PASSING OF THE WAR VIRTUES
Of all the winged words which Tolstoy wrote during the war between
Russia and Japan, perhaps none are more significant than these:
“The great strife of our time is not that now taking place between
the Japanese and the Russians, nor that which may blaze up between
the white and the yellow races, nor that strife which is carried
on by mines, bombs, and bullets, but that spiritual strife which,
without ceasing, has gone on and is going on between the enlightened
consciousness of mankind now awaiting for manifestation and that
darkness and that burden which surrounds and oppresses mankind.” In
the curious period of accommodation in which we live, it is possible
for old habits and new compunctions to be equally powerful, and it is
almost a matter of pride with us that we neither break with the old nor
yield to the new. We call this attitude tolerance, whereas it is often
mere confusion of mind. Such mental confusion is strikingly illustrated
by our tendency to substitute a statement of the historic evolution of
an ideal of conduct in place of the ideal itself. This almost always
occurs when the ideal no longer accords with our faithful experience
of life and when its implications are not justified by our latest
information. In this way we spare ourselves the necessity of pressing
forward to newer ideals of conduct.
We quote the convictions and achievements of the past as an excuse for
ourselves when we lack the energy either to throw off old moral codes
which have become burdens or to attain a morality proportionate to our
present sphere of activity.
At the present moment the war spirit attempts to justify its noisy
demonstrations by quoting its great achievements in the past and by
drawing attention to the courageous life which it has evoked and
fostered. It is, however, perhaps significant that the adherents of war
are more and more justifying it by its past record and reminding us of
its ancient origin. They tell us that it is interwoven with every fibre
of human growth and is at the root of all that is noble and courageous
in human life, that struggle is the basis of all progress, that it is
now extended from individuals and tribes to nations and races.
We may admire much that is admirable in this past life of courageous
warfare, while at the same time we accord it no right to dominate
the present, which has traveled out of its reach into a land of new
desires. We may admit that the experiences of war have equipped the men
of the present with pluck and energy, but to insist upon the selfsame
expression for that pluck and energy would be as stupid a mistake as if
we would relegate the full-grown citizen, responding to many claims and
demands upon his powers, to the school-yard fights of his boyhood, or
to the college contests of his cruder youth. The little lad who stoutly
defends himself on the school-ground may be worthy of much admiration,
but if we find him, a dozen years later, the bullying leader of a
street-gang who bases his prestige on the fact that “no one can whip
him,” our admiration cools amazingly, and we say that the carrying over
of those puerile instincts into manhood shows arrested development
which is mainly responsible for filling our prisons.
This confusion between the contemporaneous stage of development and the
historic rôle of certain qualities, is intensified by our custom of
referring to social evolution as if it were a force and not a process.
We assume that social ends may be obtained without the application of
social energies, although we know in our hearts that the best results
of civilization have come about only through human will and effort.
To point to the achievement of the past as a guarantee for continuing
what has since become shocking to us is stupid business; it is to
forget that progress itself depends upon adaptation, upon a nice
balance between continuity and change. Let us by all means acknowledge
and preserve that which has been good in warfare and in the spirit of
warfare; let us gather it together and incorporate it in our national
fibre. Let us, however, not be guilty for a moment of shutting our
eyes to that which for many centuries must have been disquieting to
the moral sense, but which is gradually becoming impossible, not only
because of our increasing sensibilities, but because great constructive
plans and humanized interests have captured our hopes and we are
finding that war is an implement too clumsy and barbaric to subserve
our purpose. We have come to realize that the great task of pushing
forward social justice could be enormously accelerated if primitive
methods as well as primitive weapons were once for all abolished.
The past may have been involved in war and suffering in order to bring
forth a new and beneficent courage, an invincible ardor for conserving
and healing human life, for understanding and elaborating it. To obtain
this courage is to distinguish between a social order founded upon
law enforced by authority and that other social order which includes
liberty of individual action and complexity of group development. The
latter social order would not suppress the least germ of promise, of
growth and variety, but would nurture all into a full and varied life.
It is not an easy undertaking to obtain it and it cannot be carried
forward without conscious and well-defined effort. The task that is
really before us is first to see to it, that the old virtues bequeathed
by war are not retained after they have become a social deterrent and
that social progress is not checked by a certain contempt for human
nature which is but the inherited result of conquest. Second, we must
act upon the assumption that spontaneous and fraternal action as virile
and widespread as war itself is the only method by which substitutes
for the war virtues may be discovered.
It was contended in the first chapter of this book that social morality
is developed through sentiment and action. In this particular age we
can live the truth which has been apprehended by our contemporaries,
that truth which is especially our own, only by establishing nobler and
wiser social relations and by discovering social bonds better fitted
to our requirements. Warfare in the past has done much to bring men
together. A sense of common danger and the stirring appeal to action
for a common purpose, easily open the channels of sympathy through
which we partake of the life about us. But there are certainly other
methods of opening those channels. A social life to be healthy must be
consciously and fully adjusted to the march of social needs, and as we
may easily make a mistake by forgetting that enlarged opportunities are
ever demanding an enlarged morality, so we will fail in the task of
substitution if we do not demand social sympathy in a larger measure
and of a quality better adapted to the contemporaneous situation.
Perhaps the one point at which this undertaking is most needed is in
regard to our conception of patriotism, which, although as genuine
as ever before, is too much dressed in the trappings of the past and
continually carries us back to its beginnings in military prowess and
defence. To have been able to trace the origin and development of
patriotism and then to rest content with that, and to fail to insist
that it shall respond to the stimulus of a larger and more varied
environment with which we are now confronted, is a confession of
weakness; it exhibits lack of moral enterprise and of national vigor.
We have all seen the breakdown of village standards of morality when
the conditions of a great city are encountered. To do “the good lying
next at hand” may be a sufficient formula when the village idler
and his needy children live but a few doors down the street, but
the same dictum may be totally misleading when the villager becomes
a city resident and finds his next-door neighbors prosperous and
comfortable, while the poor and overburdened live many blocks away
where he would never see them at all, unless he were stirred by a
spirit of social enterprise to go forth and find them in the midst
of their meagre living and their larger needs. The spirit of village
gossip, penetrating and keen as it is, may be depended upon to bring to
the notice of the kind-hearted villager all cases of suffering--that
someone is needed “to sit up all night” with a sick neighbor, or that
the village loafer has been drunk again and beaten his wife; but in
a city divided so curiously into the regions of the well-to-do and
the congested quarters of the immigrant, the conscientious person
can no longer rely upon gossip. There is no intercourse, not even a
scattered one, between the two, save what the daily paper brings, with
its invincible propensity to report the gossip of poverty and crime,
perhaps a healthier tendency than we imagine. The man who has moved
from the village to the cosmopolitan city and who would continue even
his former share of beneficent activity must bestir himself to keep
informed as to social needs and to make new channels through which his
sympathy may flow. Without some such conscious effort, his sympathy
will finally become stratified along the line of his social intercourse
and he will be unable really to care for any people but his “own kind.”
American conceptions of patriotism have moved, so to speak, from the
New England village into huge cosmopolitan cities. They find themselves
bewildered by the change and have not only failed to make the
adjustment, but the very effort in that direction is looked upon with
deep suspicion by their old village neighbors. Unless our conception of
patriotism is progressive, it cannot hope to embody the real affection
and the real interest of the nation. We know full well that the
patriotism of common descent is the mere patriotism of the clan--the
early patriotism of the tribe--and that, while the possession of a
like territory is an advance upon that first conception, both of them
are unworthy to be the patriotism of a great cosmopolitan nation. We
shall not have made any genuine advance until we have grown impatient
of a patriotism founded upon military prowess and defence, because this
really gets in the way and prevents the growth of that beneficent and
progressive patriotism which we need for the understanding and healing
of our current national difficulties.
To seek our patriotism in some age other than our own is to accept a
code that is totally inadequate to help us through the problems which
current life develops. We continue to found our patriotism upon war
and to contrast conquest with nurture, militarism with industrialism,
calling the latter passive and inert and the former active and
aggressive, without really facing the situation as it exists. We
tremble before our own convictions, and are afraid to find newer
manifestations of courage and daring lest we thereby lose the virtues
bequeathed to us by war. It is a pitiful acknowledgment that we have
lost them already and that we shall have to give up the ways of war, if
for no other reason than to preserve the finer spirit of courage and
detachment which it has engendered and developed.
We come at last to the practical question as to how these substitutes
for the war virtues may be found. How may we, the children of an
industrial and commercial age, find the courage and sacrifice which
belong to our industrialism. We may begin with August Comte’s assertion
that man seeks to improve his position in two different ways, by
the destruction of obstacles and by the construction of means, or,
designated by their most obvious social results, if his contention is
correct, by military action and by industrial action, and that the two
must long continue side by side. Then we find ourselves asking what
may be done to make more picturesque those lives which are spent in a
monotonous and wearing toil, compared to which the camp is exciting and
the barracks comfortable. How shall it be made to seem as magnificent
patiently to correct the wrongs of industrialism as to do battle for
the rights of the nation? This transition ought not to be so difficult
in America, for to begin with, our national life in America has been
largely founded upon our success in invention and engineering, in
manufacturing and commerce. Our prosperity has rested upon constructive
labor and material progress, both of them in striking contrast to
warfare. There is an element of almost grim humor in the nation’s
reverting at last to the outworn methods of battle-ships and defended
harbors. We may admit that idle men need war to keep alive their
courage and endurance, but we have few idle men in a nation engaged
in industrialism. We constantly see subordination of sensation to
sentiment in hundreds of careers which are not military; the thousands
of miners in Pennsylvania doubtless endure every year more bodily pain
and peril than the same number of men in European barracks.
Industrial life affords ample opportunity for endurance, discipline,
and a sense of detachment, if the struggle is really put upon the
highest level of industrial efficiency. But because our industrial life
is not on this level, we constantly tend to drop the newer and less
developed ideals for the older ones of warfare, we ignore the fact that
war so readily throws back the ideals which the young are nourishing
into the mold of those which the old should be outgrowing. It lures
young men not to develop, but to exploit; it turns them from the
courage and toil of industry to the bravery and endurance of war, and
leads them to forget that civilization is the substitution of law for
war. It incites their ambitions, not to irrigate, to make fertile and
sanitary, the barren plain of the savage, but to fill it with military
posts and tax-gatherers, to cease from pushing forward industrial
action into new fields and to fall back upon military action.
We may illustrate this by the most beneficent acts of war, when
the military spirit claiming to carry forward civilization invades
a country for the purpose of bringing it into the zone of the
civilized world. Militarism enforces law and order and insists upon
obedience and discipline, assuming that it will ultimately establish
righteousness and foster progress. In order to carry out this good
intention, it first of all clears the decks of impedimenta, although
in the process it may extinguish the most precious beginnings of
self-government and the nucleus of self-help, which the wise of the
native community have long been anxiously hoarding.
It is the military idea, resting content as it does with the passive
results of order and discipline, which confesses a totally inadequate
conception of the value and power of human life. The charge of
obtaining negative results could with great candor be brought against
militarism, while the strenuous task, the vigorous and difficult
undertaking, involving the use of the most highly developed human
powers, can be claimed for industrialism.
It is really human constructive labor which must give the newly invaded
country a sense of its place in the life of the civilized world, some
idea of the effective occupations which it may perform. In order to
accomplish this its energy must be freed and its resources developed.
Militarism undertakes to set in order, to suppress and to govern, if
necessary to destroy, while industrialism undertakes to liberate latent
forces, to reconcile them to new conditions, to demonstrate that their
aroused activities can no longer follow caprice, but must fit into a
larger order of life. To call this latter undertaking, demanding ever
new powers of insight, patience, and fortitude, less difficult, less
manly, less strenuous, than the first, is on the face of it absurd.
It is the soldier who is inadequate to the difficult task, who strews
his ways with blunders and lost opportunities, who cannot justify his
vocation by the results, and who is obliged to plead guilty to a lack
of rational method.
Of British government in the Empire, an Englishman has recently
written, “We are obliged in practise to make a choice between good
order and justice administered autocratically in accordance with
British standards on the one hand, and delicate, costly, doubtful,
and disorderly experiments in self-government on British lines upon
the other, and we have practically everywhere decided upon the former
alternative. It is, of course, less difficult.”[16] Had our American
ideals of patriotism and morality in international relations kept
pace with our experience, had we followed up our wide commercial
relations with an adequate ethical code, we can imagine a body of
young Americans, “the flower of our youth,” as we like to say,
proudly declining commercial advantages founded upon forced military
occupation and informing their well-meaning government that they
declined to accept openings on any such terms as these, that their
ideals of patriotism and of genuine government demanded the play of
their moral prowess and their constructive intelligence. Certainly in
America we have a chance to employ something more active and virile,
more inventive, more in line with our temperament and tradition, than
the mere desire to increase commercial relations by armed occupation
as other governments have done. A different conduct is required
from a democracy than from the mere order-keeping, bridge-building,
tax-gathering Roman, or from the conscientious Briton carrying the
blessings of an established government and enlarged commerce to all
quarters of the globe.
It has been the time-honored custom to attribute unjust wars to the
selfish ambition of rulers who remorselessly sacrifice their subjects
to satisfy their greed. But, as Lecky has recently pointed out, it
remains to be seen whether or not democratic rule will diminish war.
Immoderate and uncontrolled desires are at the root of most national
as well as of most individual crimes, and a large number of persons
may be moved by unworthy ambitions quite as easily as a few. If the
electorate of a democracy accustom themselves to take the commercial
view of life, to consider the extension of trade as the test of a
national prosperity, it becomes comparatively easy for mere extension
of commercial opportunity to assume a moral aspect and to receive the
moral sanction. Unrestricted commercialism is an excellent preparation
for governmental aggression. The nation which is accustomed to condone
the questionable business methods of a rich man because of his success,
will find no difficulty in obscuring the moral issues involved in any
undertaking that is successful. It becomes easy to deny the moral basis
of self-government and to substitute militarism. The soldier formerly
looked down upon the merchant whom he now obeys, as he still looks down
upon the laborer as a man who is engaged in a business inferior to
his own, as someone who is dull and passive and ineffective. When our
public education succeeds in freeing the creative energy and developing
the skill which the advance of industry demands, this attitude must
disappear, and a spectacle such as that recently seen in London among
the idle men returned from service in South Africa, who refused to work
through a contemptuous attitude towards the “slow life” of the laborer,
will become impossible. We have as yet failed to uncover the relative
difficulty and requisite training for the two methods of life.
It is difficult to illustrate on a national scale the substitution of
the ideals of labor for those of warfare.
At the risk of being absurd, and with the certainty of pushing an
illustration beyond its legitimate limits, I am venturing to typify
this substitution by the one man whom the civilized world has most
closely associated with military ideals, the present Emperor of
Germany. We may certainly believe that the German Emperor is a
conscientious man, who means to do his duty to all his subjects; that
he regards himself, not only as general and chief of the army, but also
as the fostering father of the humble people. Let us imagine the quite
impossible thing that for ten years he does not review any troops, does
not attend any parades, does not wear a uniform, nor hear the clang of
the sword as he walks, but that during these ten years he lives with
the peasants “who drive the painful plow,” that he constantly converses
with them, and subjects himself to their alternating hopes and fears
as to the result of the harvest, at best so inadequate for supplying
their wants and for paying their taxes. Let us imagine that the German
Emperor during these halcyon years, in addition to the companionship
of the humble, reads only the folk-lore, the minor poetry and the
plaintive songs in which German literature is so rich, until he comes
to see each man of the field as he daily goes forth to his toil “with a
soldier tied to his back,” exhausted by the double strain of his burden
and his work.
Let us imagine this Emperor going through some such profound moral
change as befell Count Tolstoy when he quitted his military service
in the Caucasus and lived with the peasants on his estate, with this
difference that, instead of feeling directly responsible for a village
of humble folk, he should come to feel responsible for all the toilers
of the “Fatherland” and for the international results of the German
army. Let us imagine that in his self-surrender to the humblest of his
people, there would gradually grow up in his subconsciousness, forces
more ideal than any which had possessed him before; that his interests
and thoughts would gradually shift from war and the manœuvres and
extensions of the army, to the unceasing toil, the permanent patience,
which lie at the bottom of all national existence; that the life of
the common people, which is so infinite in its moral suggestiveness,
would open up to him new moral regions, would stir new energies within
him, until there would take place one of those strange alterations in
personality of which hundreds of examples are recorded. Under a glow
of generous indignation, magnanimity, loyalty to his people, a passion
of self-surrender to his new ideals, we can imagine that the imperial
temperament would waste no time in pinings and regret, but that, his
energies being enlisted in an overmastering desire to free the people
from the burden of the army, he would drive vigorously in the direction
of his new ideals. It is impossible to imagine him “passive” under this
conversion to the newer ideals of peace. He would no more be passive
than St. Paul was after his conversion. He would regard the four
million men in Europe shut up in barracks, fed in idleness by toiling
peasants, as an actual wrong and oppression. They would all have to
be freed and returned to normal life and occupation--not through the
comparatively easy method of storming garrisons, in which he has had
training, but through conviction on the part of rulers and people of
the wrong and folly of barrack idleness and military glitter. The
freeing of the Christians from the oppressions of the Turks, of the
Spaniards from the Moslems, could offer no more strenuous task--always,
however, with the added difficulty and complication that the change
in the people must be a moral change analogous to the one which had
already taken place within himself; that he must be debarred from
the use of weapons, to which his earlier life had made him familiar;
that his high task, while enormous in its proportion, was still most
delicate in its character, and must be undertaken without the guarantee
of precedent, and without any surety of success. “Smitten with the
great vision of social righteousness,” as so many of his contemporaries
have been, he could not permit himself to be blinded or to take refuge
in glittering generalities, but, even as St. Paul arose from his vision
and went on his way in a new determination never again changed, so he
would have to go forth to a mission, imperial indeed in its magnitude,
but “over-imperial” in the sweep of its consequences and in the
difficulty of its accomplishment.
Certainly counting all the hours of the Emperor’s life spent in camp
and court dominated by military pomp and ambition, he has given more
than ten years to military environment and much less than ten years
to the bulk of his people, and it would not be impossible to imagine
such a conversion due to the reaction of environment and interest.
Such a change having taken place, should we hold him royal in temper
or worthy of the traditions of knight-errantry, if he were held back
by commercial considerations, if he hesitated because the Krupp
Company could sell no more guns and would be thrown out of business?
We should say to this Emperor whom our imaginations have evoked,
Were your enthusiasms genuine enough, were your insights absolutely
true, you would see of how little consequence these things really
are, and how easily adjusted. Let the Krupp factories, with their
tremendous resources in machinery and men, proceed to manufacture
dredging machines for the reclaiming of the waste land in Posen; let
them make new inventions to relieve the drudgery of the peasant,
agricultural implements adequate to Germany’s agricultural resources
and possibilities. They will find need for all the power of invention
which they can command, all the manufacturing and commercial ability
which they now employ. It is part of your new vocation to adjust the
industries now tributary to the standing armies and organization
of warfare, to useful and beneficent occupations; to transform and
readjust all their dependent industries, from the manufacturing of
cannon and war-ships to that of gold braid and epaulets. It is your
mission to revive and increase agriculture, industry, and commerce,
by diverting all the energy which is now directed to the feeding,
clothing, and arming of the idle, into the legitimate and normal
channels of life.
It is certainly not more difficult to imagine such a change occurring
to an entire people than in the mind and purpose of one man--in fact,
such changes are going on all about us.
The advance of constructive labor and the subsidence and disappearance
of destructive warfare is a genuine line of progression. One sees much
of protection and something of construction in the office of war, as
the Roman bridges survived throughout Europe long after the legions
which built them and crossed them for new conquests had passed out of
mind. Also, in the rising tide of labor there is a large admixture of
warfare, of the purely militant spirit which is sometimes so dominant
that it throws the entire movement into confusion and leads the laborer
to renounce his birthright; but nevertheless the desire for battle is
becoming constantly more restricted in area. It still sways in regions
where men of untamed blood are dwelling, and among men who, because
they regard themselves as a superior race, imagine that they are free
from the ordinary moral restraints; but its territory constantly
grows smaller and its manifestations more guarded. Doubtless war will
exist for many generations among semi-savage tribes, and it will also
break out in those nations which may be roused and dominated by the
unrestricted commercial spirit; but the ordinary life of man will go
on without it, as it becomes transmitted into a desire for normal human
relationship.
It is difficult to predict at what moment the conviction that war is
foolish or wasteful or unjustifiable may descend upon the earth, and
it is also impossible to estimate among how many groups of people this
conviction has already become established.
The Doukhobors are a religious sect in Russia whose creed emphasizes
the teaching of non-resistance. A story is told of one of their young
men who, because of his refusal to enter the Russian army, was brought
for trial before a judge, who reasoned with him concerning the folly
of his course and in return received a homily upon the teachings of
Jesus. “Quite right you are,” answered the judge, “from the point of
abstract virtue, but the time has not yet come to put into practise the
literal sayings of Christ.” “The time may not have come for you, your
Honor,” was the reply, “but the time has come for us.” Who can tell at
what hour vast numbers of Russian peasants upon those Russian steppes
will decide that the time has come for them to renounce warfare, even
as their prototype, the mujik, Count Tolstoy, has already decided that
it has come for him? Conscious as the peasants are of religious motive,
they will meet a cheerful martyrdom for their convictions, as so many
of the Doukhobors have done. It may, however, be easy to overestimate
this changed temper because of the simple yet dramatic formulation
given by Tolstoy to the non-resisting spirit. How far Tolstoy is really
the mouthpiece of a great moral change going on in the life of the
Russian peasant and how far he speaks merely for himself, it is, of
course, impossible to state. If only a few peasants are experiencing
this change, his genius has certainly done much to make their position
definite. The man who assumes that a new degree of virtue is possible,
thereby makes it real and tangible to those who long to possess it but
lack courage. Tolstoy at least is ready to predict that in the great
affairs of national disarmament, it may easily be true that the Russian
peasants will take the first steps.
Their armed rebellion may easily be overcome by armed troops, but what
can be done with their permanent patience, their insatiable hunger
for holiness? All idealism has its prudential aspects, and, as has
been pointed out by Mr. Perris,[17] no other form of revolution is so
fitted to an agricultural people as this continued outburst of passive
resistance among whole communities, not in theory, but in practise.
This peasant movement goes on in spite of persecution, perfectly
spontaneous, self-reliant, colossal in the silent confidence and power
of endurance. In this day of Maxim guns and high explosives, the old
method of revolt would be impossible to an agricultural people, but
the non-resistant strike against military service lies directly in
line with the temperament and capacity of the Russian people. That
“the government cannot put the whole population in prison, and, if it
could, it would still be without material for an army, and without
money for its support,” is an almost irrefutable argument. We see here,
at least, the beginnings of a sentiment that shall, if sufficiently
developed, make war impossible to an entire people, a conviction of sin
manifesting itself throughout a nation.
Whatever may have been true of the revolutionist of the past when
his spike was on a certain level of equality with the bayonet of
the regular soldier, and his enthusiasm and daring could, in large
measure, overcome the difference, it is certainly true now that
such simple arms as a revolutionist could command, would be utterly
futile against the equipment of the regular soldier. To continue the
use of armed force means, under these circumstances, that we must
refer the possibilities of all social and industrial advance to the
consent of the owners of the Maxim guns. We must deny to the humble
the possibility of the initiation of progressive movements employing
revolution or, at least, we must defer all advance until the humble
many can persuade the powerful few of the righteousness of their cause,
and we must throw out the working class from participation in the
beginnings of social revolutions. Tolstoy would make non-resistance
aggressive. He would carry over into the reservoirs of moral influence
all the strength which is now spent in coercion and resistance. It
is an experiment which in its fullness has never been tried in human
history, and it is worthy of a genius. As moral influence has ever a
larger place in individual relationship and as physical force becomes
daily more restricted in area, so Tolstoy would “speed up” the process
in collective relationships and reset the whole of international life
upon the basis of good will and intelligent understanding. It does not
matter that he has entered these new moral fields through the narrow
gateway of personal experience; that he sets forth his convictions with
the limitations of the Russian governmental environment; that he is
regarded at this moment by the Russian revolutionists as a quietist and
reactionary. He has nevertheless reached down into the moral life of
the humble people and formulated for them as for us the secret of their
long patience and unremitting labor. Therefore, in the teachings of
Tolstoy, as in the life of the peasants, coextensive with the doctrine
of non-resistance, stress is laid upon productive labor. The peasant
Bandereff, from whom Tolstoy claims to have learned much, has not only
proclaimed himself as against war, but has written a marvelous book
entitled “Bread Labor,” expressing once more the striking antithesis,
the eternal contrast between war and labor, and between those who abhor
the one and ever advocate the other.
War on the one hand--plain destruction, Von Moltke called
it--represents the life of the garrison and the tax-gatherer, the Roman
emperor and his degenerate people, living upon the fruits of their
conquest. Labor, on the other hand, represents productive effort,
holding carefully what has been garnered by the output of brain and
muscle, guarding the harvest jealously because it is the precious bread
men live by.
It is quite possible that we have committed the time-honored folly of
looking for a sudden change in men’s attitude toward war, even as the
poor alchemists wasted their lives in searching for a magic fluid and
did nothing to discover the great laws governing chemical changes and
reactions, the knowledge of which would have developed untold wealth
beyond their crude dreams of transmuted gold.
The final moral reaction may at last come, accompanied by deep remorse,
too tardy to reclaim all the human life which has been spent and the
treasure which has been wasted, or it may come with a great sense of
joy that all voluntary destruction of human life, all the deliberate
wasting of the fruits of labor, have become a thing of the past, and
that whatever the future contains for us, it will at least be free
from war. We may at last comprehend the truth of that which Ruskin has
stated so many times, that we worship the soldier, not because he goes
forth to slay, but to be slain.
That this world peace movement should be arising from the humblest
without the sanction and in some cases with the explicit indifference,
of the church founded by the Prince of Peace, is simply another example
of the strange paths of moral evolution.
To some of us it seems clear that marked manifestations of this
movement are found in the immigrant quarters of American cities. The
previous survey of the immigrant situation would indicate that all the
peoples of the world have become part of the American tribunal, and
that their sense of pity, their clamor for personal kindness, their
insistence upon the right to join in our progress, can no longer be
disregarded. The burdens and sorrows of men have unexpectedly become
intelligent and urgent to this nation, and it is only by accepting
them with some magnanimity that we can develop the larger sense of
justice which is becoming world-wide and is lying in ambush, as it
were, to manifest itself in governmental relations. Men of all nations
are determining upon the abolition of degrading poverty, disease, and
intellectual weakness, with their resulting industrial inefficiency,
and are making a determined effort to conserve even the feeblest
citizen to the State. To join in this determined effort is to break
through national bonds and to unlock the latent fellowship between man
and man. In a political campaign men will go through every possible
hardship in response to certain political loyalties; in a moment of
national danger men will sacrifice every personal advantage. It is but
necessary to make this fellowship wider, to extend its scope without
lowering its intensity. Those emotions which stir the spirit to deeds
of self-surrender and to high enthusiasm, are among the world’s most
precious assets. That this emotion has so often become associated with
war, by no means proves that it cannot be used for other ends. There
is something active and tangible in this new internationalism, although
it is difficult to make it clear, and in our striving for a new word
with which to express this new and important sentiment, we are driven
to the rather absurd phrase of “cosmic patriotism.” Whatever it may
be called, it may yet be strong enough to move masses of men out of
their narrow national considerations and cautions into new reaches of
human effort and affection. Religion has long ago taught that only
as the individual can establish a sense of union with a power for
righteousness not himself, can he experience peace; and it may be
possible that the nations will be called to a similar experience.
The International Peace Conference held in Boston in 1904 was opened
by a huge meeting in which men of influence and modern thought from
four continents, gave reasons for their belief in the passing of
war. But none was so modern, so fundamental and so trenchant, as the
address which was read from the prophet Isaiah. He founded the cause
of peace upon the cause of righteousness, not only as expressed in
political relations, but also in industrial relations. He contended
that peace could be secured only as men abstained from the gains of
oppression and responded to the cause of the poor; that swords would
finally be beaten into plowshares and pruning-hooks, not because men
resolved to be peaceful, but because all the metal of the earth would
be turned to its proper use when the poor and their children should be
abundantly fed. It was as if the ancient prophet foresaw that under
an enlightened industrialism peace would no longer be an absence of
war, but the unfolding of world-wide processes making for the nurture
of human life. He predicted the moment which has come to us now that
peace is no longer an abstract dogma but has become a rising tide of
moral enthusiasm slowly engulfing all pride of conquest and making war
impossible.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Imperialism, by John A. Hobson. Page 128.
[17] The Grand Mujik, G. H. Perris.
INDEX
Altruism, manifestations of, 17;
in politics, 48.
Anglo-Saxon, temptation to govern all peoples alike, 47;
distrust of experiment, 67;
individualistic, 68;
attitude towards self-government, 112.
Arbitration, change in attitude toward, 133;
in New Zealand, 134.
Aristotle’s ideal of a city, 92.
Assimilation, limit to United States power of, 39;
workingman’s attitude toward, 94, 117.
Bandereff, 234.
Bentham, 23.
Bloch, Jean de, 4.
Booth, Charles, maps of London, 86.
Bosanquet, Mrs. Bernard, 116.
Buckle, 23.
Burns, John, 125.
Charity, organization of in New York, 74;
modern, democratic and constructive, 79;
extension of, 84;
and unskilled labor, 152.
Chicago Municipal Lodging House, 157.
Chicago Federation of Labor, 130, 131.
Chicago Stock Yards Strike, power of unions for amalgamation shown in,
96;
object of, 101, 111;
use of referendum vote in, 103, 108;
good order of, 104;
paradoxes shown by, 104;
example of national appeal subordinated to union, 106;
strike-breaker in, 106;
Greek in, 109.
Child Labor, social waste of, 28;
a national problem, 107;
industrial value of, 154;
responsibility of State, 156;
effect of sub-divided, 158;
effect of premature, 159;
effect on parents, 161;
effect on product, 162.
Child Labor Legislation, makes for better citizens, 73;
immigrant parents and, 74;
uniform, 168;
leisure gained for play, 169.
Commerce, international, 115;
modern representative of conquest, 116.
Comte, Augustus, 217.
Constitution of the U. S., and the immigrant, 42, 43, 72, 73.
Contempt, social results of, 51;
in industrialism, 116;
for immigrant, 151;
for primitive arts, 202.
Cosmopolitan city, beginnings of newer ideals of peace found in, 11,
13, 18;
centers of radicalism, 16;
bond of union in, 17, 204;
difficulties due to size of, 86, 216;
subtle problems of, 206.
Cosmopolitan standard, lack of, 78.
Dante, 21.
Democratic government, causes of failure of, 47;
arousing enthusiasm for, 63;
result of moral effort, 75;
inherited form of, 121.
Democracy, modified slowly, 37;
repressive legislation in, 52;
lack of civic expression for, 59;
failure to apprehend, 91;
effects of commercialism on, 222.
Denver Juvenile Court, 81.
Doctrinaire method, weakness of, 31;
conditions settled by, 53;
unattached to experience, 72;
not fitted to modern patriotism, 74.
Domestic service, 51;
a review of the history of, 199.
Doukhobors, situation in Canada, 67;
emphasize non-resistance, 230;
meet martyrdom, 231.
Education, related to industrial efficiency, 16;
belief in, as social remedy, 21;
of vital importance to city, 73;
compulsory, 74;
advanced and reform schools, 82;
passion in America, 85;
distinctive achievement in America, 166;
for factory children, 167;
less expensive than repression, 175;
already democratized, 178.
Educators, recognizing industrialism, 169.
Eighteenth-century philosophy, abandonment of, required, 28;
inadequacy of, 31;
responsible for immigration, 40;
belief in universal franchise, 42;
ideal man of, 60;
ideals still influence statesman, 70;
retained in America, 91;
formula of equality, 117;
radicalism of, 121.
Employer, prone to attack new union, 129;
charges against unions, 135;
attitude toward business relations with unions, 138;
traditions in household, 201.
England, labor laws of, 152;
debasement of products of, 166.
Franchise, 38;
universal panacea, 42;
universal franchise, 52;
beginnings of municipal, 180;
military test absurd, 182;
why women should have, 192.
Factory system, 163;
worst evils of, 149;
uneducational, 173.
Gang, almost tribal in organization, 176;
political training in, 177.
German Emperor, 224.
Germany, government deals with needs of workingman, 88;
police socialized in, 89;
not afraid to extend municipal functions, 91;
economic protection in, 122, 152;
opposition to militarism in, 165.
Golden, State Reform State School, 81.
Government, newer manifestations of, 15;
away from the life of the people, 35;
oppressive, dependent on the sword, 36;
opposition to, formerly patriotism, 42;
dealing with naturalization, 42;
test not current, 47;
concern for the young incorporated in, 80;
fear of extending functions, 84;
traditional activities meagre, 87;
non-interference in industry, 90;
functions of, 101;
patriotic citizens forced to ignore, 112.
Hague tribunal, 5.
Hebrew alliance, 74.
Heroism, new, 25, 218.
Historic method, 31, 63.
Hobhouse, L. T., 6.
Hobson, John A., 221.
Household labor, conference at Lake Placid, 198;
history of, in America, 199;
causes of paucity of, 200.
Hull-House, experiences, 50, 58, 77, 82, 91, 119, 143, 159, 194, 203,
204.
Humanitarianism, in immigrant quarters, 15;
aggressive, 26;
scientific method applied to, 28;
cosmopolitan, 76;
present stage of, 79, 99;
its relation to labor power, 165.
Idealism, provincial aspects of, 231.
Immigrants, emotional sentiment among, 13;
unusual power of association among, 14;
franchise extended to, 38;
philosophy in regard to, 41;
exploitation of, 42, 45;
evasion of immigration laws by, 47;
contempt for, 49;
charm and historical association among, 64, 70;
ignoring past experience of, 65;
beginnings of self-government among, 71;
relations of politician to, 72;
attempts to teach patriotism to, 75;
revelation of social customs among, 79;
standardizing by workmen, 93;
difficulties largely industrial, 94;
as wage lowering weapon, 97;
standard of living for, 102, 116;
claim on charitable funds, 152;
present contrasted with youthful condition of, 161;
early industries among, 203;
historic backgrounds of, 205;
manifestations of peace movement among, 235.
Immigration, decreased by industrial depression, 44;
of recent years, 200.
Industrialism, 15;
versus militarism, 28, 220;
significance of primitive arts in relation to, 64;
idealism in, 95;
as basis for legislation, 121.
Industrial interests, in contemporary life, 42;
and the immigrant, 71;
germane to government, 122;
and international peace, 113.
Industrial development, changes in, 124.
Illiterate children in the U. S., 163.
Internationalism, 23;
socialism based on, 114;
Mazzini’s address on, 115;
active and tangible, 237.
International Peace Conference in Boston, 237.
Interparliamentary union for international arbitration, 6.
Institute of International Law, 6.
James, William, 24.
Jefferson, Thomas, 31.
Justice, the larger, 236.
Juvenile Courts, 80;
Denver, 81;
parental attitude of, 82.
Kant, 23.
Kelley, Mrs. Florence, 153.
Lecky, 222.
London, Charles Booth, maps of, 87;
government of, 88.
Machinery and the industrial situation, 149.
Mazzini, 29, 115.
Militarism, versus industrialism, 28;
police department a survival of, 55;
mediaeval city founded on, 207;
negative results of, 220.
Mitchell, John, 126, 146.
Morality, class, 27;
group, 124, 145;
antiquated codes of, 210;
village standards of, 215.
Morley, John, 118.
Morris, William, 203.
Municipal government, admitted failure of, 31;
full of survivals, 34;
two points of rapid development in, 79;
ignores interests of average citizen, 85;
failure to provide playgrounds, 176;
indifference of citizens to, 183;
woman’s traditional activities in, 184.
Naturalization, 42;
rests on laws of 1802, 43;
brokerage in papers of, 46, 71;
test not contemporaneous, 42.
Non-resistance, a misleading word, 8;
non-resistance strike, 232;
aggressive, 233.
Patriotism, belief that war engenders, 18;
a newer, arising, 19;
founded on sacrifice, 74;
taught too formally, 75;
primitive core of, 91;
founded on war, 140, 217;
bound in trappings of the past, 214.
Peace, dynamic versus dogmatic, 7;
predicted by Isaiah, 237.
Perris, G. H., 231.
Play, a social stimulus, 171;
develops self-government and discipline, 173;
attitude of enlightened city government to, 178.
Politician, professional, produced by mechanical government, 52;
friend of the vicious, 56;
appeals to human sentiment, 59;
first friend of immigrant, 72;
understands people’s hopes, 79;
attempts to control strike, 103.
Protective legislation, aggressive aspect of the newer
humanitarianism, 28;
U. S. deficient in, 152.
Reformer, contemptuous attitude of, 49;
sweeping condemnations of, 57;
alliance with business interests of, 61.
Revolutionary War, 36, 37.
Revolutionist, 232.
Repressive legislation, 54;
human element in, 55.
Royce, Josiah, 32.
Ruskin, 235.
Russia, 68;
the mir, 67;
attitude toward workmen, 122;
the army of, 230.
Self-government, difficulties and blunders of, 32;
crux of local, 35;
skepticism for ideals of, 39;
must deal with unsuccessful, 62;
scope of, 63;
forms of democracy for, 88;
immigrants’ first lesson in, 95;
clearly not yet attained, 108;
popular government oppressor of, 104;
might profit by industrial experience, 121.
Shakespeare, 9.
Social, evolution, 211;
morality in, 213.
Socialism, based on internationalism and industrialism, 114.
Socialist’s attitude to present government, 86.
St. Francis, 21.
Teamsters’ strike, war element in, 132;
employers’ position as to arbitration in, 134;
alliance between employers’ and unionists’ offices in, 135;
inexperience of merchant employers in, 136;
social results of, 141.
Tolstoy, 3, 4, 209, 225, 230, 231, 233, 234.
Tribal law, 11.
Tribal Morality, 18.
Trades unions imitate city government, 94;
teach immigrants self-government, 95;
power for amalgamation of, 97;
attitude toward violence, 98;
causes for loss of sympathy for, in Stock Yards Strike, 101;
human appeal in, 102;
gratitude of immigrant toward, 107;
devotion to, might be turned to national life, 118;
organized by Russian government, 122;
contemporaneous movement difficult to judge, 125;
success not sole standard of, 128;
present a time of crisis for, 129;
attitude toward strike, 130;
social result of strike on, 144;
struggle for recognition, 145;
attitude toward improved machinery, 148;
uncomprehending victim of, 195.
War, defence of, 26;
prophecy of subsidence of, 23;
moral equivalent for, 24;
ideals in peace confusing, 110;
phraseology of new union, 130;
crime traceable to Spanish, 143;
new social problems not to be settled, 206;
attempts to justify by past records, 210;
substitutes for virtues of, 217;
contrast between labor and, 234.
Warfare, cost of, 4;
customary method of settling labor disputes, 135;
recognition of good in, 212;
civilization substitutes law for, 219;
ideals of labor substituted for those of, 224;
disappearance of, 229.
Webb, Mrs. Sidney, 191.
Whitman, Walt, 45.
Wilcox, Dr. Charles F., 54.
Wilcox, Delos F., 117.
Women, duty toward municipal government, 28, 185, 208;
conventions a snare to, 186;
franchise only for educated, 188;
effect of machinery on work of, 190;
increasing employment of, 189;
necessity for protection of working, 191, 196;
necessity for franchise for, 191, 197;
relation to clothing manufacture, 192;
lack in education of, 197, 202, 206.
Verestchagin, 3, 4.
Von Moltke, 234.
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Transcriber’s Notes
Errors in punctuation have been fixed.
Page 12: “many nationalties” changed to “many nationalities”
Page 35: “the the hands” changed to “the hands”
Page 116: “Bernard Bosenquet” changed to “Bernard Bosanquet”
Page 123: “emanicipated serfs” changed to “emancipated serfs”
Page 173: “of the the group” changed to “of the group”
Page 174: “girls wr bars of soap” changed to “girls wrap bars of soap”
Page 192: “insanity workshops” changed to “insanitary workshops”
Page 194: “work inself” changed to “work itself”