“Other nations will study the German plan, asking whether it is true, as has been taught in America, that that Government is best which governs least.

“It may be that this war will result, entirely apart from the urgency of the labor problem which it will magnify, and wholly on the grounds of general efficiency, in a general inquiry as to whether or not the time has come for quasi-socialistic national developments.

“I think it unlikely that the war will give impetus to that proletarian socialism which is founded on class consciousness and class struggle; but it may urge forward a socialistic movement based upon the large and fruitful idea that the best hope for the future is offered by the most complete and highly organized co-operation of all elements, all interests, all agencies which in their combination make up national structures.

“As a matter of fact, I am an optimist, and I believe that this is about what will come after this war ends.

“To put my theory in slightly different terms, I believe that the conflict will greatly further the development of what perhaps may be called ‘public socialism,’ and I mean by that the highest attainable organization of whole peoples for the production of commodities, the furtherance of enterprise, and the promotion of the general well-being.

“I think that when the world sobers up it will ask:  ’How did Germany do it?’

“Whether she wins or loses that must be the universal query, for whether she wins or loses her achievement has been in many ways unprecedented.

“There can be but one answer to this query:  She did it by an organization which brought together in efficient co-operation the individual, the quasi-private corporation, the public corporation, and the Government upon a scale never before seen.

“The world is bound to take notice of this.”

Will Fear Loss of Liberty.

I asked Prof.  Giddings to go beyond economics and to consider the war’s probable results in their broader sociological aspects.

“If what I have predicted happens,” he replied, “the democratic elements of society in all nations will become apprehensive of the loss of liberty.

“They will fear that in the interests of efficiency the perfected social order will impose minute and unwelcome regulations upon individual life and effort, and that a degree of coercive control will be established which will end by making individuals mere cogs in the machine, diminishing their importance, curtailing their usefulness and initiative far more than is done by the great industrial corporations against which the working classes already are protesting so loudly.

“And not only the working people but a large proportion of all other classes will develop these fears, especially in those nations which, during the last century, have built up popular sovereignty and democratic freedom, as the terms are understood in England and America.