WHAT PEACE SHOULD MEAN
Not When but How--The Argument for War--Right over Might--National Hate
as a Political Asset--The Human Pathway--Peace by International
Police--The Practical Way--Is a New Age Approaching?
The endeavor in these pages has been to show from close personal
research in Europe the cause and cost of this war--cost in finance and
human lives,--and also the lessons that America, and particularly the
United States, should derive from this greatest war.
It is not so material when this war terminates, as how it terminates.
Many people, and especially those sympathetic with Germany, are looking
for a drawn battle. This means a world-disaster, and no world-progress.
The British Empire is determined that this war shall mean for
generations a lasting peace by the destruction of the German war
machine. The Germans likewise declare that what they are fighting for
is the peace of Europe. The Germans, high and low, declare that this
peace has been disrupted by jealousy of German culture, German
efficiency, and German success. It is difficult to understand the
German logic, for wars do not lessen jealousy, envy, or race, or
national hate. They only increase the jealousy and put peace further
away than before, unless there is real conquest, division, and
absorption.
Bismarck declared in 1867 that he was opposed to any war upon France,
and that if the military party convinced him of ability to crush France
and occupy Paris, he would be unalterably opposed to the attack. For,
said he, one war with France is only the first of at least six, and
were we victorious in all six, it would only mean ruin for Germany, and
for her neighbor and best customer.
"Do you think a poor, bankrupt, starving, ragged neighbor as desirable
as a healthy, solvent, fat, well-clothed one?" demanded Bismarck.
France attacked Germany in 1870 and found her well-prepared armies
impregnable. Many believe that the Allies will find the German
trench-defences now impregnable. I do not think the Allies will pay
the price in human sacrifice to invade Germany from the west. The
break-up of Germany is more likely to come from her exhaustion and the
weakness of Austria, against which the pressure will be steadily
increased. But what follows the war is most important. If the
victorious or defeated nations are to go on arming, they will go on
warring to the extent that there be left in the world no small nations
and no unfortified area.
If Germany is to grow other navies, and England is still to build two
for one, North and South America must in time have navies, the support
of which will burden the western hemisphere and the progress of
humanity. It ought to be clear that this audacious war can mean
nothing unless it means tremendous progress toward universal peace;
unless it means that nations are to be guided by the same principles,
practices, and morality that should guide individuals.
I know all the arguments for the needfulness of war, and there is not
one of them that will hold water. Wars exist for the same reason that
they formerly existed with individuals, or between cities, or
states,--because there was no organization regulating the relations
between individuals, cities, and states. Wars exist between nations
to-day because there is no organization regulating international
relations.
Out of this war and its alliances must ultimately come such a
regulating of international relations, or the world goes back toward
bankruptcy and barbarism.
It is declared that the people of Europe have wanted this war; that the
Germans wanted to expand by war; that the French have wanted to fight
for Alsace-Lorraine; that the Russians must war for a water outlet;
that the English have favored war for a readjustment of the European
balances in power. There are many individuals who want their
neighbors' goods, or redivision; there are many cities jealous of their
commercial rivals; there are many states jealous of the progress of
others; but all these no longer think of war as a method of
readjustment, or even of redress of grievances.
Patriotism and nationality should no more be a basis of war than civic
pride or family pride.
Perhaps the first error to be blotted out before a universal peace is
that which arises from the German teaching that the state is a distinct
entity or individuality apart from ourselves; that a state has no moral
status, no moral principles, and can do no wrong; that while we may not
steal individually, we will justify ourselves in stealing, murdering,
and plundering collectively, in the name of the state.
When once this error is clearly seen and rooted out, we shall still
find in every community men who believe that what a man is able to get
and hold is his by right of possession and power; and we shall still
have police regulations, departments of justice, and courts of law, to
defend the weak against injustice from the strong.
We have constitutions in civilized communities to prevent robbery and
the injustice of majorities upon minorities. We have sheriffs, police,
and military power to enforce the edict of right, when once the highest
tribunal has made the nearest possible human approach to justice.
A distinguished lawyer once said to me that, to him, the most wonderful
thing in the world was an edict of the Supreme Court of the United
States; "A few words scrawled upon a scrap of paper and approved by
some aged individuals of no great physical vigor; and, behold, it is
instantly the law of a hundred million people!"
And, for the benefit of future human progress, the argument supporting
that edict is later printed with it; and that in future any errors
therein may be corrected, the wisdom of the minority or dissenting
judges is as carefully preserved and bound up with the major opinion
and edict, that all public sources for correction of error may be
preserved in the clear amber of legal justice in truth as betwixt man
and man.
"For what avail the plow or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?"
And freedom fails when justice falls and right of might succeeds.
The breaking up of the world's physical body, or of the material
dwellings and possessions of humanity, may be necessary for "a new
birth of freedom"; for the incoming of the larger light; for a broader,
more universal brotherhood.
Individual robbery or wrong may beget individual hate, but law in
social organization prevents its full expression. The extent to which
individual hate may be expanded indefinitely where guns take the place
of law, may be illustrated by some communities in sparsely settled
mountainous countries in our Southern states. Here family feuds and
individual murder went on through generations, until nobody could tell
how or why they ever began.
A journalist friend just arrived from Berlin in this month of February
tells me he detects a general policy in Germany to direct the national
spirit solely against England, possibly with a view to bringing the
German people into line for proposals of peace with everybody else.
The sentiment of Germany is being swung to-day, just as it has been
from the beginning under the present Kaiser, against England as the
real and only enemy to a German world-conquest.
Punch says the Germans spell "culture" with a K because England has
command of all the "C's." But the English-speaking race has also
command of the biggest letter in the alphabet, and can say damn with a
force surpassing expression in any other language. The most popular
song to-day in Germany is the "Hymn of Hate," by Ernest Lissauer, whom,
it is reported, the Kaiser has decorated for this--the only real German
literature from the war. It is a hymn and chant, and has rhythm, hiss,
and fight in it. It runs to the sentiment,--
"French and Russian, they matter not,
A blow for a blow, a shot for a shot,"
but ends,--
"We love as one, we hate as one;
We have one foe, and one alone--
ENGLAND!"
And when that last line and that last word burst from thousands of
German throats, as in the crowded cafés of Berlin, it is the fullest
German damn that can find expression in German consonants. I believe
the Prussians of Berlin would be as pleased to megaphone that line from
Calais to Dover as they would be to throw their first shell across the
English Channel. But if enforced international law did not permit them
to strive for that shot as the expression of their passion, they would
soon forget their hot hate and put their shoulder again beneath the
progress of the world.
Man has come up from the dug-out or the cave where in primordial
condition he won his food by his own hands from the uncut forests and
the unfarmed waters. As family policeman he had no incentive to
accumulations of food, clothing, or luxuries. These involved added
police responsibilities and enlarged the temptations of his neighbors,
both men and animals.
Later, his family becomes a tribe. In combination the duties of
protection for the common good take on a larger view. The village, the
walled city and the armed state naturally follow. Each stage of
communal growth reduces the number of men set apart for defence or
police duty. There is a corresponding increase in the common store of
human possessions and human happinesses.
From states grow nations, then empires, until but a small fraction of
the people is engaged in any way in aggressive or defensive warfare, or
even police work or the determination or enforcement of laws of justice
as between individuals, cities, states, or communities of any sort.
The individual club at the mouth of the cave protecting the family has
become for England a surrounding line of steel ships; for the United
States, of 100,000,000 people, a mere outline of a military defensive
organization, to be filled in when needed. But for a few communities
in the world that individual club has become a national armory, with
human energies perfecting the most destructive machinery of warfare,
that aggression may be carried on against neighbors, and territory
expanded for purposes of national government and the increment of
national wealth.
The twentieth century has been distinguished by a call to the
humanities; a summons to a larger brotherhood. This has been the
meaning of the clashes of the classes within all growing
nations--Germany, Russia, the United States. All that outcry of
humanity against mere commercialism, against the mere financial
exploitation of man and his labor, in this age takes on a larger
meaning.
In great wars material things go back; but the man goes to the front;
and the victorious survivors make a newer and broader human creation--a
new world with a new spirit.
The world has been seeking a solution of many social problems. They
instantly disappear as dissolved in the hot cauldron of war. In the
settlement of peace following, they are found precipitated in the fired
solution, refined, clarified,--"settled."
To-day all social problems are merged in the greater problem of
national existence. Alliances and a larger nationality become
necessities. Man comes forth in a larger citizenship--a citizen of the
whole world. There is, there can be, no other solution, no other
universal peace. From this war must follow a world federation and
international citizenship.
The first recognition of the brotherhood of nations may arise under the
Monroe Doctrine. While this doctrine primarily is one for our national
defense, it should properly embrace the defense of both North and South
America, any aggression from the other side of the ocean to be unitedly
resented on this side.
The increasing responsibility of nations for their fellow nations may
be illustrated by the case of Cuba. The United States heard the cry of
the Cubans under Spanish rule, turned out the Spanish rulers, and gave
Cuba over to the Cubans. In the same spirit the United States, finding
itself in possession of the Philippines, is now attempting to develop
them not for the United States but for the Filipinos.
Lastly, we have the example of President Wilson, who has decreed that
government by assassination in the countries to the south of us must
cease, and that the United States will not recognize any government
thus set up in Mexico.
It is, however, not yet incumbent upon any nation, as upon individuals,
to say to its neighbor, "You shall not arm; you shall not build a war
machine of aggression; your offense against one is an offense against
all; your military invasion against one for purposes of expansion or
self-aggrandizement will be resented by all."
Until we have practical application of a world-wide police in
maintenance of the peace of nations, not alone by international
agreement, which can be broken, but by agreement and international
police-enforcement, so that it cannot be broken, there can be no
universal peace.
We are now approaching that time.
There is no more reason why aggregations of people should have the
right of murder, destruction, piracy, and pillage, than that
individuals should have such right.
This is just a simple, practical question in human advancement. The
world should now be big enough to grasp and effectively deal with it.
The true meaning of this war is, therefore, human progress: humanity
taking on larger responsibilities--the whole world answering the
question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" with a thunderous, "Aye! we are
one and all our brother's keeper, and we may well keep the peace of the
world!"
There is no question, national or international, no question of the
individual or collection of individuals, which cannot be settled by the
laws which belong in the human heart. Such laws may be called
spiritual or natural, divine or human; they are one and the same.
Moses wrote no new law on the tables of stone on Mount Sinai. The laws
were before the tables of stone, and before the creation of the
mountain itself. It was only for the people to hear and to do.
It is the same to-day. The laws of brotherhood--brotherhood of
individuals, brotherhood of nations, or aggregations of
individuals--are unchanged and unchangeable. It is only for the world
to hear and to do.
The doctrine that war is a biological necessity must go by the board.
The teaching that war is needed to harden men and nations must be
placed in the realm of pagan fiction.
If war is a necessity for man, it is a necessity for woman. If it is
good for men, it is good for children. If it is good for nations, it
is good for states. If it is good for states, it is certainly good for
cities. If it is good for peoples, it is good for individuals.
War is Hell, and from Hell. Hell may not be abolished, but it may be
regulated.
Wars may not be abolished from the human heart, but they may be
restrained from breaking forth to the destruction of the innocent and
the guiltless.
There is only one practical way to do this, and that is to have nations
under restraint, just as nations have states and cities under
restraint. Then international courts of justice may perform the same
work national courts now perform in respect to differences between
states.
Man has come up from the individual, or dual, unit through family and
tribal relation, the walled city, the policed state, into the armed
nation. He is now steadily stepping forth into the world as ruler of
himself, the creator of his own government, the heir and sovereign of
the world. He can step into the kingdom of manhood suffrage or
government only so far as the rights of his fellow men are recognized.
Evil holds its own destruction, and nations that live by the sword
perish by the sword.
For the United States to rush into the maelstrom of war, with
organization of armies and the building of armaments, is to invite its
own destruction.
For just one hundred years the North American continent has held the
practical example of the impotency of the war-spirit where there is no
war machinery.
By the Bush memorandum of agreement one hundred years ago it was
provided that there should be no guns, forts, or naval ships on the
greatest national boundary line of the world--4000 miles across the
American continent between the United States and Canada. Nowhere else
in the world have armed men attempted invasion, and yet provoked no
war, no reprisal. What might have been the relations between the
United States and Canada when the "Fenians" armed in New England and
attempted a raid across the border, if there had been armies and
fortifications on that border?
How securely now dwells in Canada $100,000,000 of the Bank of England
reserve gold! When German representatives in the United States talk of
Germany's right to invade Canada and get that gold. Uncle Sam only
smiles and frowns. And the smile and the frown are potential. That
boundary has been consecrated to peace; and what would be thought of
the proposal, did Germany command the seas, that Uncle Sam accept some
money or promises to pay and permit the German armies to go through,
according to the proposal to Belgium?
In an age which has abolished human slavery, broken the walls of China,
which is bringing the yellow races into the labor and white light of
civilization, which has made Germany a nation, and spanned a continent
with the human voice so that Boston talks with San Francisco, is it too
much to expect that it can bring the boon of an international
civilization, abolishing national wars?
Indeed, it is right at our doors if the United States would only
welcome it and join it, instead of preparing to invite the old-world
barbarism of national warfare by planning military defenses and naval
fleets.
Did anybody ever hear before of ten nations, and nearly a billion
people, at war, and all declaring that they are warring for purposes of
peace; and may there not yet be that universal peace by reason of this
war, and the war's _alliances_?
Suppose that, either before or after the nations of Europe lay down
their arms, universal disarmament is assented to, and the peace of the
world is entrusted to an international tribunal, which takes such part
of the armies and navies as it may need to enforce its decrees, the
balance so far as not needed for local police duty to be put back into
industry or laid on the shelf, and all border fortifications ordered
dismantled or turned into public recreation grounds--is it too much to
expect in this Age?
What would be simpler than, in the end, to find fortified Heligoland,
not back in the hands of England, but the naval base of a Hague
Tribunal enforcing international peace?