nations? At present a general agreement of the great powers on the
limitations of military establishments seems impossible. It remains
for some powerful nation to prove to the world that the great
armaments are not necessary to continued peace, with honor and
justice. Some nation must take the first step.[2] Why not the United
States? The nations of Europe are surrounded by powerful enemies,
while the United States is three thousand miles from any conceivable
foe. They are potentially weak, while our resources are unlimited.
They have inherited imperialism; we have inherited democracy. Their
society is permeated with militarism; ours is built on peace and
liberty. Our strategic position is unequaled, our resources are
unlimited, our foreign policy is peaceful, our patriotism is
unconquerable. In view of these facts, I ask you, What nation has the
greatest responsibility for peace? Are not we Americans the people
chosen to lift the burden of militarism from off the backs of our
downtrodden brother?
[2] The widely heralded proposal in 1913 for a naval holiday
by all the great powers is the first move in this
direction.--_Editor._
Now what are we doing to meet this responsibility? On the one hand, we
are performing a great work for peace. Many of our statesmen, business
men, and laborers, united in a common cause, are exerting a tremendous
influence in behalf of arbitration and disarmament. On the other hand,
we are spending more on our military establishment than any other
world power;[3] we are building more battleships than any other
nation;[4] we are no longer trusting our neighbors; we are warning
them to beware of our mailed fist; and we are thereby declaring to the
world that we have lost our faith in the power of justice and are now
trusting to the force of arms.
[3] The orator is comparing the cost of the United States
army, navy, and pensions upkeep with the military
establishments of other powers.--_Editor._
[4] Since naval rivalry in its acute form has centered
between Great Britain and Germany, European naval building
programs have exceeded those of the United
States.--_Editor._
And why this paradoxical situation? Why do we at the same time prepare
for war and work for peace? It is simply because many of our statesmen
honestly believe that the best way to preserve peace is to prepare for
war. It is true that a certain amount of strength tends to command
respect, and for that reason a navy sufficient for self-defense is
warranted. Such a navy we now have. Why should it be enlarged? Naval
enthusiasts would have us prepare, not for the probable but for the
possible. Seize every questionable act of our neighbors, they say,
magnify it a thousand times, publish it in letters of flame throughout
the land, and make every American citizen believe that the great
powers are prepared to destroy us at any moment. Having educated the
people up to a sense of threatened annihilation, they burden them with
taxes, build artificial volcanoes dedicated to peace, parade them up
and down the high seas, and defy the world to attack us. Then, they
say, we shall have peace. Is this reasonable? As sure as thought leads
to action, so preparation for war leads to war. This argument that the
United States, since she is a peace-loving nation, should have the
largest navy in the world in order to preserve peace is illogical and
without foundation. By what divine right does the United States assume
the rôle of preserving the world's peace at the cannon's mouth? Since
when has it been true that might makes right, and that peace can be
secured only by acting the part of a bully? It is unjust, it is
unpatriotic, it is unstatesmanlike, for men to argue that the United
States should browbeat the world into submission; that she should
build so many battleships that the nations of the Eastern hemisphere
will be afraid to oppose the ironclad dragon of the Western
Hemisphere. Peace purchased at the price of brute force is unworthy of
the name. Surely the United States cannot afford to be guilty of such
an injustice. If we wish to be free; if we wish to remain a true
republic; if we purpose to continue our mighty work for humanity, we
must limit our preparations for war. The best way to preserve peace is
to think peace, to believe in peace, and to work for peace.
The extent to which the great powers will go in order to secure
enthusiasm for their military establishments is almost beyond
comprehension. Each nation has its great military rendezvous, its
grand naval parades, its magnificent display of gorgeous military
uniforms, its wave of colors, blare of trumpets, and bursts of martial
music. The United States is now sending her navy around the world--for
the purpose of training the seamen?--certainly, but also that the
youth of our land may be intoxicated by the apparent glory of it all,
and thus enlist for service; that the American citizens may be aroused
to greater enthusiasm by this magnificent display of the implements of
legalized murder, and thus be willing to build more floating arsenals
rather than irrigate arid lands, develop internal waterways, build
hospitals, schools, and colleges.
The trouble with such exhibitions is, that it displays only the bright
side of militarism. If in place of the Russian battleships they should
display the starving masses of dejected and despised beings who pay
for those battleships; if in place of the gay German uniforms they
should exhibit the rags of the disheartened peasants who pay for those
uniforms; if in place of the grand parade they should produce masses
of wounded men and rivers of blood; if in place of the stirring
martial music they should produce the writhing agonies and awful
groans of dying men; if in place of sham war they should produce
actual war,--their exhibitions would make militarism unbearable.
Again, we are told that we have suddenly become a world power, and
that we must prepare to exercise a new diplomacy under new conditions.
We must increase our navy, they say, to enforce this new diplomacy. We
must prepare to fight in behalf of the Monroe Doctrine. But why, I
ask, cannot this new diplomacy be enforced as American diplomacy has
always been enforced? We promulgated the Monroe Doctrine without a
navy; we have maintained it for over eighty years without the show of
force. If our new diplomacy is right, it is as strong as the world's
respect for righteousness; if it is wrong, a hundred battleships
cannot enforce it.
We have become a world power, and therefore we have a world-wide
responsibility, and that responsibility is to establish justice, not
force; to build colleges, not battleships; to enthrone love, not hate;
to insure peace, not war. Our mission is to strike the chains from the
ankles of war-burdened humanity. Our duty is to proclaim in the name
of the Most High our faith in the power of justice as opposed to the
force of arms. May it be said of us that we found the world burdened
with militarism, but left it blessed with peace; that we found liberty
among the strong alone, but left it the birthright of the weak; that
we found humanity a mass of struggling individuals, but left it a
united brotherhood. May it be said of us that we found peace purchased
by suffering, but left it as free as air; that we found peace bruised
and stained with militarism, but left it ruling the world through love
and liberty. May it be said of us that we fulfilled our mission as a
world power; that we were brave enough and strong enough to lead the
world into the path of universal peace.
THE EVOLUTION OF WORLD PEACE
By LEVI T. PENNINGTON, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana
First Prize Oration in the National Contest held at The University
of Chicago, May 4, 1909
THE EVOLUTION OF WORLD PEACE
In the progress of the world the dream of yesterday becomes the
confident hope of to-day and the realized fact of to-morrow. As old
systems fail to meet new conditions and new ideals, they are
discarded; and into the limbo of worse than useless things is passing
the system of human sacrifice to the Moloch of international warfare.
For centuries world peace has been the dream of the poet, the
philanthropist, the statesman, and the Christian. That dream is
becoming a confident hope. This generation should see it an
accomplished fact.
There was a time when individual prowess determined the issue of every
difference. Might made right, so it was thought, and the winner in any
controversy was he who had the heaviest club, the strongest arm, or
the thickest skull. Man's interrelationships multiplied as humanity
advanced; with each new relation came new causes for quarrel, and for
a time advancing civilization brought but increase in murders and
assassinations.
We know the process by which personal combat ceased; how the duel
replaced murder and ambush and assassination; how courts of law
replaced the duel. The dreamer saw the day when personal combat should
be no more; the man of mind refuted all the arguments in favor of the
duel of men; the constructive statesman of that early day instituted
courts of law and equity. Men who had a difference insisted that it
was their quarrel and they alone could settle it; but reason saw that
two combatants inflamed by passion are least fitted of all men to see
where justice lies. Many held that where honor is involved, no one can
adjust the difficulty but those most directly concerned; but reason
saw that a man's honor cannot be vindicated by killing his enemy or
being killed by him. Men said, "If personal combat is abolished,
courage and strength will perish from the earth." But reason saw that
personal combat in a selfish cause does not bring out the highest type
of courage; and that there are opportunities enough for the exercise
of the highest and best moral and physical courage to keep valor alive
forever. It was finally urged that there would be no power to enforce
the decree if personal differences were left to the adjudication of
others; but reason said, "That power will come with the need for it."
And so courts of law and equity arose, based on the need of humanity;
laws were passed defining rights and limiting aggression; and when one
man wronged another, that wrong was settled in court by the power of
the whole people and not in personal combat with the bludgeon or the
knife.
For similar reasons wars between states and tribes have ceased; and
face to face with the inevitable logic of past progress stands the
world to-day. Though humanity has been slow to see it, the truth has
begun to dawn in the hearts of men--that international wars are no
more to be justified than civil strife, tribal warfare, or personal
combat. Gradually the omnipotent power of right is overcoming the
inertia of humanity, and the world is moving. One by one the awful
truths concerning war are forcing themselves upon the consciousness
and the conscience of men. The mighty power of fact is beating down
the opposition to world peace.
Men have begun to realize the terrible cost, the unbelievable
wastefulness of actual war, and the preparation for possible war. When
we read that the armed peace of Europe the past thirty-seven years has
cost $111,000,000,000, nearly as much as the aggregate value of all
the resources of the United States, the richest nation on earth, the
figures are so appalling that mortal mind cannot conceive them, and
they lose their force. When we remember that two thirds of the
national revenues of the United States are spent on wars past or
prospective, the matter comes closer home. When we realize that the
cost of a single battleship exceeds the value of all the grounds and
buildings of all the colleges and universities in Illinois, the
figures have more meaning to us. And when we reflect that the cost of
a single shot from one of the great guns of that battleship would
build a home for an American family, a comfortable home costing $1700,
the common man realizes that the richest nation on earth cannot afford
to go to war nor prepare for war.
But mere money is one of the cheapest things in all the world. The
price of war never can be paid in gold. Not in national treasuries can
you see the payment of that price, where smug, well-groomed
politicians sign bonds and bills of credit. If you would see the
payment of that price of war, you must go to the place of war. With
all your senses open, step upon the battlefield. Smell the smoke of
burning powder, the reek of charging horses, the breath of fresh, red,
human blood. Feel the warmth of that blood as you seek to stanch the
wound in the breast of one of the world's bravest, dying for he knows
not what. Hear the screams of the shells, the booming roar of the
cannonade, the clash of the onslaught, the shrieks of the wounded, the
groans of the dying, the last gasp of him whose life has reached its
end. Such is the infernal music of war. See the victim of the conflict
reel in the saddle and fall headlong. Cast your eyes on the mangled
forms of godlike men, fallen in the midst of fullest life. Come in the
night after the battle and look upon the ghastly faces upturned in the
moonlight. Gaze on the windrows of the dead, Mars's awful harvest,
that impoverishes all and enriches none, and you know something of the
cost of war.
And yet we have seen but little. Could we but enter the wasted homes
and see the broken hearts that war has made; could we go to the
almshouses and soldiers' orphans' homes and see widows and children by
the thousand suffering the doled-out charity of state or nation
because war has robbed them of their rightful protectors; could we but
realize the agony of the broken home, a thousandfold worse than the
agony of the battlefield,--then might we know more of the real cost of
war.
And still our idea would be inadequate, though we realized the full
measure of every groan and heartache. Earth's most priceless treasures
are still more intangible things, the treasures of justice and
kindliness and love. In that higher realm the cost of war is most
terrible and most deadly. The spirit of war in the soldier sets aside
the moral law, makes human life seem valueless, human suffering a
thing to be disregarded, human slaughter an honorable profession. The
war spirit blinds the eye of the statesman, till wrong seems right,
folly seems expediency, and the death of thousands seems preferable
to the life and happiness of all under terms of peace not dictated by
his own will. Justice is dethroned, and revenge takes up the iron
scepter and lets fly the thunderbolt. The war spirit perverts the mind
of the publicist, till the achievements of honorable peace sink into
insignificance, and the press clamors for the war that means money to
the publisher but death to innocent thousands who can have no possible
interest in the conflict. The war spirit takes possession of the
pulpit, and the minister called to preach the loving message of the
Prince of Peace stirs up the spirit of contention and animosity, of
hate and murder. Could we but draw aside the curtain and, back of the
tinsel and gold braid, see the crime, the hate, the moral degradation
that war always brings, never again would a friend of humanity ask for
war.
But the eyes of the world are opening to the fact that the cost of war
is far too high in money and in men, in suffering and sacrifice, and
in those higher values of justice and kindliness and love. And as the
thought once grew that personal differences might be settled without
personal combat, so men are looking toward the settlement of
international difficulties without recourse to the sword. They have
seen that every argument against the duel of men applies with still
greater force against the duel of nations. And the world has moved
farther toward world peace in the past twenty-five years than in all
the centuries of history that have preceded. World peace has become
not the dream of the poet but the confident hope of the world, whose
realization is the task whose accomplishment is set for the men of
this generation.
One by one the obstacles to world peace are being broken down.
Commerce has destroyed much of international prejudice. Community of
interest has obviated many former causes of quarrel. The sophistical
arguments of the friends of war are being answered by the logic of
hard facts. Warfare has been ameliorated by international agreement.
Vast reaches of territory have been neutralized. Unfortified cities
are no longer to be bombarded in any country. Actual disarmament has
taken place between the United States and Canada, between Chile and
Argentina.[1] Norway and Sweden have separated peaceably. Bulgaria has
achieved her independence without bloodshed. The Dogger Bank incident,
which a century earlier would have plunged England and Russia into
war, has been adjusted amicably. Two Hague Conferences have advanced
tremendously the progress of international amity. Over eighty
arbitration treaties are now in force. We already have a permanent
high court of nations, to which are being referred questions that
would once have resulted in war. And we are nearer than the dreamer of
last century dared hope to "the Parliament of man, the Federation of
the world."
[1] The famous "disarmament" between the Argentine Republic
and Chile was brought about by a series of four documents of
May 28, 1902, one of July 10, 1902, and one of January 9,
1903. A preliminary protocol declares the disposition of both
countries "to remove all causes for trouble in their
international relations." A general treaty of arbitration
unlimited in scope was signed for a period of ten years. A
convention bound each country to "desist from acquiring the
vessels of war now building for them, and from henceforth
making new acquisitions." Article II says that "the two
governments bind themselves not to increase their naval
armaments during a period of five years, without previous
notice." As a result of arbitration resulting from this
series of agreements the frontier was disarmed and remains
free from military posts. New naval programs of both
countries were formulated after the expiration of the period
of abnegation, and dreadnoughts are now in course of
construction.--_Editor._
But not yet has the millennium dawned. In the face of all this
progress, armies and navies are stronger and more burdensome than
ever. The United States spends more on wars past and prospective than
for all educational purposes, and England, France, Germany, Russia,
groan under the burdens of the armed peace of Europe. Armed to the
teeth, the nations of the world lie watching one another. The mind of
the world is convinced that war is futile and terribly wasteful. The
heart of the world is convinced that war is cruel and inexcusable. The
conscience of the world has admitted that war is wrong and morally
unjustifiable. And still the preparation for war goes on, and unless
conditions are changed, war is inevitable. What is to be done? The
world's will must be moved, and men must be led to do what they have
already admitted is right and just and expedient.
As we have led in other days, so must America lead to-day. As the
light of republican government and complete justice to the individual
first saw full dawn in the United States, so the eyes of the world are
turned toward us to see the dawn of world peace, and full justice to
all the nations. It is ours to lead. The example of the United States
will do more than a century of argument and conference. America should
begin the disarmament that will eventually mean the triumph of world
peace.
We have naught to fear. We are far distant from the storm centers of
the world. We have no foes within that demand a large standing army,
and there are no enemies without that are anxious to try conclusions
with us on land or sea. Then away with war talk and war scares and
"jingoism." In time of peace let us prepare for peace, that all the
world may enjoy peace. American disarmament will be a tremendous
stride toward the accomplishment of the world's desire--the cessation
of international warfare; a great world's court, to settle all
international differences; an international police force, to give
effect to the decrees of this court; and the end of the burdens of
armies and navies under which the whole world is groaning. Let heart
and voice and pen, pulpit and press and platform, soldier and
statesmen and private citizen, ask for peace, and not for war.
This is a part of the world's larger hope. Pessimists there are who
say that human nature is belligerent, and that war will never be
abolished. But international warfare has already seen the handwriting
on the wall. Mars has been weighed in the balances and found wanting.
The fruitless slaughter of the millions is not to be forever nor for
long. Let us hasten the day when the rolling war drum will be hushed
forever, the bugle note no longer call to carnage; when "nation shall
not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any
more." Love shall take the place of Hate, and Justice sit on the
throne instead of Greed. Some day in the not distant future the
nations that have all these centuries bowed before the god of war
shall own eternal allegiance to the Prince of Peace. And "of the
increase of His government and of Peace there shall be no end."
THE WASTE OF WAR--THE WEALTH OF PEACE
By ARTHUR FORAKER YOUNG, Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio
First Prize Oration in the National Contest held at the University
of Michigan, May 13, 1910
THE WASTE OF WAR--THE WEALTH OF PEACE
In the worship of Mars, Herodotus tells us, the ancient Scythian
erected an old scimitar at the summit of a huge brush heap. To this,
as a symbol of the great god of war, he offered not only the produce
of the land but also human life in sacrifice. We shudder as we picture
the priest standing over his victim, his hands wet with the blood of
his fellow man. We cry out in horror as we think of the lives these
peoples sacrificed. We call it an inhuman glorification of a pagan
deity. We call it a ruthless waste of wealth and human life. These
practices we pronounce to be the result of a popular delusion--a false
sense of obligation to the spirit of war. Yet from the time the
Scythian drew the blood of his victim in homage to the great war god,
even down to our own day, the nations have paid homage to Mars.
Though we boast of our progress in civilization, history reveals the
fact that we, too, have been the victims of the Scythian's delusion.
Is it not a fact that one of the most terrible customs of savage men
counts among its followers to-day all the nations of the earth? The
subtlest skill of the scientist, the keenest intelligence of the
statesman, vast stores of the world's resources, are devoted to
maintaining great armies and navies, to inventing new means of attack
or defense, to enlarging and making more deadly the enginery of war.
What is our boast of civilization, while we tolerate this devotion of
so many men and so much of wealth to war? Is this not a sacrifice
essentially pagan in spirit? Are we not still paying unrighteous
homage to Mars?
Why, then, we ask, do nations make provision for war the first
necessity of national life? Behold Russia. A few years ago, in time of
famine, spending millions of money for war equipment when millions of
her own peasantry were slowly starving for the lack of one dollar's
worth of food per month. What motive impelled Russia to this heathen
conduct? It was solely that Germany, France, England, Japan, and the
United States had great armies and navies against which starving
Russia must be prepared to defend herself. What dire stress compels
England to-day to perpetuate her program of naval supremacy when she
is struggling in the throes of budget difficulties which seem all but
unsolvable? What is it that compels Germany and France to tax
themselves until they fairly stagger under the burden of military
expenditures? Naught other than a suicidal lust for military power.
Naught other than the infatuation of the dizzy, competitive war dance
of mutual destruction--each nation blindly driven by all, and all by
each.