ARMIES AND NAVIES
How is the authority of the state maintained? In whatever guise, or
however far removed from the rudest savage tribe to the most modern
democratic state, this autocratic power rests on violence and force
alone. The first great instrument which supports every government on
earth is the soldier with his gun and sword. True, the army may be but
rarely used. The civil power, the courts of justice, the policemen and
jails generally suffice in civilized lands to maintain existing things;
but back of these, to enforce each decree, is the power of armed men with
all the modern implements of death.
Thousands of church organizations throughout the Christian world profess
the doctrine of non-resistance to evil, of peace on earth and good will
to men, and yet each of these Christian lands trains great bodies
of armed men to kill their fellows for the preservation of existing
things. Europe is made up of great military camps where millions of men
are kept apart from their fellows and taught the trade of war alone.
And democratic America, feeling the flush of victory and the glow of
conquest, is turning her energies and strength to gathering armies and
navies that shall equal those across the sea. Not only are these trained
soldiers a living denial of the doctrines that are professed, but in
obedience to an eternal law, deeper and more beneficent than any ever
made by man, these mighty forces are working their own ruin and death.
These great armies and navies which give the lie to our professions of
faith exist for two purposes: first, to keep in subjection the people of
their own land; second, to make war upon and defend against the other
nations of the earth. The history of the world is little else than the
story of the carnage and destruction wrought on battlefields; carnage
and destruction springing not from any difference between the common
people of the earth, but due alone to the desires and passions of the
rulers of the earth. This ruling class, ever eager to extend its power
and strength, ever looking for new people to govern and new lands to
tax, has always been ready to turn its face against other powers to
satisfy the ruler’s will, and without pity or regret, these rulers have
depopulated their kingdoms, and carried ruin and destruction to every
portion of the earth for gold and power.
Not only do these European rulers keep many millions of men whose only
trade is war, but these must be supported in worse than useless idleness
by the labor of the poor. Still other millions are trained to war and
are ever ready to answer to their master’s call, to desert their homes
and trades and offer up their lives to satisfy the vain ambitions of the
ruler of the state. Millions more must give their strength and lives
to build forts and ships, make guns and cannon and all the modern
implements of war. Apart from any moral question of the right of man to
slay his fellow man, all this great burden rests upon the poor. The vast
expense of war comes from the production of the land and must serve to
weaken and impair its industrial strength. This very force must destroy
itself. The best talent of every nation is called upon to invent new
implements of destruction—faster sailing boats, stronger forts, more
powerful explosives and more deadly guns. As one nation adds to its
military stores, so every other nation is also bound to increase its army
and navy too. Thus the added force does not augment the military power,
but only makes larger the burden of the state; until, to-day, these great
armies, aside from producing the moral degradation of the world, are
sapping and undermining and consuming the vitality and strength of all
the nations of the earth. Cost of labor and strength means cost of life.
Thus in their practical results these armies are destroying millions of
lives that a policy of peace and non-resistance would conserve and save.
* * * * *
But when these armies are in action how stands the case? Over and over
again the world has been submerged by war. The strongest nations of the
earth have been almost destroyed. Devastating wars have left consequences
that centuries could not repair. Countless millions of men have been used
as food for guns. The miseries and sufferings and brutality following
in the wake of war have never been described or imagined, and yet the
world persists in teaching the glory and honor and greatness of war. To
excuse the wholesale butcheries of men by the governing powers, learned
apologists have taught that without the havoc and cruel devastation of
war the human race would overrun the earth; and yet every government in
the world has used its power and influence to promote and encourage
marriage and the rearing of children, to punish infanticide and abortion,
and make criminal every device to prevent population; have used their
power to heal the sick, to alleviate misery and to prolong life. Every
movement to overcome disease, to make cities sanitary, to produce and
maintain men and women and children has received the sanction and
encouragement of all governments; and still these glorious rulers have
ruthlessly slaughtered in the most barbarous and cruel way tens of
millions of their fellow men, to add to their glory and perpetuate their
names. And philosophers have told us that this was necessary to prevent
the over-population of the earth!
No single ruler, however cruel or ambitious, has ever yet been able to
bring the whole world beneath his sway, and the ambitions and lusts of
these separate chiefs have divided the world into hostile camps and
hostile states. Endless wars have been waged to increase or protect the
territory governed by these various rulers. In these bloody conflicts
the poor serfs have dumbly and patiently met death in a thousand
sickening ways to uphold the authority and prowess of the ruler whose
sole function has ever been to pillage and rob the poor victims that
fate has placed within his power. To these brutal, senseless, fighting
millions the boundaries of the state or the color of the flag that they
were taught to love could not in the least affect their lives. Whoever
their rulers, their mission has ever been to toil and fight and die for
the honor of the state and the glory of the chief.
But, to-day, even national preservation demands that the rule of peace
shall give place to the rule of war. In the older countries of the earth
the great drains made upon industry and life to support vast armies and
equip them for slaughter is depopulating states and impoverishing the
lands. And besides all this, so far as external power is concerned, no
nation adds to its effectiveness to battle with the others by increasing
its army and navy. This simply serves to increase the strength of the
enemy’s guns and to make new combinations between hostile lands, until
the very strength of a nation becomes its weakness and must in turn
lead to its decay and overthrow. The nation that would to-day disarm
its soldiers and turn its people to the paths of peace would accomplish
more to its building up than by all the war taxes wrung from its hostile
and unwilling serfs. A nation like this would exhibit to the world
such an example of moral grandeur and true vitality and worth that no
nation, however powerful, would dare to invite the odium and hostility
of the world by sending arms and men to conquer a peaceful, productive,
non-resistant land. If the integrity and independence of a nation
depended upon its forts and guns the smaller countries of Europe would at
once be wiped from the map of the world. Switzerland, Holland, Greece,
Italy, and Spain are absolutely powerless to defend themselves by force.
If these nations should at once disarm every soldier and melt every gun
and turn the worse than wasted labor into productive, life-saving work,
they could but greatly strengthen themselves amongst the other nations of
the earth. Not only this, their example would serve to help turn the tide
of the world from the barbarous and soul-destroying path of war toward
the higher, nobler life of peace and good will toward men.
But not alone are these small nations made still weaker by war, but
every battleship that is built by England, Russia, France, Germany, or
the United States really weakens those nations too. It weakens them
not alone by the loss of productive power but by the worse than wasted
energy which is required to support these implements of death, from the
time their first beam is mined in the original ore, until scarred and
worthless and racked by scenes of blood and violence and shame, they
are thrown out upon the sands to rot. But every battleship weakens a
nation by inviting the hostility of the other peoples of the earth, by
compelling other rulers to weaken their kingdoms, to build mighty ships
and powerful guns. Every preparation for war and violence is really a
violation of the neutrality under which great nations profess to live.
They are a reflection upon the integrity and humanity of their own people
and an insult to every other land on earth. The building of a man of war,
the rearing of a fort, or the planting of a gun can be likened only to a
man who professes to live in peace and quiet with his neighbors and his
friends and who goes about armed with pistol and with dirk.
* * * * *
But these patent evils and outrages are after all the smallest that
flow from violence and strife. The whole pursuit of war weakens the
aspirations and ideals of the race. Rulers have ever taught and
encouraged the spirit of patriotism, that they might call upon their
slaves to give their labor to the privileged class and to freely offer up
their lives when the king commands. Every people in the world is taught
that their country and their government is the best on earth, and that
they should be ever ready to desert their homes, abandon their hopes,
aspirations, and ambitions when their ruler calls, and this regardless
of the right or wrong for which they fight. The teaching of patriotism
and war permeates all society, it reaches to the youngest child and even
shapes the character of the unborn babe. It fills the soul with false
ambitions, with ignoble desires, and with sordid hopes.
Every sentiment for the improvement of men, for human justice, for the
uplifting of the poor, is at once stifled by the wild, hoarse shout for
blood. The lowest standard of ethics of which a right-thinking man can
possibly conceive is taught to the common soldier whose trade is to
shoot his fellow man. In youth he may have learned the command, “Thou
shalt not kill,” but the ruler takes the boy just as he enters manhood
and teaches him that his highest duty is to shoot a bullet through his
neighbor’s heart,—and this unmoved by passion or feeling or hatred,
and without the least regard to right or wrong, but simply because his
ruler gives the word. It is not the privilege of the common soldier to
ask questions, to consider right and wrong, to think of the misery and
suffering his act entails upon others innocent of crime. He may be told
to point his gun at his neighbor and his friend, even at his brother or
father; if so he must obey commands.
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die,
represents the code of ethics that governs a soldier’s life.
And yet from men who believe in these ideals, men who sacrifice their
right of private judgment in the holiest matter that can weigh upon the
conscience and the intellect, the taking of human life,—men who place
their lives, their consciences, their destinies, without question or
hesitation, into another’s keeping, men whose trade is slaughter and
whose cunning consists in their ability to kill their fellows,—from such
men it is expected to build great states and rear a noble humanity!
These teachings lead to destruction and death; the destruction of the
body and the destruction of the soul. Even on the plea of physical
evolution in the long sweep of time, these men must give way to the
patient, peaceful, non-resistants, who love their brothers and believe in
the sacredness of life. Long ago it was written down that “He who takes
the sword shall perish by the sword.”