember or take over their empire. These powers must cooperate, as they are, not as many of us wish them to be. They must cooperate in mutual tolerance of their differences without any interference in their own evolution.

Cooperation Key

Their cooperation can solve the very difficult problems pending between the Soviet Union and her western neighbors, or between her and China; it can oppose aggression from wherever it comes, and thus create the atmosphere in which mutual distrust will dwindle and new avenues will be opened for free economic intercourse, for rising standards of living in Ibero-America, Africa, and Asia, for greater and more universal concern for public welfare.

The organization of the United Nations will have to elaborate and to enforce a universal bill of rights, guaranteeing in the constitutions of all countries equality before the law and respect for human personality. Impossibility of aggression and total demilitarization will also produce a change of heart in Germany and Japan and assure their cooperation in peaceful progress under law.

To Achieve a Good World

The peace treaties will not create a good world by themselves. Injustice and exploitation will remain with us internationally, as they remain with us nationally. The steadfast fight against them will have to continue for many generations to come.

But as preceding generations have succeeded, nationally, in regulating and inspiring the continuous struggle for greater freedom and justice, with its concomitant conflicts and tensions, by a framework of peace under law, so can this generation create a similar framework internationally by collective responsibility for, and enforcement of, peace by the United Nations, which include representatives of all climates and all races, China and Brazil, France and Norway, Iraq and Ethiopia.

That will demand mutual adjustments and compromise. Many of us may not like, for different and contrary reasons, the present administrations of the United States, of the British Empire or of the Soviet Union, but they are the only available cornerstones upon which peace can be actually built. Peace under law was established nationally, without waiting for ideal conditions, in all the imperfection of human nature and human institutions. It has worked on the whole well. The same task is before us internationally. It is the only alternative to lawlessness and chaos.

Hans Kohn, distinguished historian and authority on nationalism, was born in Prague and educated at the university there. During the first World War he served as an officer in the Austrian army and was taken prisoner by the Russians. There he received his first teaching experience in a minature university organized within the prison.

Kohn came to the United States in 1931 and has since been associated with such institutions as the New School of Social Research, the University of California, the University of Colorado, Dartmouth College, Grinnell College, and Smith College, where he heads the history department.

During this period he has conducted courses in history and international relations, always attacking the rampant nationalism of the 19th and 20th centuries. Author of many books, he has traveled extensively throughout the world.