The commercial relations of the entire world are disturbed. Prolonged
conflict is accompanied by the closing of the bank and the factory,
the dismantling of the shop and mill, and the lengthening of the bread
line in every city and town. In what state of prosperity and happiness
might not France have been had Napoleon never lived? With half a
century gone, our own country is still suffering from the devastation
of the Civil War. Our commerce with South America is scarcely beyond
the point it had reached before our week-end tiff with Spain. Yet
there are those who prate of national honor and of war as insuring
prosperity. From the leader of a newborn national party we hear that
without a periodic war America would become effeminate and weak, her
aggressive commercial life timid and corrupt, and within a few brief
years the great Republic would sink to a fourth-rate power. Up, brave
Americans, and man the guns! Awake, sons of freedom, and sweep the
seas! Fourteen years without a war; our beloved land is ruined. You
men of the factory and mill, you men of property and business, you
producers of the nation's wealth, forward into the carnage; burn the
homes of thrift and industry, for commerce will be enriched thereby;
ravage the fields and despoil the cities, for this will insure
vigorous national life; impoverish happy peoples, spread famine and
pestilence through fertile valleys, mark the sites of contented
villages with smoldering ruins, defy your Christian God, and kindle
the fires of hell in human breasts; commit violence, treachery,
rapine, ay, murder,--for the eternal glory of the Stars and Stripes.
Yet commerce and industry--the glittering prizes which every nation
covets when it builds a dreadnought or enlarges its army--demand that
the creative forces of peace supplant the destructive wastes of war.
To-day the financial relationships of nations are inextricably
entangled. The big banks in the capitals of the world are in
communication with each other every second of the day. During the
American crisis in 1907 the bank rate in England went up to seven per
cent, forcing many British concerns to suspend operations. Because of
the Balkan War the bank rate in Berlin, Paris, and Vienna is the
highest in twenty years, and European securities have depreciated over
six billion dollars. Foreign investments are raising insuperable
barriers to war. Should the French bombard Hamburg to-day they would
destroy the property of Frenchmen. Let Emperor William capture London,
loot the Bank of England, and he will return to find German industry
paralyzed, the banks closed, and a panic sweeping the land. Let
English regiments again move to invade the United States, English
warships draw up in battle line to attack our seaports, and four
billions of the earnings of the English people would bar the way. To
the victor of the present the spoils of war are valueless. Japan,
victor over the great Russian Empire, staggers under a colossal debt.
The Italian government hears rumbles of discontent, because the cost
of winning a victory has been too great. What better proof do we need
that war is profitless, that it means financial suicide? It has been
transformed from a gainful occupation into economic folly, and war
will cease because the price is becoming prohibitive.
In this movement for peace, capital's strongest ally is her most
active enemy. Raised to a position of independence and power by the
Industrial Revolution, labor is wielding an effective influence. The
complexity of modern business has aroused workingmen in every country
to a common interest and sympathy. The International Congress of Trade
Unions, representing twenty countries and over ten million men, has
declared for universal disarmament. Just last month eighty-five
thousand coal miners in Illinois resolved that if the United States
declared war on a foreign power, they would call a general strike.
And why not? Why should the workingmen of one country offer themselves
as targets for those of another? Why should the workers of Germany be
taxed to support a war against England, Germany's best market? Can the
rice growers of Japan profit by killing Americans to whom they sell
their produce? War means suffering and want, and the laborer has come
to know it. He is cold to the sight of its flaunting flags and the
sound of its grand, wild music, for he sees the larder bare, funds
exhausted, and hunger at the door. He refuses to sacrifice his body
and the welfare of his family upon the altar of Mars. No longer can
kings and emperors satisfy their grasping ambitions. Armed by the
ballot, the masses are to-day supreme. Never again will the cruel hand
of tyranny press to their lips the poisoned cup of death. Their sway
is absolute. The destinies of nations are in their keeping. The decree
has gone forth that war must cease.
Born of these greater movements, a host of influences bring nearer the
dawn of peace. The express and the wireless have supplanted the oxcart
and the courier. Chicago and Boston are closer to-day than New York
and Albany a century ago. Within the hour of their occurrence events
that happen in Paris are published in Chicago and St. Louis. Political
boundaries are fading before larger interests. Every railroad train
crossing the frontier, every ship plying the seas, every article of
commerce, every exchange of business, every cable conveying news from
distant lands--all these are potent factors in the cause of
international peace. Add to these the conciliating influence of
foreign investments, the telephone and telegraph, travel, education,
democracy, religion, and you have marshaled a host for peace whose
clarion trumpets shall never sound retreat. Casting aside the
prejudice of ages, modern industrialism flings around the world the
economic bonds against which the forces of militarism are powerless.
Here, then, in the world-wide operations of commerce and industry is
the _assurance of peace_. The skeptic may scoff and the cynic point to
Mexico and the Balkans, but the Industrial Revolution has produced a
multitude of influences that are knitting the nations into an
indissoluble unity. Men are beginning to realize the integrity of
mankind, and a world-consciousness is arising. Kindness and
justice--yesterday but community ideals--are extending their sway
throughout the earth. Even while bayonets are bared in conflict and
cannon thunder against hostile camps, the magic of our civilization is
weaving bonds of union that cannot be broken. Peace, not war, is the
true grandeur of nations; love, not hate, is the immutable law of
God; and so surely as governments and kings are powerless to divide
when home and factory would bind, some not too distant day will find
the battle flags all furled, the sword's arbitrament abandoned, and
the world at peace.
EDUCATION FOR PEACE
By FRANCIS J. LYONS, University of Texas, Austin, Texas,
representing the Southern Group
First Prize Oration in the National Contest held at Mohonk Lake,
May 28, 1914
EDUCATION FOR PEACE
Time was when war was beneficial. Historians have justified the spread
of knowledge by the sword. At the world's awakening, it was well that
the new thought should be diffused even at the sacrifice of human
blood. It was justified because there was no other means. We have to
cast our imagination back through the centuries and realize that then
there were no railroads, no telegraph, no newspapers; that man was
bound by narrow limits; and the elemental processes of the world were
undiscovered. We do not criticize Alexander for conquering the eastern
perils, for he carried in his phalanxes the spirit of new-discovered
thought. We do not denounce Rome for piercing the unknown realms with
her legions, for she was the mother of a new belief. But this was at
the dawn of history, when erudition was in its struggling embryo, and
the physical was the better part of man. Man went forth to battle as a
religion.
The world grew partly wise, and man preached the gospel of
brotherhood. But it did not last. The changing of the peoples
smoldered the fires of rising intelligence, and the world rolled back
again in darkness--a darkness long and black. Centuries passed, and a
new light came, slowly but courageously. Man blinkingly came forth,
dazed and unsteady. The light grew, and man grew with it; but rooted
deep in his heart was the love of war of his ancestors. In a different
spirit, it is true; but it was there, and he went forth to battle not
because it was religion, but because it was brave.
The world rolled on; war grew; it developed with the state; it became
an art; was studied--and now our cycle turns. It faces us as a custom
backed up by the centuries--deep-rooted, a consumer that yields no
returns and, what with our modern appliances, a terror to the hearts
of all the world. Men fought in the early ages because they thought it
was just; men fought in the Middle Ages because they considered it
brave; men of our modern age will banish war because it is a fallacy.
Do you know that to maintain our so-called prestige we spend seventy
per cent of our national income? Think of it! Seventy per cent to
maintain our present status and to prepare for the future! Think of
that awful drain; think, if applied in other channels, what good could
be done! We are proud of our battleship _Texas_. She is a noble war
dog; yet do you realize that if we had applied the money spent on her
in our own state we could have had one gigantic paved highway twice
the distance from El Paso to Galveston? We could have had two hundred
high schools, representing $75,000 each. We could have raised our
institutions of higher learning to a level with any of the East or
North. Fifteen millions gone for a floating war machine which in
twenty years will be a piece of rusted, useless iron; fifteen millions
for a sailing dragon who, each time one of her big guns speaks, wastes
the equivalent of a four-year college education for some
youth--$1700--for a single shot. Our war dogs sail the seas; our
soldiers parade our forts; and we look on and raise a joyous hubbub as
the nations of the world rush madly on, wasting themselves in the
race for military supremacy.
Have you ever considered yourself transported to some celestial
height, and there, from the regions of the infinite, allowed to view a
battle on earth? How foolish it must seem, these pygmies coming forth
to make war. See them as they charge and wound and kill! See brother
slay brother! See the wounded left to die! Hear the cries of distress,
and picture the grief that follows all! Men battling to conquer; men
assuming the prerogative of a god--how foolish, yet how serious! And
these artificial lines that men call boundaries, how punctiliously
they are guarded! "Take but a hundred feet, and we shall war with
thee." How foolish this too must seem when viewed from above--that we
should carry on war over even a slight infraction on any imaginary,
mathematical line.
We cherish the thought that the youth of our land are being taught
self-restraint. It is ever impressed upon them that there are courts
of justice for the settlement of controversies. Law and order have
become stock phrases, dinned into their ears at every turn. The man
who would settle his difficulty by trying the physical metal of his
adversary is of the past. By the new order he is taboo as a savage.
Individual self-restraint rings out in our vocabulary as nationally
descriptive. The babe at the mother's knee learns first the virtue of
it; the child at school is tutored to it soundly; the man in life is
lectured with it regularly. Brotherhood! Love! Self-restraint!
But what of the self-restraint of the nation? In the teaching of the
individual, is it not odd and inconsistent that we forget the
teaching of the unit? We paint the inner rooms of our national
character with colors bright and pleasing, but the exterior, though
weathering the heavier storms, is forgotten. If the child be taught
that individuals should arbitrate their differences, can he not learn
that the individual nations are subject to the same rule? If
arbitration is best for each man, surely it must be best for all. If
the child be taught that self-restraint is the boasted characteristic
of the model American, should he not learn that the model American
nation should be self-restraining? Let us learn this lesson, and
surely we will never war. Herein shall we find the solution of this
great problem. We can preach about peace and write pretty orations,
but if we are to impress it upon the hearts of the world, we must
teach it, and in a systematic manner. It is not to be learned in a
day. It is the labor of a generation and more. It must be a fully
developed characteristic. Man is learning self-development; now we
must turn to the bigger ideals--national restraint, national
development, international brotherhood.
Do you say this is idealism--visionary? On the contrary, it is
thoroughly practicable. The only way to attain world-peace is for the
individual citizen to think peace, to teach peace, and to act in
accordance with such thoughts and teachings. Just as public opinion
causes war, so only through cultivated public opinion can we hope for
peace. I do not say to sink our battleships and turn free our army. I
do not argue that we should quit guarding ourselves and throw
ourselves open to the world; but what I seek is that we should turn
our faces with bright hope to the future, eager to assist in the
abolition of all that tends to war, eager to assist in the only
proper way--the enlightenment of the world-nations.
The call comes naturally to America, the land of new belief; America,
the New World of Opportunity, as Emerson calls it; the land cut off
from the conventional past; a land that has taken world-leadership in
the march of a single century. To America, where problems are studied
and fallacies dethroned, the birthplace and the abiding home of
democracy; to America, the Christian, the civilized! What will the
answer be? Already we can hear the faint responses, as yet vague and
indistinct, the drowned murmurings of the wiser tongues. These must
grow into a national anthem whose echo will challenge the powers of
the world and startle them into the consciousness of the new
brotherhood. We will answer:
"Yes, we have learned the lessons of the centuries--that war is a
fallacy, and armed peace its ill-sprung child; that man is no longer
savage; that with enlightened mind he has controlled his warring
instinct; that human love is a mightier power than war; and that we
are one in the brotherhood of the Master.
"Let us stand before the nations, clad in simple honesty, panoplied in
elemental justice; let us appeal to the common conscience of the
world; let us say to the war-made powers, there is a way out, and we
will lead. We will help you police the sea; we will give our
constabulary to a quota of peace, but we are through. No great
standing army, no more leviathan battleships. We trust to what we
boast of as the highest attainment of the age, the innate justice of
civilized humanity."
To such a national summons, how will Texas respond? Facing the Mexican
boundary for eight hundred miles, Texas is to-day peculiarly the
guardian of our nation. The situation calls not for agitation and
jingoism, bit for rare patience, sanity, and self-control. Through
troubled waters our chosen captain is guiding the Ship of State. It is
no time for mutiny, but rather a time for obedience.
In this critical hour let every loyal citizen say with a contemporary
poet:
In this grave hour--God help keep the President!
To him all Lincoln's tenderness be lent,
The grave, sweet nature of the man that saw
Most power in peace and let no claptrap awe
His high-poised duty from its primal plan
Of rule supreme for the whole good of man.
In this grave hour--Lord, give him all the light,
And us the faith that peace is more than might,
That settled nations have high uses still
To curb the hasty, regulate the ill,
And without bloodshed from the darkest hour
Make manifest high reason's nobler power.
NATIONAL HONOR AND PEACE
By LOUIS BROIDO, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
representing the North Atlantic Group
Second Prize Oration in the National Contest held at Mohonk Lake,
May 28, 1914
NATIONAL HONOR AND PEACE
Since the dawn of history the teachers, thinkers, and prophets of
mankind have prayed and labored for the abolition of war. In the
process of the centuries, their hope has become the aspiration of the
mass of men. Growing slowly, as do all movements for righteousness,
the cause of peace first claimed the attention of the world in the
year 1899, when Nicholas of Russia called the nations together to
discuss ways and means for the arbitration of international
differences and for the abolition of war. From that day on, the
movement for peace has progressed by leaps and bounds, and to-day it
has reached the highest point of its development.
Already nations have signed treaties to arbitrate many of their
differences. Holland, Denmark, Argentina, and Chile have agreed to
arbitrate every dispute. But these nations are not potent enough in
world affairs for their action to have an international influence. It
remains for the great powers like England, France, Germany, and the
United States to agree to submit every difficulty to arbitration, and
thus take the step that will result in the practical abolition of war.
If one would find the reasons that thus far have kept the great powers
from agreeing to submit _all_ differences to arbitration, his search
need not be long nor difficult. The Peace Conference of 1907 reports
that the objections to international arbitration have dwindled to
four. Of these objections the one commonly considered of most weight
is this: "We will not submit to arbitration questions involving our
national honor." Even so recently as the spring of 1912, our own
Senate refused to give its assent to President Taft's proposed
treaties with France and England to arbitrate all differences, and
refused on the ground that "we cannot agree to arbitrate questions
involving our national honor." This is the statement that you and I as
workers for peace are constantly called upon to refute.
Let us, therefore, consider what honor is. For centuries honor was
maintained and justice determined among men by a strong arm and a
skillfully used weapon. It mattered not that often the guilty won and
the dishonorable succeeded. Death was the arbiter, honor was appeased,
and men were satisfied. But with the growth of civilization there
slowly came to man the consciousness that honor can be maintained only
by use of reason and justice administered only in the light of truth.
Then private settlement of quarrels practically ceased; trial by
combat was abolished; and men learned that real honor lies in the
graceful and manly acceptance of decisions rendered by impartial
judges.
As men have risen to higher ideals of honor in their relations with
one another, so nations have risen to a higher standard in
international affairs. Centuries ago tyrants ruled and waged war on
any pretext; now before rulers rush to arms, they stop to count the
cost. Nations once thought it honorable to use poisoned bullets and
similar means of destruction; a growing humanitarianism has compelled
them to abandon such practices. At one time captives were killed
outright; there was a higher conception of honor when they were
forced into slavery; now the quickening sense of universal sympathy
compels belligerent nations to treat prisoners of war humanely and to
exchange them at the close of the conflict. At one time neutrals were
not protected; now their rights are generally recognized. A few
hundred years ago arbitration was almost unknown; in the last century
more than six hundred cases were settled by peaceful means.
During the last quarter of a century we have caught a glimpse of a new
national honor. It is the belief that battle and bloodshed, except for
the immediate defense of hearth and home, is a blot on the 'scutcheon
of any nation. It is the creed of modern men who rise in their majesty
and say: "We will not stain our country's honor with the bloodshed of
war. God-given life is too dear. The forces of vice, evil, and disease
are challenging us to marshal our strength and give them battle. There
is too much good waiting to be done, too much suffering waiting to be
appeased, for us to waste the life-blood of our fathers and sons on
the field of useless battle. Here do we stand. We believe we are
right. With faith in our belief we throw ourselves upon the altar of
truth. Let heaven-born justice decide." Here is honor unsmirched,
untainted! Here is pride unhumbled! Here is patriotism that is
all-embracing, that makes us so zealous for real honor that we turn
from the horrors of war to combat the evils that lie at our very
doors.
We know that faith in such national honor will abolish war. We know,
too, that men will have war only so long as they want war. If this be
true, then, just as soon as you and I, in whose hands the final
decision for or against war must ever rest, express through the force
of an irresistible public opinion the doctrine that our conception of
national honor demands the arbitration of every dispute, just so soon
will our legislators free themselves from financial dictators and
liberate the country from the dominance of a false conception of
national honor.
Do you say this ideal is impractical? History proves that questions of
the utmost importance can be peacefully settled without the loss of
honor. The Casa Blanca dispute between France and Germany, the
Venezuela question, the North Atlantic Fisheries case, the Alabama
claims--these are proof indisputable that questions of honor may be
successfully arbitrated. "Does not this magnificent achievement," says
Carl Schurz of the Alabama settlement, "form one of the most glorious
pages of the common history of England and America? Truly, the two
great nations that accomplished this need not be afraid of
unadjustable questions of honor in the future."
In the face of such splendid examples, how meaningless is the doctrine
of the enemies of peace, "We will not arbitrate questions of national
honor. We will decide for ourselves what is right and for that right
we will stand, even if this course plunges us into the maelstrom of
war. We will not allow our country to be dishonored by any other."
Well has Andrew Carnegie expressed the modern view: "Our country
cannot be dishonored by any other country, or by all the powers
combined. It is impossible. All honor wounds are self-inflicted. We
alone can dishonor ourselves or our country. One sure way of doing so
is to insist upon the unlawful and unjust demand that we sit as judges
in our own case, instead of agreeing to abide by the decision of a
court or a tribunal. We are told that this is the stand of a weakling,
that progress demands the fighting spirit. We, too, demand the
fighting spirit; but we condemn the military spirit. We are told that
strong men fight for honor. We answer with Mrs. Mead: 'Justice and
honor are larger words than peace, and if fighting would enable us to
get justice and maintain honor, I would fight! But it is not that
way!'" For it is impossible to maintain honor by recourse to arms;
right may fall before might, and, viewed in the light of its awful
cost, even victory is defeat. In the words of Nicholas Murray Butler:
"To argue that a nation's honor must be defended by the blood of its
citizens, if need be, is quite meaningless, for any nation, though
profoundly right in its contention, might be defeated at the hands of
a superior force exerted in behalf of an unjust and unrighteous cause.
What becomes of national honor then?"
Too long have we been fighting windmills; we must struggle with
ourselves; we must conquer the passions that have blinded our reason.
We have been enrolled in the army of thoughtlessness; the time has
come to enroll in the army of God. We have followed a false ideal of
honor; we must disillusion ourselves and the world. If men declare
that the preservation of courage and manliness demand that we fight,
let us lead them to the fight, not against each other, but against all
that is unrighteous and undesirable in our national life. Men still
cling to an ancient conception of national honor; let us convince them
that there is a newer and higher conception. Men still declare that
peace is the dream of the poet and prophet; let us prove by historical
example that questions, even of national honor, can be happily
settled by arbitration. If men despair, let us remind them that
to-day, as never before, the mass of men are slowly and surely working
out God's plan for this great cause.
The day of triumph is not far distant. Already the moving finger of
Time paints on the wide horizon, in the roseate tints of the dawn, the
picture of Peace--Peace, the victory of victories, beside which
Marathon and Gettysburg pale into insignificance; victory without the
strains of martial music, unaccompanied by the sob of widowed and
orphaned; victory on God's battlefield in humanity's war on war.
THE NEW NATIONALISM AND THE PEACE MOVEMENT
By RALPH D. LUCAS, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, representing the
Central Group
Third Prize Oration in the National Contest held at Mohonk Lake, May
28, 1914