militarism of England and Germany and France, examples of militarism
run rampant. How our hearts have warmed within us when we have thought
of our own republic as the happy envied nation, free from the burden
of militarism! Our farmer has gone singing about his work, apparently
not having to carry on his back a soldier, as does the European
peasant. Our mechanic has freely plied his trade without thought of
supporting a sailor. Yet how can we say that the United States in
buying battleships and erecting coast defenses, in arming her soldiers
with Krag-Jörgensens, has not been deprived of schools, colleges, and
opportunities essential to happiness and prosperity? In a decade we
have spent nearly a billion dollars on our navy alone. Yes, we have
aped the military fashions of Europe and have set a new standard of
military waste.
Verily our national advancement waits on militarism. Inland waterways
should be improved; forests must be safeguarded; other natural
resources of untold value should be conserved; millions of acres of
desert lands should be improved; millions in swamps should be
redeemed. The problem of the nation's food supply is becoming urgent;
for its solution we must look more and more to scientific methods in
agriculture. Yet contrast the support our government gives these vital
interests with war's mighty drain on our treasury. Congress
appropriated $648,000,000 for all expenditures in 1910. Of this amount
$407,000,000 were appropriated for war expenditures and the glories of
militarism. For this same year agriculture received for all its needs
the comparatively paltry sum of $12,000,000. In spite of the fact that
our nation is devoting two thirds of its enormous national
expenditures to war, our militarists point to our vast national wealth
and sneer at the niggardly mortals who object to spending it for guns.
It is evident that no nation is yet beyond the infatuation for display
of the splendors of war, yet in every one there are signs of a new
power that is coming upon us. All are thinking less of the glories of
war--of the beat of the drum, of the rhythmic tread of regiments, of
glittering sabers and of monster battleships--and are thinking more
and more of the glories of peace, of thriving industries, of
magnificent libraries, of comfortable homes, and of more efficient
schools. Obviously, though we still possess a war spirit, we are
seeing with a clearer vision that the waste of war is depriving us of
the fullest measure of the wealth of peace. Our frame of mind is much
the same as that of the ragged street urchin who, having lost his
day's earnings, thinks of a hundred things which he might have spent
it for. The same spirit is permeating every nation. The American
manufacturer, the Russian peasant, the English mechanic, the German
scientist, the French scholar, are all asking themselves, "Why need
the world continue to carry this Atlantean burden of war?"
Already this sentiment has accomplished practically all that can be
done in humanizing war. It has outlawed the dumdum bullet, it has
enforced radical sanitary measures, it has neutralized the Red Cross
and brought its ministrations to the relief of the sufferings of war.
But humanized war is not the goal of this sentiment. As long as there
is an increase of armaments there will be war; as long as the battle
rages there will be waste and suffering. The same sentiment which has
humanized war now demands war's abolition. It has already accomplished
something toward this end in making the settlement of international
disputes through arbitration more probable than war. What it has not
accomplished is the discrediting of militarism. It has failed to stop
the growth of armaments. Can we expect our regiments to find
contentment in the irksome routine of training camp with never a
thought of charging the enemy? Can we expect to man the seas with
fleets of war just for gay parade and cruises around the world? Can we
expect that our skilled gunners will be satisfied to practice,
practice always, and never long for human targets? It is against
arming nations for battle and tempting them to fight that the peace
sentiment is rousing itself and is being organized. It is in this
labor that peace societies the world over are performing valiant
service. Their great mission is the creation of an intelligent public
opinion, a force more potent than government itself.
What, for instance, was the purpose of the founder of this
Intercollegiate Peace Association? Not, I take it, to give men a
chance to win petty oratorical triumphs; not, I suppose, to bring
together speakers to entertain such audiences as this--or to weary
them. But their object must have been to set the men of our colleges
to thinking on the great question of peace. In such ways are peace
societies using the platform and the press to establish a firm basis
for unity and peace throughout the world.
Yesterday the advocate of world peace was called a dreamer; to-day
rapidly organizing public opinion demands the abolition of war and
recognizes the wealth and culture of peace. Yesterday we erected
statues to those who died for their country; to-day we cheer the
Gladstones, the McKinleys, the Roosevelts, who live for humanity.
Yesterday we bowed the knee to Mars; to-day we join in peans to the
Prince of Peace. Yes, the new spirit of the day is fraternal; it is
undaunted; it is for mankind. Even now the world's geniuses are
mustering the soldier citizens of every nation for a peaceful
conflict. The great battles of to-morrow are to be fought in quiet
laboratories, in legislative halls, in courts of justice, and on the
broad battlefields of productive labor.
The final outcome is, indeed, irresistible. Racial movements have
mixed all peoples; the oceans have become the world's common highways;
the air is filled with voices speaking from city to city and from
continent to continent; an international postal system makes the
world's ideas one; there is quick participation of mankind in the
fruits of invention and research. We behold financial and economic
enterprises world-wide in their outreach; we feel the force of social
projects and social ideals that concern not one but every nation; and
we are participating in missionary movements that affect not one but
every race, and are changing the very face of nature itself. Our world
is a world unified beyond all possible conception a century ago, and
the world unity is a certain stepping stone to world peace.
The world never offered grander opportunity to the nations for
leadership--not for leadership in military splendor, but for
leadership in the sublime paths of peace. For the United States this
call means not only opportunity but even obligation. Already this
country has performed well her duty in fostering international
arbitration. She has been a party to half of the cases where disputes
between nations have been referred to the Hague Tribunal. Arbitration
is performing its mission with more and more efficiency, yet each year
the war budgets of the nations are increasing. The peace sentiment now
demands a decrease of armaments, a conversion of the waste of war into
the wealth of peace. To demonstrate that this is practicable is the
immediate opportunity before us, our present obligation. What is our
waste of war expressed in terms of the wealth of peace? Notice! Two
thirds of the cost of one dreadnought, like the mammoth _Florida_
launched but yesterday, would erect and furnish a veritable palace for
every foreign ambassador and minister of the United States, thus
solving a perplexing problem of our diplomatic service. One
twenty-second of the cost of one dreadnought would support for one
year the entire force of the American Board of Foreign Missions in
their work of proclaiming our gospel of peace. One half the cost of
one dreadnought would erect and equip twenty-five manual-training
schools, teaching the rudiments of a trade to forty thousand young
people each year. The cost of two dreadnoughts would provide every
state in the Union with a half-million dollars with which to save the
juvenile delinquents from criminal courts and schools of vice behind
prison bars. The cost of one dreadnought, wisely spent each year in
the fight against tuberculosis, would make the white plague in a
single generation a disease as rare as smallpox is to-day.
Where now we are erecting battleships and forts, it is for us to build
libraries and schools. Where now we drain our treasuries in equipping
men to fight their fellow men, it is for us to arm against the common
enemy, disease. Where now we pour out our wealth before the pagan
Mars, it is for us to devote our treasure to supporting the works of
the Prince of Peace.
Such a victory for peace would make America not simply a world power:
it would make her the world leader. Will we stop tagging at the heels
of Great Britain and Germany and travel this broadening road in which
we can be first? How humiliating to struggle along, a trailer in the
military procession! How noble to set the daring example of living up
to the belief in peace! Will we say: "See our hands; we bear no
bludgeons. Search us; we carry no concealed weapons. Militarism we
have thrown to the scrap heap of practices discredited and vicious. We
have stopped war's wanton waste of men and treasure; we rejoice in the
growing wealth of peace ideals realized"? Thus shall we speed the
steadily growing public opinion of the world, to the bar of which must
finally come every nation which does aught to break or hinder the
world's peace.
THE HOPE OF PEACE
By STANLEY H. HOWE, Albion College, Albion, Michigan
First Prize Oration in the National Contest held at Johns Hopkins
University, May 5, 1911
THE HOPE OF PEACE
The history of civilization is a record of changing ideals, and ideals
are best reared in the hearts of the world's young men. Inevitably,
nations look toward the cradle for their future and intrust the care
of their destiny to the hands of youth. "Tell me what are the
prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young men,"
declared Edmund Burke, "and I will tell you what is to be the
character of the next generation." When the blood of youth is sluggish
and impure; when the young hold wealth more dear than worth, remove
the check of virtue from their selfish aims, establish Mammon as their
god, and, ambitious to govern the world, forget how to govern
themselves,--then nations choke and die. But when the blood of youth
is rich and pure, pulsating through the veins of the universe with
strong, resistless surge; when fathers teach anew the angel's message
of good will and peace, and sons build high their goal upon a pedestal
of service and of truth,--then nations breathe and live. What hope,
then, asks the world, finds the doctrine of peace in the ideals and
aspirations of America's youth to-day?
The nation faces a charge of militarism. It is the indictment of her
critics that never before in American history has the government
entertained an attitude so hostile toward her neighbors and so
dangerous to the interests of peace. They point to the attempt to
fortify the Canal and cry out that America would drain her treasury
to build a monument of reproach to international integrity. They
criticize the vast appropriations for the navy and declare that
America is starving her poor that she may more pompously parade the
seas. They protest against the "war-game" on the Rio Grande[1] and
even charge that in the interest of a Wall Street king America invites
the world to arms. And these are not illusions. The lure of gold has
turned the nation from her mission. The spirit of commercialism has
eclipsed the sentiment of brotherhood and tempted the Republic to
barter her honor for the price of imperial supremacy. Wherein, then,
again asks the world, finds America hope for the future? And to the
charges of her critics, with their dismal prophecy of a "wrong forever
on the throne," this is the nation's answer and defense--that an
eclipse is never permanent, that the world stays not in the valley of
the shadow forever, and that the solution of the problem, the
fulfillment of a national mission, and the hope of world peace find
their common assurance in the changing ideals of America's aspiring
young men.
[1] Part of the United States army was mobilized on the
frontier for maneuvers, in 1911, owing to the Mexican
revolutionary disturbances.--_Editor._
The young American is essentially ambitious. He is wont to seek the
shortest path to leadership, and, when blocked at one highway, to turn
with undiminished ardor to another. And his ideal is a mirror of the
age in which he lives. In revolutionary days he covets the glory of a
minuteman, and in the deeds of Warren and Putnam finds the
consummation of his hopes. Again, in the hour of civil war his eyes
turn toward the battlefield--and from her boys under twenty-one the
Union draws eighty-five per cent of her defenders. But fortunately for
America this drama of the youth's ideal has one more act. The lure of
fife and drum has become a thing of the past. The glamour of military
life has become a dream of yesterday. The young man is learning that
the prize of battle is never equal to the price. And with the growing
conviction of the folly and futility of international strife must
disappear the last apology for war. Nations will cease to struggle,
not when they have learned that war is a tragedy but when they have
discovered that it is a farce.
And the youth of to-day is learning it. In the same deplorable
conditions which the nation's critics have regarded as an alarming
tendency toward militarism, he reads a message of the absurdity of
war. Militarism itself is revealing a mission. Based as it is on the
spirit of aggrandizement, it is teaching to youth the economic value
of a human life. It is uncovering its own selfish motives and
betraying its own senseless ends. It is impressing the world with the
truth that battles are fought for purse string and not for principle.
It is teaching to youth a new ideal; it is itself the answer to
complaints of friends and calumnies of foes. It is the cloud before
the dawn. It heralds the coming of the brightest epoch yet chronicled
in American history. It is the realization of that glorious prophecy
of John Hay that the time is coming when "the clangor of arms shall
cease, and we can fancy that at last our ears, no longer stunned by
the din of armies, may hear the morning stars singing together and all
the sons of God shouting for joy."
And is this but the dream of a visionary? Is it merely the fancied
perception of an inexistent star? Is it nothing more than a
groundless hope and an alluring vagary? The answer is visible
everywhere. And the hope of peace finds its safest assurance among the
institutions of learning in America. James Bryce has referred to the
United States as the nation having the largest proportion of its young
men in college. In the last month of June more than fifty thousand
collegians wore the cap and gown of graduation. It is to the trust of
the college-bred man that the peace movement confides its future, and
modern education assumes no greater responsibility than the training
of the new world-citizen. Already the school has become the most
potent factor in the new uplift. The youth is no longer dependent upon
the newspaper for his knowledge of world-politics. An intelligent
study of foreign affairs is at last regarded as of as much importance
as a study of the past. To broaden the young man's vision of the
world, prominent educators are even advocating traveling fellowships.
In twenty-five of the larger universities of America an association of
Cosmopolitan Clubs is establishing the groundworks for a wider
international fraternity. Plans are already under way to have an
organized delegation of more than a hundred students of all
nationalities present at the third Hague Conference. Day by day the
problem of world-unity is becoming more and more deeply embedded in
the mind and thought of the rising generation. More and more is
youthful patriotism becoming a realization of the truth that "Above
all nations is humanity." The lure of war is losing its magnetic power
and the brotherhood of man becoming more and more an international
reality. A sentiment for universal peace is sweeping the world, and
behind the defenses of advancing civilization, armed with the strength
of a lofty and unselfish purpose, stands an army of America's young
men, mustered from the nation's colleges, enlisted to serve for an
eternity, and invulnerable in the protection of a new and a conquering
ideal.
Therefore the significance of the young man in the world's affairs
to-day is something more than a fancy. Again and again the plea for
world-harmony hears a response in the changing ideals of a new
generation. The growing sentiment of the educated youth of Japan finds
its crystallization in the efforts of Count Okuma toward the
consummation of world-disarmament. The spirit of the youth of England
finds expression in the ambitious dream of George V, whose hope it is
to tie the bond of Anglo-Saxon unity, long since dissevered by George
III. Among the young men of Russia the life of the great philosopher
of world-citizenship has left a lasting conviction of the
senselessness of war. Even in imperialistic Germany the reckless
building of dreadnoughts brings out a vigorous and uncompromising
protest from the thinking youth of the land. In America a vision of
the international parliament of man, growing large in the minds of her
leading statesmen, finds expression in the continued philanthropy of a
great industrial king. And, most significant of all, these are the
world-wide examples that the college man enthrones in the empire of
his thoughts. Sixty thousand European students, bound together by the
cosmopolitan ties of a peace fraternity, have ceased to glorify the
triumphs of the battlefield. The commentaries of the hero-worshiper
to-day do not record the names of a Marlborough or a Bonaparte. Rather
does the young man find his idols in the more humble annals of a
Tolstoy or a Hay. And the new ideal of international peace is not
merely the religion of a few enthusiasts. In an individual way these
apostles of peace voice to the world the spirit of the unnumbered
thousands of obscurer men whose lives and talents are directed, not to
the construction of material kingdoms but to the building of a better
and more world-wide brotherhood.
Such is the Hope of Peace. The nation's critics may continue their
indictment, and, pointing out the crises of the hour, paint in dismal
hues a picture of the problems never to be solved except by shot and
shell. Her skeptics, blinded by thought of the errors of the past, may
prophesy the desecration of her honor and the disappointing failure of
her hopes. The press may pen a graphic story of the military spirit of
the age, and frowning patriarchs relate the deeds of golden days gone
by. But underneath this cloud that overhangs, and almost hidden in the
gloom of history's disparagement, the new world-citizen discerns the
birth-light of a brighter and more steadfast star,--perceives the
coming triumph of good will and peace,--and the awakened eyes of
expectant America look forward with promise to the dawn of that new
day when a nation shall be judged by the weight of its cross and not
by the wealth of its crown.
THE ROOSEVELT THEORY OF WAR
By PERCIVAL V. BLANSHARD, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
First Prize Oration in the Western Group Contest, 1912, and in the
National Contest held at Mohonk Lake, May 16, 1912
THE ROOSEVELT THEORY OF WAR
Ex-President Roosevelt has made this astounding statement, "By war
alone can we acquire those virile qualities necessary to win in the
stern strife of actual life." These words, coming from the lips of a
nation's idol, have fallen like a bomb shell in the camp of the
pacifists. Not that Mr. Roosevelt's opinion was of overwhelming
weight, but that he was voicing the opinion of some of the most
influential thinkers of the modern world. Not long before the German
philosopher Nietzsche had taken a like position, and he was indorsed
by Von Moltke, the statesman; Ernest Renan, the historian; Hegel, the
philosopher; Charles Kingsley and Canon Farrar, the divines. We must
have a care, we peace advocates, how we treat such men's opinions. If
they are right; if, as they maintain, war develops a nation, then we
are fighting against the instrument of our own salvation and
smothering the only hope of the nation itself.
But are they right? Does war make for national greatness? Before we
can give a rational verdict we must answer certain other questions.
What is our nation, anyway? What are the factors that make for its
greatness? And how does war affect these factors?
Plainly our nation is not some abstraction that haunts the marble
halls at Washington. Nor is it our vast dominion on which, like
England's, the sun never sets. You will find it rather in workshop and
store and factory; it is no more nor less than our men. If the
capital at Washington is founded on pygmy manhood, it will be blown
away like thistledown before some passing wind of revolution. Russia,
Turkey, Spain, will tell you that. If our men are giants, the nation
will be lasting as adamant. England and Germany and America are
monumental testimonies.
Now what are the qualities in our men that make the nation great?
Here a problem in analysis confronts us. Let us go about it as does
the student in the laboratory. He dissects a plant or mineral to find
the mysteries of its nature. We are to dissect a civilization to find
the factors of its strength. One little specimen will reveal the
secrets of the whole species. So one sample of civilization will show
the hidden springs of all. Go with me to the public square of any
modern city and there you will behold the qualities that build all
civilization. From the hum and rattle and roar that rises from the sea
of humanity come a thousand various voices, but all speak of one
theme--industry. There in the center of the throng and press a slender
monument rises, crowned perhaps with a figure of Liberty or Justice.
It tells you a simple story of Idealism. Yonder stands a silent,
vine-clad church, crowned by a mighty finger pointing heavenward and
beckoning always to the higher life. What need of going farther?
Industry, Idealism, Morality--already we have found the secret of
human success, the triple key to all advance, of man or group or
nation. Here is Carlyle, with his gospel of labor, the labor that
conquers all things; here is Ruskin, with his exalting idealism, that
gives an aim and purpose to all human toil; here is the great apostle
Paul himself, who transfigures that toil and exalts that purpose with
his everlasting gospel of moral sublimity. Here is our threefold
criterion, by which every nation must stand or fall. The Anglo-Saxon
is what he is through unceasing industry, perpetual aspiration, and
moral strength. The Central African is what he is through inbred
sluggishness, total lack of purpose, and almost total absence of
morality.
These are the basic elements of national greatness. But the great
question still remains, How does war affect them?
Concerning the effect of war on labor, we declare unhesitatingly that
the two are everlasting foes, and that whenever War lays hands on
Labor's throat, it strangles her. This is part of the inevitable
program of war, for note that it is on the laboring men that the
dreadful claims of war must fall. Mark its course. A bugle sounds the
call to arms. From workshop, mill, and factory the laborers pour
forth; out go the men into a trade where plunder and robbery are a
means of livelihood; when pillage and slaughter wane, indolence
becomes the order of the day; commerce degenerates into
blockade-running by sea and marauding by land. How tame the life of
peace to this wild life of war! And all the time the love of toil is
fading from men's minds; at home the factory wheels are turning more
and more feebly, and when at last the sword is laid aside, there is
only "confusion worse confounded," for the channels of labor are
choked with men reared in habits of indolence or trained in the school
of vice. Before the scar on that nation's industry can finally be
healed, decades and perhaps centuries of peace must pass away.