"You undergraduates will have to fight the next war, so it is your job to prevent it," was the message of Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia Univer and also President of the Carnegic Endowment Fund for International Peace, to the undergraduates of the University, given Saturday to a CRIMSON reporter.
Discussing American's foreign policy, which President Butler opposes, he said that he was "a stern realist" and had never found much satisfaction as an American in looking into the glass and admiring what he saw. "We live in an atmosphere of talk, we debate, we discuss and go home".
"How can we shake hands with one hand and shoot a gun with the other?" he asked, referring to Secretary Wilbur's naval projects and Scnator Kelogg's attempts to create peace. "Since the world war", President Butler continued", the dominant question in the minds of men has been the avoidance of war. The one overwhelining and dominant fear of man is that such a catastrophic madness may come again."
Considering how the situation might be remedied, he said that "If you insist on leaving tinder lying around you cannot tell who will strike the spark and set it off. It is our business to remove the tinder. This is the one question in which public opinion is important. We cannot sit by paralized and watch. There is a lack of government instrumentality; the Secretary of the Navy talks about armament, while Kellogg is ready to work internationally."
President Butler then pointed out that there were only two ways of outlawing war. The first is that man must think in an atmosphere of peace, the second is that institutions must be built to take the place of war.
Going into these two points more in detail, he said that "we must change the hearts and minds of men so that they will think in terms of peace and not of struggle. Then, instead of machine guns and submarines, a group of gentlemen who have good manners should discuss international questions around a table," President Butler concluded.
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